Historic Zuni waffle gardens, circa 1919. (Photo courtesy of Kirk Bemis)

For the past 64 years, Jim Enote has planted a waffle garden, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls that he learned to build from his grandmother. This year, he planted onions and chiles, which he waters from a nearby stream. It’s an Indigenous farming tradition suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, where waffle gardens have long flourished and Enote has farmed since childhood.

“They are the inverse of raised beds, and for an area where it is more arid, they’re actually very efficient at conserving water,” said Enote, who leads the Colorado Plateau Foundation to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and water. Each interior cell of the waffle covers about a square foot of land, just below ground-level, and the raised, mounded earthen walls are designed to help keep moisture in the soil.

Read more: The Resurgence of Waffle Gardens Is Helping Indigenous Farmers Grow Food with Less Water, Greta Moran, Civil Eats, October 2021.

Dear Kris,

I thought that you might be interested in the two photos that I attach and which were inspired by your 2015 article on Fruit walls.

Living outside Dunblane in central Scotland, I have long wanted to be able to grow fruits, such as grapes, figs and perhaps peaches, that would not normally be successful here so a lean-to greenhouse seemed the only solution. However, as I would be erecting the greenhouse in an open  field the wall had constructed as well. Some years ago I visited the  walled garden at Meggich Castle, some 50km north-east of here, and saw various old apple and especially pear trees growing in the much neglected walled garden there (I believe that they have started on a scheme to plant new fruit trees from the old stock). However, reproducing such a walled garden, about 100 m square with walls 5 m tall, was an impossible (and impossibly expensive) task, so I looked online and found your article.

I was much taken with the photo in the article of a serpentine wall in the Netherlands, and so decided to copy the idea, and you can see the result in  my photos. The wall is 30 m in length and averages 3 m in height (it has to be stepped because of the slope in the field) and tapers from 40 cm thick at the base to 30 cm at the top. It is made from local stone, a form of red sandstone, some of which I lifted from the field when it was ploughed many years ago, and the rest from an old building in a nearby village. The building was a former smiddy (the Scots term; it is smithy in England) and you can see in the second photo two metal rings embedded in the stone of the nearest column which I believe would have been used to tie up horses when they were having new shoes fitted. I hasten to add that it was two local stonemasons that I employed for the construction, and not me!

I am now waiting for some paving slabs to be laid around the greenhouse and then I need to buy some trees. I already have five apple trees in my garden which usually do quite well though this year late frosts meant only the last two to come into blossom yielded any fruit; plums have not been successful and I have replaced them with pears. I hope that the new wall will provide enough shelter to grow quince and mulberry, amongst others.

I have recently come across others locally who have successfully grown grapes and one with a large conservatory with a vine on the south side and a peach on the north, both some 30 years old. This last I saw in the spring as part of the Scotland’s Gardens Scheme where people open up their gardens to the public, with the entrance fees going to charity. Usually they are just the gardens of the wealthy, but sometimes several residents of a village will all open their small gardens on the one day. https://scotlandsgardens.org/

It is surprising how many walled gardens remain in the UK; they were originally used to grow fruit and vegetables to feed the owners of large houses and their staff, but after the First World War, when staff shortages became common (many having been killed in the war), the gardens often fell into disrepair. However, over the past few years many are being restored and used as intended. This is no doubt helped by the gardening programs on UK TV, especially as some of the presenters have acquired walled gardens themselves from where they present their programs.

Once again, thank you for your article and indeed for your splendid website.

John Sanz

Russia’s large-scale peri-urban community agriculture has proven to be a very resilient food system. In this guest post, Arthur Grimonpont investigates the phenomenon and wonders if it could be reproduced in other industrial nations, for example in France.

Image: Dacha settlement, Kursk Oblast, by Petr Magera (CC BY 2.0).

