Positive Sustainability: sustainable sustenance
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We all may want our cars, our homes, our computers and our jobs, but there is one thing we can all agree we need: food. Unfortunately, in the world today, food is highly problematic — from a global perspective, it’s expensive, it’s unfairly distributed and its production is an environmental disaster. Statistics detailing the extent of food’s many problems are easy to find, but so far, solutions to this global plight have proven elusive.
There does not yet exist a simple, out-of-the-box solution to the food crisis. For the future, however, both a class at Columbia University and a small non-profit in Kansas are working on two fundamentally divergent solutions that could change the face of cultivation forever: vertical farming and Natural Systems Agriculture.
By the end of this year, more than half of the world’s population will live in cities. Advocates of vertical farming propose that food production should follow this demographic transition into the urban environment, with the food of the future grown not in fields, but in skyscrapers. While the idea might sound at first a tad ludicrous, Dr. Dickson Despommier and his students in Columbia’s Medical Ecology class are convinced of its potential.
Common Mistakes Growers Make While Foliar Feeding
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Michael Straumietis
Foliar feeding is a fantastic, inexpensive and fairly easy way to give your plants an extra boost of nutrients. Horticulturalists have successfully used it to heal damaged plants and increase yields for decades. But like with any tool, it is entirely possible to misuse it or fail to use it to optimum benefit. To make sure that foliar feeding lives up to its reputation as a boon to your crops, you need to remain educated about proper application. In order to get the most out your foliar spray, make certain not to make the following mistakes.
Thinking Foliar Feeding Can Replace a Poor Nutrient Solution - No matter how good a foliar spray is, it cannot help your plant if you do not optimize your nutrient solution. You should think of your nutrient solution as the main course for the plant and foliar feeding as the dessert. You should work very hard to make sure that your nutrient solution has the proper balance of nutrients, is delivered to your root zone at the proper rate and has the right pH balance and temperature. Only then should you consider using foliar feeding. You should consider a foliar spray as a supplement to your nutrient solution, not a replacement for it.
Keeping Your Grow Room Too Warm - Plants are accustomed to growing in fairly warm environments, but if grow room becomes too warm it will render you foliar spray much less effective. You should remember that a foliar spray should be applied as a fine mist to your leaves, and therefore will evaporate very easily if the temperatures climb too high. You should also remember that increased temperatures increase transpiration in plants, the process by which leaves release moisture into the air. Too great of transpiration will also render the foliar spray not quite as effective.
Not Using a Sticking Agent - While it is certainly possible to simply use the spray by itself, most who choose to foliar feed their plants add a sticking agent. This decreases runoff and allows more of the nutrients to soak into your foliage.
Ignoring pH Balance of the Foliar Spray - Strange as it might sound, many growers don’t measure the pH balance of their nutrient spray before they use it on their plants. Even seasoned growers who are fastidious about making sure that their nutrient solution is balanced for optimum uptake, often ignore the conditions of their foliar spray. For optimal absorption, your foliar spray should have a pH of about 5.8. If it is too acidic or alkaline, your leaves will not be able to absorb the nutrients properly.
Not Experimenting First - Foliar feeding has the fantastic potential to help your plants but you should make certain that you try it one just one or two plants before you try it on the rest of the crop. While it is very rare, it is entirely possible for your plants to suffer excess nutrients and develop symptoms that might be as bad a nutrient deficiency.
The biggest greenhouse in Britain unveiled
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You’ve heard of the factory chicken. Now meet the factory vegetable. Grown in their millions in trays of nutrient-enriched water inside a heated, artificially-lit greenhouse large enough to house ten football pitches, they are as far as you can get from ‘natural’ home-grown food.
But this week, workers are putting the finishing touches to Britain’s largest hydroponic greenhouse - an astonishing construction in white steel and glass.
By the time the site is complete in 2010, another six massive greenhouses will have been constructed, providing a home to more than 1.3million tomato, pepper and cucumber plants - grown hydroponically, without soil.
Kent is often called the Garden of England. When this village of glass is complete, it will be more like England’s factory.
At a time when people are increasingly concerned about industrial-scale farming, this latest, monumental step in the steady, insidious creep of factory farming is a controversial one.
Fresca, the company building the complex on the Isle of Thanet with a consortium of Dutch growers, argues that the new site - called Thanet Earth - will help meet the demand for homegrown food all year round.
But real food campaigners say nothing can replace the taste of vegetables and fruit grown outside in proper soil. Read the rest of this entry »