Garden Culture Magazine: US 1

THE ART OF URBAN GARDENING AND INDOOR GROWING

IT’S ON!

US/CA EDITION YEAR 1 - ISSUE 1 · 2013 - PRICE: $ 4.99

THINK

MICRO FOR MACRO RESULTS

GMO

GROW YOUR OWN :

CILANTRO

CONTROVERSY

WILD WASABI TAMED

10 TIPS: BE A BETTER GROWER INSTANTLY

ENLIGHTENED LIGHTING T HE

I N VISI BLE

GARD EN

SECRETS TO BOOST YOUR HARVEST

VIVA ESPAÑA & T

& TEMPERAMENT

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE SUN

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The success of Dry Flower Products is their performance.

LIQUID GOLD

LET YOUR PLANT TAKE UP NUTRIENTS FASTER

BLOSSOM-BLOOD GET FULLER BUDS The addition of Blossom-Blood to a nutrient reservoir during the flowering stage of a plant will promote fuller buds & flowers utilizing selective pH control.

Blossom-Blood’s reputation comes from the results.

GREEN-UP

STOP THE YELLOWING Green-Up is designed to reduce yellowing when cuttings are rooting. It has the ability to feed a cutting before the roots have developed. Can be used on mature plants to reduce yellowing on lower leaves in flowering stage.

LIQUID BLACK CRYSTAL INCREASE YOUR PLANTS NUTRIENT INTAKE Liquid Black Crystal assists in increasing the ion exchange across the root membrane. It improves the plants ability to absorb nutrients. Liquid Black Crystal is most effective when it is applied to the root zone of a plant. It can be used for gardens and lawns, particularly where the pH of the soil is high.

Liquid Gold will increase the cell metabolic rate which translates into better growth.

Liquid Gold is absorbed directly into the plant tissue and regular daily spraying will treat new growth cells.

VEG-BOOSTER

PLAN FOR YOUR YOUNG CUTTINGS TO SUCCEED Veg-Booster enables young cuttings or seedlings to better expand branches allowing for fuller growth in the later flowering stages.

CLEARING SOLUTION KEEP IT CLEAN AND MAXIMIZE

Clearing Solution is used to replace the nutrient in the final days before removing a floral crop from your growing system. Clearing Solution induces a stress on the plants system forcing reactions within the plant.

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CONTENTS I GARDEN CULTURE

K.I.S.S.

FRESH WASABI

27

98

22

WINDOW FARMING

THE ART OF LIGHTING

42

PRODUCT

92 IN THIS ISSUE OF GARDEN CULTURE: 9 Foreword & Credits

SPOTLIGHT

10

KORN

66

62

EARTHSHIPS 66 Korn is growing corn

10 Product Spotlight

70 Fungi, molasses & rock phosphate

27 K.I.S.S.

76 10 tips: be a better grower instantly

28 Humidity: the good, the bad & the ugly

78 Hydroponics for small apartments

32 The invisible garden: a perfect balance

82 For growers by growers

36 Modern slavery and the illusion of consent

87 The growing controversy of GMOs

42 The art of lighting

88 Bitcoins: grow your own money

50 Aquaponics: a sustainable solution

92 Window farming

58 Grow your own series: Cilantro

98 Grow your own series: Fresh wasabi

62 Earthships: down to earth gardenculture.net

7

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FOREWORD & COLOFON I GARDEN CULTURE FOREWORD THANK YOU FOR READING GARDEN CULTURE’S FIRST NORTH AMERICAN EDITION! We did it. You’re now holding our first American/Canadian magazine in your hands. A major accomplishment, many months in the making. Thanks for picking us up and reading this!

We are proud to offer you the most effective garden tool ever used: knowledge. These pages bring together an intimate understanding of plant biology with vast experience in gardening. Our goal is for you to achieve a perfect balance in your garden. Each article ads a new brick in the construction of better gardens, and shortens the path to enjoying great harvests. In your hands is the authoritative reference to help you optimize the productivity of your grow space.

So who are we? Simply put, we are you. We are growers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and salespeople from the hydro industry. We love to grow, we love technology and we love the hydro business! We’ve made it our mission to bring you knowledge and insights from around the globe. We started in 2010 with the development of this magazine in Holland, and right now we have a huge following in: Holland, United Kingdom and Ireland.

To get to the point, this took a lot of time and effort. We would like to thank the GC team and everybody involved in helping us realize this magazine. We really appreciate all the hard work! If you would like to get involved too, you’re in luck. Head over to our website (www.gardenculture.net) and our Facebook page (facebook.com/GardenCulture). We’re looking for contributors of any sort, so drop us a line anytime!

This issue of Garden Culture focuses on how to make the most of your hydroponic garden with articles about using carbon dioxide, tuning your grow lights, and even growing live fish with your plants to save resources. It is this enhancement of natural processes through wise use of technology that we like to call the art of growing. In this increasingly crowded world, the ability to grow your own is not only valuable to you, but also does a great favor to the planet.

Keep it green!

Mike Nivato - Executive Editor

CREDITS Garden Culture™ is a publication of GC Publishers B.V.

EDITORS

Executive Editor: Mike Nivato E. mike@gardenculture.net Art Director / DTP Job Hugenholtz Special thanks the following contributors: Dan F, Sheldon Aberman, Wade, Tammy Clayton, April Kazema, Evan Folds, Fred Decker, Jeroen Dercksen, Sylvia Bernstein, Tom Alexander

PUBLISHER

GC Publishers Postbus 483 3200AL Spijkenisse The Netherlands t. 1-855-427-8254 w www.gcpublishers.net e info@gcpublishers.net

ADVERTISING

Eric Coulombe E. eric@gardenculture.net 1-855-427-8254 ext

SUBSCRIPTIONS

E. subscriptions@gardenculture.net

DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS Rambridge HydroFarm Sunlight Supply

ISSN: 2211-9329 © GC Publishers B.V.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the GC Publishers B.V.

Website : www.GardenCulture.net Facebook: facebook.com/GardenCulture

Twitter :

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An introduction:

Carbon dioxide There are a couple of things that plants can’t live without. Carbon dioxide is one of these substances.

It’s a gas, commonly found in the atmosphere. Although it isn’t as common as oxygen and nitrogen, which make up around 99% of the atmosphere’s volume, carbon dioxide is still relatively common.

Over the past decade or so, carbon dioxide has been in the news frequently and has suffered from a bad reputation for being a greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change. This conclusion has some merit since it is often added to greenhouses to boost plant production. This article is a short introduction into the how and why of carbon dioxide addition in greenhouses.

Plants like all living creatures need energy to survive.

Animals get this energy feeding on plants or other creatures. But plants don’t feed on other creatures. Plants store the energy they need by combining elements from soil and air using sunlight to power the reactions. A radically different survival strategy compared to animals.

This method of energy harvesting is commonly known as photosynthesis.

In essence, photosynthesis isn’t all that complicated, however when inspected more closely, one will find out that it is a cascade of many chemical reactions. To make this a little less complicated photosynthesis can be split up in two parts; ‘Light reactions’ and ‘light-independent reactions’.

LIGHT REACTIONS Light reactions are the first part of photosynthesis.

These reactions require light in order to work. When a

22

photon from the sun or a grow light strikes the photoreceptive pigment called chlorophyll, water is split into two oxygen molecules and one positively charged hydrogen atom, also known as a proton. These protons in turn are used by the plant in the light-independent reactions. But most importantly, the plant uses the energy of the protons to convert ADP (adenine di-phosphate) into ATP (adenine tri-phosphate) by adding a phosphorous group. This is how plants store energy in a usable way, essential in many vital processes. The ATP can be used as a means to transport chemical energy, because when it is converted back into ADP energy is released.

The molecule can then be recycled into ATP again. The resources the plant has to invest in order to perform these reactions is always the same. However, not all wavelengths of light are equally effective at stimulating chlorophyll, and some wavelengths transfer no energy at all. In general plants are most efficient in the blue and red ranges of the spectrum. Green light is poorly

BY JEROEN

CARBON DIOXIDE I GARDEN CULTURE

in plants and greenhouses

The proteins that were created during the light reactions are now used to fixate carbon. Carbon fixation is performed by plants using a process called the ‘Calvin Cycle’. A number of different chemicals, including the protons, carbon dioxide and ATP go into the reaction and in the end yield a simple sugar which in turn can be used by the plant to produce a number of other things including larger sugars and starches. Contrary to the light reactions, these light-independent reactions cost the plant energy.

absorbed by chlorophyll. Instead it is reflected into our eyes, which makes plants look green to us.

LIGHT-INDEPENDENT REACTIONS The dark reactions then follow up on the light reactions. This is where carbon dioxide comes into play.

Like with any chemical reaction, or biochemical reaction for that matter, a plant has to have all the ingredients to perform photosynthesis. One of these ingredients is going to be the limiting factor to the reaction. One can understand that if enough water and light are available to plants, CO2 could become a limiting factor. This can certainly be the case since CO2 is present in the atmosphere at levels around 360ppm (parts per million). This

gardenculture.net

23

CARBON DIOXIDE I GARDEN CULTURE WHEN ENOUGH LIGHT AND WATER ARE AVAILABLE, CO2 BECOMES THE LIMITING FACTOR

is where it starts to get more difficult. Most plants benefit from CO2 addition because the enzyme that transports CO2 inside the plant can get distracted. You see, this enzyme can also bond with oxygen, transporting less carbon dioxide into the plant. This makes the process rather inefficient, as oxygen is available at higher concentrations in the atmosphere. These plants, called C3 plants, benefit greatly from added carbon dioxide.

CARBON DIOXIDE PRODUCTION In a greenhouse there are a number of ways to produce carbon dioxide. Piles of composting materials can be used to produce carbon dioxide in a greenhouse however this has drawbacks when it comes to pest control. A more modern way to increase the CO2 concentration is by burning propane, or some other gas. Gas burners can be linked to controllers and sensors that monitor and adjust the burn rate according to the need of the plants. This is the most common method of CO2 production and, besides recycling CO2 from another source, the least costly. Using pressurized cylinders is too expensive and cumbersome.

There are some drawbacks to burning fossil fuels to produce CO2 . With improper combustion there is a possibility carbon monoxide is formed instead of carbon dioxide.

24

This is a poisonous and potentially deadly gas, odorless and definitely something to watch out for.

Carbon dioxide is something every plant needs and is present in the atmosphere in small concentrations. In situations where it’s preferable to grow crops intensively, CO2 is a welcome addition to boost plant growth. The addition of CO2 increases the rate of photosynthesis that is possible in nearly all plants but other factors change too. In order to get the maximum efficiency out of the added CO2 , temperature and humidity have to be pushed to an extreme. In reaction to this the speed of every process in the garden increases. This does sound rather easy, however a more extreme climate also increases the chances of pests and other problems one would want to avoid in the crops. Carbon dioxide addition requires a lot of attention to do well, but it can be a valuable tool in increasing yields. It is the next step for gardeners who have mastered their indoor growing environment. 3

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K.I.S.S. I GARDEN CULTURE

BY DAVID GREEN

Keep It Simple Stupid

Historical concepts for a Bumper Crop The acronym was coined by Clarence Johnson, lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works (creators of the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes,

The principle most likely finds its origins in similar concepts such as:

among many others). The principle is best exemplified

•

by the story of Johnson handing a team of design engineers a handful of tools, with the challenge that the jet aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic in the field under combat conditions with only these tools. Hence, the ‘stupid’ refers to the relationship between the way things break and the so-

• • •

Albert Einstein’s maxim that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”.

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

Mies Van Der Rohe’s “Less is more”.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

phistication available to fix them.

What could this possibly have to do with NY prime steak and expect him to YOUR NEW GARDEN gardening and the success or failure of eat? Absolutely not. You’ve got to IS A LIKE A TINY BABY. take it slow, learn to walk before your garden? When you need a new cellWOULD YOU BRING phone do you head down to your local you run and K.I.S.S. YOUR NEW BUNDLE electronics supplier and buy a bunch of OF JOY HOME, SIT microprocessors and resistors and head A new grower should start simple HIM IN FRONT OF home to construct your new phone like with one ore two lights, minimal A GIANT NY PRIME the mad doctor did with Frankenstein on number of plants, pots with soil STEAK AND EXPECT that stormy night? Of course not. You and a very basic nutrient feed HIM TO EAT? head over to the cell phone store or dial solution. Hand water these new it up online and click buy, pay for it and born babies and spend time in then start texting your friends to boast of your new puryour garden EVERY DAY! chase. You don’t know how to wire or build a cell phone and Take the time to study your plants. Study their reactions, what for most of you new growers, your garden is no different. makes them happy and of course, what makes them sad. As you get through your fist crop or two, you will begin to realize You’ve spent hours researching online, head out to your lothat there is more to indoor gardening then meets the eye. cal Hydro store or order online and acquire your new grow Only then can you begin to make the educated decisions needequipment, head home and start to assemble the puzzle of ed to outfit your garden, and progress into a more advanced pots, trays, tubing, pumps and then muster up the courage and automated grow system. to mix up your first batch of feed solution. You’ve done all this with no experience growing a plant and no knowledge The simpler your first garden is, the more SUCCESSFUL of how it should all work, why? you will be! There will come a time for the latest technology and all the bells and whistles, just think of the evolution of Your new garden is a like a new baby. Would you bring spy planes. Clarence Johnson said it right when he coined the your new bundle of joy home and sit him in front of a giant phrase - Keep It Simple, Stupid! 3

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, D O O G THE

& d a B e Th Y L G U E H T

28

BY TAMMY CLAYTON

HUMIDITY I GARDEN CULTURE

Everything and everyone is affected by humidity, or the lack of it. Plants are more sensitive to humidity levels and its variations than humans or animals.