This article was written by Arthur Grimonpont, and originally appeared in Les Greniers d’Abondance under the title Les collectifs de jardins russes : une organisation résiliente. Translated from French by Beth Lindfield and Alice Essam, adapted by Kris De Decker. 

The Scale of the Concept

Satellite images demonstrate the undeniable importance of community gardening in some Russian cities. From the sky, you can see vast, continual mosaics of plots lined with trees, gathered together in pockets or strips on the outskirts of almost all city centres.

Typical community gardens seen from the sky on the western outskirts of Iaroslav, Russia.

In Irkoutsk, the most populated city in Siberia located next to Baikal Lake, community gardens have become immense neighbouring forests.

A neighbourhood in the south-west of Irkoutsk. 

The Russian Gardener’s Association estimates that of the one hundred million people in Russia, sixty million engage in gardening activites in order to produce food. [1] Even in the largest cities, such as Moscow or St Petersburg, over half of the population has an arable plot. These people are called gardener-inhabitants, or datchniki. In provincial towns, such as Kazan, their number can reach as high as 80% of the population. [2] Throughout the country, there are an estimated 80,000 garden communities, which range from around ten to a few thousand plots. [4]

Origins and Description of Community Gardens

Garden communities (similar to allotments in the UK) appeared in 1917, following the increasing and worsening food shortages after the Russian state established a monopoly on food production. The gardens, informal by origin, were originally disapproved by Soviet powers. However, they quickly became managed by the state due to their undeniable efficiency in counteracting the shortages. The communities were controlled by state businesses that divided the property into equal plots and distributed them to employees. [3]

A drawing of the guidelines of a plot. (Source: Revue Jardins aupres des Oussas’bas, Moscow, April 1959, p.13)

The arrangement of the gardens was the objective of strict management. The law even enforced a certain number of apple, pear, cherry and plum trees, and raspberry and blackcurrant bushes, as well as defining a minimum area for strawberry plants and vegetable patches. The majority of plots have a surface area of 600m² (a rectangle of 20 metres by 30) and are called the “six-one hundred square metres” in Russian. In general, they have a “garden house”, or datcha, which serves as a temporary living space, as well as for storing gardening tools and harvested fruits.

It is evident that these Russian allotments offer few points of comparison with French allotments, which are much smaller (around 30 m²), don’t allow their occupants to stay there, and are historically reserved for poor people. [5]

Local Footing

The immediate proximity of these gardens to where their occupants live establishes their reason for being. Developed during a time when using cars was rare or even non-existent and free time was rare and sought-after, the allotments were located close enough to town centres for people to get to on foot or by public transport (which was the almost exclusive mode of transport for city dwellers until the 80s).

A ban on the commercialisation of harvested produce guarantees that it is only consumed locally. In the rural city of Kazan (1.2 million inhabitants), the majority of datchniki that were asked said that, thanks to their gardens, they had managed to feed their families for at least the summer. With certain produce, such as potatoes, some even managed the whole year. Potatoes are some of the most cultivated vegetables, with farming statistics showing that nearly 80% of potatoes from the Kazan region are grown on these plots. [19,20]

Datcha and luxurious garden in Valdai, in the Oblast of Novgorod. Photo by Jonas Bendiksen

As well as significantly contributing to agricultural production, the gardens play a major role in making people’s diets more varied in urban populations: they provide them with access to a diet rich in fresh produce that they can’t always find by conventional means due to their high cost. [10] They consistently harvest potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, among many other crops. They also grow a lot of berries and fruit on trees. Many varieties are often cultivated for each type of plantation and annual flowers also often make an appearance. [11,12]

The moderate size of the plots and the ban on the commercialisation of the produce separate them from the agro-industry (seeds, fertiliser, tools) and from professional selling avenues: swapping and using your own produce are the only legal practices. [13] The datchniki don’t have to put up with fluctuations in the price of agricultural produce. Their harvest, little or not at all modified, doesn’t depend on any factories or mainstream infrastructure. The mixture of fruit trees, vegetable patch plants and ornamental crops creates a varied island of greenery. The gardens host great biodiversity, which decreases vulnerability to disease, pests and adverse weather conditions.

