Garden Culture Magazine: UK 6

GARDEN CU LT U R E UK EDITION · ISSUE 6 · AUTUMN 2014

DOIN’ TIME

in the garden

fake food

AQUASCAPING phytonutrients

tomorrow’s tastiest tomato

the hazards of

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CONTENTS I GARDEN CULTURE

PARSLEY

DOIN’ TIME

GROW-YOUR-OWN

34

14

FAKE FOOD

aqua scaping

44

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

8

KOMBUCHA

74

48 IN THIS ISSUE OF GARDEN CULTURE:

E.M.I.

A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

7 Foreword

44 Fake Food

8 Product Spotlight

48 Aquascaping

11 Solar Heated Raised Bed

52 Seed Saving 101

12 5 Hot Reasons to check your grow room daily

54 What’s the Best Tomato?

14 Doin’ Time in the garden

58 The Home Grown Expo 2014

20 Tomorrow’s Tastiest Tomato?

62 Kombucha - superfood

23 Five cool finds

66 What is fertilizer anyway? part 2

24 Pollinators & Pesticides

70 True Soil, True Knowledge

28 Nitrogen - the element and its forms

74 E.M.I. - a double-edged sword

34 Parsley - grow your own

78 Plant Nutrition - part 2

38 Korn - Garden Update

82 PhytoNutrients

40 Who’s Growing What Where?

62

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Distributed in the UK by:

FOREWORD & CREDITS I GARDEN CULTURE FOREWORD

CREDITS This Edition is dedicated to Lydie Sayers and Gilles Coulombe, ‘Thanks, I wouldn’t have been me without you’

Here we are again, summer is over, and there’s nothing left to harvest. Indoor gardeners on the other hand are just setting up. We are reverse season gardeners. When every other traditional outdoor gardener is lamenting the end of another season, we are planning what to grow, and how many bags of soil or cubes of rockwool to buy. Indoors, you are Mother Nature and you control everything - as long as you have the right equipment.

In this edition we are going to cover the very controversial topic of digital ballast interference. Not a big topic in the UK yet, but red-hot in USA. We will also cover the continued plight of the bee, prison farms, and tons of info on soil/organic and hydroponic gardening.

I will also reminisce about the great time we all had at the first annual Homegrown Expo.

STORE OWNERS WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Please write in and tell us your indoor gardening stories, respond to an article in this issue, or send a picture of your garden. Have you set up a garden in a school? We want to know. We need to motivate all the hydroponic stores to get involved in their communities. Grow food for your local restaurants, they might even buy it. Don’t sit in your store waiting for someone to come in. Grow amazing things, and share them with the world.

Eric

Garden Culture™ is a publication of 325 media.

ED I TO RS Executive Editor: Eric Coulombe Email - eric@gardenculture.net Senior Editor: Tammy Clayton Email - tammy@gardenculture.net V P O PER AT I O NS: Celia Sayers Email - celia@gardenculture.net DESIGN Job Hugenholtz Email - job@gardenculture.net Special thanks the following contributors: Maya and Kees Coulombe, Tammy, Nick Jackson, Gaby, Kyle Ladenberger, Jim Otell and Korn, Nicolas Ste. Marie, Everest Fernandez, Jeroen Kateehm, Evan Folds, Grubby, Judd Stone and Celia Sayers PUBLISHER 325 Media 44 Hyde rd, Milles Isles, Québec, Canada t. +1-855-427-8254 w. www.gardenculture.net Email - info@gardenculture.net ADVERTISING Eric Coulombe Email - eric@gardenculture.net t. +1-524-233-1539 D I ST R I B U T I O N PA R T N ER S • Nutriculture • Maxigrow • Direct Garden Supplies • Team Hydro Website : www.GardenCulture.net

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developer on, a Silicon Valley AEssense Corporati innovative dicated to providing and manufacturer de applying wers worldwide by solutions for plant gro TM 4, a s, introduces AEtrium advanced technologie roponic scalable hydroponic/ae rugged, modular, and oring and mplete real-time monit system that offers co red with environment. Enginee control of the growth e and also trium 4 is easy to us simplicity in mind, AE rting with ploy, and maintain. Sta easy to transport, de an en4 can easily scale into a basic system, AEtrium y. tire production facilit ic/aeroan advanced hydropon AEtrium 4 integrates ems, indular wireless subsyst ponic system with mo le monig, and lighting, to enab cluding sensing, dosin nt over the growth environme toring and control of ch of the ing our smart app. Ea the cloud or locally us system. ilable as a standalone subsystems is also ava rp.com www.aessenseco

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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT I GARDEN CULTURE

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im Plus provide prec Imperium and Imperiu feed d duration. It has 28 sion control over fee e nd to 15 minutes. Th durations from 1 seco the feed duration to flexibility to match the s plant means the root to the life cycle of the luOxygen, nutrient so have better access to d and ultimately yields tion uptake is increase are bigger.

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BY GREG DR AI S S

SOLAR HEATED RAISED BEDS I GARDEN CULTURE

Solar Heated

d e B d e s Rai

I’m tired of cold Aprils. The last two have been miserable.

Then to top it off, just when my greens get ready for harvest, we get a spell of 32°C days that causes many of my cool crops to bolt. So, my plan is to harvest the sun to warm up my beds in March. Maybe, just maybe, I can get a crop of greens in before the freaky weather ruins another lettuce crop. If my design works, I can get a fall crop or two in.

Water will pump into the collector only when the sun is out, as the pump is a solar pump. Heated water circulates into the rock bed, which will store the heat by day, and release it when air temps are cool, and at night. Foam insulation and Reflectex keep the heat from escaping into the ground. A layer of landscape fabric over the rocks keeps soil out of

the root area. When the sun is not out, or the pump isn’t operating, the water stays in the reservoir separated from the rocks by insulation.

r only when Water will pump into the collecto solar pump. the sun is out as the pump is a rock bed, Heated water circulates into the y, and release it which will store the heat by da d at night. when air temps are cool an

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BY JUDD STONE

. . . t a e h e v i s s e c x e t n preve even the potential for fi re

5 5Reaso Hot

ns

Technology has a big role to play in our indoor gardens. Automated or not, you are using something that involves technology. All lighting used by indoor gardeners is technological in nature. Electrical motors used to pump water or move air, both solid state timers and the kind with moving parts - are still employed quite commonly in greenhouses and indoor gardens.

Replacing the sun and the wind, defining seasonal change indoors, and watering your plants with scheduled perfection... keeping your prized garden at peak health requires technology. Once you get all the equipment to automate every aspect of supporting vitality in your grow room, while reducing your workload, remember this: Technology will not take your responsibility as head gardener from you, and from the day you plugged it in, the clock started ticking toward the day its going to lets you down.

ld asons why you shou Here’s five good re om every day. still visit your ro

1) Your Lights!

Your plants need these bad boys on for the full required daylight hours, and at the right height to optimize growing conditions. If you aren’t in there to adjust the lamps regularly, even every day in some cases, you will lose the sweet

12

spot, and your grow will suffer. Ballast, bulb, or timer failure will leave your garden in the dark, throwing off photoperiod, or worse yet... kill your plants.

Always respect the heat that high intensity discharge lights produce. Inspect them daily, because malfunction could lead to fire, and a fire can become devastating on many levels.

2) Your Fans!

These also are very important to have going all the time.

Make sure the fans in your grow area have manual switches on them. Most indoor garden centers offer this type of fan. Don’t use digital or remote control fans from big box stores - they reset with a power outage. So, if your power flashes, and your lights come back on, your fan won’t. But any fan can fail while your away, and if you are studious about adjusting your reflectors to optimize canopy light, mitigating heat with flow of air is a must. If this flow of air stops, your canopy gets hot, and your grow suffers.

GARDENING MISTAKES I GARDEN CULTURE

to check your g row room daily n a c n a f y n a ile fail whw y a a e r ’ you 3) Your Pumps!

Your solution for moving your solution. If the pump in your reservoir fails to come on when it should, your plants don’t get irrigated. In an intense growing environment that’s not good, and time is not on your side. If you won’t be going back into your room for a couple of days, you will be most unhappy when you return. If only you had just peeked in once a day...

The flip side of that problem is when a pump sticks on.

Now you have an extensive clean up job with potential water damage to the building. Not to mention a new pump to buy.

Both of these scenarios could be caused by a faulty timer or the controller you have the pump plugged into, so be sure to check those before replacing the pump.

Thankfully, the other commonality is that the quicker you address a bug infestation, the easier it is to recover from it, and beat them. Bugs could very well be the number one reason for failed indoor gardens. If you check daily for bugs, or signs of bugs, you can grow without preventative chemicals, and address situations as the present themselves. If you check on your grow room every 3 days, then you are missing the window of opportunity for bugs to get up to a 3 day head start.

By then things could get ugly.

5) Mercury Rising!

For those gardens that absolutely require air conditioning, losing it is blatant failure. However, you have levels of security options for this problem.

“Technology will not take your responsibility as head gardener from you”

4) Hostile Invasion!

They move quick. It’s open salad bar in that room 24/7, and the weather is perfect. Bugs never travel alone. They like to invite their friends, and have this maddening habit of reproducing like crazy upon arrival. It doesn’t matter what kind of bug it is either, they all have this in common.

You can attach your lighting to a high temperature cut off switch. If your air conditioning or fans fail, and the temperature rises higher, then the setting on the cut off switch will shut down your lamps to prevent excessive heat, or even the potential for fire. You now have 24 hours to fix it. But if you’re unaware for 3 whole days...

There are so many things that happen in real-time, regardless of how “automatic” any particular grow is. With gardens, we are always at the mercy of Mother Nature, even indoors.

Check on you plants daily, they enjoy having company. 3

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BY NICK JACKSON

A L L- N AT U R A L R E H A B I L I TAT I O N

doin’ time inthe garden

What better way to do time, than to watch things grow? Well, okay, I really wouldn’t wish the experience upon anyone. But if you find yourself in this position…

In October of 2012, I found myself facing 18 months in state prison. All because I didn’t call the police when someone broke into my home, robbed me, and flipped my life upside down. Little did I know, this would become such a positive learning experience for me, and others that I had the fortune of influencing in a positive light.

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DOIN’ TIME I GARDEN CULTURE

“ I FOUND MYSELF FACED WITH 18 MONTHS IN A STATE PRISON”

Settling in at ‘Hotel’ Santiam, I discovered the remnants of a garden tended by an older man who looked a lot like a garden gnome. He had earned his way there, to the best job on the yard. I made it my mission to do the same, and join him in the only positive spot in this place.

Before I knew it he had moved on, and I moved into his place. I was nominated as lead gardener on a crew of four. The other three were garden noobs, so I guess this wasn’t huge achievement, but happily taken anyway.

In early February of 2013, after four months of incarceration in another place I called the zoo.

Locked down for 22 hours a day in a cell as big as most people’s closets. It was such a relief to finally get my hands dirty, and do one of the things I love most - GARDEN. I’ve been gardening since I was a boy, alongside my grandfather, who was a passionate gardener. It was a chore that grounded me, and gave me connection to, and respect for, this earth. Having that and all freedoms taken away was a very humbling experience.

The soil in this garden needed lots of TLC, but I needed a project to keep my sanity intact. I soon found a lot of other people’s sanity connected with that patch of ground too.

I’ve always thought gardening was therapeutic and inspiring, but hearing people talk about the beautiful garden we grew was awesome and fulfilling. They were constantly me asking questions, monitoring the growth, and our work. Its beauty was quite a sight in a place of such despair and negativity. I realized that I wasn’t just doing this for me, I was doing it for all of them. The ones who couldn’t be out there lived vicariously through our gardening.

At the beginning the IWP (inmate work program) coordinator had high hopes and expectations for that little piece of land. While already a garden,

it wasn’t successful. In the end what we did with this half acre amazed him. None of us imagined we would grow over 7,000 pounds of food to supplement 480 inmates’ diets with fresh produce. The gardeners became the popular kids on the block.

We turned the food being served into something healthy and exciting to eat, rich in vitamins and minerals that really helped to rehabilitate the mind, body, and soul. Because as you might guess, our prison system doesn’t always focus on rehabilitation, it focuses on money - like everything else in Corporate America.

Sure, they offer a few classes here and there. But they don’t mind at all if you come back repeatedly, because it just makes them more money. Prison is a huge money-making machine that needs taming.

By who? Who knows! Society would be better off because of it. Not that there aren’t people who deserve punishment for things they do wrong, but treating people liked caged animals? I think its time to rethink this program. Caging animals is wrong, but humans are a civilized species. Being incarcerated shouldn’t change that.

Back to my experience... The coordinator informed us of all the work they expected us to do, and delivered the news we had no budget. There was no money to pay for anything we needed. We had to use existing tools and old seeds from years ago that had definitely not been stored properly. Not off to a good start here!

A challenge, I thought to myself…. bring it on! I instantly asked about donations. He gave me the path to try to get them approved, and offered any assistance he could. Now it was time to contact some good friends in the industry to get the tools and things we needed donated.

First came 11.5 m3 of natural compost from the City of Salem. A generous offering that was enough

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to give us a nice start on soil amendment. Next, my good friend, Jeremy Blau with Vital Earth, donated roughly £3030 worth of organic soils, fertilizers, and amendments to help us succeed.

We turned and amended that whole half acre by hand with a shovel using the John Jeavons double dig technique. This was many weeks of work, but that made days go by fast. Everyone loved to watch us work, especially the older guys, who spent a lot of time watching us through the windows.

After amending the dirt (it wasn’t fit for the title of soil yet), we made a list of what we wanted to plant, and where. I had friends who would donate any amount of seeds that we needed, but prison management wouldn’t allow it. The IWP coordinator soon managed to get us a few hundred dollars for seeds from somewhere.

When I get involved in something I give it everything I’ve got. I talked to anybody and everybody in the prison to try to get funding for seeds and equipment. I was so happy it finally paid off. So, when it was time to order seeds, I went with a long time favorite, Territorial Seed Company. They have great seed and such a wide selection. Naturally, we maxed out our seed budget in no time.

I ordered things I’d never grown before, and stuff people said we couldn’t grow - but we did. We tried starting seeds outside, but there’s just too much rain in an Oregon spring. So we had little to no success on many things.

There were two huts on the property that had no power, but offered a rain-free zone for germinating. So, I asked the electricians to donate some fluorescent lights they were going to throw out, and put some power outlets in these huts. They was fantastic! Not only did they give us electricity, but bought us a few brand new T5s too.

We were about to make history - the first Oregon Department of Corrections indoor garden.

I taught the crew how to start seeds, and tend baby plants. We started some 500 tomatoes, 300 peppers, eggplant, broccoli, okra, melons... and the lengthy list goes on. The onions, beans, peas, kale, spinach, carrots, beets and squash went directly in the ground with decent success.

It was awesome. You could tell that all those plants had a positive effect on morale, for gardeners and spectators alike. Even the guards had questions, like when things were ready. They too were eager to try what we had grown.

DOIN’ TIME I GARDEN CULTURE

The garden made us feel so good in such a bad place. It became apparent to me that this is what people needed, to watch things growing, and be a part of things evolving in a positive direction. It gives people hope, anticipation that something good is happening, and that things can change from nothing into something so beautiful, full of life, and delicious.