We manage to live through the discomfort. Plants manage humid conditions too, but the effect can be undesirable. Improper humidity levels affect plant functions and can cause irreparable

UNDERSTANDING WHAT RELATIVE HUMIDITY (RH) IS AND HOW IT AFFECTS THE PLANTS IN YOUR INDOOR GARDEN IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF A HEALTHY CROP AND AN ABUNDANT HARVEST

damage to roots, stem, foliage, flower and fruit.

The worst case scenario is pretty ugly. You could watch the death dance in horror, not knowing how to stop the process.

Common Hydroponic Crop Relative Humidity (RH) Averages • Chilli Peppers: Ideal 50-70% (RH), with 65% being optimal.

• Bell Peppers: Ideal RH is 75%.

• Tomatoes: Ideal RH is 65-75% at night and

Moderation applies to all life forms As a grower you must regulate the environment and climate for your crop. Especially if you don’t want them to go on strike, get lazy and refuse to perform.

It is best to take your role as climate creator seriously.

Understanding what relative humidity (RH) is and how it affects the plants in your indoor garden is an important part of a healthy crop and an abundant harvest. The wrong humidity level can present you with a number of issues that vary by crop type. At early growth stages low humidity can cause your crop to go on a binge eating spree while profusely perspiring. The result is they burn to a crisp from the loss of water that maintains nutrient levels in their systems. Obviously, this is bad, at best.

In an attempt to improve dry conditions the plants will absorb more nutrient solution than in proper humidity.

At the same time they rapidly shed water through the cell pores on the underside of the leaves known as the stomata. What is the result of this undesirable situation?

Even a weaker solution will lead to nutrient burn.

What’s the right RH Level?

It would be great if it were that easy, to have one metric to aim for here. You have an average humidity level of 50-75% for best results with dark cycle RH levels being higher than

80-90% for light cycle.

• Herbs: Most prefer 40-50% RH • Cucumbers: Will do well at 70-80% (RH), with 75% being perfect.

• Lettuce: Maintain RH below 70% at all times.

light cycle. However, different plants and different stages of growth require varied humidity. So, be sure to learn what the best RH levels are for your crop at each stage, as some plants will prefer a drier climate and others need high humidity.

A seed sprouts and rapidly develops a good foliage canopy and abundant roots in the cooler, shorter days of late spring and early summer when high moisture is present. As temperatures climb and day length increases, high outdoor humidity can be a bad, even ugly thing. The purpose of an indoor garden environment is to give plants optimal conditions through all stages to harvest. Coaxing them to produce that bumper crop you want includes controlling relative humidity.

This is why many indoor hydroponic growers have separate vegetation and flowering to fruiting grow chambers. It is also why some plants are good indoor companions and others aren’t.

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HUMIDITY I GARDEN CULTURE

...IT IS BEST TO TAKE YOUR ROLE AS CLIMATE CREATOR SERIOUSLY

VARYING RH LEVELS NEEDED FOR DIFFERENT GROWTH STAGES GERMINATION & PROPAGATION STAGE: Maintain rooting cuttings or germinating seedlings humidity at above 80%. A propagator makes controlling RH more manageable and allows your new crop to concentrate energy on producing the roots.

Some crops can be successfully propagated in your grow tent using a humidifier with a humidistat.

YOUNG PLANTS: Between minimal foliage to breathe out water (transpiration) at night and the hot lights, many growers experience problems keeping the RH levels high enough to produce strong growth and plant vigor. In 6 sq. ft. (0,6 m2) of grow space, using two 600 watt lights, you’ll generally find 35-50% RH and a temperature of 72-82o F (22-28 C).

As described earlier, low humidity will make the plants work overtime at creating humidity. You don’t want the RH to drop below 40%. This brings issues with nutrient overload and other related problems. Your target RH level at this stage of growth should be 60-70% for faster root growth, leaf development and more compact plants.

VEGETATIVE STAGE: These larger immature plants have more shoots and leaves. They will take up increasing amounts of nutrient and emit more water vapor as they increase in size.

At this stage you want to ensure the RH levels don’t climb too high. This danger increases as plants thicken.

FLOWERING & FRUITING STAGE: The ideal RH range here is 50-60% during daylight cycle and 60-70% during the dark cycle. Keep on top of RH control, as both fruit and flower are easily damaged by fungal disease with soaring humidity. High humidity related fungal problems can ruin many kinds of fruit, vegetable and flower crops.

Increasing the RH Misters and humidifiers are used to increase RH levels. The more water vapor being emitted by your plants into the grow room environment, the less the humidifier or mister needs to be run. For plants that need tight humidity control a humidification system with HR-HRSA humidistat is best.

Decreasing the RH Ventilation drops your grow room RH level. Depending on your crop and grow space situation, at times an extraction fan with a variable speed control is all that is needed. High RH levels can also be corrected by with a dehumidifier.

Great care is needed to not remove too much moisture, creating a dry environment. This can cause some plants to emit water through leaf tips, allowing it to collect on foliage and promote disease development. Ultra-sensitive plants may do best with a humidification system that precisely delivers both humidifying and extraction functions in one.

Measuring Your Humidity Levels To stay on top of the RH level at all times, you need an instrument known as a hygrometer to give you humidity readings. Be sure to select one that is water resistant and designed for the demands of hydroponics.

These will give you the connected accurate temperature and humidity measures.

RH Changes with Temperature Variation In your grow space, the relative air humidity is influenced by temperature. High RH disrupts a plant’s ability to get rid of excess water. Low RH makes the plant emit too much water and can cause the intake of CO2 to stagnate, leading to impaired growth. Nutrient up-take rate increases with dry air, and for about every 10oF (5.5 C) temperature increase the amount up-take doubles.

Both of these fluctuations greatly affect your crop.

Ideally, you want your grow room to have a lower humidity during the day cycle than the night cycle. During the darkness hours in the growing space, many assume that without the heat of grow lamps, the humidity will drop.

This assumption could get ugly. In darkness, plants breathe out water, increasing the need for air flow and ventilation.

Ignoring this puts your entire crop at risk for pest and disease outbreaks, among other health issues. 3

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N E D R A G E L B I S I V THE IN Check this out. Some of the most important things regarding the evaluation of a garden and the food it produces cannot be observed. The majority of people don’t realize that the soil is alive and teeming with beneficial microbes, because they can’t see them.

The quality of food cannot truly be evaluated until it is eaten, but we cannot taste all the things that are harmful to us and artificial flavoring has resulted in us forgetting how food is supposed to taste anyway. We are farther away from the farm and our food than at any point in human history. Many farmers don’t eat what they grow. Agriculture has collectively become a race to the bottom line where the food that is produced is designed to sit on a shelf, not nourish our bodies.

growth truly a sign of thriving plants? Or is it obesity?

Plant obesity and deficiency are what attract and create pests and disease, not unlike a human on a bad diet. Truthfully, the average gardener believes that pests and disease are bad luck.

Due to this lack of perspective, most attempt to kill their problems away instead of addressing the roots of the issue.

It’s a vicious cycle. Most of the time we are creating our own problems. What should we expect when we use artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides to grow living plants? this way...

People are clamoring for real Think of it food. Community Supported don’t feed your plants, Agriculture (CSA) programs Even hydroponic fertilizers and farmer’s markets are contain no more than 17 feed your soil booming, and record numbers elements, or only what a plant of people are planting gardens for the first time in their lives. has to have. Most plants can use upwards of 30-40 elements The future of food is to know your own personal agriculture. directly or indirectly, some more than that, but microbes use What better way can you do this than by growing your own? every single one of them to work their magic. Growing a garden without all of the elements in play is like hiring someone Growing the best garden of your life is done through the to build a house and giving them half the tools. marriage of quality gardening products and techniques, and Consider using rock dusts or sea-mineral based products to a proper perspective towards the natural world. One of the increase elemental diversity in the garden. Not only will you primary ideas to keep in mind when growing a garden is diversity. increase yields, but you will build the innate capacity in plants Using cheap budget fertilizers that have 6-7 elements in them and microbes to fend for themselves. After all, why would is the equivalent of fast food for plants. Sure, the plethora of Mother Nature make an element not needed in the garden? artificial gardening products available on the market stimulates The same is true for microbes. The greater the mineral and plant growth and often creates higher yields initially, but is the biological diversity in the garden, the more strength and

32

BY EVAN HOLDS

A PERFECT BALANCE I GARDEN CULTURE

balance you bring to the ecosystem. Think of it in this way… don’t feed your plants, feed your soil. Microbes have been helping and protecting plants since the beginning of time and they are not going to stop anytime soon. In fact, over half of the carbohydrates a plant makes for itself through photosynthesis are exuded through roots to attract beneficial microbes.

A great way to enhance the PLANT OBESITY AND beneficial microbes in your garden DEFICIENCY ARE WHAT ATTRACT is by brewing compost tea. This involves using aeration to grow PESTS AND DISEASE, NOT UNLIKE A microbes from compost in the HUMAN ON A BAD DIET presence of biological food sources and mineral catalysts. Compost tea can and should be used in every garden, including hydroponics, as it is a great way to make sure you are growing thriving plants. After all, people don’t make plant food, microbes do.

In addition to the friendly microbes and fungi there are other invisible forces active in your garden that affect the growth of all plants. For those feeling truly experimental, consider planting by celestial rhythms. It is well known that lunar cycles affect plant growth. There are many “plant by the moon” calendars online. There is even a method of gardening called Biodynamics that includes a broader range of celestial phenomenon and recommended planting days, flower days, root days, etc. It’s fascinating. Biodynamics is used extensively in other countries like Australia that have poor soil, and is also used widely in viticulture. Not many farmers pay closer attention to their crops than those growing grapes for wine. The idea of working with natural energies in the garden is a foreign concept to most, but life is defined by energy on every level of its existence. The

articulation and use of subtle energies is the new frontier of farming and gardening. The philosophy that utilizes the subtle forces of nature in the garden is called Bioenergetics and seeks physical, mineral, biological and energetic balance. This is the sweet spot that allows plants to truly thrive and become vitamins for life.

Beyond all the products and techniques, the most powerful tool we have in the garden is our perspective. What we think, we grow. Sure, we don’t have to grow this way, but the question is…what are we missing?

You will find your own way into testing and verifying these ideas, but hopefully some seeds of experimentation have been planted. Now get growing! 3

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BO R N

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MODERN SLAVERY

n o i s u l l i e h and t t n e s of c on

36

“

BY EVEREST FERNANDEZ

MODERN SLAVERY I GARDEN CULTURE

If you’ve got kids, you’ll probably hear these words on a daily basis. It’s not that “fairness” is a childish concept; it’s more that the idea establishes itself so early that it runs to the very foundations of our collective consciousness and remains there for the rest of our lives. Indeed, as we grow older many of us hold on to the belief that we possess an intrinsic ability to recognize when a situation is equitable.

In reality though, this world of fairness and equity is dependent on one thing; our brains and our willingness to exercise them.

For instance, if I declare myself the “leader” of a remote Polynesian island and convince its inhabitants that I am their deity incarnate whom they must please with daily offerings of their youngest, fairest maidens, while the men labor all day in the fields and copper mines so that I, the Great Lord Everest, may be glorified and gracious in sparing them my wrath. The islanders, if taken in by this almighty bounder, may conclude that their situation is quite fair and just. It’s a square deal: they offer up their bodies for sexual and agricultural services in exchange for my “wrath” being spared. On the other hand, as an outside observer, you might conclude that they’re being exploited for their ignorance.

If that example seems a little weak then picture another scenario, a little closer to home perhaps. Let’s say you and I are neighbors, living out in the lesser-trodden parts of the Humboldt countryside in Northern California. Add to this blissful scene a single cow grazing on my ample pastureland.

And you, perhaps not enjoying so grand an estate, are content to take care of a small brood of chickens. Now, I’m not suggesting that this situation is unfair. I may have chosen to work longer and harder for my larger slice of this fine Earth.

But, in the spirit of community, we choose to share stuff. I like eggs and you like milk, so we agree to make a swap each morning: a pint of my (or Daisy’s) milk for two of your (chickens’) eggs. What could be simpler than this direct barter?

Notwithstanding our animals’ rights or wrongs, so long as we humans establish mutual consent, we can share and enjoy our collective resources and life seems a whole lot more sunnyside-up for the both of us.

However, here’s where the plot begins to curdle. What if I awoke one morning intent on pursuing a more favorable deal for myself—say, just half a pint of milk in exchange for your two eggs? What then? A civil discussion over the garden fence, perhaps, with the hope of modifying our consensual agreement? Of course, you might inform me that I can “keep my milk” or other choice words to that effect. So what if I choose to avoid confrontation by secretly diluting your “pint of milk” with rainwater? Just a few drops at first so as not to raise your suspicions, yet slowly but surely, over the course of a year or so, I diluted the milk to the point where it’s actually fifty percent water! I’m patting myself on the back for executing this change so gradually, while all along you are none the wiser!