Resilience and Flexibility

Throughout the 20th century, the number of collectives and the intensity of their cultivation fluctuated a lot in accordance with economic conditions. Likewise, today the gardens are distinguished by the extent of their productiveness, which partly conveys the differences in social status between their occupants. The continental climate of Russia encourages the majority of datchniki to maintain a main place of residence and a job in urban areas, and to only temporarily occupy their gardens in the active season, stretching from May to September.

In recent years, more and more Russians are making the choice to live in their “six-one hundred square metres”, which have been made more comfortable by some recent transformations. With the relative political and economic stability of Russia in recent years, the number of cultivated plots has decreased and the plots are progressively used more for holidays than for agriculture. Most families who can afford to tend to give up their food-producing cultures, although they often keep a small part for family tradition. [6]

From the beginning of the spring until the first frost, millions of Russians make the most of their summer chalets. Photo by PhotoXPress

However, the system is flexible and its usefulness was made particularly clear during the disintegration of the Communist Bloc and the decline in production on kolkhozes and sovkhozes (state-owned Soviet farms in Russia) in the early 1990s. Russians were hit by the quick collapse of agro-industrial production and spending power (teachers saw their earnings cut by between 3 and 5 times). [14]

During that period, fears concerning sudden provisions shortages and the outbreak of famine spurred the United States and the European Union to devise huge food aid programmes. However, the aid was not necessary due to the revival of allotments: people quickly converted the lawns in their “six-one hundred square metres” into space for food growing.

A study from the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) showed that as many as 65% of families in the city of Moscow engaged in urban gardening in 1991 compared to 20% in 1970. In the mid-90s, this urban gardening provided the majority of potatoes, fruit and vegetables eaten by people living in cities. This production represented between 20 and 30% of the total value of food production in Russia. [15]

A Model to Replicate?

In France, 57% of households have a house with 600m² of adjoining land as their principal dwelling. [23,24] There already, then, exist significant potentially cultivatable plots of land. To provide all homes without a garden with a 600m² plot on which to grow, around 18,000km² (6950 miles squared) of arable land is needed near city centres, which is about 6% of used agricultural land in France. [26] This is the equivalent of half of the current urbanised land area. [25,27]

Dachas Moscow Oblast. Image by Trasprd (CC BY 4.0). 

This might seem like a lot, but consider that:

• Garden communities do not lay down unnatural floor (access paths must be permeable and cabins must be easily dissembled) and can host considerable biodiversity (much more than a monoculture plot), particularly if the size of the plot allows for trees to be planted. [28]
• With regard to halting urban sprawl, converting wasteland, neglected land and some peri-urban agricultural land into garden communities would improve the relative value of land, making possible its transfer and safeguarding ownership.
• Gardening, on a large scale, offers other societal benefits than just food production.

This last point is particularly visible in Russia, where we can observe that these communities:

• reduce low-income households’ dependence on social benefits
• help people who have experienced difficulties reintegrate
• improve health and life expectancy
• provide many people with and affordable place to get fit and spend leisure time
• give people a place to ride out continental summer heat waves, minimising both the heat island effect and providing somewhere well adapted to the hot season.

The suburban model, the main mode of urban growth in France since the 1970s, is by all accounts unsustainable but undeniably meets a proportion of the French populations demands. [31] Garden communities offer a credible response to individual aspirations, without externalising harm to common interests and good.

Recent Evolutions and Uses

Allotment plots officially remained property of the state until 2006. They have since been transferred into private hands at a rapid rate. The increase in the standard of living and the loosening of rules have also meant that there is a higher number of permanent structures within certain communities. This change is often accompanied by the merging the plots to make them bigger, installing gas and electricity, and strengthening access roads. The community gardens are therefore moving significantly towards the model of European housing estates. [7]

Kstovo’s industrial area (CC BY 2.5).