We filled that whole half acre with so many plants that we had trouble keeping up with harvesting everything. People had constantly asked to volunteer, and now I took them up on that offer. I felt like a volunteer. We were only getting paid about £1.25 a day for working our butt off, but it wasn’t about the money.

This was a labor of love, paying you in unmeasurable self-satisfaction. It was a release to a different world, a place I knew and missed greatly. The garden gave me something to look forward to every day.

Before I was thrown into this situation, I had filled my life with so much chaos that I took my morning chores of watering my garden as a burden, rushing through it, not truly enjoying the simple things that really matter. This opened my eyes to all aspects of life that I never took time to stop and pay respect to or be thankful for its place in my life, and humble myself to the real things in life that meant something to me. I had always thought of myself as a very grounded individual that didn’t take things for granted. This experience opened my eyes to a whole new level. Every day I watched plants grow, my crew grow, and the people around me who were watching grew too. Gardening should be one of the first requirements for any form of rehabilitation, it grounds you, literally...

Filling that whole half acre the way we did amazed everybody. When it came time to provide more space, I needed containers. I called my friend Dennis Hunter from Geopots. He donated lots of different sized Geopots that could be placed anywhere that wasn’t being utilized. Perfect for gardening on bark, rock, or even cement.

THE S.G.I GARDEN One of my top priorities was making sure I had a fresh beet, garlic clove, and a few kale leaves everyday. I must admit that we didn’t share many strawberries, blueberries, or the watermelons, but the rest was put on the veggie trays, and distributed throughout the chow hall.

I’d like to think we changed some peoples perspectives and health by supplying such nutritional food. I got a lot of praise for mpiy expertise. The amount of veggie trays that were served definitely increased immensely. I’ll never forget the first time they served beets, and everybody’s pee was purple.

They were freaking out, and the med line was full.

Too funny!

This experience changed my perspective of the need to not undervalue everything that happens in our daily lives, and to never take for granted even the smallest things that are constantly growing all around us. All people should have the option to eat healthy, and those in the situation of incarceration might need it more, to gain that clarity needed to make good decisions, and live a longer, healthier life. 3

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BY AMBER FIELDS

TO M O R R O W ’ S tast ie st

t omat o?

JUST MIGHT BE

HYDROPONIC Tomato lovers know that mid-summer through frost is the only time you can enjoy tomatoey perfection.

Whether purchased fresh-picked at a farm stand, or harvested from plants grown in your yard, there is just nothing that can compare at the grocery store. The only place to find distinctive heirloom fruits like Brandywine, Green Zebra, Purple Cherokee... is to grow your own, or find someone nearby who does.

But some summers leave you hanging. Sometimes its two or more summers in a row between good harvests, because tomatoes are both easy and tricky to grow. For seasoned tomato gowers, it all depends on the weather. An excellent tomato harvest is one of the few things people can fail at repeatedly, and not give up.

Those highly sought after flavors are complex; a unique blend of sugars, acids, and gases that have more to do with our sense of smell than taste buds. You need just the right growing conditions, cultivar selection, and soil fertility to produce that tomato heaven sensation devotees of the fruit tend to obsess over.

The more unpredictable the weather becomes, the less reliable those heady weeks of tomato delight are in taking shape, because even with the perfect cultivar, success with tomatoes requires perfect summer weather. The past decade has delivered anything but that.

Temperatures that are too high or too cold, too much rain or not enough at all, these are things that can leave tomato fans disappointed. Depending on the extremity - plants wither, disease sets in, fruits split before ripening, or you

20

have diluted flavor from excess water. Or worse, wildlife robs you of your crop by devouring the plant, puncturing fruits, or feasting on one almost perfectly ripe orb at a time!

The best tomato weather is warm, and somewhat dry.

Something we have no control of outside, but indoor tomato growers have complete control over everything. A fact that doubled greenhouse production of tomatoes over the 5-year span from 2007-2012. It was a boom driven by consumer demand for tastier tomatoes, and year around availability in the greenhouse or grow room, you can create the perfect summer regardless of freaky weather, the season, and the natural climate. Since hothouse tomatoes of the past don’t even come close to meeting today’s consumer demands, commercial greenhouse tomatoes are just about all grown hydroponically now.

The early stages of this switch produced much better fruits than before, but many times though juicier, the flavor is still lacking due to distances and ripening after being severed from the plant. A trend that is changing as more commercial growers establish themselves near heavily

HYDROPONIC TOMATOES I GARDEN CULTURE

S U C C E S S W I T H TO M ATO E S REQUIRES PERFECT S U M M E R W E AT H E R

de ve lop bet ter f lavor

THE HYDROPONIC TOMATO GROWER CAN SIMULATE THE WEATHER CONDITIONS

THE BEST TOMATO WEATHER IS WARM AND SOMEWHAT DRY

populated areas. This move toward local growing allows the tomatoes to remain on the plant longer, and develop better flavor.

But there are other things, more scientific control measures that one can do to recreate the perfect summer for hydroponic tomatoes grown indoors. The dry weather thing, for instance. They’ve discovered that by adding salts to the nutrient solution, the hydroponic tomato grower can more realistically simulate the perfect summer conditions that give backyard tomatoes their awesome qualities. Maybe awesome isn’t good enough to describe the reason so many to develop such an affinity for them that they will continue to plant them year after year - knowing that it might be fruitless effort in the end.

The more we learn about what the perfect harvest needs, the better the results of growing it indoors hydroponically will be, and the easier it will become for any indoor gardener to reproduce that outcome repeatedly, year around. Even the much treasured summer tomato. 3

gardenculture.net

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Heavy Duty Control Units:

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GREEN PRODUCTS I GARDEN CULTURE

cool finds 1

ADD SOME GREEN ANYWHERE

Air plants are a cinch to grow. The perfect houseplant for space challenged people on the go. Check out these awesome handmade planters designed just for air plants we found. A stylish way to add some greenery to just about any spot in your home.This is just a peek at what Cor Pottery has to offer.

More info: Etsy.com/shop/CorPottery.

2

AFFORDABLE SOUS VIDE

Used by the finest chefs in the world, the sous vide method cooks any food to perfection, and holds it there. Dinner is ready whenever you are, with all the nutrition and flavor preserved. The Sansaire is an immersion circulator for home sous vide cooking.

Compact, beautiful, and phone app control!

More info: Sansaire.com

3

4

WEED TEA BREWER

All natural vegan fertiliser from weeds!

High-nitrogen green tea brewed from nettles and comfrey is great for your garden plants.

You can get free nitrogen from other plants too.

Make instant release fertiliser from grass clippings, and even weeds pulled in your plot. Available from Worm.co.uk.

5

E AT I N D I G E N O U S LY

What can you harvest from an unkempt hedgerow? Plenty of deliciousness, actually. Totally British food compliments of Nature. Take a hike, and forage fresh organic foods indigenous to the ground you travel. Haul it home, and whip up something delightful. More info: WildAtHeartFoods.co.uk/the-book

TO G O G R I L L

Simply stunning. Possibly the most beautiful portable grill ever. Perfect for a picnic afield, a trip to the beach, or grilling on a compact balcony. Everything you need but the charcoal and utensils neatly stacked up and held in place by a rugged strap.

Available from Occa-Home.co.uk

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BY AGENT GREEN

pollinators &PESTICIDES There’s more to the story on bee decline. Unfortunately, this is a plight shared by all pollination assistants... butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and the rest. Pollen contamination continues to show a harmful effect on pollinators.

The Prime Suspect Read the ingredients on any insecticide at your local garden of them did not exist. A discovery that leaves one wondering center or at home. All of the following are neonicotinoid what purpose does it serve to coat seed in the powder in the chemicals: imidacloprid, clothianidin, acetamiprid, thiacloprid, first place if it is not doing what its professed to do? Curious. dinotedfuran and thiamethoxam.

However, the EPA’s original assessment of Imidacloprid begs They kill grubs and earthworms. Without worms, soil will turn to differ with these new studies. They deemed the chemical back into rock. The stuff is residual in the soil, and present had acute high toxicity, but naturally approved it anyway. in surface water that both insects and Imidacloprid applications protect timber birds use as a water source, increasing stands, rubber plantations, and buildings HUMMINGBIRDS, uncontrollable exposure. Birds eat from termites via a product called Premise BUTTERFLIES AND BEES worms and bugs that have these 200SC. ALL FEAST ON THE pesticides on them or in them.

Bayer’s Premise brochure it states that SAME NECTARS Hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees lmidacloprid is extremely water-soluble, all feast on the same nectars. They may have tested these spreads in the soil when wet, but binds to soil particles when chemicals on ducks and quail, but hummingbirds are far dry. It works by way of paralysis, disorientation, and stops smaller. Lots of birds are smaller than quail. Song birds eat the feeding and grooming habits - leaving termites 10,000 times seeds and berries off of crops, landscape plants, and garden more susceptible to deadly soil pathogens to boost disease perennials treated with neonicotinoid pesticides. It only takes obliteration. It does not degrade due to soil pH until levels a few seeds laced with Imidacloprid to reach the lethal dose reach pH 9, and even then it has a half-life of a year. reported in industry controlled lab testing.

The effects of the many applications in the war against pests is Is your concern over the situation rising? Sit tight. There’s affecting the ecosystem. Imidacloprid, also used in ant bait, has more. long-term residual activity in the soil, and is readily absorbed In February 2014, an opinion piece published on Forbes.com, by untreated plants. Soil testing shows that it is still present Bee Deaths Reversal: As Evidence Points Away From Neonics As after 2 years - the entire life of the studies. Neonictotinoid Driver, Pressure Builds To Rethink Ban, stated that a round of pesticides have spread beyond the boundaries of application studies in the US and one in France found that not only were areas. It is being found in a growing list of waterways in lethal neonics not killing bees, but that the supposed systemic action levels. Bayer’s Premise has a soil life of 5 years minimum, but

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POLLINATORS I GARDEN CULTURE

s e u n i t n o C a g a The S TRUCKING BEES ALL OVER THE U.S. CAUSES MORE INBREEDING, AND VAST EXPOSURE TO DISEASE

POLLEN CONTAMINATION CONTINUES TO SHOW A HARMFUL EFFECT ON POLLINATORS other Imidacloprid products only last weeks or months? (See: elitepest.com. sg/brochure/Premise_200SC.pdf.)

Imidacloprid and clothianidin are both known causes for bee deaths. Witnesses have watched tended honey bees feeding on trees in bloom near cornfields being planted becoming almost instantly paralyzed and dying. Bayer’s claim that there is no evidence of this is not true. As of May 7, 2013, there is also video proof that this does indeed take place. (Visit: youtube. com/watch?v=xxXXaILuK5s.)

Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia banned Clothiandidin in 2008, and bee populations bounced back in areas that honored the ban, so it’ not surprising that neonictonoids as a group were very recently banned by the European Union for an initial two year period. A lot of damage control lobbying and press was in motion as the EU considered banning all neonics.

The EU chemical lobbyists’ message was that a ban will cost farmers billions. Now Canada is considering a ban, and the Forbes piece marks the start of industry damage control in North America.

It’s not just about the bees. What about the damages being done to our ecology? These chemicals are lethal to all creatures with no vertebrae, and toxic to aquatics and fish.

Many questions remain, begging solid non-industry-favored answers.

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POLLINATORS I GARDEN CULTURE

a katz / Shutterstock.com

The Suspect Pool Widens

A study published in July 2013 done EPA and USDA has already suggested). by the University of Maryland and California with its huge almond industry the USDA proves that fungicides are should have enough local beekeepers to also to blame. Rather than causing support their pollination needs. The same instant death like neonictinoid is true of Florida, yet apiarists truck hives chemicals do, scientists have from the New England states to Florida discovered that ingesting fungicides in winter, and just about every bee in the lowers a bee’s immune system, nation that shows signs of life shows up to making them prey to become pollinate California’s almonds. infected by the Nosema ceranae That is not sustainable agriculture. It’s EPA’S ORIGINAL gut parasite believed responsible for ridiculous. If it is profitable to truck bees Colony Collapse Disorder.

ASSESSMENT OF such distances to pollinate crops and collect Researchers in this new study IMIDACLOPRID... honey, then an overlooked local business found an average of 9 pesticides in opportunity exists - everywhere. One that’s ACUTE HIGH every hive, with some containing even more profitable with a hugely reduced TOXICITY dozens. Obviously, the answer isn’t carbon footprint, lower costs, and less banning a single pesticide or type stress. of chemical. The PLOS One peer-reviewed paper shows Truth be known, the most efficient nut-tree pollinators are that the problem is much more complex due to the toxic not honey bees, but mason bees. cocktail of contaminants found in hives.

Anything that can entail any given mix of over 100 different The Solution pesticides is a difficult riddle to solve. It could take many Maybe it’s time for more people to become locavore years of investigating the currently available pesticides. honey producers using native bees. You can keep apiaries Meanwhile, a rash of new pesticidal products will in cities and suburbs. Do some research on beekeeping continue to be released for agriculture and horticulture and breeding. A visit to your state or county beekeepers’ applications. A definitive conclusion is impossible unless association website is a good place to start. nothing changed in the pesticide arena - no alterations, Don’t fall for the idea that imported queens give you hives and no new product releases. Fat chance that would ever with better honey production. We had plenty of honey happen! before all this importing began, and the idea that bees are Unfortunately, the likelihood of pesticide use on crops and year around cash flow machines took root. Not everything ornamental plants ceasing is nil. Where managed honey exotic is beneficial locally. You don’t need commercially bees are concerned, it might make more sense to greatly raised bees to have an apiary or harvest honey. increase the number of beekeepers and bee breeders. Also Beekeepers in the past had no problems producing honey there is the issue of too much inbreeding, and importing reliably without all this nonsense, and they used wild bees. bees from other parts of the world, and different climates...

It is a seasonal endeavor. It can continue in that manner if on top of trucking bees all over the U.S. to pollinate crops you get the right information. Your agenda as a sustainable in various seasons. This coming together of hives from apiarist? Make it to produce honey as naturally as possible everywhere causes more inbreeding, and vast exposure for your location and climate. If it doesn’t generate enough to disease as healthy and infected communities merge into income for an annual salary... diversify. 3 one massive swarm.

Native bees would be acclimated to a region’s climate, and stand a far better chance at resisting disease than More info: imported bees and kissing cousin gene pools (as the ento.psu.edu/publications/are-neonicotinoids-killing-bees

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N

KYLE BYBY KYLE L. LADENBERGER LADENBURGER

ni

7 n e g o tr The Essential Element and its Forms

Every living creature on earth requires some form of the element Nitrogen (N) to live, grow and reproduce. Without Nitrogen, plant and animal life may have never become as beautiful, precise, and awe-inspiring as it is today.

Every living creature on earth requires some form of the element Nitrogen (N) to live, grow and reproduce

This ever abundant element comprises nearly 80% of the earth’s atmosphere, and plays a key role in amino acid production - the building blocks for proteins found in every cell of both plants and animals. Nitrogen is also a factor in nucleic acids’ development. These are important in DNA and RNA formation, which contain the genetic information responsible for proper reproduction and growth of a living cell.

Of the 13 elemental minerals found essential for proper plant growth and production, Nitrogen is the most important, and held within the plant in the highest concentrations. Only three other elements can rival Nitrogen’s importance to plant growth. They are Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O).

Plants obtain Carbon and Oxygen as gases from the air, and Hydrogen from water.