I laugh with contempt at your hapless children, for watery milk is all they’ve ever known! Moooooohahahahaha! Another generation of suckers is born!

Perhaps I’m guilty of overly-indulging this example. Maybe I’m assuming a little too much naiveté on your part? Surely you’d detect that something was up with the milk, wouldn’t you? Nevertheless, emboldened by your seemingly boundless gullibility, I decide to take my scam to a whole new level. Instead of giving you watereddown milk, one day I turn up at the garden fence with something entirely new. It’s a piece of paper. I call it a “milk certificate.”

“You can redeem this for ‘real milk’ anytime! (Wink, wink)” I assure you, “What’s more, you can use these milk certificates as payment in trades with other vendors. It’s so convenient for you!

And, best of all, you don’t have to keep them in the refrigerator!”

Okay, by now you’ve guessed it; we’re talking about money, not milk. But this milky analogy needs a few modifications before it even comes close to accurately reflecting our

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SLAVERY I GARDEN CULTURE WEMODERN ARE INDEED WAKING UP TO THE FACT THAT SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG services. (The Spanish discovered WITH OUR this when they returned from the MONEY SYSTEM Americas with boats laden with

present predicament of economic slavery. You see, up until 1971, a dollar was redeemable for gold.

Gold was chosen because it was viewed as universally valuable.

People, knowingly or unknowingly, accepted dollar bills in exchange for real goods or services backed by a belief that these little pieces of paper would be later accepted by others—and an assurance that they were also convertible into physical gold at any time—well, during banking hours at least.

However, since the dollar was decoupled from the gold standard, it has lost around 90% of its purchasing power.

Thinking back to our milk for eggs exchange, you might be tempted to picture a bottle of slightly cloudy water being handed to you over the garden fence, or a fistful of worthless “milk certificates.” But think again. For, if I am assuming the role of the banker in this scenario, I’m actually asking you to borrow some pieces of paper (with no mention of milk, eggs, sex, honey or anything else that’s tangible) and pay interest for the privilege! All these pieces of paper represent is your debt to me—a debt that I have created out of nothing, meanwhile you pledge to forfeit your house if you don’t keep up the repayments! Perhaps the Polynesian islander’s example wasn’t so far out of whack?

With the woe-is-us-machine we know and love as the Internet now running on all twelve-cylinders, it’s easy to blame Wall Street greed, the Illuminati, the neoconservatives, the royal family—anybody, in fact, but ourselves for the mess we’re in. But the inescapable fact is the only thing that holds up our monetary system is our persistent belief in it and our unwillingness to embrace viable alternatives. Our problem is one of philosophy, not politics. How have so many of us been hoodwinked into accepting such an absurd tautology: a dollar is worth another dollar—what sort of insidious, circular, recursive symbolism is this? But then, take these dollars away and how are you going to pay for your groceries?

You really don’t need a PhD in economics (or any other pseudo-science for that matter) to understand that as more make-believe money is pumped into the financial system, the purchasing power of each dollar is diluted, just like the nourishment of our watery milk. This is inevitable so long as an inflated money supply chases the same amount of goods and

gold. They thought they were going to be incredibly wealthy, but the amount of goods and services available back home had not really changed. Result? Prices simply went up!) The real privilege of the super-rich is their priority lane access to this newly created money. In essence, it’s not so much the quantity of money they have, but the fact that they get to spend it into circulation first, before the rest of us cotton on to the fact that it’s been watered down. By the time these dilute dollars finally meander to you and me, it’s little more than cloudy water, or symbolic cloudy water, or … confused? Good. Now get back to work.

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves this very simple question: what is money? Don’t shy away from it—no need to overcomplicate it either. You don’t want to spend your life chasing an enigma now do you? Don’t leave this to the “experts”—the people whose career depends on maintaining their intellectual propriety with confusion and obfuscation.

You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that money is intrinsically a bad or evil thing either. At the very least concede that it’s very useful stuff, helping us to transcend the limitations of direct barter. Problems really occur when we seek money as if it were the true wealth in and of itself, rather than merely a symbolic means of exchange.

So what are we to do? Should we join some protest movement waving “End the Fed” banners? Should we petition our governments for greater freedoms, or is that, as the monetary prophet E.C. Reigel wrote over fifty years ago, just an absurd act of deference, “wholly lacking the spirit of a freeman.” In short, are we going to take responsibility for the mess we’re in, or are we going to let “the economists” sort it all out for us?

All facetiousness aside for a moment, one by one, we are indeed waking up to the fact that something is very wrong.

Looking at the world with the eyes of our ancients we realize a fundamental truth—our monetary system has been corrupted to one where national sovereignty is a joke on a naive populous. We are collectively enslaved to ‘unelected’ central banks through usurious and fraudulent money systems, an eternally un-payable “debt,” created out of nothing but our promise to repay. It is a deeply absurd and untenable situation

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MODERN SLAVERY I GARDEN CULTURE

for any person to endure. Yet the mainstream media persist in echoing the bankers’ threats of the sky falling down and untold misery if we don’t put up with the status quo.

Heaven forbid if enough people discover the truth—that we don’t actually need banks at all in order to issue currency and trade with each other, on a personal, corporate or even national level.

Crucially, take note that a global scale of value is not the same thing as a global currency. Moreover, a global scale of value would give birth to thousands, maybe millions of different currencies, not just one—but they would all be measured on the same scale, and all of them backed by goods and services in common demand.

The ratio of credit to demand (i.e. offers to buy vs. offers to sell a company’s credit token) can be instantly evaluated, thanks to the Internet, meaning the actual value of the credits in circulation can adjust in real time. The idea of money as fluid and self-correcting, does not reward greed and is based on real goods and services.

It may be a little tricky to grasp at first but really we’re only describing a world where the monopoly over the issuance of credit, currently enjoyed by banks, has been removed. If this sounds crazy then remember, so did the idea that the world was a sphere and that there were potentially people living “upside-down.”

WE ARE COLLECTIVELY ENSLAVED TO ‘UNELECTED’ CENTRAL BANKS THROUGH USURIOUS AND FRAUDULENT MONEY SYSTEMS

The Internet has helped us share our ideas, but its real power is in the creation of a common monetary language. Forget about “internetbanking”—that’s just a sideshow.

Imagine a new form of money, issued by the producers of this world. By producers I mean the corporations that generate our electricity, or make our computers, or grow the tomatoes. Imagine money backed, not by debt, or by gold (or tungsten) but by … wait for it … real stuff. Cars, beef burgers, Thai massages, goods and services that we use every day. Sounds unbelievable? Well, so did the concept of a spherical earth to most people a few thousand years ago. It’s time to unplug from the Matrix.

At the center of it all is a global scale of value. What’s that?

Well, think of an inch. Or, if you prefer, think of a centimeter, a foot, a mile, or a furlong. Where would we be without these universal units of length? Now imagine if we created the same thing, but for value. Of course, we’ve been conditioned into mistaking our monetary units as our value units. When we talk about the value of things we invariably think in terms of dollars, or pounds, or yen, don’t we? This beautiful, shiny phone costs $799. This car costs $25,000. This house is valued at $500,000. We need to stop thinking like this.

This ignorance is at the kernel of our enslavement to the bankers. We are guzzling watery milk without so much of a whimper of complaint. Now it’s time for a good burping.

Unlike an inch or a centimeter, the dimensions of a dollar keep changing. We call this “inflation.” But how then can we measure “value” using these shape-shifting units of exchange?

It’s almost as if we are confusing the item being measured with the ruler it’s being measured on. Are you beginning to see the magician’s sleight of hand? Money has no real value.

Ultimately, the real treasure of this planet is you and I. It’s time for the credit commons to be restored to the people instead of being monopolized by bankers who create nothing. Until enough of us wake up to their false pretentions towards deity, docile and malleable human beings will remain the ultimate resource to be controlled, manipulated and exploited. 3

Want to know more?

Check out these amazing videos: The Essence of Money (7 minutes) http://youtu.be/qBX-jaxMneo Digital Coin – An Introduction (15 minutes) http://youtu.be/dkXclJr1Z4U

Footnote: Everest Fernandez did not accept any legal tender in return for writing this article, but that doesn’t necessarily imply he wasn’t paid.

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The differences between LED and LEP There are many new exciting developments in climate room lighting. As scientists start to understand more about the influence of light quality in respect to quality and yield of the crop, two technologies are emerging: LED and Light Emitting Plasma (LEP).

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. It’s a technology based on semiconductors as you find in transistors and chips. One of the characteristics of a LED is that it emits light at a very narrow bandwidth, resulting in a single pure color that only covers a small portion of the light spectrum. Though the intensity of current high power LED systems is very high, you will always need an array of LEDs as grow light solutions.

Light Emitting Plasma (LEP) is a new type of plasma lighting.

Sulphur Plasma lighting has already been commercially available for a long time, but these units are bulky, noisy, have moving parts in them and are always high output (>700W). It is very difficult to spread the high amounts of light from such a small source over a large area. You need to keep a lot of distance between the lamp and the crop to make Sulphur Plasma work. In many climate rooms you don’t have that distance.

LEP is a technology that enables the production of compact, small plasma lights without any moving parts. It makes the technology suitable for climate rooms. The principle is very simple: Using concentrated radio frequency radiation a gas and metal halide mixture is heated in a vial until it forms into plasma which emits a very intense full spectrum light.

Other than the technology used to generate the light, the biggest difference between LED and LEP is the spectral quality: LEP technology enables a very high quality, full continuous spectrum and includes UV radiation. Though there are white (full spectrum) LEDs available most are based on a phosphorous light emitting layer (like a CFL) and do not generate a full continuous spectrum. To achieve that it is necessary to mix several colors of LED into an array, and include UV LEDs, which are very expensive.

As an emerging technology, LEP seems to have really good perks for grow room lighting. To understand the impact of quality lighting in a commercial growing space we need to understand first how important it is to give the crop high quality lighting, and specifically what truly defines high quality lighting.

LIGHT QUALITY Many studies have shown that full continuous spectrum with sunlight quality is the best spectrum for healthy plant development. This is a full continuous spectrum which includes UVA and UVB, far-red and infrared. It also includes a lot of green light and here is something we need to clarify.

300w plasma bulb

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LIGHTING I GARDEN CULTURE

BY GAVITA HOLLAND

t h g i L emitting

plasma

in climate rooms

Image: solar light spectrum

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LIGHTING I GARDEN CULTURE

If you study the solar spectrum you will see that green light accounts for the highest amount in the spectrum.

It would be a waste of Mother Nature’s benefits not to use that. Our eyes are most receptive to that green color because we have the ability to see in the daytime. Most plant response curves however, such as the famous Keith McCree curve (fig 2), show a lower relative photosynthetic efficiency for blue and yellow/green light. This is correct for low PAR levels. However, recent studies have shown that the green light, which is most abundant in sunlight, is very efficient when used in high intensity lighting. In fact, at high irradiation levels the green light is equally or more efficient than other colors.

Climate room with LEP

room to simulate sunlight conditions, specifically in the vegetative stage when the plants are small and still need to develop. But is it efficient?

LIGHT EFFICIENCY. Efficiency of light in the PAR spectrum (in low light environments)– McCree ’73 – P curve is plant sensitivity curve, V curve is human eye sensitivity

There are many important processes which are influenced by the quality of the spectrum. Two very important factors are photosynthetic rate of the leaves and the morphogenesis (or structure) of the plant. Photosynthetic rate describes the level of photosynthesis in a leaf. In sunlight conditions you will see the formation of sun leaves which have a very high photosynthetic rate. This enables the plant to develop really fast and use the light very efficiently. Also the position of the leaves is optimized to intercept the light, which is steered by colors in the spectrum. These two aspects are mostly responsible for the fast vegetative development of plants under simulated sunlight or full spectrum plasma light. To build and maintain the photosynthetic system of a plant you need blue light in every growth phase.

The UVA and UVB in the LEP light harden the plant and thicken the leaf surface creating better protection against fungal infections. UVB also increases the flavonoids and volatile oils in the plant, which increases plant benefits, such as better aroma.

Overall, high intensity LEP is the best solution for a grow

High pressure sodium lamps are known as the most efficient lamps to produce photons for grow light.

However, the quality of that light is not so good. Analysis of the HPS spectrum shows a start of the effective spectrum at about 560 nm (yellow to red). Below that wavelength there are a few small spikes, but not a balanced continuous availability and not enough in the blue spectrum.

Typical High Pressure Sodium spectral distribution diagram Research in greenhouses shows that you need at least 7% blue light from sunlight for a healthy crop, as the blue light also maintains the photosynthetic system. It is important to know that in high intensity lighting there is not a lot of difference in efficiency between blue and red light. In grow rooms it is common to use Metal Halide (MH) lamps to add additional blue spectrum. Yet, MH lights do not have a long lifetime, are generally not very color stable, have a spiky spectrum, are not as efficient as HPS and generate a lot of heat. Ceramic Metal Halides (CMH) are already better in stability and efficiency, but still do not have the spectral quality of the plasma lamp, nor the UV radiation. So how

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LIGHTING I GARDEN CULTURE LEP IS MORE EFFICIENT THAN HIGH TEMPERATURE MH LAMPS AND MUCH MORE STABLE. THE LIFETIME IS AS MUCH AS 30,000-50,000 HOURS COMPARED TO THE 2,000 TO 4,000 OF A MH. IT HAS A BETTER LIGHT QUALITY AND IS MORE EFFICIENT THAN MH, BUT IS IT MORE EFFICIENT THAN HPS? NO, IT IS NOT efficient is Plasma light compared to HPS? Is it an alternative?