These changes cause inequality among community gardens, especially those next to the most important cities. Subsequently, these changes have put pressure on property and, more interestingly, on property developers who generally already have access to water and gas. By contrast, in some suburbs far from the city centre, gardens have been abandoned by their owners. [8]

At the beginning of 2019, the legal system managing the communities was standardised in attempt to prevent these kinds of deviations. In particular, the right to build is now managed in a standardised way by local planning regulations. [9] Despite the changes observed in recent years, urban gardening remains in cultural heritage and a tradition for tens of millions of Russians.

Arthur Grimonpont

Original article: Les collectifs de jardins russes : une organisation résiliente.

Notes and References

1. Estimates are difficult to make because of a lack of a clear legal status; they vary from 45 to 67 million, according to different authors. 60 million is indicated by : https://versia.ru/obshhaya-ploshhad-dachnyx-uchastkov-v-rossii-sostavlyaet-desyat-territorij-moskvy
2. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., 2011. Des sols agricoles au service de la résilience urbaine : réflexions à partir du cas de la Russie. Espaces et sociétés, 147, p. 135-153
3. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. Cit.
4. Specialists note the difficulty in making a precise estimation of this number in the absence of an official consensus, and given its constant evolution. Estimate provided by: Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. Cit.
5. Guyon, F. 2008. Les jardins familiaux aujourd’hui : des espaces socialement modulés. Espaces et sociétés, 3(134), p. 131-147
6. Robert-Bœuf, C. 2014. Les jardins collectifs à Kazan: une agriculture familiale entre espace productif et espace résidentiel. POUR 4(224), p. 101-109
7. Robert-Boeuf, C. 2017. Cultiver la ville en Russie, Géographie et cultures, 101, pp. 17-34.
8. Translated from the Russian website: https://rg.ru/2017/04/26/kakie-izmeneniia-zhdut-vladelcev-dachnyh-uchastkov.html
9. A new federal law of July 29, 2017 No. 217-З entitled “Keeping citizens of gardening and gardening for their own needs and amending certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation” ame into force on 1 January 2019
10. Ortar N. 2005. Les multiples usages de la datcha des jardins collectifs. Anthropologie et sociétés, 29(2), pp. 169-185
11. Ortar N., op. cit.
12. Ortar N., op. cit.
13. This independence is of course not perfect. With regard to seeds, Robert-Bœuf C., op. cit., notes that “few gardeners save their seeds today, preferring, because of their relative low price, to buy them in specialised stores or in supermarkets”.
14. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. cit.
15. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. Cit.
16. Robert-Boeuf, C. (2017), op. cit.
17. Ortar N., op. cit.
18. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. cit.
19. Robert-Boeuf, C. (2017), op. cit.
20. Statistical data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Tatarstan, from 2012
21. FAO (2014), L’agriculture urbaine, http://www.fao.org/urban-agriculture/fr
22. Zezza, A. et L. Tasciotti. 2010. Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: Empirical evidence from asample of developing countries. Food Policy, 35, p. 265-273.
23. INSEE (2018) https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2412780
24. INSEE (2006) https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1281267
25. In the absence of more precise data concerning the area of the spaces adjoining individual houses and their use (these can be waterproofed, serve as parking or a terrace), we arbitrarily consider that half of the gardens with an area of ​​less than 600m2 do not lend to significant vegetable production. There are then around 60% of the 30 million French households to equip.
26. The French UAA represents 29 million hectares, or 290,000 km2, according to INSEE, Agreste.
27. Artificial soils, that is to say coated, built or made unfit for cultivation represent 3.4 million hectares, according to INSEE, Agreste
28. Most “working-class gardens” in France prohibit the planting of trees, and would be too small to accommodate them
29. Marloie M., Boukharaeva, L., op. cit.
30. Dacha owners spend most of their weekends there, from spring to fall, and many spend their entire holiday there: http://krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/2239
31. Dias D., Langumier J., Démangé D. 2008. Mutabilité du périurbain. Le modèle pavillonnaire face aux crises énergétique et environnementale. Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine Année.104 pp. 149-156

