Urban Food farming

[veggiechicken]

Just saw this interesting video about a cycle of food production within an urban area - Salford actually. Some food for thought!
BBC News - Living lab tests urban food farming

[Kirk]

I am somewhat unsure what the aim of the project is. Growing food in urban areas is not really difficult, build a raised bed, or two.

Too much of the wording is towards all your food/vegetables, simply not possible, you need a much greater area of land. They do not say it explicitly but the way it is put is ambiguous.

What is the research going to show? Not I suspect that we can grow papaya, banana and mango in the average Manchester back garden. Likely that apples, plums, swede, potato's, turnips and tomato's will. The things that we have grown for years.

The watering systems in place will cost more then my food purchases for the next 10 years. And blocking the windows with plants means putting the lights on in the house. The roof garden looks nice, just my roof slopes.

When I look at it they seem to have made raised beds, used containers and built a poly-tunnel.

The idea is good but I am unsure where it can lead beyond what we are fully aware of now. An investigation into possible new plants to grow is reasonable but showing standard vegetables growing better in a bed with £1000 of irrigation is pointless.

A free 10 week course on building a raised bed, filling with soil, sectioning and planting 4 or 5 vegetables varieties would be more productive. At least to my thinking. Potato's I would now always plant in a large plastic pot, I get better results, show people a suitable pot, the compost+manure mix and put in 3 potatoes, a few words of advice (watering) and that takes 30 minutes. I find ones like Anya and PFA works very well.

Them researching into options is one thing, educating people to do any basic growing is another.

[Martin H]

Outside our central London office there are some big, deep raised beds. Last week the maintenance people cleared the summer bedding and spread a deep mulch of well-rotted horse muck on the beds.

I expect over this next week it will be planted up with winter/spring bedding and spring bulbs. I'm sure ot will look lovely. But wouldn't it be great if instead they filled it with overwintering onions, garlic, broad beans, spring cabbages and other tasty edibles!

I'm afraid when I watched the BBC clip I just thought, what a waste of funding: I hope my taxes aren't going into this project. I'd much rather invest in encouraging local people to grow ordinary food in low-tech ways using the ground already available to them.

I'm also guilty of thinking Vincent should get a haircut. I must be getting old...

[mothhawk]

In the video I noticed
that the shop sells bananas and pistachios, but didn't see either being grown, so that's not 78 steps from growing to selling.
Also satsuma and plastic shrink wrapped cucumbers.
There seems to be an awful lot of wasted space between the raised beds
The sweet peppers were slightly deformed, so they are lacking something
The fungi are presumably a cash crop, since to grow them takes a lot of space for a relatively small amount of edible bulk.

Does it actually all pay for itself I wonder? So much piping, buckets, baskets, pumping (didn't see any renewable energy sources) must have cost a fair amount to set up, then the rent/cost of the building and the shop.
As it's part research project, no doubt they get their labour for free from uni students.

I bet they could grow a lot more by demolishing the old factory building and turning it into allotments.....

[alldigging]

Interesting.

Our council is having a world food day discussion - so I am looking to take ideas along that could make places more sustainable for food.

The idea of short courses on growing stuff is probably a good idea - doing it as cheaply as possible, so people can actually replicate it at home easily.

[Potstubsdustbins]

My mother always said "if you've got nowt good to say, say nowt".

NOWT.

Potty

[Mikey]

I have no sound at the moment so its just a lot of pictures to me.

I believe that any local gardening is good if it reduces some road miles of produce, but you have to factor in the mileage of seed aswell. I wish they built new houses with space for allotments these days rather than filling it up and having a token evergreen bed, and small park.