URBAN PERMACULTURE INSPIRATIONS! part 2

日本語はこっち

Here are some inspiring TEDx talks on urban gardening and more! I think its really important to propagate not just gardens and gardeners, but stories of possibility. Growing a culture that encourages life! And while these are both amazing projects with powerful speakers, there are billions of stories and acts of active hope that are happening across the globe. Keep spreading the stories, and planting seeds.

RON FINLEY: A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA

Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA — in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."

PAM WARHURST: How We Can Eat Our Landscapes

What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.

BRITTA RILEY: A Garden In My Apartment

Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles — researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.

more to come.....much more!

URBAN PERMACULTURE INSPIRATIONS! part 1

a few inspirations from around the world.

more to come from Tokyo this year!



URBAN ART X NATURE



MOSS GRAFFITI



UPCYCLE GARDEN





MOBILE GARDEN



VERTICAL GARDENS



ROOFTOP FOREST GARDEN



ROOFTOP OASIS



GUERRILLA GARDENING



SEED BOMBS!



TOKYO GUERRILLA AQUAPONICS



GUERRILLA DAIKON RADISH

under the asphalt and concrete is life waiting to spring back into action!

when we stop paving it over, Tokyo will return to forest....or a field of daikon.

Spring Gardening: practice and perspective

Finally a few sunny warm days have poked through the chilly cold grey Spring.
Most of the garden beds are dry enough to be forked.
It was beautiful to see everyone outside waking the garden up after a long wet winter.

Spring gardening feels like a new beginning for me.
A commitment to learn and grow while intimately engage with life.
An opportunity to explore the depths of food growing philosophy and practice.
Accepting the challenge of choosing methods and responding to unexpected situations.

This year I decided to continue my exploration of shizeno (natural farming) in the far far garden (its really far), and improve my lazy organic gardening for the communal production focused beds.

Biointensive

Most of my experience has been with the Biointensive model I learned at the UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden/Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). As the name suggest Biointensive is intense! Its a lot of physical work and I feel like its too rough on the soil. Its an awesome method for Santa Cruz if you want to be a small-scale organic gardener pumping out tons of food and you are physically fit. They are some of the most bump'in gardens with beautiful veggies packed tight in a small amount of space. For more on this, check out How to Grow More Vegetables (Jeavons), or go to amazingly beautiful and educational sites like the UCSC gardens, the Homeless Garden Project, or Camp Joy (all in Santa Cruz).

Biodynamic

Recently, I've been increasingly exposed to more and more biodynamic practices and philosophy. Here at the Bullocks, Doug encouraged us to use, or at least look through, the biodynamic calendar with the moon cycles and other cosmic elements that illuminate what you should plant at what time during each day. My good friends at the Frey Biodynamic Vinyard in Mendocino, CA are the most serious anthroposophists I know and frequently teach me about the various dimensions of Steiner's teachings. What I appreciate about Biodynamic is the integration of various elements (agriculture, medicine and health care, education, architecture, etc) in to a spiritually rooted humanistic belief system. Really intriguing stuff that I hope to learn more about. I don't know enough to put much of it into practice at the moment. Definitely an important circle for the sustainability movement.

Natural Farming

Then there is shizeno, the method and philosophy I am most attracted to.

Whats the difference with organic gardening?

Well, the simple answer I give these days is,

no weeding, no tilling, and no fertilising (including compost).

But, its much more than that.

Those are merely the physical expressions of a way of life.

Shizeno to me is a path of reaching and maintaining ecological balance

through observation, understanding, and minimal intervention.

Like my tai chi teacher taught,

"what can we do less of,

what are we doing that we don't need to do."

Its a practice to transform our perspective

and respect those we struggle to get along with,

like weeds and pests (like our in-laws:)

Weeds, fungi, bacteria, bugs, other people, nature are not our enemies.

We share the earth with all living and non-living things.

Our minds discriminate and we often try to eliminate our problems before understanding why they have have come to be.

I see this as another practice to transcend the dualistic thinking of good and bad.

Its not easy, but its important.