Nitrogen is also essential to chlorophyll production. Proper chlorophyll production will lead to lush, green vegetative growth, while signs of Nitrogen deficiency within a plant are always seen in a yellowing of the leaves. Nitrogen is relatively mobile inside a plant (able to move throughout as needed), so the yellowing of leaves often appears in older growth first, as the plant tries to maintain proper nitrogen levels in the newest growth.

Nitrogen is beyond important in plant growth and development. It has a hand in building nearly every plant structure. But, with regards to plant utilization and uptake, not all forms of Nitrogen are the same. The key to optimizing a plant’s growth potential is understanding the different forms of Nitrogen, and realizing how each interacts with the plant and the soil/ growing medium too.

Dinitrogen (N2) Also known as atmospheric nitrogen, dinitrogen is the most common form available on the planet. Earth’s atmosphere consists of almost 80% dinitrogen.

With such a staggering abundance of nitrogen available everywhere, it’s easy for one to think ; “Awesome! A plentiful source of nitrogen for every plant to use.” Unfortunately,

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NITROGEN I GARDEN CULTURE nitrogen cycle

Understanding the Nitrogen Cycle

plants can’t take in dinitrogen. However, this abundant source of nitrogen isn’t completely untapped.

Through a process called Nitrogen Fixation, some soil microorganisms are able to convert dinitrogen into ammonia (NH3) with the help of special enzymes. The fixing (combining with other elements) of nitrogen is also done in small amounts through lightning strikes and combustion, like from an internal combustion engine. Most nitrogen-fixing microorganisms live freely in soil, but some form a type of symbiotic relationship with the roots of certain plants, the most common being Legumes.

Legumes are often used as a cover crop between plantings of high nitrogen commercial crops such as corn, because the plants encourage colonization and reproduction of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms. A corn crop drains a lot of soil nitrogen. A legume crop tilled under helps replenish the natural nitrogen supply, so the next crop thrives with less fertilizer applied.

Organic Nitrogen (C-NH2) This is the nitrogen found within organic matter. It exists in multiple forms, including urine, feces, and decaying plant and animal proteins. Organic nitrogen is part of a complex organic carbon molecule, and cannot be directly accessed by plant roots. Organic matter must decompose further by soil microbes into plant-usable/inorganic forms, the first of which being ammonium nitrogen.

Organic matter does not travel easily through soils. The

microbes must find and consume it, which can take time. The rate in which the organic matter breaks down depends on the environmental conditions within the soil. In warm soils with adequate moisture levels the rate of decomposition will be higher compared to cooler, drier soils that do not favor microbial activity. Rates of decomposition can vary with each different organic material used as a fertilizer input, making it hard to predict exactly when, and how much of, the organic matter is actually converted into a plant usable form of nitrogen.

With organic fertilizers, like earthworm castings and poultry litter, keep in mind that the percentage of nitrogen and other nutrients on the label is actually a potential nitrogen percentage. They’re bound in an organic matrix of sorts that only time and favorable soil conditions can release, and only through decomposition by soil microbes will convert into plant-usable forms.

Ammonium Nitrogen (NH4) This is the first form of plant-accessible nitrogen to emerge from decomposed organic matter within the soil. The process in which specialized soil microbes (fungal) break down organic matter is known as mineralization. Since mineralization, also called ammonification, is a biological process, it occurs at higher rates during the summer months, when soils are warm and moist.

When a plant takes in ammonium nitrogen it’s used directly for creating proteins. Ammonium nitrogen exists in the soil as a cation, an ion with a positive charge. This is an important point, because it explains how ammonium nitrogen acts within the soil. Soil particles have a negative charge, attracting ammonium ions to them. This attraction causes the soil to hold on to ammonium nitrogen, allowing it to stay put and not be washed away during rainfalls or watering. How strongly the soil holds on to the ammonium nitrogen depends on a soil’s cation exchange capacity.

Soils that have cation exchange capacity have higher levels of clay and decomposed organic matter (humus), along with the capacity to hold a fair amount of water. A soil that is sandy and

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Nitrogen is beyond important in plant growth and development loamy will have a very low cation exchange capacity. Other elements also participate in the cation exchange process, including Calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg).

The ability to bind to a soil in this fashion means ammonium nitrogen is not likely to wash away by a mass flow of water through the root zone, and leach into ground waters. This sounds good, but presents possible drawbacks. Years of research shows undesired effects from the ammonium form of nitrogen being a primary nitrogen source. Over time, symptoms of ammonium toxicity, fruit disorders (such as blossom end rot) and the decay of the internal vascular tissues can occur, ultimately restricting the uptake of water (Jones 2012). However, most of the time this isn’t a concern as the ammonium nitrogen may not stay in the soil for long.

For, yet another biological process converts the ammonium to the nitrate form of nitrogen.

Nitrate Nitrogen (NO3) Through a process called nitrification, ammonium nitrogen changes into Nitrate Nitrogen by specialized soil microorganisms (bacterial). Nitrate is a form of the nitrogen element that is readily used by plants and, like mineralization, nitrification is a biological process that takes place at higher rates when soils are warm and moist. During the hot months of the summer the nitrification process of ammonium nitrogen to nitrate nitrogen can happen as quickly as just a few days.

Nitrate is the form of nitrogen most often used by plants, because its accessibility when found in the root zone, and the direct use of it for new leaf and stem production. Nitrate nitrogen in new leaves is then converted to amino acids by the energy produced through photosynthesis.

Unlike ammonium, the nitrate ion is a negatively charged anion, and doesn’t participate in the cation exchange process. It is this negative charge that can pose potential problems with nitrates in the soil. As stated earlier, soil particles also have a negative charge so they will effectively repel nitrate ions. This is a potential problem in that with the next watering or rainfall the nitrate nitrogen can easily be washed away (leached) through the soil, potentially ending up in lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater.

We see the harm nitrate runoff can cause in situations

like the blue algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico that have devastated entire ocean ecosystems. Nitrates are a part of the natural biological process in which organic matter decomposes, but the excessive use of nitrates in agriculture leads to high amounts of nitrate leaching and runoff.

On the other hand, nitrate nitrogen, with its accompanying negative charge, is very suitable in hydroponic growing systems that recirculate the nutrient solution. It mixes well with, and travels easily in water, and tends to flow freely through a rooting medium or substrate without the risk of excessive build up.

The different transformations the nitrogen element undergoes in its journey from the atmospheric nitrogen (dinitrogen) state all the way to the nitrate form are all part of a bigger overall process called the Nitrogen Cycle. With help from specialized microbial life and the right soil conditions, the nitrogen in the atmosphere is then converted into plant usable forms - just as it has been for millions of years. But, completing the nitrogen cycle calls for one more step.

Through a process termed denitrification, nitrogen changes from the nitrate form back into the gaseous dinitrogen (N2) form where it can then slowly move from the soil to the atmosphere. Denitrification is one more skill of specialized microbes, however, it takes place under much different soil conditions than those mentioned earlier. This process will only occur under anaerobic conditions when there is very little to no oxygen present. When the soil is completely saturated by water, like after a flood, denitrification takes place, resulting in some plant accessible nitrogen being lost from the soil.

By taking a careful look at the nitrogen cycle you see the possible effect on the overall availability of plant accessible nitrogen. Without adequate nitrogen, plant growth will be slow and weak. A yellowing of the leaves will begin to replace the beautiful healthy green growth we all know and love. And if allowed to continue down the path of nitrogen deficiency, the size and quality of the plant’s yield does suffer.

Understanding the different forms of nitrogen, and the ways they behave in the soil allows a grower to make sound decisions about plant health and fertilization. I can say this from experience, it only takes one season of improper nitrogen management for a grower to see, and realize, exactly why this element is repeatedly deemed, essential. 3

Reference: J. Benton Jones, Jr. (2012) Plant Nutrition & Soil Fertility Manual: Second Edition. CRC Press

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4 to 80 plants managed from one control unit

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34

PARSLEY I GARDEN CULTURE

BY TAMMY CLAYTON

Grow Your Own Series THREE TIMES MORE VITAMIN C THAN ORANGES

H I STO RY & F O L K LO R E Petroselinum is known today as one of the world’s healthiest foods, yet this globally popular herb was once as feared as the Devil himself. A relative of carrots, celery, dill, and lovage - parsley so terrified the Greeks’ warriors that one savvy Celtic chief saved his kingdom from hostile invasion by blanketing hundreds of donkeys with it, and driving them toward the Greek army. The invaders turn tail, and fled with great haste.

The ancient Greeks associated parsley with death.

“To need parsley” was the same as “one foot in the grave.” They made wreaths of parsley for funerals.

This association with death continued for hundreds of years in Greece. The Romans however, were using parsley lavishly by the 4th Century in celebration, in the kitchen, for healing, and as a spiritual symbol. Pliny writes that it restores sickly fish to good health, that no salad or sauce should be without it, and it worked wonders at freshening breath. The British learned early on that sprinkling parsley on the dead lessened the smell.

Arriving in England in the 1600s, medieval gardeners believed awful things happened if one wasn’t fully aware of its powers. Everyone thought that only the man of the house could plant it safely, but only on Good Friday.

It was a plant whose seeds had to travel back and forth to hell multiple times before they could sprout. Some claimed that only a witch could get it to grow.

Surprisingly, this superstitious nonsense actually makes sense. Parsley is difficult to germinate, super slow to sprout, and the best time to plant it is in March to April when abundant spring rains aid it in sprouting more successfully.

Myth and legend aside, parsley is a popular culinary herb globally today, most heavily used in Europe and the Middle East. It is grown worldwide, being spread hither and yon by conquerors and travelers.

you don't have special needs with this crop

H E A LT H B EN EF I T S In the modern Western diet, we use parsley more for garnishing and color, than as a food. This is sad, because it is a super healthy green with two types of unusual components with unique health benefits. The first is the volatile oils; myristicin, limonene, eugenol, and andalpha-thujene. And then its flavonoids; apiin, apigenin, crisoeriol, and luteolin.

Parsley is an excellent source of vital vitamins A and C - three times more Vitamin C than oranges! It’s a good source of folic acid that also offers both alpha and beta carotenes. Powerful antioxidants that render dangerous free radicals harmless, and reduces the risk for development and progression of atherosclerosis, diabetes, and colon cancer. It’s also known to be beneficial in arthritis relief, and root parsley is used in creating mild laxatives.

While fresh cuttings have more, one gram of dried parsley contains good levels of lycopene, alpha and beta carotene, as well as Lutein+Zeaxanthin. Four grams of fresh parsley has more flavor, only 3 calories, and 153% of the Recommended Daily Value of Vitamin K. It’s an exceptional source of iron and potassium, and rich in magnesium and calcium too.

Parsley has a huge list of medicinal attributes long used in home remedies from insect bite relief, to curing dandruff, and being a birthing aid. Discover the amazing list of natural medicine benefits this ‘culinary decoration’ offers via Google.

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CONSISTENT MOISTURE IS A MUST

36

N O M EN CL AT U R E

G R O W N OT E S

While you’ll find a lot of different named types of parsley seed for sale, all of them are Petroselinum crispum, though sometimes listed as Petroselinum hortense. There are really only four distinct types, and the most commonly known in the US is Curly Leaf, because it is more decorative. There is also flat-leaf, fern-leaf, and one grown primarily for the roots.

P. var. crispum: Truly beautiful plants in the garden, and for garnishing, you’ll find this variety sold as Curly Leaf and Moss Leaf cultivars.

These have much richer green foliage than the other groups.

P. var. crispum neopolitanium: This is the Italian Flat Leaf type, and most closely resembles the wild species.

Some say this one is much stronger flavored.

P. var. filicinum: You’ll find this variety listed as French Flat Leaf or Fern-Leaf. It’s lighter green than the crispum varieties, and a little shorter. They make a nice garnish, and have very similar flavor to the crispums. It is easier to grow, better suited to colder climates, and deals with heavy moisture better too.

P. var. radicosum: This is commonly known as Root Parsley or Hamburg Parsley, and sometimes listed as P. var. tuberosum. While uncommon in UK and US gardens, these delicious roots are wildly popular in Europe and western Asia. Eat them raw as a snack, or cooked like any other root vegetable, and use the leaves as a herb. Harvest the roots as needed from August through April.

Though most gardeners treat parsley as an annual, it’s a biennial - a plant that grows leaves and roots the first year, and then flowers to set seed in the second year. Once it’s flowered, a biennial plant dies.

The species grows about 30 - 45cm tall, and requires plant spacing of 15-30cm. Check your selection’s needs for better detail. When seeding directly into rows outdoors, plant when soil temps warm to 10°C. Don’t worry about frost, it will be weeks before it can cause damage. Whether sown in the ground, or in seed trays indoors, planting depth is 5mm.

Parsley puts out deep tap roots, so use a deep pot for container growing - at least 30cm tall. For hydroponic growing, a deep water culture lettuce raft setup, or a bucket system will best accommodate those roots. You can plant it in the same system with other herbs or lettuces.

G E R M I N A T I O N · Notoriously difficult to sprout, no matter what method you plan to use to grow your parsley crop, soaking the seed in lukewarm water for 24 hours before sowing promotes better germination rates. A brief freeze helps to jolt it out of dormancy. Consistent moisture is a must. Oasis cubes work great, and covering the germination tray with a humidity dome is your best bet in moisture retention. Mist to rehydrate.

Set your seedling heat mat thermostat at 26°C, so the germination tray doesn’t get too hot.

Be patient. Expect the germination process to take 21-28 days. For easier outdoor growing, start your seed under lights or in a sunny window 6-8 weeks before garden planting season arrives.

PARSLEY I GARDEN CULTURE

...no t or iously slow t o ge rmin at e...

GROW TH MEDIA Generally, you want nitrogen-rich, moist soil with good drainage for best results outdoors, though once established, parsley grows in drier conditions. Quality soilless mixes with good moisture retention work great for traditional container growing. You can also grow this crop hydroponically in coir, rockwool, perlite, and vermiculite.

INDOOR ENVIRONMENT Once your seedlings emerge, remove the humidity dome.

Take them off the heating mat. Move them under vegetative lighting. Maintain an ambient temperature of 20-24°C. Use an oscillating fan to create a gentle breeze. The light movement will help your plants develop sturdy stems, and promote natural shaping.

They won’t need nutrients or transplanting to their growth container or system until a full mature shaped leaf has formed. Parsley grows best at 14-24°C. It will tolerate higher temps, but stops growing at 30°C, and quick to bolt into flowering at 26.6°C or hotter.

LIGHTING Parsley does best in full sun outdoors, but it will tolerate only 6-8 hours of direct sun a day. To grow this herb inside, you need a minimum of 6 hours direct sunshine daily too. In winter, and lacking a large window with Southern exposure, resort to grow lights.

Like other leaf crops, you’ll have no problem growing parsley under T5 HO fluorescent and CFL fixtures. Since this is far less powerful than the sun, you’ll want to run your lights 16 hours a day. You can also grow parsley under HID lights

positioned .60-1.21m above the plants (more wattage = more distance), while T5s and CFLs need to be kept at 12 inches above your crop.

NUTRIENTS Soil, growth media, and hydroponic reservoir pH levels are optimum at 6.0-7.0, though this plant will tolerate a range of 5.6-7.5 pH. Parsley will not grow at all if the pH drops lower.