The plasma process of generating light is by itself very efficient. The conversion from energy into actual light is very efficient and generates a very low percentage of heat radiation in the light. The light itself is very “cool”. In the process of getting the energy to the small plasma cell you still lose a lot of energy, which is dissipated into convection heat from the fixture’s driver, power supply and emitter.

That heat will never reach the plant though as it rises up and is extracted. For temperature controlled grow rooms there are air cooled LEP fixtures available as well.

Air cooled plasma light

LEP is more efficient than high temperature MH lamps and much more stable. The lifetime is as much as 30,00050,000 hours compared to the 2,000 to 4,000 of a MH. It has a better light quality and is more efficient than MH, but is it more efficient than HPS? No, it is not. Actually HPS is 1.5-2 times more efficient in generating photons than plasma light - but the HPS light quality is really bad. That sounds like a catch 22. Either you have good light and bad efficiency or good efficiency and bad light!

UVA and UVB in the spectrum you normally don’t get in a greenhouse, because of the glass roof which shields UV in most cases.

WHICH LEP FOR WHICH PURPOSE? Recently Gavita Holland, a horticultural lighting innovator, introduced a LEP fixture which produces less red spectrum and more green and yellow for use in combination with HPS. The philosophy behind that is very simple. HPS is the most efficient technology to produce red light, so why would you want your LEP to produce this red spectrum when used in combination with HPS? This type 01 emitter is more efficient to use in combination with HPS, and still provides enough quality spectrum for a vegetative cycle. The spectrum of the 01 emitter primarily picks up where the HPS stops.

Another advantage of the 01 emitter is that is has a 50,000 hours lifetime over 30,000 hours for the 02 emitter.

Gavita Pro 300 LEP 01 fixture

FOR A SOLUTION WE GO BACK TO THE GREENHOUSES If you understand that you need a minimal amount of additional quality spectrum to guarantee a healthy crop like greenhouse growing, you want to bring in some additional spectrum. At least to enough to create that 7% of the blue light spectrum. Also you want to introduce all the colors that HPS is lacking, basically all under 560 nm. A 300W LEP can provide just that in combination with up to 1,200 W HPS light. This does not re-create the full solar spectrum and still has more red light in it, but it is sufficient for a healthy crop.

It all makes sense. In greenhouses you need a percentage of quality sunlight to guarantee a healthy crop when using HPS lighting, in grow rooms you create that sunlight by adding LEP to an appropriate level. LEP extras are the

The spectral difference between the 41.01 and 41.02 LEP emitter.

The original LEP with 02 emitter is also still available from Gavita and other LEP fixture manufacturers, and produces the best spectrum for a pure vegetative cycle or for artificial sunlight. The lamp offer efficient benefits, for example, in a dedicated vegetative grow room. It is still a good choice to use it with HPS, though the 01 green emitter has the advantage there. There is something to choose now when it comes to plasma lighting.

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“Can we feed the more than 9 billion people anticipated to live on this planet in 2050 without destroying Earth’s life support systems?” This captivating conundrum was the title of a cover article for Nature Magazine’s edition titled “Solutions for a Cultivated Planet.” The article details the findings of an international group of scientists and researchers who gathered at the University of Minnesota tasked with nothing less than figuring out how to sustainably secure the world’s future food supply.

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BY SYLVIA BERNSTEIN

AQUAPONICS I GARDEN CULTURE

Th e sustainable solution for th e world’s future food supply

? k r o w t i s e o How d

Aquaponics is, at its most basic level, the marriage of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (growing plants in water and without soil) together in one integrated system. The fish waste provides organic food for the growing plants and the plants naturally filter the water in which the fish live. The third and fourth critical, yet invisible actors in the play are the beneficial bacteria and composting red worms. Think of them as the Conversion Team. The beneficial bacteria exist on every moist surface of an aquaponic system. They convert the ammonia from the fish waste that is toxic to the fish and useless to the plants, first into nitrites and then into nitrates. The nitrates are relatively harmless to the fish and most importantly, they make terrific plant food. At the same time, the worms convert the solid waste and decaying plant matter in your aquaponic system into vermicompost.

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AQUAPONICS I GARDEN CULTURE

Nothing in the Nature Magazine report was surprising for anyone engaged in the worldwide ‘future of food’ dialog. However, what was striking was that aquaponics (growing fish and plants together in a recirculating, soilless system) was not included among the set of proposed solutions. Aquaponics is a foodgrowing approach that addresses the harmful practices cited in the study and simultaneously realizes the potential for increased food production envisioned by the researchers.

Widespread adaptation of aquaponics could both alleviate all of the environmental destruction cited by the researchers and provide the vehicle for increased sustainability and productivity.

First, the environmental problems with current agricultural practices were outlined in the report as follows.

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“Farm and ranch lands cover nearly 40 percent of Earth’s land area” While aquaponic techniques can’t address this shocking statistic per se, they can certainly mitigate the impact. Because aquaponics is a soil-less growing technique, plants and fish can be grown anywhere, including on land that is considered unfertile (too sandy, too rocky, too toxic) and even in old warehouse buildings and unused parking lots.

“Agriculture consumes nearly three quarters of the earth’s available water” Because aquaponics is a recirculating system, the only water “lost” is either held in the plants, transpires through their leaves, or evaporates from the top of the fish tank.

Aquaponics is generally thought to use less than a tenth of the water of traditional agriculture for the same crop output.

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“About 40% of all crops the planet produces are used to feed animals.”

Fish are the single most efficient converter of feed to flesh of any edible animal. One and a half pounds of feed will bring to harvest one pound of edible, omnivorous fish fillets. It takes eight pounds of feed to produce the same single pound of beef fillets.

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While not mentioned in the article, we should also add “consuming petroleum” to this list.

Between oil-based fertilizers, oil-fueled farming machinery, and long distances between farm and table, modern food is “dripping” with oil. Aquaponic systems on the other hand, have no oil-based inputs and are run entirely on a small amount of electricity. This electricity can be created through currently available renewable energy methods.

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“Agricultural activities such as clearing land, growing rice, raising cattle and overusing fertilizers make up 35 % of the single largest contributor of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere” None of these practices have any place in aquaponic growing.

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AQUAPONICS I GARDEN CULTURE

The researchers then recommended five changes to current practices that they believe will not only help to solve the issues stated above, but will also extend our ability to feed the burgeoning world’s population.

All but one can be implemented through aquaponic growing techniques.

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“Halt farmland expansion.”

As explained above, because aquaponics is a soilless growing system that can be set up anywhere, it is perfectly suited to address this goal.

“Close yield gaps. Many parts of Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe have substantial “yield gaps”- where farmland is not living up to its potential for producing crops.

Closing these gaps through improved use of existing crop varieties, better management and improved genetics could increase current food production nearly 60 percent.”

Because of the consistent and ideal mix of water, oxygen and fertilizer that an aquaponics system provides, plants grow significantly faster in an aquaponics system than they do in soil. In addition, plants can be placed closer together in aquaponics systems because they are not competing for those resources in their root zone. This is an answer to the search for “better management” techniques that the researchers are seeking.

“Use inputs more strategically. Current use of water, nutrients and agriculture chemicals suffer from what the research team calls “Goldilocks’ Problem”: too much in some places, too little in others, rarely just right. Strategic reallocation could substantially boost the benefit we get from precious inputs.”

Since aquaponic systems use comparatively so little water, inherently produce their own nutrients, and use no agricultural chemicals, the problem of redistribution becomes a non-issue.

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“Shift diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on top croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 percent.”

Fish protein is not only heart-healthy but, as mentioned above; it is the most efficient converter of plant protein to animal protein known to man.

“Reduce waste. One-third of the food farms produce ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 percent.”

Because aquaponics systems are raised off the ground they tend to have fewer pest issues than traditional agriculture. And because aquaponic farms can be set up anywhere, producing food directly within densely populated communities can be implemented right now, with no new technologies needed. The path from farm to table can be made as short as down the block or even from back yard to table. Thus, aquaponics is an attractive way to localize food production and to cut out the waste inherent in the long paths we have from farm to market to home – paths that could be reduced to near zero with widespread aquaponics.

Aquaponics is not the answer to all of our future food supply and environmental issues. Grains and root crops, for example, will probably always be most efficiently grown in the soil. But for above ground, vegetative crops and fish protein, there simply isn’t a better growing technique on, and for, the planet. 3

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AQUAPONICS I GARDEN CULTURE

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE THE AQUAPONICS FARM HAS IT ALL...

Bio Sylvia Bernstein is the author of “Aquaponic Gardening: A Step by Step Guide to Growing Fish and Vegetables Together� and the President and Founder of The Aquaponic Source, the leading U.S. based company focused entirely on the home aquaponic gardener. She runs the Aquaponic Gardening Community, the largest online community site dedicated to aquaponic gardening in North America, and is the Vice Chairman of the Aquaponics Association. She also writes the Aquaponic Gardening Blog and teaches and speaks extensively about aquaponics and its exciting potential.

Sylvia Bernstein President, The Aquaponic Source, Inc. email - Sylvia@theaquaponicsource.com website - http://theaquaponicsource.com/ book - http://aquaponicgardening.com/

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Grow Your Own Series:

Scrumptious salsas, south of the border dishes, along with a variety of Asian and Indian delicacies just aren’t the same without the unique zip of different parts of the cilantro plant. Admittedly, there isn’t any middle ground with this herb when it comes to taste buds. You either love it or hate it. If you enjoy the taste, you can’t beat the just-picked vivaciousness it adds to cuisine. While it is available dried, cilantro is at its divine best freshly snipped from the plant. Within hours of being cut, fresh cilantro loses a great deal of flavor, so if you’re purchasing it by the bunch in the produce aisle, you’re already missing out on a lot. It’s simple to keep a never ending supply on hand at home.

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BY TAMMY CLAYTON

CROP BIOGR APHY For many people, cilantro is excitingly new and trendy. Actually this wildly popular ingredient is as old as the hills and used in many foods and confections we’ve been enjoying forever.

Properly identified as Coriandrumsativum, this name comes from the Greek word ‘koris’ and means ‘stinky bug’. Coriander is its common name in English and many other languages, but today generally refers to the seed. The leaves are known as ‘cilantro’ in Spanish, which is how the plant got to Mexico and why the leaves are so commonly used in Mexican food and the cuisine of other South American countries.

This is one of the few plants that all parts are edible, as well as being classed as both an herb and a spice. Dried coriander seeds are a spice derived from the sweetly fragrant, lacy flower heads that are used ground or whole in cooking, baking and preserving. The pungent leaves and stems are classed as an herb, and together with the roots are used in cuisines from around the world. Which plant part is favored most often, depends on what culture created the recipe.

For those who aren’t aware of it, there is a defining difference between an herb and a spice, though we use these words interchangeably today. Spices are fragrant or aromatic plants parts that are also edible. Herbs also have healing properties used for medicine, beneficial properties used in cosmetics and food preservation, along with adding great flavor to food or drink.

BENEFICIAL ELEMENTS The earliest record of health benefits from the coriander or cilantro plant is in ancient Egypt where it was brewed into tea as a cure for urinary tract infections, as well as made into salves and poultices.You know there is something truly special about a plant when its seeds are buried with King Tut to use in his afterlife. Cilantro tea is still used in holistic medicine today and in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries to treat disorders of the stomach. The Greeks also used the essential oils from the foliage and stems for making perfumes.

It is known to be high in antioxidants and has antibacterial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory properties and has shown excellent results in treating diabetes where it lowers the blood sugar.

Cilantro is also used in the U.S. today for fighting cholesterol, and research shows it is twice as effective at killing Salmonella as gentamicin.

SEED VARIETIES & CROP PL ANNING For those who try to time outdoor garden harvest of tomatoes, jalapenos and cilantro for the most heavenly of salsas, the heat required to finish off the peppers and tomatoes makes the plants quickly bolt and turn into coriander. As soon as the plant

CILANTRO I GARDEN CULTURE

GYO Fast Facts • • • • •

pH range 6.5-7.5 for best results Cilantro likes low humidity 68-75oF (20-23 C) best for leaf harvest 11-hour daylight minimum Crop yield: 1 lb. / 5 ft. (.5 Kg. / 1.5 m.) of NFT trough • Harvest per sowing: 2-3 • Harvest 12 months a year is possible

HIPPOCRATES PRAISED THE HERB FOR ITS HEALING BENEFITS AND WAS USING TEA BREWED FROM THE LEAVES TO TREAT HEALTH DISORDERS IN 500 B.C. begins to form flowering stems, the sought after flavor of cilantro is ruined as the leaves become bitter tasting. This makes indoor growing of cilantro even more valuable year around.

Coriander, like all other cultivars, has been paid great attention to by hybridizers. You will find seed varieties available that are sold as having improved flavor and slower seed setting. Still, this annual performs best for prolonged cilantro harvest at cooler temperatures, so be sure to make note of this inherent trait.

