Small scale & Urban Farming CAN be profitable

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Small scale & Urban Farming CAN be profitable

 

$80,000 on Half An Acre Farming Vegetables - Profitable Mini-Farming with Curtis Stone

Published on 22 Apr 2016

Learn how Curtis farms in his online workshop:
http://www.permaculturevoices.com/cur...

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SMALL & PROFITABLE MICROGREEN FARM IN A SHIPPING CONTAINER!

urban farming

Published on 10 Jan 2015

 

Comments

jason browne

This is what every family should be doing. It was once, during WWII, considered patriotic and a community service to have home Urban farms. The need for families to do this has never left. If we want our country to grow health, we need to think small. Small local business, small family farms, etc. I think this Rocks. Thank you for this educational video.

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Up to Pasture: local artist has vision to turn Landmark into vertical farm

Posted on August 29, 2014by David McNair

Turning the abandoned and blighted Landmark Hotel into a vertical urban garden may sound like a fanciful, farfetched idea, but at least local artist Russell Richards has an idea. The same can’t be said for the City or the hotel’s various owners, who have offered only empty promises.

“I suspect the Landmark is never going to be completed,” says Richards, who has informally presented his idea to City Council, and is scheduled to give a TEDx presentation on the idea. “The longer it sits exposed, the more it deteriorates and devalues. But that’s what’s happening, for whatever reason, so I personally believe the thing won’t go forward.”

Earlier this year, current owner John Dewberry “swore” to one city official that he would begin the project before the end of the summer, but as anyone can see, that isn’t happening.

“I have admittedly gotten a lot of mileage out of the fact that everyone, everyone hates that hotel,” he says.

Richards says there’s a trend now among architects and engineers to design farms ‘up’, as kind of vertical greenhouses, and it strikes him that the Landmark could be an ideal candidate for such a thing.

As Richards points out, the walls are largely open and permit a lot of light to penetrate the interior, it faces southward to the sun, which strikes it throughout the day, there are no nearby buildings casting a shadow on it.

“A vertical farm would actually be a bit different from how I rendered it,” says Richards. ” It’d be closed off, like the greenhouse levels I depicted on the upper floors, permitting crops to be grown throughout the year regardless of weather conditions.”

Richards says that hydroponic and aeroponic growing methods allow crops to be grown quite densely- all the way up to the ceiling of any given floor, essentially- and use a minimum of water, and no soil. So the crop output of such a space would be far greater than the footprint of any given floor

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> more: https://charlottesvilledtm.com/2014/08/29/up-to-pasture-local-artist-has-vision-to-turn-landmark-into-a-vertical-farm/

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Selecting farmland

 

+ Not too steep, to allow water to drain away : No more than 10% slope

+ Loam soil is best for optimal water absorption:

: Loam is "a mixture of the other three" - sand, silt & clay, where

: Silt is mud or "fine sand, clay, or other material carried by running water and deposited as a sediment, especially in a channel or harbor."

+ Look to see what local plants are growing nearby - similar plants will grow best

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Ideal PH for plant-growing is usually PH 6 -7.0

 

Soil pH Levels for Plants | The Old Farmer's Almanac

A pH of 6.5 is just about right for most home gardens, since most plants thrive in the 6.0 to 7.0 (slightly acidic to neutral) range. Some plants (blueberries, azaleas) prefer more strongly acidic soil, while a few (ferns, asparagus) do best in soil that is neutral to slightly alkaline.

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> https://www.almanac.com/content/ph-preferences

 

 

Soil pH - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_pH

Soil pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of a soil. pH is defined as the negative logarithm .... Plants grown in acid soils can experience a variety of stresses including ... For example, a soil low in molybdenum may not be suitable for soybean plants at pH 5.5, but soils with sufficient molybdenum allow optimal growth at that ...

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BUMP - & move to PHL section