Berlin has been pioneering another current trend - urban farming. Many of the 74,500 local gardens contain edible plants. The fervor for local gardening began back in the World War 1 and 2 years.
However, Berlin’s senate, faced with the task of balancing a budget ridden with debt, says that some of the gardens may have to be bulldozed in favor of new construction.
Social media and the Internet changing the world as we know it.
We are able to share information with just one click of the mouse.
I can ask a garden question on Twitter and get answers from around the world within minutes.
It’s amazing.
The Internet is growing at an astonishing rate. New websites pop up every minute. There’s a whole world to be discovered….if you can only find it. Search engines can help, but you don’t always even know what you’re looking for.
Stumble Upon is a social media service that strives to help you find your favorite new websites. You will be directed to random sites based on your stated interests and the recommendations of your friends. I have spent hours just clicking the button and zooming around the Internet.
You sign up for an account with Stumble Upon and check off what kinds of topics and websites you are interested in visiting. There’s a toolbar to be downloaded. Once that is ready, you just start pushing Read the rest of this entry »
I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was growing up.
I would visit the tidepools and find the crabs, sea anenomes, limpets and more.
We took trips to a local science center where people could peer at smaller creatures under the microscope.
One kind of tiny ocean dweller is the diatom. These are algae that have developed a hard outer shell. They come in many shapes and sizes and are exquisitely beautiful, as these pictures show. After they die and fossilize, they are ground up into a fine powder called diatomaceous earth.
What does this have to do with urban gardening?
It turns out that many insects can be killed by using diatomaceous earth. The ground outer shell has very jagged, sharp edges that cut the exoskeleton of the insect when it comes into contact. This allows the sun and air into their shell, so they dry out and eventually die.
Earlier this year I wrote about how Joe Lamp’l, author and star of Tv gardening shows, started up a project where he vowed to create an organic victory garden for $25 or less.
As the main gardening season draws to a close, I thought I would give an update on how the project has gone.
He made greenhouses using empty plastic bakery cake boxes. Inspired by his example, I noticed that the 2 pound strawberry boxes I was buying at the grocery store would be perfect to use as urban garden-sized greenhouses.
Four or five wait patiently in my pantry now. I’ll be planting some pea seeds in there soon as I prepare to plant up my Earthbox.
I end up visiting a lot of nursery websites as I research plants for articles.
I noticed from time to time that I ended up at one called TyTy Nursery.
Each time I noticed how strange the pictures were, but didn’t think much of it.
One day I actually stopped and started laughing at the pictures on the page. I started clicking around to the different plants and noticed that all the pictures featured plants that had images like bikini-clad women and shirtless men inserted.
I visited again today for a giggle and noticed that it’s gotten even better - now they have videos, too! I watched the one about the “Italian White Fig Tree”, fascinated as someone moved a fig around the screen, with a painting of an Italian street in the background. Read the rest of this entry »
By Vanessa Richins
By Vanessa Richins
By Vanessa Richins
By Vanessa Richins