Traditional housing for chickens in Zembe, Mozambique. By Ton Rulkens – Traditional housing 2, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Global sustainability requires large-scale reductions in rich world per capita resource use rates. Globalised, industrialised and commercialised supply paths involve high resource, energy, dollar and other costs. However, “The Simpler Way” involving small-scale integrated localised settlements and economies can enable enormous reductions in these costs. This study uses input–output analysis of one product, eggs, to illustrate how big the difference between the two paths can be.

The industrial path results in a dollar cost at the supermarket check-out that is at least twenty times that of the local path if a labour cost is included, and 100 times if one is not. The multiple for energy costs when the industrial total ends at the factory out-gate is about 166 kJ/4.3 kJ = 39/1. A complete account which added the energy costs of waste disposal and transport from the supermarket to the household, etc. might raise the cost for the industrial path to above 1.5 MJ per egg, i.e., to the region of 350 times the energy cost for the alternative path.

This study provides a concrete illustration of the large savings that can be associated with production in small scale, highly self-sufficient and cooperative local economies. It draws attention to the rarely recognised “diseconomies of scale”. In complex, multi-functional and integrated local economies the close proximity of productive activities along with informal networks of communication and production enable many functions to be carried out easily and spontaneously, eliminating the need for many intermediary functions, industries and costs.

Often outputs such as manures can immediately become valued inputs to other activities, many tasks and problems can be dealt with informally with minimal need for equipment, and many functions such as transport and warehousing can become unnecessary. Design can ensure that elements perform overlapping and multiple functions. For instance forest gardens can provide wind breaks,fruit, vegetables, grazing, honey, dyes and perfumes, leisure resources, habitat for birds that feed on garden pests, roofing shingles, chemicals such as eucalyptus and creosote, mulch, sawn timber and firewood. Familiar informal communication and sharing networks involving multi-skilled citizen performance of many functions can enable rapid action at little or no material cost.

The implications for sustainable development are profound. If the findings of this study are sound and generalizable the Simpler Way would enable very large reductions in resource and ecological impacts for sustainability to be achieved, but only if extremely radical changes are made in economic, political and cultural systems. With respect to Third World “development”, our results reinforce the emerging alternative view which seeks to avoid the dominant capital-intensive trickle-down approach and explores the potential of local, sufficient, cooperative, participatory, resource-cheap and frugal ways.

Many societies, ancient and contemporary, have innovated ways of supplying their fields with fixed nitrogen and phosphorus—two crucial ingredients for crop productivity. One is crop rotation, which alternates nitrogen-fixing and nitrogen-exhausting crops. Farmers around the world make use of chickens, ducks, and geese to add “fresh” guano to their fields. Cattle manure is another useful alternative—although it often lacks in phosphorus. Much more labor intensive than simply adding fossil-fuel derived synthetic fertilizer, these practices tend to build up soil, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to less run-off into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Persian pigeon towers are one of the more elegant solutions to the nitrogen-phosphorus problem. These are essentially castles built for thousands of wild pigeons, strategically placed in the middle of the fields. Their droppings were shoveled up once a year and sold to nearby farmers. While most pigeon towers existing today are in disrepair, the oldest still standing are dated to the 16th century (but they are assumed to have existed over 1,000 years ago) and helped fuel the cultivation of Persia’s legendary orchards, melons, and wheat production.[1]

Snakes

The basic design of pigeon towers is simple. Its main structure is conically shaped and made of mud bricks. At the center of the structure rests a large cylindrical drum, surrounded by smaller pillars, also made of the same brick—this design maximizes the potential surface area, allowing some towers to house up to 10,000 pigeons. The bricks are indented to create a small cove and ledge for the pigeons to nest in. At the very top of the tower there are holes that allow pigeons to come and go as they please. These holes are also designed to be inaccessible to snakes—the pigeon’s main natural predator in the region.