Pinching back flower stems buys you a little more foliage harvest time, but not much. For continual harvest, it is better to start new seeds about every 4-5 weeks to ensure that you have a continual supply of fresh cilantro for whipping up your favorite dishes.

All varieties of cilantro or coriander mature to about 24 inches (60 cm) tall at flowering, so be sure to have ample height for lighting adjustment as they grow.

SOWING & GROWING INFO Cilantro is a great candidate for indoor gardening with its hardy constitution, minimal light requirements and preference for lower ambient temperatures. With good grow lighting, you can enjoy great success in potting soil, but it is also a simple crop for hydroponic containers, and Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) or drip irrigation systems. In a greenhouse it is difficult to maintain the climate for this crop and it is prone to fungal infections. Days that are too short cause the plants to quickly thin, wither and die off, so don’t cheat your plants out of any of the required sunshine hours.

This member of the carrot family does not transplant well, so

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CILANTRO I GARDEN CULTURE DAYS THAT ARE TOO SHORT CAUSE THE PLANTS TO QUICKLY THIN, WITHER AND DIE OFF, SO DON’T CHEAT YOUR PLANTS OUT OF ANY OF THE REQUIRED SUNSHINE HOURS you will want to start and finish it in the same medium. The best mediums for hydroponic growing of cilantro are high quality free-draining soilless mixes or sterile media. Seeds start best at 68-75°F (20-24 C), and will germinate in 5-7 days. Cilantro is best started misting the medium twice a day and keeping the container in a covered germinating tray or sealed plastic bag.

Maintain full sun lighting for 12-14 hours each day. Plants are ready for your drip irrigation or NFT hydroponic system when the seedlings are 2-3 inches tall. The plant’s preferred daytime temperature is 75°F (24 C) and 60°F (15.5 C) at night with no more than 75% humidity and a minimum of 11 hours of sunlight a day. Higher grow room temperature brings bolting rapidly. You want only the immature parsley-like leaves for cooking. Once the feathery leaves that precede bolting appear, you might as well allow it to produce seed. The feathery leaves are bitter and of no value.

You can expect good harvesting in 4-6 weeks. If you can’t wait that long to whip up some salsa, you can begin cutting as early as when you have about 6 inches of leaf and stem available. The plants will continue to generate new stems, as their goal in life is to flower and set seed. Just don’t expect them to grow thick and full in the face of your impatience for culinary ingredients. At the same time, trimming helps to stall bolting. If you’re after both seed and leaf, plan your crop and harvest accordingly.

Controlling the heat that causes cilantro to quickly bolt and start the seed setting process is much easier to accomplish with lighting versus summer temperatures outdoors. This plant does very well under standard fluorescent or high output fluorescent lights and High Intensity Discharge (HID) grow lights. With the thin leaf structure and hot HID lights, you will need a fan with the power to circulate air rapidly enough to prevent over-heating of your crop. The last thing you want after successfully producing great plants is to burn the uppermost foliage.

Nutrients for cilantro will be ‘grow’ solutions that are high in nitrogen for increasing leaves and roots as opposed to flower and fruit. If your interest in growing fresh cilantro is more business orientated, plan on the full 6 weeks for your first crop harvest.

You’ll find a good market for this fast growing herb in super fresh condition almost anywhere, especially when organically grown which will bring the highest wholesale crop income.

TASTE BUD TEASERS Rub it on meat, sprinkle it in salads or have a constant supply for any number of ethnic dishes. Cilantro is used in so many popular dishes today; it will be hard to imagine how you lived without it constantly available for picking fresh. Here’s an awesome sounding recipe to try. 3

Cilantro Pesto Spicy, piquant sauce perfect for topping off botanas or grilled vegetables. For fresher fire, omit the cayenne and add a jalapeno pepper. A little dab will do you.

This flavor explosion sauce will go a long way.

• ¼ cup (60 mL) olive oil • 1 scallion, chopped • 1 clove garlic, chopped • 1 tablespoon (15 mL) toasted pine nuts or walnuts • 1 ½ teaspoon (7.5 mL) lime juice • 1 cup (237 mL) lightly packed cilantro leaves (short stems) • 1 cup (237 mL) lightly packed parsley sprigs (small stem) • Few pinches of cayenne pepper • 1/8 (.5 mL) teaspoon salt Put all ingredients but the salt and cayenne in your blender or food processor and mix to combine. If you’re using fresh chilli, you will want to add it with the first ingredients.

Add the salt and puree until smooth. Transfer to a small serving dish for the table. Bon appetite!

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Earthships DOWN TO EARTH Coming from the north, east or west it seems like a little hill grown over by grass. Approaching the Earthship from the south, one finds a crystal-like greenhouse instead. Surprising, but with a moment’s thought, you realize that the windows are facing south for a good reason. They are directed toward the most sunlight, toward where the sun gives life – in the Northern hemisphere, anyway. And this is one of the key concepts of what Earthships are all about: to enable one to live comfortably with what nature has to offer.

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EARTHSHIPS I GARDEN CULTURE

BY MAAIKE VISSER

radically sustainable green Earthship in Taos, New Mexico

Public Park Nooterhof in the city of Zwolle (the Netherlands) lodges one of these Earthships. This Earthship functions as a public tea house, opening its glass doors to visitors fascinated about living in and with the earth, and outside the paradigm of the modern urban world.

THREE PRINCIPLES

THREE PRINCIPLES GIVE EARTHSHIPS THEIR DEEP GREEN COLOR: THE USE OF RECYCLED PRODUCTS, SELF-SUFFICIENCY FOR ITS INHABITANTS, AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES

Known as radically sustainable green, these curious buildings covered in dirt, not only spare the environment, but help improve several issues the environment is faced with nowadays. As is often the case with brilliant ideas, the principles behind an Earthship are surprisingly simple. In fact, the buildings leave anyone first looking into their concept startled by its simplicity. Three principles make Earthships extremely green: the use of recycled products, self-sufficiency for its inhabitants, and the implementation of sustainable technologies.

STACKED TIRES FILLED WITH EARTH Standing next to the Earthship’s several feet thick walls makes you realize that they are nearly impossible to penetrate, or even to disturb. It is discarded car tires, stacked like bricks

and jam-packed with earth, that make up the building’s frame. Visitors of the tea house are allowed a peak into the Earthship’s outer walls. A small piece of the northern wall has been left unfinished. It shows a couple of the thousand discarded car tires that shape the walls.

However impressive, not car tires but earth is the humble secret ingredient that makes up the Earthship. Just as the building’s name suggests. Earthships use earth as their weapon in a building’s never-ending battle with the ambient air temperature-with hardly any intervention of air conditioning or heating. Earth functions as thermal mass that passively absorbs natural heat when the sun is out. During the night or on cloudy days, the earth gives its stock of warmth back to the room. This way, even in climates as chilly as the Dutch have, Earthships provide for a constant indoor temperature year-round with a minimum of utility bills.

GL ASS WALLS Don’t assume that an Earthship will have an aesthetics deficit. Quite the contrary. Its car tire, earth-filled walls are

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Earthship in Zwolle, the Netherlands

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EARTHSHIPS I GARDEN CULTURE

AS EARTHSHIPS ARE NOT CONNECTED TO ANY POWER, GAS, WATER OR SEWAGE LINES,THEY ARE FULLY SELF-CONTAINED normally plastered and painted over making them appear similar to those of an elegant, modern adobe style house that would fit into any community. The inside walls, however, are the walls that allow for creativity in interior design. Looking at these artsy walls you would almost forget that they are sound-damping, temperature moderating as well as fine-looking.

Reynolds has been devoted to building houses out of natural resources and discarded items since graduating from the University of Cincinnati in 1969. His conviction that, with the right formula, products can be recycled to form buildings that won’t spoil the resources and beauty of the earth, led him to design the first Earthship in the 1970’s. He has authored five books on the topic, and directed the film ‘Garbage Warrior’ in 2007.

EFFICIENCY AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

WORLDWIDE HYPE

Now that the ‘earth’ part of the concept has been explained, the mystery remains why these buildings are dubbed ships. This piece of the puzzle will fall into place at the moment one enters an Earthship. Walking into one of these self-sufficient capsules feels like boarding a ship.

Suddenly you are separated from the world - autonomous even. For Earthships are not connected to any power, gas, water or sewage lines, they are fully self contained. Not only does this trigger a strong feeling of independency, it also allows for more efficiency in terms of energy, water, economics and environment.

Rainwater that hits the Earthship’s roof is collected, filtered in plant troughs several times, and then used and reused. Starting off as drinking water, it seconds as shower, washing machine, and toilet water, after which it is finally used to water the plants. And solar panels on top of the roof generate enough electricity and warmth for a family to get through a normal day.

The tea house in Zwolle is just one of the many Earthships that can be found worldwide. After some start-up trouble, they now have reached global celebrity status. Around the world today, you will find hundreds of Earthships with dozens of specialized crews building more of these uber green structures. Each building is custom made to fit the climate it is placed in, and through a process of trial and error, each new Earthship is a bit better than the last.

THE FIRST EARTHSHIP One tire at a time, an experienced international Earthship crew finished construction of the Dutch tea house in 2009.

This was the first Earthship built in the Benelux Union area of Europe, but certainly not the very first of its kind. Introduced

by American eco-architect Michael Reynolds, the prototype Earthship was built in the desert of Taos, New-Mexico.

As for the Netherlands, after having introduced Earthships to the Benelux, the country is currently the first in Europe to develop an official Earthship district. Last spring construction began on twenty-three more of these exciting self-sufficient buildings in the city Olst.

YOUR CUP OF TEA? Earthships are remarkable buildings that enable civilized living while helping to restore the exhausted and damaged environment. Anyone interested in these sustainable and recycled buildings can visit the tea house Earthship in Zwolle.

Reflecting over a cup a fair-trade tea here makes you realize all too well the beauty and comfort of radically sustainable living. And while you are there, don’t worry about enjoying that piece of pie: it has been locally grown. 3

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PHOTOS BAND: TDC PHOTOGRAPHY / SHUTTERSTOCK

Korn Garden Culture visits Korn’s recording

studio in Bakersfield, California to find out why the legendary nu-metal band is starting their own indoor food garden.

When you picture the members of Korn, you probably don’t envision them with propagators, nutrients and grow lights—but, between world tours and a grueling recording schedule, the band is determined to take steps towards controlling their own food supply.

Here’s why…

Via a friend I got in contact with Jim Odell, Korn’s right hand man, and Toi Russell, the band’s tech support guy. Jim and Toi’s job is keeping Korn sounding good and feeling good.

Their jobs require the highest level of dedication. Eleven albums, countless concerts and running the sound both on the road and in studio, these guys work grueling hours and have tons of responsibility. The rock and roll lifestyle can be a killer—literally. The members of the band all gave up all drugs (including alcohol) years ago. They made a decision to live sober, healthier lives and focus on making music. But when it came to their diets nothing had changed.

“I didn’t know any better than to serve them the standard of modern American cuisine, fast food and junk food,” Jim lamented.Then, about two years ago, Jim spoke to record producer Ross Robinson. “He told me

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Corn ?! that I should take better care of the guys—that life on the road was tough and the diet that went with it was just not good for them.

So Jim decided to replace processed junk food with healthy alternatives. He made daily visits to Whole foods and Trader Joes. Kale chips replaced regular chips. Salads took the place of chips and pizza.Within just a few months the guys were looking and feeling great. It turned out Ross was 100% on the money and the band members became hooked, so to speak, on healthy eating. The next step was to cut out all the shopping. “Few folks really have the time to go shopping every day, just to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables.” That’s when Jim first thought about growing his own garden—how could it be any fresher?

KORN I GARDEN CULTURE

BY ERIC COULOMBE

Korn Who? vis Jonathan Da

Toi approached hisfriend, Pat Gallager, about their garden aspirations. Pat owns The Hydro Store in Reno Nevada, and manufactures a bucket-style system for growing hydroponically, called the Hydrolife 7.8. The seed to Korn’s garden was planted.

In the beginning of this year I was contacted by Pat and seven days later I landed at LAX and was on my way to the studio in Bakersfield, CA. Originally Toi had an idea to set up an 8’ X 8’ grow tent garden producing food hydroponically. I contacted some industry friends and quickly we got hooked up with a tent from Secret Jardin and a kickass grow room controller from Grohause.

However, in the process of discussing their requirements, plans quickly started to turn into something bigger. Together we conceived the plan for the 30 X 8 foot room Korn had available for growing fresh produce.

Here is the fun part. This garden is going to grow, literally.

In the process of discussing their requirements, the plans quickly started evolving into something bigger. Together we conceived the plan for the entire 30 x 8 foot room Korn had available for growing fresh produce. This is just the beginning. In a couple of weeks I’m back at Korn’s studio to finalize the set-up of a new and bigger grow room. Check out the next issue of this magazine for the follow up of Korn. 3

Korn’s unique distorted seven-strings style launched a new sound in American metal music, coined Nu Metal. Copied by many bands, Korn has forever left its mark on American music. The band first formed as LAPD (Love And Peace Dude) and was later changed to Creep. They renamed to Korn after the vocalist, Jonathan Davis, joined the band in 1993.

