Most urban consumers are happy to leave farming to the farmers, but for those with a green thumb, it is getting easier to garden in the city. That's thanks, in part, to DIYers sharing ideas for reusing old materials to garden in and a new range of tools designed to get many more people involved with growing some of their own food.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has lately been talking about micro-gardens as critical way to help the urban poor get more food on the table. The FAO defines micro-gardens intensively cultivated small spaces — such as balconies, small yards, patios and rooftops. Many rely on containers such as plastic-lined wooden boxes, trash cans and even old car tires.
While it's probably tough to sustain a family on a micro-garden, FAO research shows that a well-tended micro-garden of 11 square feet can produce as much as 200 tomatoes a year, 36 heads of lettuce every 60 days, 10 cabbages every 90 days, and 100 onions every 120 days.
Sure, micro-gardens can easily be created out of plenty of scrap materials: potatoes grown in a bucket or trash can, for example, or wooden pallets turned into an herb garden. Anne Gibson, an Australian who runs The Micro Gardener website, has aggregated many of the most creative ideas. And for folks who don't want to DIY it, several companies are also making it easy to start a micro-garden with an array of new products.
Earth Starter is one such start-up. This month, the company launched a Kickstarter campaign to manufacture more of its all-in-one roll out garden tool, called a Nourishmat. The Nourishmat, which is inspired by Square Foot Gardening, makes it easy to grow a lot of food in a 4-foot by 6-foot space by turning a plastic mat into a garden planting guide.
The mat comes with seedballs (seeds mixed with clay and worm castings to enrich the soil, and chili powder to keep pests away). To plant, you simply lay out the mat on top of a bed of soil, then stick the seedballs for the 18 different vegetables and herbs in their respective holes. (Urban residents who may have soil contaminated with lead and other heavy metals will have to build a raised bed and fill it with clean soil.) The mat also doubles as a weed barrier.
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