The structural cracks in many pigeon towers are said to be due to the tremors caused by thousands of birds in panicked flight when they spot a snake. The central drum also houses a stairway, and most towers have one or two doors to allow someone to collect droppings and check in on their guests. Sometimes the pigeons are provided with grain and water, making the tower a free bed and breakfast. In other cases, pigeons ate from the surrounding fields. Never mind AirBnB: this is the true sharing economy.

Pigeon towers are an example of what’s called vernacular architecture—a type of structure that is architecturally unique but has no single creator. Likely passed down by families throughout the ages, the design of the pigeon tower tends to be isomorphic with regional variations.

 Source: Flickr.

One unique aspect of the Persian pigeon towers is the ledge of the bricks on the inside of the structure. The repetitive feature creates a mesmerizing honeycomb effect, in which the whole becomes greater than the parts. It is also amazingly inventive, in that it enables the maximum number of coves with a minimum of building material. The bands of smooth plaster around the exterior of the tower may seem decorative, but are also highly functional: unlike the rest of the bricks, snakes have trouble climbing up this low-friction surface.

10,000 years

For centuries pigeons played a significant role in the Persian economy and political system. Farming first evolved in Iran 10,000 years ago, and considering this long tradition, the focus has been on sustaining yields over time rather than short-term maximization of profits.[2] Pigeon towers became a crucial part of the agricultural economy, providing much-needed fertilizer for melons, cucumbers, and other nitrogen-demanding crops—cornerstones of Persian cuisine. With characteristic enterprise, rulers even taxed owners of pigeon towers—the equivalent of taxing salt or fossil fuels.

Pigeons also featured significantly in Persian culture—to such an extent that most European travelers, starting with Marco Polo, felt the need to make remarks about them in their travel diaries. Pigeon dung was also used to make gunpowder, well before Europeans started playing with explosives.

Most pigeon towers still around today are in the area of Isfahan, the second most populous region in Iran. However, many of these lie in disrepair. There are also pigeon towers in Eastern Turkey, but these differ greatly in their design. These look like small shacks that dot the hillside, but are actually entrances to larger caves dug into the limestone bedrock, providing large empty spaces for the pigeons to nest in. Often villagers will hang baskets in the shacks and caves as nests for the pigeons. These dovecotes are often still in use, but, like the ones in Iran, are more and more falling into disrepair.[3]

Low Maintenance

While Iran was almost self-sufficient in food production in the 1960s, the increased use of synthetic fertilizers actually lowered food productivity, as they scorched the thin soil. Water scarcity is increasingly a problem in many areas of Iran—Isfahan being one of them [9], and high-input agriculture is using up most of what’s left.

This confluence of problems indicates the need to start practicing alternatives to high-input agriculture. Despite their decreased use, pigeon towers have some benefits over other low-tech alternatives in use today, such as the practice of some organic farmers to roll chicken coops over their fields. Another example is the flightless Indian runner duck, which some farmers let stampede fields in hordes, laying droppings and eating pests.

Photo: Safavid dovecotes near Isfahan. Mohammad Reza Pourjafar, Mohammad Reza Leylian, Farid Khodarahmi & Farhang Khademi Nadooshan

First, unlike chickens or ducks, wild pigeons are extremely low-maintenance. Provide water and shelter, and they will come. A pigeon tower is also stationary: no need to spend the whole day rolling an enormous shed around your field, or herding ducks. Like chickens, you can also eat pigeons and harvest their eggs—although peasants in Iran seemed to have abstained, in part due to the important place of pigeons in Islamic cultures. Best of all, pigeon towers are extremely low-tech: no wheels, electricity, or tractor needed: just bricks and a shovel to harvest the droppings, and some maintenance work every couple hundred years.