Like most herbs, you don’t have special hydroponic nutrient or garden fertilizer needs. It’s a rich green plant, which instantly tells you it loves nitrogen. Adding a bit of magnesium and calcium is a good move, no matter what growing method you’re using.

For hydro parsley use any basic vegetative nutrient solution. Keep nutrient reservoir temperatures at 14-24°C, and maintain your solution at EC 0.3-0.5 (3-5 CF).

HARVEST You can snip off sprigs and stems continuously. When growing it solely outdoors, harvest all stems in the fall, and air dry thoroughly before packing the dried leaves in tight-sealing jars.

Or ‘harvest’ the entire plant, and pot it up to continue harvesting fresh parsley indoors all winter. Cut the plant back before digging it up. This will give you a steady supply of fresh cuttings until your new seedlings have grown to proportions that offer a harvest next spring. Remove any flower stems right away to keep the old plant alive. Then let it bloom, and your spent plant will supply you with seed for your next crop. Seeds ripen in about 4 weeks from flower opening. 3

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n r o K

e t a d n e p ard u

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BY JIM OTELL, KORN GUITAR TECH, 15 YEARS AND COUNTING

Seems like it was a long time ago that we started gardening in our studio. Trying to get everyone involved in it has been easy, because what we are promoting is good eating. I’m inspired by James (Munky) to eat right, and pay attention to the food we eat. I do the shopping for the band, and in the past I have put out the food and snacks. The guys could concentrate on writing.

During recording of Korn 3, diet some day, so enjoy it while ell, Ot Jim e, mb ulo our producer, Ross Robinson, you can. c Co Garden Culture’s Eri Davis and Ray Luzier Jonathan asked me why I was putting all Now that we’re eating better, this crap out for the guys to and drinking coconut water oceat. Well, that was the mocasionally for potassium, I am ment it hit me the hardest. I feeling good. And then we learn love my guys with all my heart, about GMOs. How can we be and want them all happy and sure we ain’t ingesting poisoned healthy. Munk was already food? Poisoned by pesticides, and changing the way he was eatthings like Bud Nip, and whatever ing, so in order to keep up with him, and following inelse I don’t know about. structions from Ross, I started looking at labels. I stopped Learning about this Bud Nip stuff they put on potatoes buying the big boxes of potato chip packs, and quit putting from the store got me wondering. So, I did some exa bowl of chocolates out. The first major change was reperiments of my own with potatoes, and found that with placing whole milk with almond milk and rice milk. Then proper plant food, Bud Nip won’t stop potatoes from we moved into the age of granola and probiotics. growing.

I don’t buy bad stuff for the guys these days, but I do have a little crappy food around, in case someone has a fit, and Actually, everything grows in the hydroponic system we wants some good old American engineered, modified, enuse now. We are still experimenting on what we like, and hanced, mass-produced stuff instead. Why not? We all fall I’m not too sure. We are growing many varieties, like letoff the wagon once in a while, but it’s not the habit now. tuce, kale, basil, arugula, spinach, and even some strawI know a guy, Sluggo, who likes what he calls ‘fat guy food’. berries. They were a little tough for us, but now they are I must admit to partaking in a pizza flavor Hot Pocket now coming up. I feel we will be successful with strawberries. I and then. It’s strange to put that stuff in the studio fridge strongly believe strawberries are the perfect food, espenow though. And Sluggo, you’ll get converted to a healthy cially organically grown.

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KORN I GARDEN CULTURE

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ntoon

r 10 0 0W

I know what we are doing is not considered organic, but we control the environment. I hope it’s not bad that I don’t even wash the lettuces and stuff, because I saw the process. From the Korn farm to my plate, there’s only an occasional tiny fly that followed me in. Other than that, there’s no bug problems - nothing like they warned me about.

The first garden failed while we were on tour. My new friend, Eric, did not have full understanding of just how long I intended to neglect the project. We’ve made some changes in the garden design, and it’s not left totally unattended now.

While the guys and I are on the road, my right-hand man, Marc, is filling my 200-liter reservoir. My hydro nerd friend, David, is by checking the nutrients and starting some seeds. As for seed, we are planting all organic seeds from trusted companies.

So I watch what I call the ‘garden cam’. So many beautiful bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers came up in the bucket system fed by an automated hydro system that I still haven’t learned how to use. My other new friend, Cameron, has promised me to help get it going. I do think his hydro system will really help solve my problem of not being able to know what’s really happening while we’re gone. 3

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s ’ o h W g n i w o Ghrat W

Cultivate London Now in its fourth year, Cultivate London has certainly spread its wings. Their mission is threefold: revitalize derelict properties by turning them into productive urban farms, provide young unemployed Londoners with job training in specialty agriculture, and grow fresh, local food for Londoners.

The 2014 season finds them with three farm sites and three interns. The team’s growing a marvelous array of food and flowers at Brent Way, Commerce Road, and London Road locations.

An excellent initiative supported by the Housing Charity Pathways Trust.

Courtesy of Cultivate London

Where

1) West London

2) East London

Compared to a vacant lot or a rooftop of some massive building, you might not think an urban farm inside a terrace shop could produce very much food. Yet, the oldest and largest aquaponics operation in the UK grows enough salad fixings, herbs and edible flowers to supply the bulk of what’s on the menu in the café. Where’s the café? In the center of this indoor garden.

The mix includes tilapia and mushrooms, along with two city chickens that produce 300 eggs a year. Rated a Top 10 Cheap Eats by The Guardian, Farm:shop on Dalston Lane whips up delicious fresh salads and sandwiches. What they don’t grow on the premises comes from other local farms.

Way to grow, guys!

40

Courtesy of Something & Son

FARM:shop Dalston

WHAT’S GROWING ON I GARDEN CULTURE

Courtesy of Barnes & Webb

3) East London

Barnes & Webb Okay, so Chris and Paul aren’t growing greens, fruits or veg. Their mission has wings, and does provide a vital urban gardening service. The goal is to help you grow your own more efficiently, and hopefully help save honey bees in the process. They’re urban beekeepers who produce Postcode Honey through rented hives, and the renters keep part of the harvest, on top of enjoying fully pollinated gardens.

They don’t just drop off the hives. Barnes & Web service them regularly, provide swarm control on call, and are

doing their part to save our pollinators. They also offer bee adoptions, and sell the raw local honey in their online shop at BarnesAndWebb.com. Try them all, each postcode has its own flavor.

Without a doubt, a sweet endeavor.

4) Exeter

Courtesy of GroCycle

Urban Mushroom Farm

in the UK

A well grounded enterprise that hasn’t lost its focus as it evolved. It began with Adam Sayner’s quest for the secret to growing his own mushrooms, which morphed into selling locally grown mushrooms to Devon chefs and markets. Initially, he used a UK adaption of the successful methods long employed in Japan and China.

But then Adam discovered recycling coffee grounds in his media, and the spores of change broadened his vision.

As the bigger picture developed, he gained business partner, Eric Jong, won an award for his environmentally innovative company, recycled thousands of tons of coffee waste collected from area businesses, stopped growing commercial harvests, and branched out into spreading the love of homegrown mushrooms all over the country.

The mushroom kits now sell under the name GroCycle.

Adam and Eric have repurposed a vacant Exeter office building into a new mushroom farm, and have plans for saving as many tons of coffee grounds from landfills as humanly possible.

Green initiative and fresh mushrooms. 3

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FAK E F O O D How

LENT

changed the way I e at

44

FOOD ADDITIVES I GARDEN CULTURE

Last spring my 10-year-old daughter Maya told me that she wanted to “do” Lent. For all of you who are not familiar, Lent is a Christian ritual, where an individual gives up something they like for 6 weeks prior to Easter. She got the idea from my mother who observes Lent as an exercise in will power. “Okay,” I thought. “Sure, honey,” I said, “sounds like a good idea. What do you want to give up?” She told me that we get to pick each other’s Lent.

Each others!? That meant I actually had to ‘do’ Lent. I agreed, not knowing what a profound impact it was going to have on all of us.

“OVER 1,700 FDA APPROVED ARTIFICIAL FL AVORS EXIST

She immediately said that I was to give up coffee. I was leaving for Spain in a week, then Seattle two weeks later, which meant I was going to miss out on some good coffee. If I had to give up my beloved morning coffee, she was going to have to give up something big. What would a 10-year-old miss the most, and need the least? Sugar. We both agreed, 40 days; no coffee for me, no refined sugar for her.

If I was going completely coffee-free, then she was going totally sugarless. This was easy to eliminate in food prepared at home, but what about the sweeteners in other foods she eats?

It was time to do a little research.

Refined sugar, you know, that big bag of white or brown sweetness in your pantry. Primarily, it’s sugar cane or sugar beets that have undergone a refining process to remove the molasses, and well, everything else. The result, a sugar named sucrose. We went on to read about dextrose and glucose, which are also plant-based sugars, and fructose, a fruit-based sugar. High fructose corn syrup was another that seemed to appear everywhere. It is a super sweet liquid extracted from corn. Then there were the sugar substitutes, artificial sweeteners, like Saccharine and Aspertame.

We began to read all the food labels in the house, and on big brand food at the supermarket. Sugar and his friends were everywhere. In fact, we discovered over 17 “natural” sweeteners alone. Our research resulted in an endless trail of danger.

There are thousands of chemicals in our food. Some are more dangerous than others, either because of their toxicity, or from the volume consumed because they are in everything. Other countries have banned many of them,

but the FDA feels they’re safe enough for Americans.

Making a list of “dangerous” chemicals is difficult when the FDA deems them all safe. So, it’s my word against the FDA? Not exactly, there are tens of thousands of people, and many from the medical community trying to fight the FDA and big business to get some of these substances banned in North America. Chances are they will never be. Until then we can easily avoid them by not buying the products that contain certain things.

Here is our list of 6 things to avoid: 1. Artificial Flavors A chemical mixture designed to mimic a natural flavor.

Over 1,700 FDA approved artificial flavors exist.

Health effects: Companies are not required to identify their flavor chemical, only that they be listed under the umbrella of “artificial flavors” on the label. Not being able to know gives good reason to avoid them.

Examples: benzyl isobutyrate, ethyl acetate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate (petroleum derivative), methyl benzoate (petroleum derivative), and hydroxyphenyl2-butanone. They can create an artificial flavor from any number of synthetic chemicals.

Used in: Almost all processed food.

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THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF CHEMICALS IN OUR FOOD” LESS THAN 0.5 GR A MS OF TR ANS FAT PER SERVING, THE L ABEL CAN STATE 0 GR A MS

3. Artificial Colors The 9 artificial colors approved for use in food by the FDA are: FD&C Blue No. 1 - FD&C Blue No. 2 - FD&C Green No. 3 - FD&C Red No. 3 - FD&C Red No. 40 FD&C Yellow No. 5 - FD&C Yellow No. 6 Citrus Red No.2 and Orange B are not widely used.

Health effects: Every single one of these artificial colors are synthetically derived from coal-tar, and a known carcinogen. They have also been linked to asthma, hyperactivity, hives, learning difficulties, and more.

Used in: Almost all processed foods.

2. Modified Starch A food additive created by chemically treating starch, which causes the starch to partially degrade. They use modified starch as a stabilizer, thickening agent, or an emulsifier to change texture of a food, increase its stability, and to extend shelf life.

Examples: propylene oxide (a petroleum derivative), hydrochloric acid, succinic anhydride, potassium hydroxide, and sodium hydroxide.

Health effects: None presently known, though more testing is definitely required. Since it’s commonly used in baby foods, safety concerns have arisen.

Used in: Baby food, baby formula, powdered drink mixes, yogurt, Gatorade, Powerade, fruit juices, soda, bread, and condiments…

46

Companies secretly decide what they want to put in food

4. Partially Hydrogenated Oil (A . K . A . TR A N S FAT ) : Trans fats are made by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil through a process called hydrogenation, giving the oils a longer shelf life. Using trans fats in the manufacturing of foods helps them stay fresh longer, have a longer shelf life, and have a less greasy feel.

Health effects: Trans fat raises your “bad” (LDL) cholesterol, and lowers your “good” (HDL) cholesterol. It’s been linked to numerous health issues.

Used in: All types of processed foods. In the United States, if a food product has less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, the label can state 0 grams of trans fat.

FOOD ADDITIVES I GARDEN CULTURE

You would think the FDA would have guidelines and protocol to ensure that food additives are safe for human consumption. That is certainly a reasonable belief, since the FDA is, as their website states, “responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of our nation’s food supply.” However…

5. Sodium Nitrate/Nitrite This is a flavoring agent, food coloring, and preservative for processed meats. Prevents the growth of the bacteria clostridium botulinium, the cause of botulism.

Health effects: Nitrates bind to red blood cells, blocking their ability to carry life-giving oxygen throughout the body. Most commonly affecting young children, and linked to blue baby syndrome. The Linus Pauling Institute warns of the association between nitrates and an increase in brain tumors, leukemia, and nose and throat tumors.

Used in: Canned, cured, and processed meats. Bacon, potted meat, frankfurters, smoke cured tuna and salmon.

6. Aspartame An artificial, sweetener used as a sugar substitute in many foods and beverages. It was first sold under the brand name NutraSweet and Equal Health Effects: Claims that aspartame causes a number of health problems, including cancer, have been around for many years. The internet if full of people’s stories of how aspartame has made them sick. Unfortunately, like so many other chemicals, it is very hard to prove an undeniable link.

Used in: Most low-calorie food or drinks.

Since 1997, the FDA has passed that responsibility on, allowing food companies to make their own determinations of a substance’s safety for use in our food. The legal jargon being used is “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. This originally applied to things like oil and vinegar - foodstuffs that are widely accepted as safe to consume. It’s a loophole, and allows big business to govern public safety.

Companies secretly decide what they want to put in food is GRAS, and the FDA openly allows the them to do so.

In short, the food industry—not the FDA—is in charge of what you eat. Just another shocking failure by the government to put favor corporate demands over what is right.

Lent finally ended, and we had changed. I didn’t miss my coffee nearly as much as I thought I would, and my daughter understands a little more of the truth about the food system. Now she is telling people about what she learned.

She told me that I had to write this article, because people need to know what sort of “fake stuff we are putting in our bodies, and to help support the businesses who make the good food and sugar.”

She is right. Teaching your children about the food we eat is so important. I know, no one taught our generation this stuff as kids. The truth is, my parents - your parents… didn’t know any better. A lot of people look at this the same way I did before that Lent, “I ate apples laden with DDT, and god knows what other things, and I survived.”

Right? Sure, I am healthy, but we can’t argue with the facts.

Cancer rates are at an all time high, heart disease remains the #1 killer, and the USA is the most unhealthy country in the world.

Start by reading labels, and asking yourself, “Do I really want to eat that, or feed it to my kids?” 3

LINKS FDA GRAS explanation http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/

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BY TAMMY CLAYTON, PHOTOS: ZHANG JIAN FENG, STJEPAN ERDJELIC, STOCK

G N I P A C S A AQ U WA T E R GA R D E N I N G I N DOORS BLE SCENERY… I D E R C N I Y L L A T TO UM IN YOUR AQUARI Say goodbye to the tacky fish tank with its crude sunken ceramic castle and plastic plants resting on a bed of unnaturally colored gravel. You can create totally incredible live scenery instead with mountains, meadow, paths, rivers, trees, cacti, and maybe even a waterfall.

