Green Group discussion

Growing plants in straw bales is becoming popular. If you buy the straw from an organic farm, you can be sure it is an organic way to raise your crops. You raise only as much as you need at a time, and the spent straw makes a good mulch. Be prepared to do a lot of watering, so you might want to capture rain from the roof.

Here is a very helpful book, the location is North America but it can easily be adapted.
Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales: Easy Planting, Less Weeding, Early Harvests. A Storey BASICS® Title

Today, just making the time and space to grow your own food for the year is the alternative.
Here is an excellently written book about how a family did just that; recipes are included, as well as a look at modern agriculture and food production.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Of course you can always forage for food, especially at this time of year. The Fruit Forager's Companion: Ferments, Desserts, Main Dishes, and More from Your Neighborhood and Beyond

This is a gorgeous book which will send you out with a basket on a tour of exploration.

Here are a couple of books about traditional farming written by the people who carried it out. These were mixed farms and the manure was used to fertilise the fields. In one case the land was owned by a great house so flowers and fruit were very important.

The Days of the Servant Boy


Apricot Village

Using ground-up ghost peppers to protect seeds from mice. The seed is not harmed and neither is the environment as it's only natural capsaicin.

https://www.care2.com/greenliving/thi...

Foraging for ramsons, wild garlic leaves, in Wales. This writer makes them into pesto and recommends other leaves and a book.

https://www.newwelshreview.com/articl...

Denis Cotter, Wild Garlic,Gooseberries… and Me: A Chef’s Stories and Recipes from the Land, (Collins, 2007).

I read about brown seaweed recently and have been adding an eighth of a teaspoon of powdered seaweed to my porridge each morning. I feel it is doing me a lot of good. Seaweed contains iodine which is needed for a healthy thyroid. My jar is an organic brand from the island of Jersey.

https://www.care2.com/greenliving/6-p...

Japanese food such as sushi often comes with seaweed but this is a low-iodine version so it is safe to eat a lot. You don't overdo iodine.

Indoor farming can be organic and in one case, the farm draws its water from the air instead of the city water supply. City indoor farming is taking off in a big way for salad greens and this look at Chicago shows how smart it is to supply the big market. 820 urban farms, some of them on top of factories.
https://www.care2.com/causes/this-cit...

I work for a food service company, and we just announced a partnership with a very cool startup called Square Roots. It's all about indoor vertical farming in urban areas to, at least in part, mitigate the problem of food deserts. Love their mission!

Wonderful! Thanks for the photo.

I found a great channel on YouTube about natural growing, thanks to my husband Allan sending me a link.
This video is all about spreading ash from fires and barbecues on your vegetable garden. Including which plants do not like ash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61ryi...

https://www.ecowatch.com/rob-greenfie...

Live for a year on what you can grow or forage...

Gizmodo asked a few experts what was the healthiest food. All recommended eating more and a variety of fruits and vegetables, and one expert tells you how to make your lawn an organic garden.

https://gizmodo.com/whats-the-healthi...

Also: " Researchers in Colorado found that planting food next to sidewalks and on front yards, strengthens neighborhoods, cuts down on crime, and builds what is calls “collective efficacy.” "

Here is the research article on the gardens.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

I once knew someone who turned her front lawn into a corn field. I love that idea.

Smart greenhouses - if you don't put in chemicals there won't be any, and you can apparently grow enormous quantities of food.

https://inhabitat.com/myfoods-smart-g...

A new Pdf is available from Ireland's EPA, giving easy-to-follow info about gardening without chemicals.
Among their advice is to choose varieties and species which are not prey to slugs, suit your soil type and so on. Composting, pest control, weed control and watering are included.

https://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/waste...

Slugs are easy to get rid of. Just put a small cup or two of beer out in the garden. They will pile into it and drown.

Green roof farming.
This may be the only connection some city kids have with nature.

https://livingarchitecturemonitor.com...

Make Use Of shares a list of five gardening websites and apps.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gardeni...

Thanks to the Royal Dublin Society for this:

"The McCormack Family Farm journey from a one-acre garden to a multi-million-euro vegetable farm is a remarkable success story. Edward McCormack started the business in 1984 by growing vegetables in a neighbour’s one-acre garden to sell to restaurants, and over the years the farm has grown in size to 250 hectares. In late 1990s Edward and his son Stephen, who now manages the farm, decided to pivot the business, moving away from low-margin vegetables such as potatoes and carrots in favour of higher value herbs and salad leaves such as rocket and spinach. The father and son team realised that most products in this category were imported and they strongly believed in delivering a quality Irish product to the market.

McCormack Family Farms continue to develop new product lines and supply many of the leading retailers in both Ireland and the UK. They have established a strong brand that is recognised by both customers and retailers for delivering high quality baby leaf salads, herbs, edible flowers, and microgreens. The McCormack’s have noticed a strong growth in demand for their products in recent years and currently produce approximately 50 tonnes of baby leaf, and 10 tonnes of herbs, each week making them one of the largest producers in the country. The farm is an important employer in the local area with 110 full times staff and up to 150 employed in peak season.

The McCormacks are also involved in many community and education initiatives. They host several farm tours each year, for everyone from local school students to international young farmers eager to learn from their success. Stephen McCormack and his team also support the Meath Feeding Homeless programme, which is very close to their hearts."

https://mccormackfarms.ie/

Quite an alternative - applying science to the work of making deserts fertile.
Sand grains are coated with a tiny layer of standard clay, so they can absorb water and stick together in a layer where plants can develop roots.

https://singularityhub.com/2020/08/19...