They may lie in disrepair today, but pigeon towers stand as monuments to the enduring importance of low-tech solutions to contemporary crises. It’s no surprise that the region that gave birth to agriculture has also refined innovative sustainable agriculture methods for thousands of years. Pigeon towers were one such innovation—and they helped Persian farmers cultivate all kinds of crops on previously arid, thin-soil land.

Aaron Vansintjan

[1]. Beazley, Elisabeth. (1966) “The pigeon towers of Isfahan.” Journal of Persian Studies: 105-109.
Bekleyen, A. (2009). The dovecotes of Diyarbakır: the surviving examples of a fading tradition. The Journal of Architecture, 14(4), 451-464.

[2]. Koocheki, A., & Ghorbani, R. (2005). Traditional agriculture in Iran and development challenges for organic agriculture. The International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management, 1(1), 52-57.

[3]. Bekleyen, A. (2009). The dovecotes of Diyarbakır: the surviving examples of a fading tradition. The Journal of Architecture, 14(4), 451-464.

[4]. Before Europeans ‘discovered’ the enormous islands of bird droppings—guano—off the coast of South America, Andean people collected and sold the fecal gold for over 1,500 years.

[5]. http://www.nature.com/news/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708

[6]. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fertilizer-produces-far-more-greenhouse-gas-expected

[7]. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#nitrous-oxide

[8]. Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton et al. “A safe operating space for humanity.” Nature 461, no. 7263 (2009): 472-475.

[9]. Erdbrink, Thomas. (2015) “Scarred riverbeds and dead pistachio trees in a parched Iran.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/world/middleeast/scarred-riverbeds-and-dead-pistachio-trees-in-a-parched-iran.html

“These include the limited range of crop species that can be grown; the tiny proportion of our population’s total food needs that indoor crops could supply; the elite market being targeted; and the irrelevance of indoor agriculture to the lives and diets of people living in economically stressed rural regions where the bulk of our food is grown.”

“Meanwhile, looming largest among the many factors that will restrict the growth of vertical gardening (a term I believe is more apt than “vertical farming,” given the potential scale and the types of food that can be produced) are its extraordinary energy requirements and heavy climate impact.”

Read more: Enough with the vertical farming fantasies: there are still too many unanswered questions about the trendy practice. Via The Urban Vertical Project.

“Corn provides a natural pole for bean vines to climb. Beans fix nitrogen on their roots, improving the overall fertility of the plot by providing nitrogen to the following years corn. Bean vines also help stabilize the corn plants, making them less vulnerable to blowing over in the wind. Shallow-rooted squash vines become a living mulch, shading emerging weeds and preventing soil moisture from evaporating, thereby improving the overall crops chances of survival in dry years. Spiny squash plants also help discourage predators from approaching the corn and beans. The large amount of crop residue from this planting combination can be incorporated back into the soil at the end of the season, to build up the organic matter and improve its structure.” Read more: 1 / 2 / 3.

“Straw Bale Gardening is simply a different type of container gardening. The main difference is that the container is the straw bale itself and is held together with two or three strings.”

“Once the straw inside the bale begins to decay the straw becomes ‘conditioned’ compost that creates an extraordinary plant rooting environment. Getting the straw bales conditioned is an essential part of the process, and should be started two weeks prior to your target planting date wherever you are located.”

“This gardening technique works well anywhere in the country or the world for that matter.” Read more: here and here.

“Soil and plants are placed in the outer donut-shaped chamber, and the center chamber is filled with water. The unglazed terracotta’s natural porosity allows the water to move from the center chamber and into the soil, based on the soil’s moisture (and thus the plant’s need for water). The terracotta wall both regulates and filters the water. A simple lid on the top of the water chamber prevents evaporation.”

The design is based on the Olla, a terracotta pot for irrigation that has been in use for 4,000 years. See also:

• Botijo’s: how to keep beverages cool outside the refrigerator
• Ceramic food steamer with central chimney
• The poor man’s refrigerator
• How to make your own low-tech vertical farm

More.