None of these plants are edible, and the fish are purely ornamental, but they are absolutely beautiful when you know what each water plant can do for you. Some of these aquascape designs look so real, it blows you away when you find out it is inside a freshwater aquarium.

It’s a hobby that has turned into an international sport with a number of aquatic gardening associations scattered across Europe, Japan, the USA, and the UK. There are annual competitions, which like any such event, are brimming with beauty, politics, and underhanded trickery. Still, getting their aquatic garden design to place

48

high on the judges’ list of winners and honorable mentions is many aquascapers goal.

It is possible to create a beautiful saltwater scape, but you’re limited to a reef effect. Freshwater aquatic plants open the doors to crafting unbelievable effects. Like your hydroponic garden, the aquascape garden needs good lighting, nutrients, and CO2. There are a variety of distinct styles within this genre of gardening. Not all of them are totally submersed, and not every aquascaper has animals in their system. Some are in it purely for the plants, while others mix the garden with fish or reptiles.

AQUASCAPING I GARDEN CULTURE

A HOBBY THAT H TURNED INTO A AS INTERNATIONAL N SPORT Submerged freshwater aquascapes have a natural, Dutch, jungle, or biotype style. There are also partially submersed aqua gardens known as paludariums, which are the perfect home for reptiles, but you can grow one without pets in residence too.

There are maintenance chores to perform in the underwater garden much like all other forms of plant keeping.

Clipping, pruning, and cleaning the environment periodically. They’ve shaped the aquatic plants by shearing in many of the truly sensational natural style aquascapes.

Unlike an entire yard full of landscaping or a huge flower garden, this miniature world confined to the dimen-

sions of your aquarium requires a lot less time keeping it maintained.

You might be wondering what the difference is between these styles. Jungle aquascaping is easy to picture. It’s all on one level with plants densely placed and planted with the shorter selections in the front graduating to the tallest in the back. A riot of beauty if you’ve got a keen eye for plant selection and placement.

A biotype aquascape mimics a certain environment, like the bottom of the lake nearest to your home, but it also includes the fish that are native to that place. This style would best suit a zoo, museum, or nature center where

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AQUASCAPING I GARDEN CULTURE

A VARIET Y OF DISTINCT ST YLES tank size doesn’t matter, though you could recreate the environment small aquarium fish would inhabit.

Dutch style aquascapes are more like an ornamental garden. The plan uses terraces and planting in rows.

These will have high color reminiscent of a flower garden grown purely for aesthetics.

All of the above are cool, but they pale in comparison to the natural aquascape. This is where you mold the underwater garden to look like a real world landscape with trees and other outdoor plants, hills and mountains, roads, paths, and streams. Some gardens have a scene across the back that makes the planting look like it’s part of the setting. This style started in Japan, but has caught people’s imagination everywhere.

Natural aquatic gardens are mesmerizing. Some of the designs that have won first place in competitions are so

realistic its uncanny. They make you want to rush out and get the biggest tank possible to create one of your own to enjoy. A word to the wise - start with a small tank, and figure out getting the right system environment first. Like any style of gardening, you have to learn to walk before you can run. 3

Learn more on these websites: • • • •

Paludariums.net Aquatic-Eden.com UKaps.org Aquatic-Gardeners.org

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GARDEN CULTURE I SEEDS

BY AMBER FIELDS

Seed Saving

101

The best seed comes from food that goes past its prime before being picked

It’s a practice as old as agriculture, the saving of seeds from the current crop to provide the means to start next year’s food source. And while the process doesn’t require a huge amount of knowledge, there are things the uninitiated gardener needs to understand. Free seed is awesome, but if you choose the wrong fruits to provide it, or harvest it at the wrong time... you won’t have much to eat next time around.

Repeat Performance In the early days of tilling the soil, a person was pretty safe in saving seed from just about anything that came out of their garden. There were no hybrids. Today, just about everything is a hybrid. This means that even though you might get plants from the seeds saved, your harvest will differ from last year, and it’s highly likely you’ll wind up with several cultivars, but not what you wanted. Hybrid seed doesn’t produce the same thing you planted, but whatever parentage it had - at random.

Good Germination If you’re going to go to the trouble of saving seed, cleaning it, drying it, and storing it - you no doubt want the stuff to sprout.

Take precaution to make sure that the seed is totally devoid of moisture before packing it up, or it will mold and rot in storage.

Secondly, good seed can only be gathered when the source is completely ripened on the plant. There’s a growing trend of green gardeners who experiment with saving seed from supermarket produce... fruit and vegetables harvested green for shipping and storage conveniences. This seed is generally not viable. It should not sprout, because it never fully developed. If it does sprout it’s unnatural. Nothing reproduces before maturity.

The best seed comes from food that goes past its prime before being picked. Then there’s no question of seed maturity.

Rotten Tomatoes Getting new tomato plants from this year’s crop can prove almost impossible until you learn that getting the saved seeds to

52

germinate means letting the fruit spoil before collecting seeds.

It doesn’t necessarily have to rot on the plant, but the seed of a tomato needs to ferment inside the fruit. Just as they would do in the wild.

Every seed inside a tomato is held within a gel sac which contains natural chemicals to inhibit germination, and may also contain tomato diseases. The fermenting that follows as the fruit ages to a stage we would see as gross destroys the gel sac and any diseases it held.

All open pollinated tomato plants give you true to type fruit from its seed. These will be heirlooms. Once you’ve got one that matured properly on the stem to a point past edibility, put it on a glass or hard plastic plate, and let it do its thing. I hide them on top of the refrigerator where no one can witness the seed preparation process.

Let it dry completely up there. Then you can peel the seeds out of the ‘fruit leather’ that remains.

Some say to put it in a covered dish with some water. Then you harvest your seeds after a nice thick layer of mold grows on top. Eww! Trust me, the fruit leather version is much less disgusting. You don’t even need to clean them.

Remember to label each one before hiding them up there.

You won’t recognize what’s what by New Year’s when they’ve dried to a crisp and you can safely pack the seed away in an air-tight container until spring.

Always store your harvested seeds in a cool, dark place. 3

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WHAT’S THE BEST Tomato?

That depends. What do you want from this plant? Tomatoes that have great flavor, you say? But there is more to it than that.

What is the plan for these delicious fruits?

There are three ways we use tomatoes.

Slicing fruits, salad enhancers, and canners.

Naturally, slicers work just as nicely in salads

as cherry and grape types, once you cut them up. Slicing tomatoes also can really well, if you’re putting up tomato juice and soups. Should you want salsa and spaghetti sauce for the pantry that is less watery, this calls for adding some paste tomatoes with few seeds and a meatier interior, like Romas, though you will find some slicers listed in seed catalogs as excellent for sauces too. The latter being less juicy, and having thicker sidewall meat than slicers, but juicier than a paste type.

So here you are with your selection of tomatoes growing nicely, but you seem to have a problem. The plants gave you an excellent pile of tomatoes and suddenly stopped bearing fruit.

What’s up with that? There are no more fresh tomatoes for sandwiches and salads!

You picked a ‘determinate’ cultivar.

Some people like the idea of compact, bush-shaped plants.

These will sound best suited to the small indoor garden too where space is at a premium for a variety of crops.

Determinate tomatoes also don’t require the trouble of pruning or trellising. The shorter ones might not even need a cage. Nifty, yes, but they also are best suited to canning, because they produce the bulk of their fruits all at once. Then it’s over. So much for summer-long fresh eating.

By the same token, if you’ve selected a variety of indeterminate plants with dreams of a wide assortment of flavors in the salsas you’ll put up with the different tasting fruits... you might find that you’re not getting enough tomatoes at one time for canning. Yes, you can acquire quite a pile picking a few every day and storing them in the refrigerator until you have enough to brew

54

THE BEST TOMATO I GARDEN CULTURE

THERE ARE THREE WAYS WE USE TOM ATOES

up a batch. But the longer you store fresh tomatoes, the flavors begin disintegrating, and the odds are that the older fruits will begin to develop bad spots. Especially piled in a home refrigerator. The sheer weight of this mountain will begin to bruise the fruit on the bottom, and cause stems to poke through skins.

You can’t can with anything but perfect, unblemished tomatoes. Bad spots, pressure cracks, and stem pokes are a prime location for bacteria to move in. There are other ways to preserve these less than perfect fruits, such as chopping and freezing, or slow roasting and freezing, but this likely is not what you wanted in the first place.

There are those who have the idea that determinate tomatoes are something created for the food system. They weren’t. There are a good number of determinate tomato cultivars found within the heirloom category. They will have smaller fruits. Some will be on the paste to sauce tomato end of the scale, and others are simply slicers that

top out at about 3 inches wide and 8 ounces in weight that ripen early providing cold climate gardens with a harvest. Big Food did not invent the canning tomato. People have been home canning tomatoes in jars since canning jar invention in 1858.

By the way, if you’re growing tomatoes for canning, you do not want the low-acid types. These will not have good shelf life, and may present you with spoiled sauces and salsas, no matter how careful you are at putting up only perfect fruits. Any recipe that incorporates high and low acid foods strikes a delicate balance, and if your tomatoes are low-acid, it does away with part of what preserves the stuff in the jar. Sweet tomatoes are not candidates for canning, even if they do come from a determinate plant, so beware of catalog descriptions about super sweet flavor for this use.

So, what is the best tomato? It fits your needs. For most people, a mix of plants is just right to give them the best tomato for everything. 3

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The

Home Grown Expo I have been to so many indoor gardening expos I have lost count - let’s say roughly 30.

Even so, the Homegrown Expo stood out as one of the best I have ever attended. Held on May 31 – June 1 2014, at the Ricoh Center in Coventry, the show was put on by Down to Ear th Kent, The Grind Magazine, and Garden Culture Magazine.

58

HOME GROWN EXPO I GARDEN CULTURE

So, yes, I may be a little biased since I was involved in putting on this show. But I am usually my toughest critic, and I loved the show for so many different reasons. If you didn’t make it out, you definitely missed something special.

For one the venue, Ricoh Arena, is a stadium complex situated in the Rowleys Green district of the city of Coventry, England, containing a 32,609-seat football stadium, a 6,000m2 exhibition hall, The DeVere Hotel, a leisure club, and a casino. What a beautiful venue.

ALL THE BI G PL AYERS WERE THERE, THE UK’S L ARGEST WHOLESALERS, NUTRIENT COMPANIES, AND MORE GR ACED THE HALL FLO OR. IT IS SAFE TO SAY THAT TH IS WAS TH E BI G GEST SH OW O F TH IS T YPE E VER D O N E I N TH E UK

One of the best experiences of the weekend came when we were checking in to the DeVere Hotel. My wife was on this trip with me, and we were excited to enjoy our time alone. Our initial impressions of the room were mixed. It was clean, and still had that kinda new feeling, but it was small, and looked like it was designed for entertaining. That was cool. The big surprise came when we opened the blinds. They covered the length of the wall, and rolled effortlessly when I drew them open. A warm, fresh green light immediately washed over the room and us. Holy s..t, our room was directly on the pitch. And at that moment the elusive UK sun was briefly beaming through a small hole in the clouds.

I have stayed in far too many hotel rooms over the past 10 years.

Many were fancier, and certainly more expensive, but few were as memorable. It is rare that your hotel room is unique enough to be part of the experience.

The hotel is connected to the convention center and it took about 3 minutes from my room to the convention center

main room. Of course, not everyone was so lucky, but there were several other hotels very close by.

Friday set up went off without a hitch. There were inevitable problems that were handled quickly, professionally, and with a smile from both the Homegrown and Freeman staff. I cannot say enough good things about the Freeman Company.

They are the exclusive provider of event services to Rioch Arena, and a damn fine bunch of people. I am Canadian, so I wasn’t totally sure if this type of service is normal in the UK. I asked, and the answer was a resounding no. These guys are just good.

It was not just their job competency, which was there in spades, but the manner in which they responded to you. There was not a problem they couldn’t fix, and they treated us like family. They were a big part of that total vibe that permeated the show. It was a happy place.

Another quirky element that really caught my attention was the carpet. I am so used to the same old stuff at all the USA shows. Here they laid down this brand new, thin, and I believe throw-away carpet roll. Not very environmentally friendly, but certainly convenient. There wasn’t very much to it, but it was nice under the feet, and looked like a million bucks. Every seam was perfect, not a bump in the building. (The British government is BIG on safety.) We all had our high-vis vests on, supplied for free, thanks to the generosity of the HGE. Saturday morning we were the first into the room. It was stunning, over 3500 square meters of sold out space populated with an impressive list of over 60 exhibiting companies.

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HOME GROWN EXPO I GARDEN CULTURE

The Main Sponsors included Gavita, MaxiGrow, HESI, and Dutch Pro. All the big players were there, the UK’s largest wholesalers, nutrient companies, and more graced the hall floor. It is safe to say that this was the biggest show of this type ever done in the UK. Throwing a trade show is a risky enough endeavor, but putting it in a small town on the outskirts of Birmingham only increases the stress on the organizers. Footfall was truly a result of marketing, and hard work.

THROWING A TR ADE SHOW IS A RISK Y ENOUGH ENDE AVOR, BUT PUT TING IT IN A SM ALL TOWN ON THE OUTSK IRTS OF BIR MINGHA M ONLY INCRE ASES THE STRESS ON THE ORGANIZERS.

Saturday was the public day, and I believe the indoor gardeners from the region came out. We were by no means overly crowded, but there were a steady flow of enthusiastic gardeners and allotment farmers engaging booth workers with questions and expressing interest.

Reviews from the exhibitors were unanimously positive. The consensus was that they were fairly busy, nothing crazy, but all in all it was a good day.

with walkways, a park bench, Roses, Foxglove, Daturas, and tons of other plants and flowers.

It was beautiful, and an excellent way to show off the products and technologies at work in an inviting environment. I am slightly biased when it comes to this garden, you see, I designed it. :0) I worked late after the show on Saturday, and decided I needed to eat to make it through the night. This made me slightly late for the party hosted by Hydrogarden and the Homegrown Expo. They were showing the the Carl Froch vs.

George Groves rematch fight on the big screen in the bar attached to the complex.

Sunday was the big one, trade day, and it was a lot busier. The official count for unique shops was 120. Storeowners came from near and far. I met people from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland, and all over the UK. It was visibly busier, and many booths had crowds of people gathered around to sample their wares, and learn something new.

The party venue was in the building complex, making it super easy to get to. The 200 meter walk down to the bar was eerily quiet. I found out why when I stepped into the party. Everyone was there, maybe 500 people packed the bar.

The drinks were free, there was an amazing magician walking around, and the fight raged on. It was quite obvious that Froch was the crowd favorite, and when he knocked out the favored Groves with a savage right in the eighth, the room went wild everyone screaming, beer flying... it was great.

After the fight, Hydrogarden provided us with a 5 Pound Casino chip, and we had a back door entrance to the Casino (which I was told will never happen again). I turned that 5 Pounds into 20, and stayed up till 3:00 am. It was a great night.