Unfortunately, in 2005, the nu-metal godfathers lost their guitarist Brian ‘Head’ Welch to other projects. Korn’s current line-up is vocalist Jonathan Davis, bassist Reginald ‘Fieldy’ Arvizu, drummer Ray Luzier and guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer. www.korn.com

Ray Luzier

Regin ald A rvizu

Who is Who? Jim Odell has been one of Korn’s technical supervisors, the guitar tech, and a friend of the band for almost 14 years. In the service of Korn Jim wears many hats; his newest will be gardener.

Toi Russell has been with the band since 2010. He is the ProTools Guy and technical support for the drums. Like Jim, Toi does tons of different things.

When they say the show must go on, it these guys who get that done. They are the glue. Of course they have lots of help too!

Pat runs The Hydro Store in Reno Nevada. He also manufactures a Deep Water Bucket System called the Hydrolife 7.8.

More info www.thehydrostore.com

Thank you to Bloomington Wholesale and Secret Jardin for supplying the Grow Tent and Cameron Laubisch andJordan Gartenhaus fromGrohaus Automation for supplying the amazing Hydroid.

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Reduce shadow patterns.

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Fungi, Molasses,

& ROCK PHOSPHATE Many plants go through a juvenile stage where they sharply increase in size before shifting their energy into flowering and fruiting. The size plants reach during this stage has an impact on how much harvest they produce.

Beneficial fungi, molasses, and rock phosphate have been used to help boost plant growth during this critical stage for years. They work in harmony to help plants thrive.

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BY GRUBBYCUP

GROWTH BOOSTERS I GARDEN CULTURE

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MYCORRHIZAE AND THE PLANT IS A SYMBIOTIC ONE; BOTH ORGANISMS BENEFIT FROM THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH EACH OTHER

Since beneficial fungi take time to establish and colonize the root system, they are best introduced early. Mycorrhiza fungi are beneficial and assist in nutrient collection and uptake. Adding carbohydrates to a nutrient solution is a gardening trick for boosting plant performance going back to at least the 1960’s.

The two most important fungi for most gardeners are ecto-mycorrhizal, and endo-mycorrhizal.

Ectomycorrhizae form primarily on tree and woody plant roots, although some can form on a wide variety of plants.

The fungus forms a covering on the roots, and then branches out into the surrounding soil. Similar to hair extensions for roots, this fungal web called hyMycorrhizae (fungus-roots) are found phae both extends the reach of the root naturally occurring in healthy “live” system, and increases the amount of soil. Sterile hydroponic media may surface area collecting nutrients for require a spore inoculation to esthe plant. This network of nutritablish colonies. They are caused ent collecting hyphae is anchored by mycorrhiza fungi infecting a between the cortex cells of the plant root and the two together roots. The hyphae pick up nutriare what are known as mycorrhients from the soil, and transport zae. them to the plant in exchange for carbohydrates made by the plant.

Mycorrhizae spore Plants with well-established mycorCertain varieties also have antibiwith external hyphae rhizae tend to perform better than otic properties, which help protect the those that do not. Approximately 90% of plant from infection, and the sheathing of all plants can benefit from some form of mycorfungus on the roots offers some protection from rhizae, including trees, shrubs, and garden plants. The nematodes. Since the hyphae strands are thinner than relationship between mycorrhizae and the plant is a symroots, they not only extend the reach of the root system biotic one; both organisms benefit from their association by meters, but they can also exploit smaller nooks and with the other. The plant provides a carbohydrate source cracks in the growing media. One milliliter of colonized for the fungus, and in return, the fungus helps assist the soil may contain up to four meters of ectomycorrhizae. plants in nutrient uptake, drought resistance, and blocking For most other green leafy plants including vegetables, entheir environmental niche from pathogenic fungi. It is betdomycorrhizae is the more important fungus. ter to have helpful roommates than destructive ones, so making sure beneficial fungi take up the space can prevent Instead of helping the plant by extending the root system, something worse from moving in. Mycorrhizae collect and they improve the existing root system. Where ectomycorprocess nitrogen, phosphorus and a variety of micronutrirhizae help by moving nutrients into the plant, endomycorents and pass them to the plant. Of particular use is their rhizae help move nutrients within the roots themselves, ability to increase phosphorus uptake, which dramatically speeding them to the rest of the plant for use. Weaving increases over non infected plants. itself into the cortical cells of the roots, endomycorrhizae

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GROWTH BOOSTERS I GARDEN CULTURE

Roots with mycorrhizae

form small structures called arbuscules. These arbuscules are where the fungus delivers the transported nutrients for the plant to receive, and picks up carbohydrates supplied by the plant. Nutrients transported by endomycorrhizae include nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, sulfur, and zinc, with an emphasis on phosphorous uptake. Of particular use is where rock phosphate is being used as a phosphorous source instead of the more available superphosphate, as endomycorrhizae speeds the solubility conversion. Adding endomycorrhizae generally replicates the effect of increasing the strength of phosphorous in nutrient solution by improving existing phosphorous uptake.

Although commonly already present in healthy soil, mycorrhizae fungus levels can be increased by adding powdered spores (inoculants) available at garden and hydroponic shops. Sterile media and poor soils can be brought from a complete absence of mycorrhizae to abundance with the use of inoculants. All they need is food (carbohydrates), water, and half a chance. High applications of chemical nutrients can be detrimental to development, so this system is less appropriate for “goose pate” style gardens where nutrient is supplied to the plant at the upper end of its ability to absorb.

This can create an apparent paradox where continuing to apply additional nutrients can impede the plant’s nutrient absorption. For example, killing off the endomycorrhizae will require additional phosphorous to be added to make up for the loss in efficiency and uptake.

If using mycorrhizal inoculants, apply at the beginning of the season to establish the colonies early. Once es-

THE BENEFITS OF ADDING CARBOHYDRATES ARE MOSTLY INDIRECT; THEY FEED THE BENEFICIAL MICROORGANISMS AND MYCORRHIZAE WHICH HELP THE PLANTS tablished, the infected roots should serve as a host to allow the fungus to spread throughout the root system. Much like a small colony of mold will take over an entire loaf of bread; in a healthy root system mycorrhiza will spread to fill the available space. Plant improvements from inoculate use are particularly pronounced when used early in poor or sterile mediums.

In soil that already contains high levels beneficial fungi, adding more spores has a less pronounced effect.

Mycorrhizae thrive on carbohydrates, which is part of what they receive in payment from the plant in exchange for helping the plant thrive. One way to boost beneficial microorganisms including mycorrhizae is to feed them with a carbohydrate additive such as molasses.

Carbohydrates (saccharides) are molecules with spe-

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GROWTH BOOSTERS I GARDEN CULTURE

cific combinations of carbon and as cattle feed supplement tends MYCORRHIZA water. A subset of carbohydrates to be pretty cheap. Molasses sold HELP BRING are the sugars ending in “-ose”. for cattle feed is often mixed with PHOSPHOROUS AND a grain to add structure. The adFor example, table sugar is sucrose OTHER BENEFITS (C12H22O11), milk sugar is lactose dition of grain not only makes the TO PLANTS, AND (also C12H22O11, but the atoms are molasses easier to work with, but CARBOHYDRATES arranged differently), blood sugar adds compostable organic material is glucose(C6H12O6) and so on. as an additional benefit. Personally, HELP MYCORRHIZA Carbohydrates store energy that I tend to purchase molasses made many life forms can use, people included. The “sugar for human consumption, as I don’t have a large garden; rush” from eating a lot of sweets is an effect from overI like it on my pancakes, and in Shoo Fly Pie. Apply at indulging in sugars. The energy is easily converted, but two teaspoons (about 10ml.) per gallon of water, or the then is quickly used. Keep in mind that unwelcome visisame amount per pancake. tors such as ants may be enticed to visit if a carbohydrate banquet is available, so make sure to clean up any To complete the trio, add a good dollop of powdered spills promptly. rock phosphate to the mix. Not only will this provide the mycorrhiza with a supply of phosphorous to supply The benefits of adding carbohydrates are mostly indithe plant, but it can also provide a suitable environment rect. They don’t help the plants directly, they feed the for other beneficial organisms to take up residence. The beneficial microorganisms and mycorrhizae which help well fed mycorrhiza should be put to work, and what they the plants. These microorganisms use the ready energy do best is absorb and supply phosphorous to the plant. available in carbohydrates to thrive and reproduce.

Rock phosphate is available in two forms, “soft rock” Cane syrup, maple syrup, fruit juice, and molasses can phosphate, and “hard rock” phosphate. Soft rock phosall be used as carbohydrate sources. Dilute to two teaphate contains a higher amount of immediately available spoons per gallon (10 ml./3.8 l.) of water. Cleanliness is a phosphorous, and is usually the choice for container must, as these may attract insects and leave a sticky resisoil enhancement. Hard rock phosphate is better suitdue. Ants may be attracted to the residue, and if hydrated ed to improve a field where plants are to be grown for (mixed with water) and allowed to go anaerobic (stale) several years, or where the soil is reused. these may encourage the wrong sort of fungal growth.

Mycorrhiza help bring phosphorous and other benefits Molasses (also known as Treacle) is a byproduct of sugar to plants, and carbohydrates help mycorrhiza. During refining, and contains not only plenty of carbohydrates early growth is a good time to add inoculants with a to add to your garden, but potassium, nitrogen, and iron packed carbohydrate lunch and rock phosphorous desas well. Many micronutrients are locked in their chelated sert to your growing media. Feeding your fungus carform and require a chelating agent to unlock them. Mobohydrates regularly throughout flowering can have the lasses acts as a chelating agent (like Humic Acid), by enend result of giving your plants a phosphorous boost, and ergizing the root level biology, it makes micronutrients reintroducing spores can help reestablish lost colonies. more readily available for nutrient uptake by the plants.

Beneficial fungi help with keeping plants well fed, and Be careful when purchasing molasses as prices vary proper nutrition is one of the keys to bountiful harwidely. Although all three are usable for gardening vests. Embrace the fungus among us, feed them, and purposes, molasses marketed as a plant additive tends give them phosphorous to carry. to be very expensive, molasses intended for human consumption is moderately priced, and molasses sold Peace, love, and puka shells. 3

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10 TIPS: BE A BETTER GROWER INSTANTLY! 1

2

3

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Measure, Monitor and Check Measuring is one of the most important things when growing. Don’t just measure your temperature in one place. Measure it in multiple places to make sure your climate is the same everywhere in your grow room. In addition, it’s good to know what happening when you’re not looking at the instruments.

Get a data logger that can tell you what’s going on when you’re at work or asleep. Make sure your water is the right temperature by measuring it, and at the same time make sure the pH and TDS are correct as well. The same goes for lighting. Get a light meter to make sure it’s evenly distributed. Monitor all these parameters. Correct them when necessary. You will see improvements instantly.

4

5

Quality in - Quality out Using quality items saves you lots of trouble in the long run. Saving $40 on a pH meter seems like a good idea when you’re in the store. Somewhere down the road when you need to calibrate it or need replacement parts, you’ll discover it wasn’t your best idea. The same goes for critical items like ballasts, fans or carbon filters. You don’t want them to break or fail in the middle of your grow. Also, your substrate is very important. A cheap bag of soil or media is cheap for a reason. The quality of the components used in substrates make up a big portion of the price. Going into this cheap will hurt your bottom line in the end

Don’t Skimp on Climate Control Climate is essential for a plant to survive or thrive. With a bad controlled climate you can be sure the outcome of your grow isn’t what you expected. I understand an A/C is expensive but it’s even more expensive to buy an extra A/C because your initial A/C can’t cut it. The same goes the exhaust fan if your growing without A/C, bigger is better.

Not only will it cool quicker but it also makes less sound because your exhaust fan doesn’t have to work as hard.

6

Whatcha Doing That For Know what you’re doing before you’re doing it. I know this sounds lame, but a lot of growers do stuff without knowing why they are doing it.

Think before you act. Why are you upping the dose?

Why are you changing the height of your lamps?

Sometimes the question is just as important as the answer. If you’re unsure about how to fix a problem - check out the internet, call a friend or visit your local hydro store. Don’t make hasty decisions without knowing the outcome.

Prevention is Better than Cure It is better avoid a bad thing from happening than it is to fix the bad thing once it has happened. So what can you do right now? Run a tight operation.

Clean your grow room, and don’t let dead leaves or plant materials lay around in your room. Clean before starting a new grow. It’s also very important when you’ve been outdoors or inside a friends grow room to change your clothes. Another great natural prevention is the introduction of beneficial bugs into your grow room. This truly “bio control” method helps you prevent and fight pest infestations by introducing their natural enemies in your room before they can get to it.

Should mites come along they won’t have a chance in getting to your crop. Instead, its dinner time for their natural adversaries.

Too Much is Never Good!

The wisdom of moderation is first taught to us as children and rings true until the day we die. Too much of anything can be bad for us, and it’s the same way with plants. Moderation is key. Don’t overwater your plants.

Don’t overdose them with nutrients. Instead of feeding them half a gallon of water at once, use moderation. Spread that half a gallon out to four different feeds spaced through the day. You don’t drink a gallon of soda all at once. You drink it one glass at a time. The same goes for your plants.

Too much is stressing them out. Moderate.

