Pear harvest time and random news from the garden

We are nearing the end of the outdoor season and I decided to give it a last little push...Cleaned out some weeds in the back, gave my plants bloom fertilizer for the first time this year (yup!) And trained some of the vining plants up the fence.

Almost everything I planted produced pretty well, save for the watermelon and zucchini...I have to investigate why those didnt grow well. And I have 1 white seedless grape vine (can't remember the type) and 1 concord grape vine, along with 1 hardy Issai kiwi vine (yes, kiwi!). Those haven't bloomed but it is my understanding that they should fruit next year. Can't wait for homegrown grapes and kiwis!

The picture in this post is from my d'Anjour pears that I harvested this morning. What's great with fruit trees is that they are so productive! Mine gave me 100lbs of delicious pears with ZERO maintenance or fertilizing. Enjoy!

Outdoors season finishing, time to focus on indoor growing!

Irene has made ravages on the east coast (and broken some of my plants!). Not as bad as everyone expected, but surely bad enough to destroy crops!

Either way, the temperature has been cooling down and days have been getting shorter, which indicates that the outdoor growing season is close to its end...

I've harvested more cherry, roma, beeksteak tomatoes and peppers of all kinds, cucumbers, than I know what to do with! Thankfully my friend owns a restaurant and I give him the surplus. Gives a bit of market feedback and helps bring his costs down a bit...everyone wins

I've finally taken those cuttings and they are rooting at the moment for soon to come indoor planting. I'll be growing 10 cherry, 10 beefsteak, 10 various peppers, and I've also taken so raspberry and grape vine cuttings for test purpose, and for my personal pleasure :P

Enjoy the pictures and stay tuned for more!

Guilty...

Guilty of not having delivered the pictures as promised....

But in my defense, I have had a hectic week, so my grow room isnt even reorganized yet... Im gonna hire some help this week to handle the indoor growroom since I have to ensure everything is kept up with..

Our vertical farm project is on track and we are getting lots of investment offers. But not accepting any for now, I want this to stay private for as long as possible.

What do you think of vertical farming? Is it economically viable? How about Dickon Despommiers concept? Do you believe in it?

above is a picture of this morning's harvest from outside...lots of cherry tomatoes and delicious veggies, miam!

Stay posted, I've saved the best for the last!

A day of propagation...

Today is the day we propagate. Today is the day we bring new life into my indoors grow room. See I've been running this little room of about 10X10 in my basement as a little lab. It's set up with supplemental lighting and some -basic - environmental controls, mainly a window ac unit, a dehumidifier and a standing fan.

I originally planted a blueberry, raspberry and mulberry (dwarf) trees. I also one lettuce, 4 cucumbers, 1 tomato plant, some strawberry plants, and 2 bell peppers. 1 cucumber and 1 bell pepper are grown hydroponically, the trees, tomato, and 1 pepper are in organic soil, and the rest of the cucumbers are in Pro Mix, which is a soil less medium made of perlite, vermiculite and peat moss.

I recently also added a bunch of herbs and edible flowers to the mix. Basil, lavender, thyme, pansies, oregano...They are all growing in Pro Mix as well.

The reason for all these different mediums is that I'm trying to determine which one is more productive and easier to deal with. My previous experience with ProMix makes it a strong competitor, but so does my experience with hydroponics.

See, most commercial greenhouses grow in large rockwool slabs, using drip irrigation lines. It's effificient, quite simple labor wise, and is scaleable on a vertical level, so we may end up using just that.

So today we are streamlining the grow room a bit. And this starts with 5 new tomato clones, 5 new pepper clones,a big cleanup of the strawberry buckets. I will post pictures later today of the old vs new setup, so stay posted!

The story unfolds...

Sunday, July 31st, 2010

Time for an update, and a bit more details on the plan, which im sure sounds not so clear so far...

It's scorching hot outside right now and my tomato plants are just loving it. There will surely be much more than my family can eat, but that's besides the point.

See the whole idea behind this project is to put together a functional, full size prototype of a COST EFFECTIVE vertical farm. Now I emphasize the words "cost effective" because the concept of vertical farming isn't new... It's been coined a longggg time ago and was recently updated in definition by the man considered the modern father of the idea: Professor Dickson Despommiers over at Columbia University.

His theory calls for a building costing over 100 000 000$ that has the capacity to feed 50 000 people. Lots of money for no garantees of anything really working out... But the core of his concept is good and the principles are valid.

After much research, I think I've got a system that can feed the same number of people for about 2 000 000$, or 2% of his system's cost.

Now that's ambitious, I know....But so far the results I am seeing and the projections seem to indicate it's working!

His system for vertical farming is all over the internet, if you care to read about it some more....As far as mine is concerned, you'll have to wait just a bit longer....

Khaled

Getting you up to speed!

Hi y'all!

I've been into this project for about 3 months now...I promise I will eventually explain why it took me so long to start blogging about it, but for now I expect this update will make you forget my little mishap :-P

I'm posting a bunch of picture from my outdoor and indoor gardens, those are about 3 weeks old, so things have changed a bit since then, but it still gives a good idea of what's happening...

I've got many types of tomatoes and peppers, some melons, although I don't think they'll do very well, cucumbers, strawberries, raspberries, and some grape vines

The outdoor crop is there mostly for observation of phenotype; resistance to water, diseases, wind, cold, etc. I will be taking cuttings from the best plants and transplanting indoors soon....

And that's where the fun begins!

See, in my opinion, food needs to be grown locally, close to where it is consumed. For many reasons. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some extreme left anarchist, I actually used to find the views of the Greenpeace crowd ridiculous. But I've come around...

Local production allows for fresh, nutrition produce that doesn't need to be ethylene ripened, that requires very little transportation. The produce tastes better, is much safer for human consumption on many levels.

More importantly I'm the poster boy for greenhouses. No more pesticides, herbicides, full environmental control, no need for crop rotation anymore, year round local production, and if you can stick in hydroponics as well, you've just eliminated soil born diseases such as e.coli and salmonella.

Stay tuned for more on this later!

A few steps into the game already!

Good day all,

First post, but definitely not first day of work! I've been wanting to start this blog for quite some time now, but haven't come around to doing it so far for many reasons. Feeding the planet, as the title says, is my objective, and it is indeed an ambitious goal.

I've always enjoyed growing things. The thought of something delicious, tasty, pretty, and useful, being grown by me, puts me in a state of bliss that is hard to explain...Perhaps we are closer to caveman than we think we are (or at least I am...)

I'm also tired of big agri-business, growing monocultures that cause soil erosion, using massive amounts of pesticides and herbicides that leach into our soil (and water), along with GMOs and hormones. Some will say "ya, but organic and bio farming are filling in the gap"...Sorry to disappoint, they're not... Organic farmers cannot be constant in their supply, and their produce often contain the deadly e.coli and salmonella viruses... It's an intermediary step, but definitely not the end of the journey!

I've grown all kind of stuff before, and it was always just for fun, but now it's different. I want to grow food. I want to grow enough food to make it a business. I want to grow enough food to feed the planet.

Stay posted, the interesting stuff is coming up!