Good side if this is done cost-effectively would of course be that people in (increasingly) arid lands could grow more crops and provide their own food. The greenery would shade the land, provide humus to enrich the new soil and grazing, and would help absorb sunlight and carbon both.

Bad side would be that Earth's population would increase as it did during the green revolution of the 1960s. The human population will increase to match the food available.

The World's biggest rooftop greenhouse is in Canada, where it uses previously unused rooftop space on a warehouse.

And it's an organic vegetable farm.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-world-b...

""The advantage of being on a roof is that you recover a lot of energy from the bottom of the building," allowing considerable savings in heating, an asset during the harsh Quebec winter, he explains.

"We also put to use spaces that were until now completely unused," he said.

Fully automated, the new greenhouse also has a water system that collects and reuses rainwater, resulting in savings of "up to 90 percent" compared to a traditional farm.

Lufa "more than doubled" its sales during the new coronavirus pandemic, a jump attributable "to contactless delivery from our online site," says Sorret."

Author and archaeologist
Francis Pryor tells us how he and his wife opened their garden to visitors this year, despite the ongoing restrictions.
As he lives in fenland, he explains about drainage and other situations.

https://pryorfrancis.wordpress.com/20...

I found a new List about books on microgreens. There's a wide variety of books and authors.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Hi, someone can help me with a book about biochemistry in the soil in relation with the plants, I need to know how the plant gets the nutrientes and absolutely everything that have relation with it. Please group!

Hi Aaron,
this is the first one to come up on Google. From China.

http://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/...

Another
https://senr.osu.edu/sites/senr/files...

If your college works with Jstor you can just sign in.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1711530

An article that covers the basics

https://www.ecologycenter.us/microbio...

You can also find decent articles on Wikipedia and look at the references to see where they are getting the information.

I don't have any books to recommend personally. But there is far more on line now than previously.

Thanks, its a pleasure to receive an answer for you Clare, greetings from México, im doing master in sustainable organic agriculture!

Glad you are with us, Aaron, and wishing you every success.

Free on Kindle today, I have got it but not read it yet. There is more than one book of this name, by different authors.

Aquaponics for Beginners: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Own Aquaponics Garden System That Will Grow Organic Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Raising Fish

How Adding Rock Dust to Soil Could Help Get Carbon into the Ground,

"Researchers are finding that when pulverized rock is applied to agricultural fields, the soil pulls far more carbon from the air and crop yields increase."

The pulverized basalt weathers as it lays on the soil, which absorbs carbon. It becomes part of the rock. The changed rock eventually becomes limestone. It can end up in the ocean as sediment washed off the land.

If the US, India, and China treated the farm lands with the crushed rock that could lock up 1 billion pounds of atmospheric carbon dioxide in a year. Done globally, it could lock up 2 to 4 billion tons a year.

It might also allow nitrogen to bind to plant roots better, meaning less nitrogen fertilizer would need to be put into the ground which would reduce harmful nitrogen runoff into the rivers, lakes, and oceans.

The basalt is a cheap byproduct of the mining industry, left over rock from mining operations. There is enough lying around to do this for several years.

Not all basalt is created equal. Some variations have heavy metals in them which would be very harmful to put on farm land or anywhere else for that matter. It would have to be carefully screened which would add to the cost. Transporting the rock far distances would also add to the cost.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-ad...

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-discard...

"Aloe barbadensis, commonly known as aloe vera, has been used for thousands of years to treat skin ailments, promote digestive health and heal wounds. But while aloe vera gel is in high demand, the peels are thrown away as agricultural waste. Today, scientists report that these peels, or rinds, can ward off bugs, acting as a natural insecticide. They have identified several bioactive compounds in extracts from the peels that deter insects from feasting on crops.
...
"Now that insecticidal compounds in the aloe peels have been identified, the researchers will test how well they work in real-world fields against agricultural pests. Additionally, Bandyopadhyay is working with colleagues to explore if these compounds have anti-mosquito and anti-tick properties, which could potentially lead to development of an insect repellant for consumer use. "By creating an insecticide that avoids hazardous and poisonous synthetic chemicals, we can help the agricultural field," says Bandyopadhyay. "But if the peels show good anti-mosquito or anti-tick activity, we can also help the general public.""

More information: Treasures from trash: Aloe vera peels as a sustainable resource for natural pesticides, ACS Fall 2023.

Provided by American Chemical Society

Only downside I can see is that of course, the waste leaves make compost at present, so if they are not put back in the system there is less organic matter in the soil.

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-commonl...

"Overall, all nets that included red fibers performed significantly better at keeping out onion thrips than black or white nets. In the second outdoor trial, the researchers tested the effectiveness of red-red netting at different levels of cover: no cover, full cover, top only and side only.

Due to an outbreak of onion thrips in the area, insecticide was used. The fully covered plot required the least amount of insecticide and produced onions of high commercial value. The plots that were only ceiling- or side-covered required one additional application of insecticide, compared to the fully covered plot. Compared to the completely uncovered plot, the red-netted plots overall reduced the number of insecticide applications needed by 25–50%.

"These new red nets are more expensive than pesticides, but they are economical because they can be used for years. They are also very effective in controlling pests without all the work involved in spraying pesticides," said Shimoda. "My dream is that in the future we can make red nets that don't look red—at least not to the human eye, but they would have the same effect on pests. Hopefully, this would reduce manufacturing costs, and we can find ways to increase durability.""

More information: Advanced methods for insect nets: Red-colored nets contribute to sustainable agriculture, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-52108-1

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Provided by University of Tokyo