10 TIPS I GARDEN CULTURE

YO U W I L L SEE I M P R O V E M EN T S I N STA N T LY

7

Spend More Time in Your Garden Don’t just spend time sitting in your grow room.

Look at the plants closely. Use a magnifying glass to see things better. The more time you spend with your plants the better you can “read” them, or see problems before the disaster strikes. For example, a spider mite infestation doesn’t just explode. It starts with one plant and then steadily becomes more and more. When you see massive webs across your plants, you’re too late, and you haven’t spent enough time with your plants. The same goes for malnutrition or crop deformation. It started small, with one plant. When you’re onto it early, you can still steer things back in the right direction.

8

Educate Yourself The thing that sets experts apart from novices is education. They know how to recognize problems, and how to correct them. You’re reading this magazine, so you’re well on your way to a good education. To become an expert, you need to do more. Buy a book on growing plants, take a subscription on Garden Culture, get a DVD and above all read more on the internet. You’re never too old or young to learn. Even experts with 25+ years of experience under their belt can still learn new things as long as they are open for it.

9

10

Be Passionate Good relationships are formed with passion.

It isn’t any different with the relationship between you and your crop. Being passionate makes everything much easier, more fun and makes the learning curve less steep. Grow because you want to grow and focus on things you like to do when growing. Don’t dwell on the stuff you dislike. If you need to do something you dislike - turn on the tunes and dream about better times. Just remember the more you focus on the positive, the better the outcome will be.

“SOMETIMES THE QUESTION IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE ANSWER”

Keep it Dark How do you feel being rudely awakened in the middle of the night with a big flashlight in your face? That how your plants feel every time you interrupt their rest to work in your grow room or to show your friends. Just don’t do it.

Buy a green LED light to work or look in your grow room when your plants are awake. Also it’s important to make sure your room is actually dark when the lights are off. Plants can have a lot of stress with light leaking into the grow room, so make sure it’s dark. Leaks are easyly spotted by standing in your room with the lights off in the middle of the day.

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Hydroponics Just because you live in a shoe box doesn’t mean that you can’t grow delicious food that provides a large supplement to your family’s normal diet. While it may be easier to have the expansive and rich soil of farmland in the Great Plains, you can easily mimic the process of growing food in only a four by four feet chunk of space. With the right set up and know-how you can grow almost any type of vegetable or fruit that you can imagine.

Hydroponic growing systems are your answer to growing food in tight spaces. When you grow food hydroponically the food grows up to 25 to 30 percent faster, because the plants do not have to spend valuable energy growing roots to find food. The plants are suspended in a nutrient rich solution, which also saves you the hassle of dealing with messy soils and insects that are attracted to the soil. This nutrient rich solution contains essentials such as potassium, zinc, magnesium, borine, copper, etc. The pH level needs to be constantly monitored to maintain the balance. There are many meters and monitors available to keep a constant watch on the solution as the pH strips are not reliable for constant monitoring.

Farmers enjoy numerous benefits using hydroponics growing systems. Soil not being part of the equation, contamination or soil borne diseases. Operation is easy as there are automated systems that do all of the timing for you. Additionally, hydroponic systems recycle the potable water, so you only have to change it once every

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couple of weeks. You also have a wide variety of plants that you can grow in this method including, but not limited to, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, grapes and a variety of different herbs.

The basic 5.4 ft 2 (0.5 m2), sixteen unit hydroponics setup is easy and affordable. You can buy the unit from an online retailer or hydroponics store, or you can build one yourself.

There are many variations on the hydroponic growing system, but the easiest method to use if you are limited by space is a drip system that includes a pump and timing system. First, you must decide to either buy the system or build the system. While figuring cost, include the money you will save growing part, even all, of your family’s food supply.

If you live in a small space you will need to allocate at least a 5.4 ft 2 (0.5 m2) space in your apartment or on your balcony.

You can reduce this space even more by building vertical, with a two by two feet space on the floor and another two

BY KAYLA SHAW

HYDROPONICS I GARDEN CULTURE

WHEN YOU GROW FOOD HYDROPONICALLY THE FOOD GROWS UP TO 30 PERCENT FASTER

for Small Apartments

by two foot space on the wall above the floor units. When you do it this way, you will have 16 separate units that you can use to grow different plants, the same plant in all of them or do half and half. This is all up to you and your food needs and preferences. However, wherever you decide to put the system, it needs to be in close proximity to a window so that it can receive the sunlight it needs. If this is impossible, then you can also buy grow lamps that will give the plants the light spectrum they need to grow.

A drip system is one of the easiest hydroponic systems to use. There isn’t a lot of setup, and the maintenance is not time intensive. The system incorporates a reservoir of nutrient rich solution that gets pumped directly to the roots in the individual units. Usually the drip timing needed will be for 15 minutes every couple of hours. The plants are very sensitive to this, so you must keep a schedule for watering. This is why a pumping system with a timer is a very handy thing to have, because otherwise this can become a full time job. This pump and reservoir system recycles its own water, so you only have to change the solution every

couple of weeks. Don’t toss it. Use it for watering your other house plants.

Now you have the basic information you need to start growing hydroponically in your apartment, on your balcony or in your back yard. There is more to learn and many different methods you can use than what is described here.

There are also a multitude of products and gadgets that you can buy to make growing food hydroponically extremely simple and cost effective. 3

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RELIABLE

DIMMABLE

BALLASTS

C

Works great with Bulbs

US

F O R

G R O W E R S ,

B Y

G R O W E R S

“THE SHOW IS RE AL,

WE HAVE FUN AND OUR AUDIENCE GETS ENTERTAINED AND EDUCATED AT THE SAME TIME”

In case, you have never heard of The Heavy T Grow Show or The Hydroponics Happy Hour, let me enlighten you. Heavy T is a live podcast/broadcast about indoor growing. Live on-air you can hear a broad selection of the cream of crop the hydro industry has to offer. This mixed with credible knowledge, humor, great songs and their secret weapon: product giveaways. That said, Heavy T is not for everybody. They get insane. They party, drink, cuss, hook growers up with free hydro gear, and sometimes they (Horti Kris) even take that to whole other level.

So how did you guys started?

T: Our show started in the back of my stores’ warehouse on a picnic table with 3 drunk guys podcasting on one phone line.We had to have our friends call in just so we could have some content. Now our friends can’t call in because the line is always busy.

man. Of course, he is not a complete idiot, but sometimes he’s not too far off…

What do you guys attribute to your success?

Horti Kris: Reliable growing advice. You can search on a How many people are listening? computer all night long, but for every piece of good informaT: We have grown to over 45,000 tion, there’s three pieces of bad WE PROVIDE RELIABLE GROWING information. I think that what people tuning in per month on the DFZ network and 9,000 downADVICE. YOU CAN SEARCH ON gives us the edge over the Interloads on iTunes and the DFZ site A COMPUTER ALL NIGHT LONG, net searches is that people like talk (dfzradio.com). Now there are BUT FOR EVERY PIECE OF GOOD radio, people like to listen to stuff. close to 7,000 live listeners each You can listen while you’re attendINFORMATION, THERE’S THREE week… ing your garden, working or even PIECES OF BAD INFORMATION when driving in your car.

Where did the Duffman come from?

T: Also the chemistry is great on the show.The show is real, we T: We needed a guy that we could make fun of. A guy that have fun and our audience gets entertained and educated at the would always be giving the wrong advice. Someone called the same time. Another part of our success is the track record we Duffman. There was never a question as to who was going to have with our advertisers. Hydro companies want to know that do it: Greg. Me and him went to kindergarten together and have the samples they give out are going to be used by the person been friends ever since.After a couple of beers, Greg is the Duffthey gave it to, not sold on eBay.

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BY ERIC COULOMBE

INTERVIEW HEAVY T I GARDEN CULTURE

Who is Who?

T

HEAVY

Heavy T a.k.a. Tyler R. He’s an avid gardener with nearly 20 years of indoor gardening experience, owns 3 hydroponic shops in southern California. He started The Heavy T grow show 2 years ago in the back of his shop, and is the creator and host.

Horti Kris a.k.a. Kris W. Owner of Horticontol for the past seven years, Kris has an educated opinion on all things, grow related or not.

You’re never sure what is going to come out of his mouth.

Duffman a.k.a. Greg. We asked him several questions, but Greg was slurring his words. We couldn’t understand a thing he said.

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GARDEN CULTURE I INTERVIEW HEAVY T Heavy T

Duffman

Bear in mind we’re doing a whole new type of media. Niche casting is very different from broadcasting. Instead of throwing s**t against the wall and hoping some sticks, we perform precise demographic surgery. Who is going to listen to a 3 hour grow show that isn’t into growing? Nobody, that’s who.We offer a super targeted product to people who are listening. Hydro companies get their products directly into end users hands across the nation.

Where’s the Heavy T Show and DFZ Radio going from here?

T: We want to continue to offer the best advice for indoor gardeners and grow the show as big as we can. But, we also want to offer other programming on the DFZ network that is gardening related.

Any new projects coming up?

T: Yeah, we are starting production on new shows.This type of program is different from Heavy T or the Hydroponics Happy Hour, but will hopefully appeal to a completely new group of gardeners. Our aim is to go to live programming 7 days a week.

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More info DFZ Radio Show All available online via dfzradio.com

Heavy T’s Grow Show Wednesdays 7-10 pm PST (10pm EST) Hydroponics Happy Hour Thursday from 7pm to 8pm PST (10pm EST) The Beer Thirty Show Fridays 4:30 – 5pm PST (7:30pm EST)

COLUMN I GARDEN CULTURE

BY TOM ALEXANDER

Growing

on

the

E d ge

THE GROWING CONTROVERSY OF

GMOs

I first became aware of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) when press releases from Calgene, Monsanto and other large biotech companies started crossing my desk in 1995. I felt honored and proud that these large companies even knew Growing Edge existed, the magazine I was publishing at the time.

WORLDWIDE FACTS: Calgene created a tomato called, Falvr Savr, which through genetic engineering slowed the ripening process preventing it from softening and rotting, resulting in a longer shelf life, yet retaining its natural color and flavor. It seemed cutting edge. So without knowing all the specifics, both good or bad, pro and con, I wrote a cover story in Growing Edge magazine touting all the talking points that were in the press release.

The Flavr Savr tomato eventually was a failure due to only yielding 40-50% of traditional field grown tomatoes. Calgene was eventually bought out by Monsanto, who is now the largest GMO company in global agriculture.

My cover story created a firestorm of response from organic growers and environmental activists. So much so, that a few issues later, I wrote another cover story titled Frankenfood. In it I presented the views of people and groups who were alarmed of the dangers of GMOs for the future of ESTIMATES OF GMO FOODS agriculture, gardening IN THE USA and consumers 85% of corn eating the genetically 95% of sugar beets engineered food.

91% of soybeans Unlike traditional 88% of cotton hybrid breeding 70% of processed foods where like species are % of total production in the USA deliberately crossbred for desirable traits.

Genetically modified breeding takes genes from distinctly different plant species creating a totally new variety of plant. Many of these genetic modifications have tried to boost nutritional benefits or productivity, but the two main traits that have been added to date are herbicide tolerance and the ability of the plant to produce its own pesticide within the plant. These results have no health benefit, only potential economic benefit for the biotech companies.

15 million farmers grow biotech crops.

1 billion+ acres growing GMO crops globally $13.3 billion global 2011 GMO seed market value $160 billion GMO grown produce grown annually 230% GMO seed prices increase since 2000

The profit motive has made many people question the safety of the GMOs. Scientists who study these GMOs must sign nondisclosure agreements, leaving the biotech company free to approve or disapprove releasing the results of any GMO studies.

It has been difficult to find independent funding to conduct unbiased health studies of genetically engineered crops. Studies conducted or funded by GMO companies may be skewed to their advantage and negative results may be withheld from summary data shown to regulators and the public.

What is outrageous is the pollen from field grown GMOs trespassing and polluting crops miles away from the GMO crops.

When the trespassed upon grower replants saved contaminated seeds, Monsanto sues them for patent infringement. Monsanto has already filed lawsuits against hundreds of farmers for illegally using GMO patented seeds, and there have been judgments as high as a million dollars, with the average judgment being about $170,000. GMO pollen pollution can ruin an organic farm’s crop, profit and reputation.

The solution to this problem is to grow as much of your own food as possible, hopefully far enough away from a commercial farm growing GMO crops. Reading every issue of Garden Culture magazine will help you do that.

Tom Alexander has written on agriculture and gardening since 1980. He published Growing Edge magazine from 1990 until 2009. The Growing Edge website is still active at www. growingedge.com . He is a member of the Garden Writers Association.

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GROW YOUR OWN

MONEY BITCOINS

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BY DAVID MURPHY

BITCOINS I GARDEN CULTURE

In final months of 2010, at the height of the Wikileaks scandal, the major online financial institutions VISA, Mastercard and Paypal moved to cut off the supply of donations to the site, under pressure from powerful governments around the world. Faced with ruin, Wikileaks turned to an alternative currency. One that wasn’t controlled by any government around the world. A currency that had essentially been created with the press of a single key, by an enterprising young programmer who was known in the cybersphere as Satoshi Nakamoto. It was called bitcoin.