One of the original elements of the show was the feature garden. Two 6X6 meter booths, smack dab in the middle of the show. One featured only hydroponic equipment. Hydrogarden was showing their aquaponic system amidst several different hydroponic gardens GHE and Nutriculture had set up, all teeming with fresh herbs and flowers. The other showcased Autopots and Smartpots set up as an English garden - complete

The underlying feeling I got over the weekend was something like you get when you’re on a great team. Everyone else felt it too. It was smooth, it was busy, and everyone was smiling. It was a special show that will go down as one of the best ever. Can’t wait until next year. 3

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BY ERIC COULOMBE

one of the “superfoods” that can make a real difference in some people’s lives

a h c u b m Ko

The Grossest Thing You’ll Ever Love

They say it cures cancer. They, the nameless, but ever-growing group of Kombucha true believers scattered across the internet. Most are anecdotal stories, but more and more credible evidence exists that this drink is one of the “superfoods” that can make a real difference in some people’s lives. Fads come and go, but for 2000 years Kombucha has been home-brewed, and revered for its healing properties.

About 10 years ago I was attending an indoor gardening expo in San Francisco. I had stayed out far too late on Friday night, and consumed one too many beverages. Needless to say, I did not feel so great the next morning. As I was setting up the booth to get ready for a busy day a kind friend brought me a bottle of iced tea. At least, that’s what I thought it was. It wasn’t, it was Kombucha tea. She explained to me that it was a tea made with a fermented mushroom. What!? I don’t even like mushrooms, and this sounded less than appealing, but I listened as she passionately explained all its health benefits.

The ‘mushroom’ was actually a culture called a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast). It doesn’t look appetizing, but has very powerful healing properties. The drink contains a blend of beneficial bacteria and yeast (probiotics), as well as certain acids and enzymes that aid digestion, detoxify the body, and promote health. Wow! What once sounded gross now sounded great.

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I graciously accepted her gift and cracked the lid. PFFFFFT - oh, it‘s carbonated. As the drink ran down my hand, I made a mental note not to shake store-bought Kombucha.

(I say store-bought because mine is never as fizzy as the one you buy in the store.) The tea was cold, and I was thirsty. After the first couple of gulps I realized that this drink was weird, vinegary - the wrong taste at the wrong time. I hated it. It was a super strong, unflavored brand. I didn’t show my dislike for the beverage, and managed to drink most of it. Not long after that I started to feel better. Hmm, was it because of the tea? I wasn’t sure, but the history and health claims got me interested.

Kombucha has been around for thousands of years, believed to have originated in China. North Americans have only discovered it the past two decades, and it’s only now entering the mainstream market. Legend has it that after a Korean physi-

KOMBUCHA I GARDEN CULTURE

cian, Kombu, who healed the Japanese Emperor Inyko with the Kombucha tea, and it was named after him: “Kombu” + “cha” (as in tea).

It wasn’t until about 4 years ago that I started brewing it myself. The first time I just poured half a bottle of into a gallon of sweetened tea that I made, no SCOBY. I put a silk screen extractor bag over the pot with an elastic, and left it alone.

Twenty-one days later, I had success - my tea, and a big juicy SCOBY on top for my next batch. I’ve had a couple of bad batches where mold grew on top. I threw it all away, and had to start again. If your batches spawn an extra SCOBY, separate it and try to keep it as an extra, or a gift.

Anybody can make it easily at home, and for pennies, rather than exclusively in large manufacturing plants or laboratories, and for that reason, it has less economic incentive than most other commercial drinks. The medical community does very little research on natural health products. Therefore, health claims are often anecdotal, and certain assumptions about the beneficial elements of the drink get created with no real evidence. We know fermented foods are powerful in their ability to support a healthy body, and restore balance to an unhealthy one. What we don’t really know is how exactly it works, but it does.

Many Kombucha true believers do not claim it cures anything. To them it’s a living elixir that aids our bodies to defend and repair itself.

st of Here is a partial li

HEALTH BENEFITS: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Prevents cancer Aids healthy cell regeneration Alkalizes the body Detoxifies the liver Increases metabolism Improves digestion Rebuilds connective tissue Alleviates constipation Boosts energy Reduces blood pressure Relieves headaches & migraines Improves eyesight Heals eczema – applied topically Speeds healing of ulcers Helps clear up candida & yeast infections Lower glucose levels Reduce gray hair… not so much for me :0( High in antioxidants High in probiotics

‘baby’ scoby

mother scoby

“revered for its healing properties for 2000 years”

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KOMBUCHA I GARDEN CULTURE

Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.

MAKE YOUR OWN

Hippocrates

Supplies: • •

• • • • • • •

1 cup/200 gr Sugar 3-5 Tea bags *Loose leaf: 1 bag = 1 tsp/1.5 gr Kombucha SCOBY - or 1 bottle unflavored Kombucha tea 1 Gallon/4 liters Purified water Brewing container (open top, glass is the best) Cloth or silk screen cover Rubber band 5 Wine bottles Funnel

Preparation: • • • • • • • • •

Boil water in a big pot.

Add tea bags.

Steep 5-20 minutes, then remove tea bags.

Add sugar and stir to dissolve.

Cover and let cool.

Transfer into brewing container.

Add SCOBY and/or bottle of Kombucha tea Cover with cloth. Secure with the rubber band.

Store in a dark spot.

Tea can take from 10-20 days depending on temperatures, and the health and size of your SCOBY.

Decanting + preparing the next batch • •

• • • • •

Start your gallon of tea. Add sugar. Allow time to cool before you start the decanting process of your finished Kombucha tea.

Remove the SCOBY, and place it in a very clean container with about 500 ml of the tea. I use a 150 micron silk screen extraction bag as my cover, and my strainer. You can use any fine strainer.

Decant - Wine bottles make excellent vessels. I use a funnel, takes 2 minutes.

Clean out brewing container Add cold, sweetened tea to freshly cleaned container Add 500ml of Kombucha tea and SCOBY Cover. Put away and put the date on your phone. Will be ready in about 20 days.

Enjoy! 3

Note: Continuous brew is another option. Brew once, then top up mixture with tea and sugar as you tap tea from the bottom. This method maintains the pH level, the SCOBY suppresses competition, and is believed to grow even more complex compounds.

How do you know when it is ready?

When starting without a SCOBY, check 7 -10 days in, you should have a new SCOBY growing on the top. If there isn’t one, let it keep going. Up to 20 days. If one never forms, then you have to start over. Something went wrong. The tea should still be good to drink.

When starting with a SCOBY check after 7-10 days. Insert a straw beneath the SCOBY and take a sip. If too vinegary, reduce your brewing cycle next time. If too sweet, leave it to brew for a few more days. Keep testing the tea until it is just right for you.

Important Tips • Never store Kombucha SCOBYs in the refrigerator!

• Store in a cool, dark place • Airflow is important – find an open area for your Kombucha Tea. • Sanitize with hot water or vinegar – NO SOAP. It kills the Kombucha culture.

• If you see mold, throw everything away. Kombucha Mushrooms are not salvageable.

• Keep a SCOBY backup in a mason jar.

Try this at home. The cost is next to nothing, it’s kind of fun, and the potential health benefits are real.

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BY EVAN FOLDS

WHAT IS

R E Z I L I T FER ANYWAY? In Part 1 of this article we discussed fertilizer, and the significant difference of feeding your plant versus feeding the soil. Now we will discuss how plants use fertilizer to nourish themselves, and how the use of targeted mineral diversity and biocatalysts can take major responsibility off of the plant to get truly monster yields in the garden.

By definition, fertilizers are a “chemical or natural substance as inorganic ions in water. This then paved the way for estabadded to soil or land to increase its fertility.” In other words, lishing base plant nutrition and the first hydroponic fertilizers. a fertilizer focuses on growing the plant, not the soil. This is So artificial fertilizers work because they don’t need help from a good thing, but it can also be bad. Human ingenuity is exMother Nature to create a growth response in plants. They tremely powerful when properly placed, but it can also result are man-made or synthetic, engineered by humans in an atin empty, toxic food when we resort to growing food for profit tempt to sustain plant growth. instead of for people.

Fertilizer takes on its true potential in hydroponic applications With the last hundred years of agronomy being defined by where the grower cannot assume the soil will provide fertility quantity over quality we have resorted to growing obese and has charged himself with providing complete nutrition. It is plants that fall short of the potential of food. Conservative loosely established that there are seventeen elements required estimates report 30 to 50% of crop for plant growth to occur, called the W E H AV E R ES O R T ED yields come from natural or synthet“essential elements”, which makes ic commercial fertilizer, but when T O G R O W I N G O B E S E up the large majority of hydroponic we bypass the soil’s intelligence, and fertilizers. This is what a plant has P L A N T S T H AT FA L L fail to imagine that plants want more to have, but not necessarily what a SHORT OF THE than what we have deemed essential, plant wants.

P O T E N T I A L O F F O O D Just as modern agronomy has drifted we end up selling ourselves short.

Soil holds nutrients, but the soil itself is not essential for acto the lowest common denominator by using as few as three complishing plant growth. When microbes break down orto five elements to fertilize commodity crops, hydroponic ferganic matter, and the mineral nutrients in the soil dissolve in tilizers have done the same by stopping at the seventeen elewater, plant roots are able to absorb them to manufacture ments deemed essential. Think about it, why would Mother biocatalysts that result in all the amazing metabolic processes Nature make a soil element not needed in the garden? that plants undertake.

Consider the truth in the following statement. The minimum This is the basis behind hydroponic applications made possible requirement for accomplishing plant growth does not meet by the 18th century discovery that plants absorb nourishment the conditions for the potential of plant growth. That’s right, it

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FERTILIZER I GARDEN CULTURE

TA K E M A J O R RESPONSIBILITY OFF OF THE PLANT T O G E T T R U LY

MONSTER YIELDS IN THE GARDEN INTRODUCING BIOCATALYSTS INTO YOUR GARDEN IS WHERE YOU WILL GET THE

WOW FACTOR

is possible to grow a plant using fertilizers that do not allow it to grow to its potential, the plant is wanting more, but it has no way of telling us. The same is true in human health, we can eat processed foods and survive, but it is only when we seek living whole foods that we can thrive.

In gardening terms, this means that when people use organic fertilizers they are unconsciously deARE WE INTERESTED livering a greater spectrum of nourI N S I M P LY G R OW I N G ishment than when using a refined hydroponic nutrient. This is where the PL ANTS, OR DO WE quality versus quantity discussion was WA N T TO G R OW born with organic versus hydroponic EXCEPTIONAL cultivation, respectively. The quesPL ANTS?” tion becomes how do we combine the best of both worlds? Are we interested in simply growing there is simply no way that seventeen elements are capable of plants, or do we want to grow exceptional plants? supporting this diversity of life. So what are we missing?

While hydroponics does accomplish plant growth, it isn’t too The reality is that we may never know, but the good thing is much of a stretch to assume that the plants would desire more that if we use diversified products balanced by Nature we don’t have too. It is human nature in the modern world to try ripping than seventeen elements to grow to their genetic potential.

And then there is the concept of isotopes, or the fact that things apart to discover the truth, but on this subject we must individual elements take on variable form in Nature, and the take a step back, and accept that we may never reach an actual reality that certain elements not needed in order for plants understanding of complete nutrition in regards to plants. There to form do influence making other elements available that are is simply too much diversity and variability in all that Mother essential. In short, we know enough to grow a plant, but very Nature manifests to expect any sort of cut and dried answer.

The best most growers accomplish is using a higher nitrogen little about how to grow plants to their maximum potential. fertilizer in the vegetative phase and a higher phosphorous ferPlants support the entirety of the mammalian food web, and

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GARDEN CULTURE I FERTILIZERS

plant, a w o r g o t h ug no e w we kno how to grow ut o ab le t t li y r e v t bu tential po um m i ax m r i e h t o t plants So, a first step is to make sure we are using grow and bloom tilizer for the flowering phase. This is relevant to any garden phase specific fertilizers that reinforce what the plant is as it provides the main element required for those respectrying to do at a concentration that justifies the nutrient tive stages of growth, but current hydroponic technology only accomplishes plant growth from a human perspective, threshold of the plant being grown, and to incorporate not a plant perspective, and there is a world of difference. some sort of organic materials like kelp, fish or sea minerals It is also important to monitor the relative concentration of into our fertility regimen, but what if we can use materials the fertilizer that’s being delivered. We use the terms parts beyond fertilizers to get the most out of our plants? How per million (PPM) and electrical conductivity can we combine human ingenuity with the (EC) to reference concentration in fertilizwisdom of Mother Nature in order ers. PPM and EC are a different way to grow better gardens? of expressing the same number, so When a plant takes in an ionic elefor this article we will use PPM. ment through its leaves or roots PPM means literally parts of ions it proceeds to leverage the gluper million of water. Again, the cose energy it manufactures PL ANTS SUPPORT ions are what a plant is eating during photosynthesis to build THE ENTIRET Y OF when you use fertilizer, or when hormones and biocatalysts that T H E M A M M A L I A N a microbe decomposes organic carry out the metabolic and FOOD WEB, AND matter into humus. constructive functions of plant T H E R E I S S I M P L Y It turns out that all plants have growth.

N O WAY T H AT different thresholds for ideal ferIntroducing biocatalysts into tilizer concentration. For instance, S E V E N T E E N E L E M E N T S your garden is where you will lettuce may want 600-800 ppm get the WOW factor, where A R E C A PA B L E O F and tomatoes may want up to you can see the results of using SUPPORTING THIS 3500 ppm. If the grower is using the product in days, sometimes D I V E R S I T Y O F L I F E the same amount of fertilizer for hours. This rarely happens by each crop they are not maximizing switching to a new fertilizer. the growth of their plants.

There are many examples of biocatalysts on the market.

When we fertilize plants using soluble fertilizers we’re basiFor example, amino acids are the building blocks of protein. cally force feeding them, and if we are not careful to deliver Manufacturing of amino acids takes place when hormones a balanced fertilizer to stimulate growth, we can leave our signal plants to build them based on the DNA of the speplants obese and vulnerable to pests and disease - just like cific plant, and the developmental stage of growth. You can people on a fast food diet. buy amino acid products that are stage specific that work If we use too much fertilizer we can also burn plants. This to take the responsibility off of the growing plant. is a water stress created by reversing the osmotic gradiThe same is true for carbohydrates, vitamins, enzymes, and ents of roots. It’s a tipping point reached when there are a range of other constructive endeavors by plants. Essentoo many ions outside the root versus inside, which sucks tially, using plant metabolites and biocatalysts to stimulate water out of plant roots causing the edges of leaves to die growth is to feed the plant what it has to make for itself back, or “burn”. before it has to make it. The plant says “thank you very One of the advantages of hydroponics is that because it much,” and puts all of its extra energy into functions that uses soluble fertilizers and recirculates them, the grower it wants to accomplish, namely reproductive growth and can fine tune the concentration delivered to the plant being fruit production. grown. Astute growers knowingly push their plants to the The takeaway here is don’t grow your garden for what you threshold to learn the limit, then they step off and monitor, want to get out of it, but what the plant wants to get out of so that the concentration is not being abused. This is the it. This will result in far happier plants and, in turn, happier only way to learn, and one of the major justifications for people. 3 cloning plants.

68

BY NICOLAS STE-MARIE, LES URBAINCULTEURS MTL

U R BAN GA R D E N I N G t e c h ni q ue s

Ph ot os : Ni co las Ste -M ar ie

What if we can create a new generation based on true knowledge of growing vegetables, real veggies with all the nutrients intact, in or on our houses all over the world? Enough food that even the poorest persons would not have such a huge need for money. You see, printing money and growing your own veggies is the same thing. The only difference is there’s no bank or big daddy to split your wealth up with! Usually, people are trying to make more money, because buying food gets more expensive year after year.