I've been deeply moved by the humility of shizeno farmers,

and their understanding of the soil and local ecology.

They are patient, committed, and hard-working.

More exciting stuff to come about shizeno!

Bullocks 2011

For my assigned garden beds that are to feed the intern community,

I started with my lazy organic method.

We each have a total of about 6-8 garden beds in two different locations.

This year my goal is to use as little or no off island resources,

mainly pelletised chicken manure and crab meal.

I feel that is more inline with my values and I want to challenge myself to localize more.

Why not?

The Lazy Biointensive Method

I define the edges of the bed with a D handle fork, then I turn chunks of the garden bed with a four pronged cultivator. That way its less work and much less chopping of earthworms. I break the big chunks of soil with my hand or a fork and smooth the bed out with a rake and my hands. I really like touching soil so I try to use my hands as much as possible.

Its really important to touch the soil and be intimate with it. Bare hands is so pleasant.

The Bullocks M.O.

Here at the Bullocks we define out paths with stable litter. Then the following year we scoop the decomposed stable litter (free and from nearby) into our beds to add organic matter. This also serves as a weed barrier where we can easily pull any quack grass that migrates toward the beds. We often use freshly mowed grass clippings as a nitrogen rich mulch that also deters the large slug populations which devastate the sweet little sproutlings. It seems common at the Bullocks to add compost, pelletised chicken manure, and crab meal into the beds.

This year I'm in charge of asian greens, fava beans, chinese cabbage, onions, gailan, cucumbers. My companion plants are kale and several fragrant and delicious Japanese plants: shiso, nira, mitsuba, yomogi. The chinese cabbage transplants looked a bit nitrogen deficient and Yuriko suggested pelletised chicken manure but I'm going to see if I can address it with urine (the bucket). I found a bunch of cut grass so I just threw it on my bed as mulch.

*What I learned from several sources is that the key to utilising urine is DILUTION. 1:10 urine to water seems like what most people say. I'm hoping to get a copy of Liquid Gold (Steinfeld) so I can make use of this amazing resources that I am generating all the time!

Coming soon....

In the far far field shizeno beds,

my approach this year is to grow the easiest crops for the climate here.

Mainly brassicas, onion, and maybe some legumes.

I have a long way to go before I get a descent harvest through shizeno,

but I'm committed to get there.

It took Fukuoka and Kawaguchi a few years before they had harvests that

matched their previous chemical farming methods.

In fact I think they both had close to no harvest the first year or two.

I'm in no hurry and luckily I live in an area that i can experiment.

Final thoughts

Yuriko commented that I'm too caught up with philosophy.

I do feel like I'm experiencing the gardening version of the Omnivore's Dilemma sometimes.

There are so many styles to choose from.

And gardening is a very intimate element in my life.

I'm having fun though, and curiosity is driving my desire to explore and learn these different methods.

Life is about gardening the soil, the mind, and the soul.

I love gardening!!!!!!!!!

Especially when I start the day off with homemade waffles,

and take a tea ceremony break under the flowering plums and cherries,

accompanied by freshly made mochi balls.

Eat food grow food.

Winter Squash Planting

木曜日にようやく様々な種類のカボチャを植えることができました。１０種類以上上田気がします。カボチャの収穫の話でみんな盛り上がっています。

On thursday we all rallied to finish planting out winter squash transplants.
All sorts of varieties were planted, Kabocha (of course!), Buttercup, Tetsukabuto, Black Forest, Sweet Meat, Delicata, Australian Butter, etc. Can't wait to eat them!

ここでカボチャを育てるために工夫しなければいけない点は、ナメクジとカタツムリの食欲から守る事、草の侵入を防ぐ事、そしてできる限り熱を与える事です。黒プラスチックのマルチは草を除外しながら土を暖めます。
The main challenges for winter squash growing is slug predation during the early stages, vigorous weds, and getting enough heat. The black plastic mulch is to suppress weeds and collect heat.