Twenty years of aggressive ers there are, the less each one regrowth on the internet has given ceives, and the system is designed to us a string of dotcom billionaires. run for a twenty year period, yieldFrom Larry Paige to Mark Zucking no more than 21 million bitcoins. erberg, the ability to conjure up It is the combination of these facvast sums of money simply by tors that give bitcoins their value, in having the right idea at the right much the same way as gold acquired FOR YOUR CASH, time is nothing new. But what more value than water in the anYOU GET WHAT Nakatomo was trying to achieve cient world, because it was limited IS ESSENTIALLY A with bitcoin was something difin quantity and took a great deal of BLOCK OF UNIQUELY ENCRYPTED DATA. ferent. His system mimicked the effort to extract.

IT CANNOT BE popular peer-to-peer networks REPLICATED already used by millions to downAlmost as soon as mining began, Bitload and share their favourite coin exchanges opened on the web. games, movies and music; it also If you can’t be bothered spending incorporated new anti-spamming your own money on a mining effort, and cryptography technology which would enable it then you can simply buy a miner’s coins with conto create money literally out of nothing. ventional money through a more traditional digital currency system such as paypal. At the peak of their It functions on a simple principle. Bitcoins can only value, a bitcoin was worth more than 15$ although be produced by completing complex mathematical market fluctuations and other factors have since puzzles, a process referred to as mining. The puzzles brought the price back down to about 5$. require a real world investment, in terms of computing power and the energy required to run a procesFor your cash, you get what is essentially a block of sor, and prospectors are rewarded by the occasional uniquely encrypted data. It cannot be replicated, and trickle of bitcoins into the system. The more minbecause every copy of the program keeps a record

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SO WHY DID SATOSHI NAKAMOTO CREATE BITCOIN, AND SUDDENLY DISAPPEAR OFF THE FACE OF THE WEB?

of where every bitcoin was created, it would take a million times more work to fake the file than to create a real one. If you delete the encrypted data, or damage the computer it’s stored on, it’s gone. Other than that, it works just like any real world commodity. You can spend it at an exchange, or with a retailer – anyone else who runs the bitcoin software. You don’t register your name, and none of your personal details are included in the coin.

Everything is tied to a single bitcoin address, secured by incredibly complicated, paired encryption keys.

The irony is that the supposed anonymity of bitcoins is a fallacy. The lengthy chain of data encrypted by each computer includes all of the transactions ever processed by the system, linked to the various IP addresses of the users. With enough forensic investigation, any particular transaction can be traced back to a physical location. There are now sites that offer what is called a bitcoin “fog”. This fog acts as a mixing service where funds transferred to the fog get mixed with other users’ funds and when requested are paid out in multiple randomized transactions to further obscure the source of the money.

So why did Satoshi Nakamoto create bitcoin, and suddenly disappear off the face of the web? He had done nothing illegal and he didn’t stand to make some outrageous, immoral level of profit from floating the company a year down the line. Like a 21st century Salk, the creator of the polio vaccine, he gave his invention away. There have been suggestions that Nakamoto hoarded a stash of bitcoins before the software’s release, and that at the optimum moment in the bitcoins twenty year lifespan he will release them onto the market and make millions. But like everything else surrounding Nakamoto, it is merely rumour, heaped on speculation, stacked on a wobbly pile of guesswork. Is he a single individual? A cadre of programmers working under a collective alias?

The other coders credited with developing the bitcoin technology, and with maintaining it, stay tight-lipped about his identity. For them, the individual isn’t important. The project is more about good old-fashioned rebellion. A reaction to the financial irresponsibility demonstrated by the world’s leading institutions over the last five years. It’s about taking digital currency out of the hands of administrators and governments, and putting it back in the hand of the private individual. 3

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WINDOW FA RMING With farm land decreasing at the same time that population numbers are increasing globally, vertical hydroponic gardens may be one solution to the world’s food shortages. Being ecologically and economically sound, hydroponic gardening is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the U.S. today. The trend is far from restricted to the U.S. Many innovators across the globe are creating these gardens in urban environments.

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MORE THAN 33,000 PEOPLE NOW PARTICIPATE IN THE WINDOWFARMS COMMUNITY

Some of these farms are large scale, such as the vertical greenhouse called Plantagon, which is set to be built in Linkoping, Sweden. The concept is a helix system in which plants are transported on a special elevator. The crops grow during the slow ride down the helix, and an automatic harvesting machine allows the food to be harvested in batches.

A smaller scale, grassroots urban agriculture movement was launched in New York City in 2008 by Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray. What started as a simple idea has since turned into a worldwide movement and a company called Windowfarms. More than 33,000 people now participate in the Windowfarms community.

Their concept was created for people to become more nutritionally independent.

Using a vertical stack of recycled bottles in which plants are rooted in clay pellets with no soil, a pump at the bottom sends liquid nutrients to the top. The nutrients then trickle down through the root systems of the plants, and the roots remain compact, requiring less space than plants grown in dirt. As a result, organic vegetables can be grown indoors in any climate year-round using natural or artificial light.

Riley and Bray knew that NASA had been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space, discovering that optimal nutritional yield can be achieved by running high quality liquid nutrients over plant root systems. So, they gathered some friends and created their first prototype. As Riley said in her 2011 TED talk about Windowfarms, the first

systems were “leaky, loud, power-guzzlers that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved.” She and her team were able to grow enough vegetables for a single salad a week in their New York apartments, but they wanted to work out the bugs in the system and make it better. So, they opened the idea to co-developers in what Riley calls “open source collaboration.”

In order to encourage this collaboration, they created a social media website that spilled the beans on how the systems are created, as well as what was not working. They hoped people would take the idea and run with it. And run they did.

A number of people wanted to become more nutritionally independent, so they each worked on improving and customizing the farms for their own needs.

One Windowfarms enthusiast, for example, discovered that using air pumps instead of water pumps would cut the carbon footprint of the system by nearly half. Another learned by trial and error that he could get his strawberry plants to fruit in low light by simply changing the nutrients in the liquid. A Windowfarmer in Finland outfitted the system with LED grow lights.

As people shared their ideas and discoveries, Riley’s team incorporated the improvements that were most likely to benefit the majority. The end result? Manufactured kits that became available for shipment in the U.S. and a few other countries in the summer of 2012.

Funding for manufacturing was achieved through crowdsourcing. Riley’s Kickstarter.com page was begun with the goal of raising $50,000 in Windowfarm pre-sales. She

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WINDOWFARMS IS NOW BOTH A FOR-PROFIT COMPANY WITH A PATENT AND A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION raised $257,000 instead. Windowfarms is now both a forprofit company with a patent and a non-profit organization. The for-profit company makes the products, and the proceeds fund the non-profit, which focuses on the community, the movement, and education.

Recycling: collecting plastic bottles in Manhattan for creating window farms

CREATING A VERTICAL HYDROPONIC FARM AT HOME Individuals can build their own Windowfarm rather than purchase a kit using the instructions provided on the organization’s website. Setting it up can take from a few hours up to a full day. After that, the system is mostly selfsustaining. Water simply needs to be changed weekly, and some cleaning must be performed monthly.

The systems are 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, fit in different sized windows, and are hung by a hook or sit on a platform below the window (on the floor, a shelf, or the windowsill). Wide windows can handle several columns, while tall windows can accommodate one on top of the other. Some growers use clip-on CFL or LED lights on timers to better control the environment for their plants.

After the initial material costs, maintenance expenses are minimal. If the pump is run on a timer, as suggested, only

a small amount of electricity is required to run the Windowfarm. In the U.S., the average electricity cost of even a 4-column farm is just over $3.20 per year.

While these small vertical hydroponics do not grow everything, such as root vegetables or tall grain plants like corn and wheat, most plants like greens and herbs, as well as fruit, can be grown, with heavier plants tied to the metal rack that holds the bottles.

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VERTICAL IS THE FUTURE While Plantagon is centralized, and the Windowfarms concept is decentralized, both seek to grow food in cities as a response to global crowding. Riley says that urbanites rely on others more than rural dwellers. “It’s precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all of these things to specialists that we cause the kinds of messes that we see with the food system,” she said in her TED talk.

As a result of these food system issues, the vertical hydroponics trend is fully entrenched.

As more and more people move into urban environments, growing their own food or purchasing from sources like Plantagon may become the norm rather than a novelty. 3

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Grow Your Own Series:

Fresh

Wasabi If you’re a regular patron of Japanese restaurants, fiery green wasabi paste is a familiar and welcome sight. So, it might come as a surprise to learn that you’ve probably never tasted real wasabi. Most restaurants use a substitute made from Western-style horseradish and other ingredients, including vinegar and mustard powder.

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BY FRED DECKER

GROWING WASABI CAN PROVE A FASCINATING PROJECT FOR EXPERIENCED GARDENERS IN SEARCH OF A CHALLENGE

That’s because real wasabi, Wasabia japonica, is rare and expensive even in its Japanese homeland. It’s native to the cold upland streams of that mountainous country, and is notoriously difficult to grow. It flourishes only in a narrow range of conditions, and most cultivars are specific to one small region of Japan. However, commercial growers in Japan, Taiwan and North America have slowly learned to coax this uncooperative plant into producing reliable crops.

Wasabi is part of the larger brassica cludes the cabbages and mustards as well as Western horseradish and other root plants including turnips, daikon and the familiar garden radish. Like horseradish and the mustards, its fiery nostril-clearing character is a chemical defence against predators. When the cell walls are crushed or grated, enzymes in the root quickly convert stored sulphur compounds into an irritating chemical called sinigrin. It’s highly volatile and aerosolizes quickly, which is why you feel the effect primarily in your sinuses.

Growing wasabi can prove a fascinating project for experienced gardeners in search of a challenge. The plant requires lots of shade, ideally 75 % coverage or better. It requires high humidity and cool air temperatures, ranging from 46-68°F (8-20 C), and flourishes best at 54-59°F (12-15 C). In warmer, sunnier or drier climates the shade-type greenhouse can be the best solution, pro-

viding shelter and a microclimate that can be kept humid and temperature-controlled. A fertilizer containing sulphur will help increase the root’s potency.

In nature, wasabi grows in a semi-aquatic environment along stony riverbeds. If you have running water on your property, or have an existing hydroponic system, you can use that water to cultivate wasabi. Prepare a deep bed or large box-shaped planter, approximately 30-50 inches (75125 cm) in depth. Fill the bed with stones approximately family, which also in2.5-3 inches (6-8 cm) in diameter, leaving 4 inches (10 cm) at the top. Cover the stones with a layer of rounded gravel the size of large peas, approximately 2.5-3 LIKE HORSERADISH inches (6-8 cm). Finally, fill the rest AND THE MUSTARDS, of the bed with fine sand.

WASABI’S FIERY NOSTRILCLEARING CHARACTER IS A CHEMICAL DEFENCE AGAINST HERBIVORES

The plants will flourish best when the water flows gently down a slight slope, usually 2 to 4 degrees. Water should be distinctly cool, with an ideal temperature of 54-59°F (1215 C). Water flow should be gentle, no more than 4 inches (10 cm) per second, to produce straight and healthy rhizomes. If the water flow is too strong, the roots will grow in a curved shape. The flavor will still be fine, but if you’re growing them for sale, curved roots don’t fetch as high a price.

Wasabi can also be cultivated on dry land, in a light, well-drained soil with lots of sand and organic material. Prepare your beds in an area where there’s a lot of natural shade, or where you can easily shade the

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WASABI CAN BE PROPAGATED FROM SEED, SLIPS OR THE SMALL PLANTLETS THAT GROW AROUND THE CROWN OF A MATURE PLANT plants with a cover. The plants require constant moisture even on land, so plan to irrigate with soaker hoses or some other form of low-flow irrigation. Monitor your plants closely. Provide more water if they wilt, and less if you begin to find stem rot.

Wasabi can be propagated from seed, slips or the small plantlets that grow around the crown of a mature plant.

Plantlets 1.25 inches (3 cm) long, with four or five leaves of their own, can usually be planted directly into your aquatic or dry-land beds. Place each plantlet in its own hole, about 1 foot (30 cm) apart, with about 3/8 inch (1 cm) of the root left above the surface once you’ve patted the sand or soil back into place. Plants grown from slips or seeds must be grown to a height of approximately 2 inches (5 cm) before transplanting into their beds.

The fiery roots will usually be large enough to harvest in 16 to 24 months, depending on your growing conditions.

Remove plantlets from the main stem for replanting, and then wash the root thoroughly. Trim away any small roots then peel the stem with a paring knife or peeler. As with chilli peppers, it’s best to wear gloves while working with fresh wasabi. The juices can be decidedly unpleasant if they find their way to a sensitive spot.

Real wasabi is best when grated as needed. Japanese chefs use a special grater made from shark skin, but a very fine conventional grater will also work. The flavor will reach its peak within 3 to 5 minutes, and will diminish within 15 to 20 minutes if it’s left uncovered. Fresh wasabi has the familiar, fiery effect in the diner’s sinuses, but mellows quickly to a sweet and complex flavor quite unlike the artificial variety.

Grate only as much as you need for one meal, then store the remainder of the root tightly wrapped in your refrigerator. It will keep for several weeks. To preserve your wasabi for the longer term, slice and dehydrate the roots. Grind the dried roots into powder in your spice grinder, and store it in airtight packaging in a cool, dark place. 3

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