But, because we are urban gardeners, when we start calculating the price of the potting mix, fertilizer, plants, and container we hit a wall! Not a real wall, a perceived obstacle. We, however, realized very fast that creating a garden with all the soil life - microorganisms, bacteria, and more, that we can support our life with good food for many years in the same container without changing anything. If we were doing conventional growing we might need to change the substrate every year.

Me and Les Urbainculteurs based in Québec, Canada decided few year ago to create a technique, not a new one, but an old one - the one that was used for hundred of year all around the globe. We first ran into a huge problem, the container! There’s many kinds of container on the mar-

70

ket, but for us the most important thing was finding one designed to let the entire root system breath at 100%.

First of all, because it is the primary principal in large field agriculture to let the soil breathe. Which it does, because of their soil work, like introducing nitrogen, and turning the soil again and again. Also they create lighter machines every year, so they are not compacting the soil anymore!

So they’ve learned something, to let the soil breathe.

We first tried some containers with a self-watering system at the bottom, like the ones they sell as a ‘1-week watered container’. After 1 month it happens that the water, which cannot get oxygen, became an anaerobic system. So we were cultivating fungus, another thing we didn’t want in our production. Then standard plastic containers, then

URBAN GARDENING TECHNIQUES I GARDEN CULTURE

c on taine rs, se e th t a d e ok We first lo e ct e d the first sp re y e th e us be c a ul ture b e fore pr inc ipal of agr ic yge n to the ox e th , g in th ry e ve way The re s ul t w as . % 0 10 t a s ot ro e xpe ct e d . b e t te r th an w e

Smar t Pro: custom cont ainer for productio

n length rows over 100-feet long.

wood that really helps us propagate insect nests, snails, and more. None of this is good. Finally, 5 years ago we tried a fabric container. Here too, the market offers a lot of different kinds, so we tried to figured out which was best and why. This where our history with Smart Pot and High Caliper begins.

Why is Smart Pot the winner? This fabric container’s construction was so simple with no turned hem on the top, no Velcro, and only one side piece and one bottom piece. With less parts and stitching I was able to wash them in the machine with a little bleach, giving us a perfectly clean container that we can reuse again and again for many years. We first looked at these containers, because they respected the first principal of agriculture

before everything, the oxygen to the roots at 100%.

The result was way better than we expected. I was able to grow bigger plants in smaller containers and spaces.

The High Caliper crew was so axed on the development that I was able to create my own custom container like the Smart Pro for production length rows over 100-feet long.

This container is now one of our main products for roof top gardening in Canada. The only thing we are adding on the demand of the customer is some exterior wood framing. It looks like a stylish wood planter, but without airflow degradation. The design maintains perfect oxygen to the roots, it’s fast to install, and because of the

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URBAN GARDENING TECHNIQUES I GARDEN CULTURE

to the a F in ally , w e w e n t foun d just hydro shop, an d ; h umic ac id , d e d e e n e w t a h w ria, s yst e mic b e ne fic ial bact e e f fic ie nc y inse ct ic ide, high rie n ts... light ing , mic ronut

thick fabric, the humidity level is very easy to control.

Even with excessive rainfall, once it is 100% saturated a lot of the water leaks out of the container, without soil of course. If that’s not a genius container, then it is definitely “Smart.”

Building a roof top gardening company is not easy. First of all, we need to deal with all the people who already grow on a rooftop with no technique. On top of buildings we have temperatures rising up to 65° Celsius with the wind blowing 5 to 8 times stronger than on the street. We need to create a perfect environment up there that will last for years.

After the technical development, we worked on the fertilizer plan. We started with the average stuff bought at the local store. Then we hit the garden center, because they carry better nutrients. Finally, we went to the a hydro shop, and found just what we needed; humic acid, beneficial bacteria, systemic insecticide, high efficiency lighting, micronutrients... all the specific stuff unavailable at the garden center store.

Les Urbainculteurs has grown food on roof tops for over

8 years. In those years we were able to recreate all the life in our soil with local - okay just to be clear, 85% local products, because we can’t find every single thing needed in Québec, like the humic and fulvic acids. But the earthworm marine compost, sea weed, fish emulsion, and the separate minerals, and by that I don’t mean just the N-P-K. I’m talking about all the minerals plants need, including boron and copper. When I said complete soil, I meant we create real complete soil. That’s why our crew now includes an agronomist, biologist, and an agronomy student from a university in another country every year, because we are developing a strong, yet simple solution.

The knowledge we’ve gained in the last decades helps us in getting production contracts with people the industry never thought would want it before. Here a few examples: a law firm rooftop (it was perfect for us to have this client at the beginning), the National Assembly of Québec where they are now growing in the stairs to the main door, St-Hubert BBQ - a 115-restaurant chain who now produces their own food.

As an urban farming organization, the expertise we create allows us to start doing jobs for architectural firms and engineering companies, because in the construction development they forgot something very important, the building owners are paying huge amounts of money in our society for using the ground floor, but guess what guy’s - there’s another one on the top! Rent it, start your own project, share it with your neighbor, whatever, but please don’t let those stunning spaces go to waste!

Turn your unused rooftops into a garden paradise ;-) Cheers to the good food and friends! 3

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BY THEO TEKSTRA, MARKETING MANAGER GAVITA HOLLAND

IONING T C N U F E H T E D A R G E OR D EMI CAN DISRUPT ELECTRONIC DEVICES OF OTHER

I . .

M .

E

D R O W S D E G D A DOU B LE-E

BE SMART WHEN YOU DESIGN A CLIMATE ROOM has created tronic remote ballasts into the market elec cy uen freq high of n ctio odu intr The cy signals ence (EMI). EMI consists of high frequen rfer inte etic agn trom elec : blem pro a new grid), or example your power cord back to the for h oug (thr ted duc con er eith are ch whi a high example by your lamp cord connecting (for es wav io rad of form the in d itte em ing of EMI can disrupt or degrade the function p). lam the to ast ball ote rem cy uen freq situations, s, this may even lead to life threatening case e som In . ices dev ic tron elec er oth ed. ency communication systems are influenc erg em or s em syst l dica me if le, mp exa for lations? to avoid it? What are the rules and regu do we can t wha and I, EM that is t wha So

74

E.M.I. I GARDEN CULTURE

Standards Let’s get the dull stuff out of the way first: there are two classes which define how much EMI a device may emit: a) Class A for industrial use b) Class B for residential or medical use In industrial environments the EMI levels are allowed to be a bit higher. Class B, for residential use, is more strict than the industrial standard. In Europe, as well as North America, class A and B are used, and are very similar. Manufacturers of electrical devices need to make sure they do not emit more than the applicable standard.

- Conducted EMI travels through the power cord of the device back to the grid, and is distributed over your mains cables. All devices that are plugged into the same mains supply will receive this automatically. The interference does not stop at your house though: a complete block of houses or more, connected to the same supply, can be influenced. The frequencies are approximately 9 kHz to 30 MHz. Radiated EMI can, for example, hinder cell phone reception, wireless devices such as intercom systems, monitoring systems and radio amateurs, but it can also induce bad readings of sensitive instruments such as pH and ec meters.

Conducted EMI can influence anything that is connected to the same mains supply, and can cause routers to disconnect, computers to fail, loss in data, interference on audio and cable TV systems, etc.

Of the two, the conducted EMI may well be a worse problem than the emitted EMI.

THE INTERFERENCE DOES NOT STOP AT YOUR HOUSE

EMI, however, is a double-edged sword: manufacturers of electronic devices should also make sure that their electrical devices are protected against the influence of EMI from other apparatus to a certain degree. This, of course, makes things a bit more complicated. Interference you experience is not necessarily from a device emitting too much, it could well be that the receiving device is not sufficiently protected against EMI. There are many devices that emit EMI, because they emit radio frequent radiation, for example, cell phones and radio transmitters. In certain environments it is therefore not allowed to use these, because they would possibly interfere with sensitive systems. Examples are radio studios and theaters (interference with audio systems and wireless microphones), hospitals and airplanes (possible interference with critical electronic systems). Still, these devices all comply to regulations.

Radiated and conducted EMI There are two different types of EMI: - Radiated EMI works like radio waves, and is emitted by the equipment like a radio transmitter. Radio waves are very high frequency: frequencies from 30 kHz and up (long wave) can cause radiated interference. Medium wave, for example, ranges from approximately 500 kHz to 1.7 MHz. This emission can be picked up by devices that are sensitive to these frequencies, without any electrical connection to the device generating the EMI.

Electronic ballasts and EMI Electronic ballasts have become popular because they are efficient, lightweight, run relatively cool, provide a stable output regardless of mains voltage fluctuations, and can be controlled. Traditional (low frequency) core-coil ballasts are quite heavy and become very warm. They can be noisy, as in humming, and some components degrade over time. But they are cheap, reliable, and cause no interference whatsoever, because they work on the mains frequency: 50/60 Hz! So why don’t manufacturers make a low frequency electronic ballast? They do.

There are low frequency electronic ballasts as well. Because of the electronic nature of the ballast they can still cause EMI though, and because of the low frequency they are often big and more expensive. Especially square wave low frequency ballasts can be noisy on lamps, resulting in (literally!) vibrating arc tubes. They are also less efficient than high frequency ballasts, and more expensive to produce.

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Then there is a huge variety in operating frequency: traditional high frequency ballasts work around 35 kHz, but modern horticultural double ended systems, for example, work at 120 kHz! It’s not only this base frequency that causes the problems. High frequency equipment generates what we call harmonics, much higher frequencies than the base frequency. They easily reach the radio frequent spectrum your other devices are sensitive to.

Harmonics are mostly responsible for emitted EMI problems.

Sine wave and square wave both have higher harmonic frequencies. High frequency square wave ballasts in particular generate lots of harmonics and EMI.

Low versus high frequency Magnetic ballasts output the same frequency as the receive from mains, so 50 Hz in Europe, 60 Hz in the USA. This causes a “flicker” in the light, which actually switches on and off 100/120 times per second. On digital photographs you see this as light and dark banding. High frequency electronic ballasts switch so fast that the arc in the arc tube does not extinguish any more, leading to a higher output, and better efficiency.

How to avoid EMI It is almost impossible to avoid EMI with a high frequency remote ballast. The lamp cord connecting the (metal shielded) ballast to the reflector is the biggest problem for radiated EMI: it works like an antenna. The longer the cord the bigger the antenna. Shielding the lamp cord is not a solution in many cases, as it dampens the ignition pulse and can lead to lamps not starting any more, causes losses in output signal, and in some cases, it actually causes the frequency of the ballast to go up to a much

D E

Down to Earth Kent Ltd

higher frequency, possibly even destroying the ballast. This is why in horticulture only complete fixtures are used, with ballast and reflector integrated. The lamp cables are integrated in the metal design, reducing the interference to a minimum.

Conducted EMI is caused by insufficient filtering inside the ballast, or just plain bad design, causing high frequency signals to be delivered back to the grid. This can happen in remote ballasts, as well as complete fixtures.

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 610021 Tel: +44 (0) 1223 500633

Email: info@downtoearthkentltd.org.uk Website: www.downtoearthkent.co.uk

E.M.I. I GARDEN CULTURE There are several ways to keep your EMI to a minimum: 1. Best option: use complete fixtures! Ballast and reflector are integrated, so there is no loose lamp cord to emit lots of EMI. Also they are much easier to wire than remote systems. You just need to bring power to your climate room.

2. Make sure you have a good earth connection. The use of a protective earth connection is crucial to avoid EMI in shielded systems. Always use protective earth for safety, but specifically for high frequency devices to provide good shielding.

3. Keep lamp cords as short as possible, so keep the ballasts as close to the reflector as possible. And here I am talking about just 15 cm of cable instead of 5 meters or more!

4. Keep lamp cords apart from mains cords. If you they cross or run parallel you can get induction of the high frequency output on your mains supply, causing conducted EMI. This feedback signal can even destroy your ballast.

5. Never coil your lamp cords, make them too short! A coil can influence the frequency of your ballast, and can amplify radiated EMI.

So, what should I buy?

If a device carries an FCC or CE sign it should be compliant to the EMI regulations. I say should be, as in reality there are a lot of things wrong with the testing of electronic equipment.

For CE, for example, the manufacturer may choose to test the equipment himself, and declare that it is compliant to CE. If it turns out that it isn’t compliant he will probably get a slap on the wrist, which in many cases is cheaper than being really compliant. Specifically manufacturers in cheap labor countries outside the European Community (where the CE certification is required) do not really care so much about compliance. The importer or distributor is responsible.

For FCC compliance the device needs to be tested in a lab which is accredited by the FCC. In reality though, there is a huge difference in reports that are obtained from different (accredited) labs from different countries, also depending on how they test. If you test a ballast, for example, with just 15 cm of lamp cord it will give you a much better result than with 4 meters coiled next to the ballast. An FCC approval is no guarantee for absence of EMI. Be smart when you design a climate room. Think ahead, and choose products from a reliable manufacturer. Realize that all high frequency remote ballasts (even the FCC approved) can emit EMI and that in all cases it is better to use complete fixtures. If you use remote ballasts, then place the ballasts as close to the reflectors as possible, and use very short leads. Never cross lamp cords and power cables, and make sure all your systems have perfect ground connections. 3

HARMONICS ARE MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EMITTED EMI PROBLEMS

EMI measuring rooms ideally do not contain metal objects close to the sources, de tables on which the objects are placed are made of wood.

Keep your family and neighbors happy and safe EMI can cause all kinds of mayhem in a domestic environment: Internet routers that lose connection, Wi-Fi access points that decrease in performance or lose connection, TV’s and satellite receivers that show interference, remote controls (for example, to open your garage door or arm your alarm system) that do not work anymore, intercom systems that become unusable because of a loud hum, false alarms in wireless systems, amateur radio traffic interference, etc. When the neighbors call the cable guy to search the cause of the problem you are already too late.

It is always better to prevent these problems.

Conducted EMI

Measuring graphs from a FCC Report of a complete fixture (Gavita Pro 1000e DE) – all levels are below the limits that are indicated by the red line Emmited EMI

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BY GRUBBYCUP

P L A N T COMPOUNDS OF PHOSPHORUS ARE USED IN RESPIR ATION

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P H O S P H O R U S ( P) A required element for photosynthesis, blooming, and root development. Phosphorus is also used to form nucleic acid, which is an essential part of living cells. Compounds of phosphorus are used in respiration, and the efficient use of nitrogen. Important throughout the life cycle of the plant, but use becomes elevated during flowering.

Phosphorus deficiencies usually manifest as a generalized underperformance of the plant. Leaves may develop a bluish tint.

Phosphorus assists in nitrogen uptake, so symptoms of phosphorus deficiency are often similar to a nitrogen deficiency.

An overdose of phosphorus may cause iron and zinc deficiencies.

Phosphorus comes from mined rock phosphate, that when subjected to an electric furnace, or treated with an acid, creates orthophosphoric acid, which plants can use. To manufacture superphosphoric acid, they remove waCOMPOUNDS ter from the acid.