Hat tip to Rob De Schutter.

Sub-irrigated planters are simple devices that allow low-maintenance, low-water consumption container gardening. Appropedia has DIY-instructions, using plastic buckets or bottles.

Previously: Water batteries for trees, How to make your own low-tech vertical farm.

“The University of Tennessee Extension maintains a collection of over 300 building and equipment plans, and all are now available in electronic format for download. The plans are primarily intended for use in Tennessee, but many are appropriate for other locations as well.

The plans came from many sources. Some were developed in The University of Tennessee Extension Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Department, but most were developed in a cooperative effort with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Cooperative Farm Building Plan Exchange. The Plan Exchange no longer exists, but the plans remain on file and are available.”

Via The Survivalist Blog.

“Almost anyone who has a backyard or garden would do well to plant fruit trees for the years ahead. Most fruit trees, though, take more years to mature than most of us have to prepare, and take up more space than most of us have in cities or suburbs. Luckily, only a few centuries ago master gardeners developed a way to cultivate fruit in narrow spaces – one that yields more fruit, more quickly, and with a longer growing season.

Espalier is a method of growing a dwarf fruit tree along a wall or fence, binding it for support, and bending the branches to follow certain lines, as Japanese artists do with bonsai trees. Most gardeners started espaliers with a “maiden,” a one-year-old sapling that had not yet forked, and tied it to a staff of wood to keep it straight. Then they tied the desired branches to the fence or wall as they emerged, bending and pruning aggressively as the tree grew.

With the tree’s natural growth concentrated into only two dimensions, it creates many spurs looking for a chance to spread, creating more flowers and fruit than their conventional counterparts, and earlier in the trees’ life. The fruit can be picked casually while standing or sitting, with no need for the ladders or devices needed to pick many other fruit trees, and no risk of injury. Growing a tree against a south-facing wall has another advantage; not only does the tree receive maximum light and heat, but the thermal mass of the wall absorbs the heat and provides shelter from the wind. In this way trees get a longer growing season, and can grow in cooler climates than they would ordinarily tolerate.”

Read more: Fences of fruit trees. Related: Irish hedgerows.

“Jardín vertical low-tech en Ibiza” by Spanish architects Urbanarbolismo. The garden acts as a sound barrier between a club’s outdoor central courtyard and nearby appartments. The ceramic elements – used as a planting medium – are placed so that irrigation water can easily enter from above. No automated irrigation systems are required. Urbanarbolismo makes use of local plant varieties.

Jardín vertical low-tech en Ibiza. Urbanarbolismo. Also check out their green roofs:

Previously: How to make your own low-tech vertical farm.

“Using groundwater to grow crops and trees doesn’t make sense to Pieter Hoff, a Dutch inventor. Not only are traditional irrigation techniques inefficient because most of the water is lost to evaporation, Mr. Hoff says, but water can be easily captured from the atmosphere to grow just about anything.

To prove his point, Mr. Hoff retired from the lily and tulip export business in 2003, established his company, AquaPro, and devoted himself to the development of the Groasis Waterboxx (manuals), which he says will grow food crops and trees even in the driest places on earth.” Read more.

Vertical Veg – high yields from tiny spaces. Has very good links, too.

Instructions at Wired. Hat tip to Lloyd Alter. Also:

• Terracotta Home Composter
• Make your own garden beds
• Flower madness in Cordoba (Spain)
• Water batteries for trees
• How to make your own low-tech vertical farm (previously)

The crack garden. “A crack team of guerrilla gardeners will undertake tactical missions to etch similar tectonic fissures in the parking lots of failed suburban malls and abandoned inner neighborhoods of post-industrial cities. With pneumatic drills or with pick axes and some elbow grease, they’ll wound the earth’s (un)natural asphalt skin, so that forgotten ecologies may return and hopefully fester”. Via Pruned. More how-to information here.