1. 穴の位置を確定しから深い穴を掘って、そこに肥料をまぜこみました。蟹の粉末（蟹肉を除いた部分）、海藻の粉末、コンポスト、熟成された馬糞の豪華な組み合わせ！苗を植えた後に鶏の糞を粒状にされたものを上から振りかけました。工夫をした点は、プラスチックシートを穴の中下向きに織り込みながら穴の周りを土で被せた事です。横から忍び寄って芽をだす雑草を除外しながら、ナメクジやカタツムリが隠れないようにします。

1. After measuring out where the holes should be, we dug deep holes and filled them with a combination steer manure, compost, chicken pellets, kelp meal,and crab meal. The value meal!
*Tucking in the plastic mulch (in this case a salvaged tarp) around the holes and covering beyond the hole with growing medium (soil/compost) is a tactic to prevent running grass from popping out from the openings, and keeping slugs and snails from living and hiding around the transplantlings.

2. 各穴にカボチャの苗を二つずつ植えました。右上の写真はプラスチックマルチなしで植えた部分です。溝は 貯水のためで苗を植えた丘は、水はけを良くするためです。

2. Then we planted 2 transplants per mound. This picture on the right is a section that has no plastic mulch. The berm is to concentrate water in that area while the mound will keep the transplants dry so they don't get funky fungi.


3. 次にホットキャップ（大きなペットボルみたいな入れ物から下を切り取ったもの。使用済みの業務用の油の入れ物など）を苗に被せて、ナメクジなどが入ってこないように地面に押込みます。

3. Next we covered the tiny transplants with hot caps (these are plastic bulk oil and other foodstuff containers that had the bottoms cut off). Burying the edges in the soil is another tactic to keep slugs and snails from hanging out in the containers and ravaging the tender sprouts of winter squash.

4. 最後に水をやって、水やり用のドリップテープをしきました。
4. They were watered in and drip tape was set up.

完了。
Bada bing, bada boom.

最低一日一回は、カボチャの様子を伺うようにとダグに言われました。苗のうちは半日でナメクジや水不足などで死んでしまったりしまいますから。

Doug reminded us to check up on the plantings daily to see how the plants are doing, as they are delicate in the early stages especially slug and snail predation.

楽しみ！

カボチャで思い出すのが、子供の頃母が作ってくれたカボチャスープ。カボチャと牛乳。あ〜懐かしい。カボチャの煮付けとカボチャパイも好物です。カボチャ最高！

Thoughts on natural farming/gardening 1

WHAT IS NATURAL FARMING?　自然農とは。。。
It depends (the answer to most questions here at the Bullocks).

A simple summary of what I understand shizen no (shizen-nature/natural and no-farming/gardening) is growing food without tilling, fertilizing, or weeding. Those are the 3 elements that both Fukuoka (One Straw Revolution) and Kawaguchi (the one I met) use as the foundation of their gardening method.

But to reduce shizen no to only the above would be misleading and disrespectful. There is a deep spiritual dimension to our relationship to the web of life, and shizenno is an intentional relationship with nature, to grow food in harmony with all life. It is an art, a spiritual practice, and a path that will help us look deeper into how everything is connected. Similar to permaculture, its not another farming method or style, it is not just about growing food, it is a way of life. Well, at least that is how I receive it. I'll share more as I learn on my first adventure actually doing it. My intention is to share in a nourishing way without becoming dogmatic, which is a common criticism about Fukuoka. And please let me know how I can support your interest in shizen no.

Kawaguchi, who has been doing shizen no since the 70s, says "growing food in a way where we do not till, we do not fertilize, we do not spray pesticides, and we do not treat weeds and bugs as our enemy." His main principles are, "no tilling, no importing materials, and no exporting materials." Respecting all life by not straining our environment.

This is an invitation to try it out with me and enjoy a new way of growing food, a new understanding of life. There may not be any epiphanies, much "production", and you might struggle with the pureness of your experiment, but until you do it natural farming will only be an idea.

The picture on the top is the site of my experiment before any of my interventions. Looks quite lush with volunteers. The bottom is after I cut all the grass with the kama, Kawaguchi's tool of choice. I also staked it with bamboo to help envision the dimension of the garden beds.