OF PHOSPHORUS You can obtain phosARE USED IN phorus naturally from RESPIR ATION organic composts or bone meal.

Sources of phosphorus include ammoniated superphosphate (5-50-0), ammonium phosphate (18-46-0), and animal manure (varies). My picks are bone meal (3-15-0), and rock phosphate (0-30-0).

Rock phosphate is available in two forms, “soft rock” phosphate, and “hard rock” phosphate. Soft rock phosphate contains a higher amount of immediately available phosphorus, and is usually the choice for container soil enhancement. Hard rock phosphate is better suited to improve a field where crop plants will grow for several years.

PLANT NUTRITION I GARDEN CULTURE

NUTRITION P O TA S S I U M ( K )

C A L C I U M (C a)

Potassium is important for photosynthesis, carbohydrate and protein creation, and disease resistance. Used in the “plumbing” of the plant: liquid movement within the plant, stems, roots, etc. Many enzymatic reactions require potassium, and it assists in silica uptake.

Potassium deficiency often shows as a yellowing, browning, or dying of the leaf edges, curled over leaves, followed by yellowing spots in the interior POTASSIUM IS of the leaf face. DisIMPORTANT FOR colored spots may apPHOTOSYNTHESIS pear on the undersides of leaves. Deficiency symptoms show first on lower leaves as flecking or mottling on the leaf margins. Prolonged deficiency results in cell death along the leaf margins, and the plants can show signs of wilt.

These symptoms first display in older leaves, and continue to work up through the plant to the newer leaves if not corrected. Growth, root development, disease resistance, and bud size are all reduced.

Used in making cell walls, and in some enzyme reactions. It provides a base for neutralization of organic acids, and facilitates the activities of growing points (meristems), especially with root tips. It may also be of importance in nitrogen absorption. Using “hard” water may supply enough calcium to meet plant needs.

CALCIUM MAY Calcium deficiencies can show as ALSO BE OF dying or dead tissue on new leaves.

IMPORTANCE Leaves may curl under. Overdoses IN NITROGEN of potassium or nitrogen can cause ABSORPTION calcium deficiencies, even if calcium is available. Overwatering can also interfere with calcium uptake.

Absorption slows in cooler weather. Root diseases and nematodes may cause calcium deficiencies.

Overdoses of calcium may cause iron deficiencies.

Calcium is often added as calcium carbonate (12% Ca), or calcium nitrate (12-0-0 17% Ca).

Overdoses of potassium can result in a calcium and magnesium deficiencies.

Potassium chloride (0-0-60), potassium sulfate (0-0-50) and potassium nitrate (13-0-44) are all sources of potassium. I like powdered kelp (1-0-4) compost (3-1-2), and greensand (0-0-3).

Potassium is also known as potash.

Used in amino acid and enzyme production.

Deficiency symptoms consist of a general yellowing of the leaves. Similar to a nitrogen deficiency, but starting in the upper leaves, not the lower leaves like with a nitrogen deficiency.

Many plants can generally tolerate quite high concentrations of sulfur, and overdosing is uncommon. However, over application can lock out molybdenum, and hinder beneficial microbial life.

SULPHUR Sulfur is commonly paired with anOVERDOSING IS other nutrient. Potassium sulfate (0UNCOMMON 0-50 18% S) and Epsom salts (13% S 10% Mg) both supply more than one nutrient. I prefer Epsom salts, as it supplies both sulfur and magnesium in approximately correct proportions.

Common forms of potassium used for fertilizer include: • Potassium chloride (KCl), the chlorine separates easily, leaving potassium available for plants.

• Potassium sulfate (K3SO4) • Potassium nitrate (KNO3)

S U L P H U R (S)

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M A G N E S I U M ( M g) Magnesium is a key element in making chlorophyll, and used in certain enzyme reactions. Magnesium also assists in phosphorus uptake and carbon fixation.

MAGNESIUM IS Deficiency symptoms consist of yelA KEY ELEMENT lowing between veins, which can IN MAKING lead to dead patches in the affected CHLOROPHYLL areas that cause a mottled appearance. Signs of magnesium deficiency appear first on the oldest leaves, and progress systematically toward the youngest leaves.

Damage is similar in appearance to zinc and chlorine deficiencies. Lack of magnesium can result in premature aging.

Overdoses of calcium and potassium can block magnesium uptake.

Epsom salts, agricultural lime, and magnesium carbonate can all supply magnesium.

The last six nutrients iron, manganese, boron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum are only used in very small amounts.

I R O N ( Fe) Plants use iron to facilitate chlorophyll production and enzyme reactions. Iron chelates are soluble, and aid in keeping iron in solution available for uptake.

PL ANTS USE Iron deficiency shows as upper IRON TO leaf yellowing between the veins FACILITATE that may progress to cell death of CHLOROPHYLL the affected leaves. New leaves PRODUCTION come out bleached. Yellowing begins on the lower part of the leaflets. Iron deficiencies can look similar to a manganese deficiency. Overdoses of calcium, zinc, manganese, phosphorus, and copper can lock up iron and cause a deficiency. Basic (pH above 7) conditions or overwatering can also lock out iron uptake.

M A N G A N E S E ( M n) A plant needs manganese for chlorophyll formation and enzyme reactions.

Manganese deficiency consists of yellowing between green veins, similar to a magnesium deficiency, but appearing first on the upper leaves, and more mosaic looking. Yellowing may turn brown as the leaf dies. Basic (pH above 7) environments can lock out manganese uptake.

B O R O N ( B) Boron aids in the creation and stabilization of the cell walls in plant cells. It’s required for root tip development and new growth. It can delay the onset of calcium deficiency, but is not a substitute for calcium. It tends to keep calcium soluble, and may assist in nitrogen absorption.

Boron deficiency affects the active growth and root tips first.

Leaf tips curl under, turn yellow, and die. Growth may become stunted and bushy. High pH may lock up boron.

Z I N C ( Z n) Zinc activates enzymic reactions and indoleacetic acid.

Zinc deficient young leaves show yellowing between the veins.

Sometimes a zinc deficiency can lead to plants with shortened internodes. Zinc deficiency may occur in cold, wet soils, or in basic pH conditions.

C O P P E R & M O LY B D E N U M Plants need even smaller amounts of copper and molybdenum, which they use in quantities down to a thousandth as much as the macronutrients. Organic matter or soil usually has sufficient quantities of micronutrients to fulfill the needs of plants, but in a highly sterile hydroponic environment you may find the plants need them added to the system. These are only needed in trace amounts. For example, water running through house pipes has been known to pick up enough copper to meet the needs of plants.

Knowing what nutrients the plant needs is half the battle, knowing how much is the other half. It is also the more debated of the two. Reacting to deficiencies and overdoses is one way to get a feel for how much of which nutrient you should add to your nutrient solution. Another is to start with someone else’s best shot at it, and then try to improve on it yourself. 3 (condensed from Grubbycup’s Gardening Notes)

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BY BRIAN BURK

Promising results in preventing certain diseases.. .

PHYTO

You’ve heard about antioxidants, vitamins, and omega-3, but have you heard anything about phytonutrients? What about phytonutrient degradation? The longer they study the nature of food and it’s effect on our health, the more you need to know.

Phytonutrients have produced promisaracts. According to the U.S. National THERE ARE ing results in preventing certain diseasLibrary of Medicine, phytonutrients es. According to the American Cancer have shown potential as photoprotecTHOUSANDS OF Society, there are thousands of known tants. Photoprotectants prevent damKNOWN phytonutrients, but the effects of these age from UV rays, which can lead to PHYTONUTRIENTS... phytonutrients diminish due to the way developing skin cancer. industry handles and processes our As a whole, research shows a correlafood. To fully understand these potential benefits, we must tion between phytonutrients and preventing heart disease, figure out what a phytonutrient is. tumors, blood clots, asthma, inflammation, and it also has the potential to slow the aging process. But unfortunately, According to Oregon State University, phytonutrients (also getting phytonutrients through our food is stifled by the way known as phytochemicals) are compounds found in plants. it’s being processed and prepared.

Some common phytonutrients are carotenoids (alpha-carotene and beta-carotene), chlorophyll, curcumin, flavonoids, Fruits and vegetables begin their journey in fertilized soils. lycopene, and gingerol. Collectively these compounds affect The Better Health Channel, run by the state government of fruits and vegetables in various ways. Some plant specific Victoria Australia, states “high use of nitrogen fertilizer tends effects, according to the Stanford Cancer Institute, include to reduce the vitamin C content in fruits and vegetables.” protection from ultraviolet (UV) radiation, bacteria, viruses, They also state both organic and non-organic fertilizer efand fungi. Also, certain phytocompounds provide fruits and fects nutrient loss in the same way. vegetables with a luscious hue, and rich flavor. But what can phytonutrients do for humans?

During the pre-harvest stage, temperature fluctuations play Similar to the effect of antioxidants, phytonutrients may play a major role in phytonutrient development. According to the a role in reducing the risk of developing various ailments and University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural diseases. Research has also shown promising results indicatResources, light intensity, and changes in climate can cause ing phytonutrients may prove useful in cancer prevention. fluctuations in the nutrient content of fresh produce. These Indoles, which are found in vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, influences will differ from year to year, and can become diffiand kale, contain sulfur and active agents that destroy cancercult to overcome. This makes mass farming more susceptible causing chemicals. Another potentially powerful phytocomto nutrient degradation. After the produce has time to “depound is lutein. Research in the study of lutein has produced velop,” the harvest begins. favorable results in preventing many diseases, like colon canDuring the harvest, opportunities arise that further enhance cer, breast cancer, age-related macular degeneration, and catnutrient loss. In an industrialized farming situation, the mech-

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S T N E I R T U N anized picking of fresh produce can lead to bruising and browning; which impede nutrient development. Once harvested, the process of packing and transportation begins.

weeks to arrive at its destination. In order to combat these climate changes during transportation, most modern forms of shipping have humidity and cooling systems installed. Since there is one cooling system per cargo space and fresh produce Transportation not only includes the means of moving fresh loads are often mixed, only part of this produce preserves the produce, but also how they pack and maintain it during movenutritional integrity they entered the container with. ment. Before loading for transport, it’s placed into boxes that The produce reaches its next destination, which in most can potentially cause damage to the produce. If overfilled and cases is a ripening warehouse, where the produce ripens in a stacked on top of one another, box compression ensues. Also sealed chamber - not on the vine. To start it off, pallets of prothese boxes, after absorbing moisture, can collapse and cause duce go into ripening rooms, where they get fumigated with further compression damage. As in the pre-harvesting stage, ethylene gas for about a week. Ethylene is a gas that naturally if the produce gets physically damaged, it occurs in some fruits, vegetables, and causes nutrient loss. Even when packed in plants as they ripen or age, and exTEMPERATURE reliable boxes, shipping fresh produce still posing some types of produce to this FLUCTUATIONS PLAY can result in nutrient loss. gas restarts the interrupted maturNot taking the earlier mentioned stages of ing process. However, as the USDA A MAJOR ROLE IN phytonutrient degradation into account, states, the ethylene used for ripening PHYTONUTRIENT one of the biggest areas of phytonutrient today “is a synthetic analog of a natuDEVELOPMENT loss occurs during transit. Whether it’s via ral gas produced by plants.” highway trailer, trade ship, or cargo plane, Exotic or off-season produce shipped fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity present the long distance, like bananas, avocados, or tomatoes, must be biggest influence on nutrient content. picked when green and nutritionally underdeveloped. Unfortunately, this picked early and ripened artificially produce Each individual type of produce has different requirements for thing is necessary to deliver a “fresh product” to your groshipping but, due to economic concerns for moving massive cery store. According to Washington State University, side amounts of produce, they are often shipped in mixed loads. effects of ethylene gas ripening include, loss of chlorophyll, This means there are several types of produce being shipped abscission of plant parts, yellowing of vegetables, and epinasty in one container, which is not the best for nutritional stability. (the bending of stems). Another downside, perhaps the most For example, when traveling cross-country, tarnishing a load unfortunate, because they pick the produce early and it’s not of “fresh” produce can happen in only three or four days. This ripened naturally, the loss of nutritional quality cannot be fully is more severe when being shipped overseas where it can take recovered.

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The force-ripened produce now gets loaded back on transport trucks, and sent to grocer’s shelves or on to specialized packing plants, where it’s put through multiple processing methods. These processing methods include blanching, canning, and milling.

Before being canned or frozen, a vegetable or fruit may very well be blanched. Blanching is the process of heating quickly with steam or water, which causes water-soluble vitamins and phytochemicals to deteriorate. After blanching, these foods are now ready for the cannery. Safe canning means PHYTONUTRIENT heating the food inside the LOSS OCCURS can again to kill many types DURING TRANSIT of bacteria and dangerous organisms. This process may lead to great loss of many water-soluble phytonutrients.

Although, fresh food expires faster than its canned brethren, fresh food offers a larger amount of nutrients.

Wheat can already be milled before its trip to the distributor. Milling is the process of grinding down grains to remove fibrous husks. Unfortunately, these husks contain a large amount of the plant’s vitamins, fiber, and phytonutrients. Even though most wheat products are artificially fortified with nutrients that are lost, it does not bring the nutrients to its former state.

Now these processed fruits and vegetable have great shelf life, and are then sent to the supermarket, but they are not safe from further phytonutrient loss yet. There is still one major obstacle in the way of a more nutritious meal, the consumer.

Many home kitchens, in the effort to make foods tastier, prepare their fruits and vegetables in a way that further degrades the nutritional quality. Peeling and pruning your fresh produce potentially pulverizes the nutritional value. Most of the vitamins and fiber accumulate in or near the skin of fruits and vegetables, so by removing the skin, you are removing the nutrients.

Boiling your vegetables can result in many nutrients leaching into your cooking water. You could either shorten the boiling time for your produce, or use the cooking water, filled with nutrients and phytochemicals, to make a stock for soups or to cook rice. Most phytochemicals and nutrients are lost during high heat cooking processes. These include the aforementioned methods, but also roasting, grilling, sautéing, and drying. Cooking at a lower temperature, with the least amount of water, and a shorter cooking time maintains the greatest amount of phytonutrients in your produce.

But fortunately, there is a way to combat nutrient loss in fresh produce, having your own home garden. There are many benefits to growing your own fruits and vegetables. According to the Harvard Health Letter, growing your own food will lead to a larger consumption of fresh produce and, typically, a greater amount of nutrient yield versus store-bought produce.

Growing your own allows you to pick what fertilizers and chemicals come into contact with your harvest. This also allows you to control when you harvest your crop, providing the freshest produce you can acquire. Even if you don’t have a backyard, or one large enough to grow in, you can still grow hydroponically.

Produce grown hydroponically still has a higher nutrient content than most store-bought produce. It also has the added benefit of being isolated from the soil and climate, which allows you to grow a variety of vegetables and fruits that would otherwise be difficult to grow in some areas. Hydroponics can provide even greater benefits. Using hydroponics there is a significant reduction in chemicals to control pests and weeds, it also uses less water than traditional growing methods, and you can build growing systems using recycled materials.

As you can see, there are many steps from the field to your dinner table. During each step, nutrients are being lost, and food is getting wasted. But there is still hope. The benefits of growing your own produce is not just about saving money, preserving flavor, or even keeping our food safe; if more produce was grown in our own backyard, we could shorten the steps, and put an end to nutrient loss. 3

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