トマト植えとクイズ Planting tomato and quiz

A few days ago Yuriko gave me 3 Japanese tomato starts. 2 Momotaro (Peach Boy) and one Odoriko. She told me that Momotaro is one of her favorite tomatos, and knowing her as a gardener and cook, I trust her judgment. I like black and wine colored tomatoes a lot, and one of the ones I had fun growing in Costa Rica was Tommy Toe from Seed Saver Exchange. Huge loads of very large cherry tomatoes. I'm a fan of cherry tomatoes.

数日前ゆりこさんから日本産のトマトの苗を頂きました。彼女お勧めの桃太郎２つに踊り子１つ。僕は黒やワイン色のトマトが大好きです。西海岸ではブランディーワインという種類が人気です。コスタリカでNPO Seed Saver Exchangeが販売しているトミトーというミニトマトに惚れました。大きな梅／アプリコットの大きさで大量に収穫できます。どちらかというとミニトマトを育てる方がお手軽なので好きです。

For tantalizing tomato varieties and pictures see the SSE site (below)
下のリンクで美味しくて美しいトマトのあらゆる種類を官能してみてください。
http://www.seedsavers.org/Items.aspx?hierId=43

Sam suggested to plant the tomato into 50% one year old steer manure that he got, and 50% soil mix (made on-site) for drainage. Both Sam and Doug mentioned that tomatoes grow in straight manure and even sewage sludge.

サムにトマトの植え方を聞いた所、近所から持って来た一年ものの馬糞５０％に水はけのために土５０％混ぜたら良いと言われました。トマトは糞１００％でも下水泥状物でも元気に育つとサムもダグも話してました。

The tomatoes on the site here are grown in pots in the green house or in a garden bed with a hoop-house over it.

ここでは、トマトを大きな鉢に植えて温室で育てるか、ポリトンネンルを被せた畝に植えています。

(Front Row: Momotaro, Momotaro, Odoriko)

QUIZ
Where did tomatoes originate? What kind of environment did they initially come from?
トマトはもともとどこで発生していたのでしょうか？そこはどのような環境ですか？

What are dry farmed tomatoes?
They tend to be much more flavorful, I love them.
ドライ・ファーム(乾地農法?)トマトとはどういう意味なのか？
味が凝縮していてとっても美味しいです。

What are the top 3 tomato producing countries?
トマトの三大生産国はどこか？

How did tomatoes become such a key ingredient in Italy?
なぜイタリア料理でトマトが中心的な存在になったのでしょうか？

Potential

見るだけでわくわくしてしまいます。
さてこの写真に映っている植物達は誰でしょう？
(クリックすると写真が大きくなるはず。）
This is potential. Just looking at it gets me excited. mmmmm......so beautiful.

農業最高！

今日は様々な鳥の歌を聴きながら、ガーデンベッド（畝？）を耕しました。小鳥、鶏、アヒル、たまには鷹の鳴き声まで。ここは色々楽しいですが、僕は畑の中で働くのが一番好きです。土とふれあい、きれいに畝を整えて、幸せの可能性いっぱいに詰まった種を植えるのが大好きです。落ち着きとわくわく感が素敵に混ざり合った快感。地球とつながっている事が、毎瞬実感できている気がします。

有機農業をしながら自然農の長所について考えていました。実験的に川口由一さんから聞いた自然農をやってみようと思っています。有機農業は結構なれてきたのでそろそろさらに素敵な農業にトランジションしようと考えています。今まで見てきた中で赤め塾や川口さんの田んぼと畑が一番美しいと感じました。レベルが違いますね。がんばってみます。


耕す前の写真。僕が担当しているのは手前の三つの畝です。ほうれん草、タマネギ、と芽キャベツを植える計画です。奥には沼地が見えます。


先週撮った写真です。奥に鶏トラクターが映っています。今日は真ん中の畝を桑などで耕しました。気持ちよかった〜。ミミズさん達には迷惑をかけてしまいましたが。ここの土はとてもリッチです。何もしなくても野菜が育ちそうな、いい色と感触がします。さすがブロックス。