Urban Food Production

Urban Food Production

Overview

• Urban food production is one of the best strategies for reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and to learn about sustainable practises.
• When supplies of cheap fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) were cut off from Cuba during the Special Period (1990-2000) the population reverted to organic and permaculture farming practises both in cities and in rural areas. Collectively they were able to reduce per capita GHG emissions to 4 tonnes per person per year.
• They did this by composting organic waste material, planting nitrogen fixing cover crops, and using more human labour inputs to help manage local food production. Organic, regenerative and permaculture food production techniques were widely practised as presented in the documentary film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

CERES Urban Farming Course

• It takes years of persistence and practise for gardening to become natural and intuitive.
• To get a head start it worth joining a Community Garden or attending a course such as the CERES Complete Urban Farming Course presented by Justin Calverley which runs for 14 weeks (weekly sessions). There is also a book that accompanies the course titled The Urban Farmer.
• There are also other good on-line resources to draw inspiration from:
  • My Smart Garden and especially the Resources section that has instructional videos from local experts.
  • My Green Garden by Maria Ciavarella has a focus on Italian food production and preservation practises.
  • Deep Green Permaculture is an excellent resource prepared by Angelo Eliades and showcases a Permaculture urban food forest in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
  • Huw Richards - Permaculture Inspired Kitchen Gardening on YouTube which presents short, easy to follow gardening videos for beginners.

Urban Farming missing Manuals

• There are two big issues that need to be addressed with urban farming, but are rarely discussed.
  • Water loss - water is lost as stormwater (roof rainwater) and water that is sent to sewage (toilet flusing, showers, sinks)
  • Nutrient loss - nutrients are mainly lost to sewage (nutrients in our urine and poo).

Water loss

• It requires a large amount of water to grow food.
• Foodprint Melbourne project has found that it takes over 475 litres of water per person per day to grow our food Food Print Melbourne, Dr. Rachel Carey, University of Melbourne. This number would be lower if Melburnians ate less meat, dairy and processed foods, which in general require larger water inputs in comparison to more vegetarian based diets.
• Agriculture extracts 70% of the waterflows from our waterways which severly comprises the health of our waterways, especially during drought.
• Growing food locally at home, using roof water and large rainwater tanks (10,000-20,000 litres storage), grey water diversion to the garden, taking shorter showers (2 minutes) and using dry composting toilets leads to an overall reduction of total water usage ANU Press Troubled Waters: Confronting the Water Crisis in Australia’s Cities
• Ideally we should prioritise water use at home to grow food and plants. Minimal water should be used in the home for other household requirements (e.g. 2 minute showers, dry-composting toilet, cooking and drinking).
• The United Nations recognises our basic right to clean water and estimate that daily water requirement should be 50 to 100 litres per person per day UN The Right to Water
• Melbournian's currently use 155 litres per person per day and most of this water is sent to the sewer.

Nutrient loss

• Nutrients are naturally contained within soils and can be made available to plants through:
  • composting of food and other organic material
  • weathering of rock to release minerals
  • fixing of nitrogen by nitrogen fixing plants and associated bacteria
  • addition of other inputs such as crushed rocks, seaweed and shells
• However, in a typical household most food nutrients are lost because they are flushed into the sewer.
• To recycle these nutrients back to the garden requires a waterless composting toilet. As a first step urine can be recovered in a pee bucket, diluted with water (1 in 10) and used as a liquid nitrogen fertiliser on the garden.
• The correct processing of humanure is detailed in The Humanure Handbook by Joel Jenkins. This book is also available for free as a pdf on The Internet Archive.
• The Victorian EPA also presents a list of approved Waterless Composting Toilets].
• Humanure can be safely used under fruit, nut trees and in non-food producing garden beds (but not for most Australian natives because they prefer soils low in nitrogen).
• Food waste can be safely composted and used in vegetable food growing beds.

Top Ten Gardening Tips

• The following tips will help develop your urban farmer skills.
• One over arching attribute to gardening is to take the time to observe your garden.
• This can be done while hand watering, or sitting down with a cup of coffee.
• The power of observation will become your greatest teacher.

1. Grow food producing trees and shrubs
2. Learn to grow vegetables from seeds using a green house or shade house
3. Protect soil and garden beds with mulch
4. Install a rainwater tank. Divert all excess roof water and grey water to the garden
5. Establish hot composting bins and recycle all food and organic waste to the garden
6. Plant a pollinator garden to attract bees and other insects to help pollinate your flowering vegetable plants
7. Plant diverse plant species in your garden to attract biological control agents
8. Learn how to preserve foods
9. Keep rabbits, chickens or quails and experiment with producing their food production and composting their waste
10. Install a waterless composting toilet

Food production trees and shrubs

• Trees produce the greatest amount of produce using the least amount of space because:
  • unlink annuals they don't need to re-grow each year
  • a large established root system will afford better access to water and nutrients in the soil
  • they occupy more vertical and horizontal space in the garden
• In my garden I have a range of productive trees:
  • Loquat - evergreen that produces fruit in December and can be waterered all year.
  • Cherry - produces fruit in late December
  • Strawberry - evergreen that produces fruit from December to February. Grows as a ground cover.
  • Apricot - produces fruit from December to January
  • Apple (dwarf) - produce fruit from January to February
  • Blackberry - produces fruit from January to February
  • Fig - produces fruit from January to March
  • Persimmon - produces fruit from March to April
  • Almond - nuts ready in March to April
  • Olive - fruit available from April to June
  • Lemon - produces fruit twice per year.

• Most fruit trees can be planted in early Spring.
• Allow for a 3m x 3m space between each fruit tree.
• Try to use dwarf fruit and nut trees because they are easier to net and manage.
• Plant something you love and enjoy eating.
• An excellent reference book is The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia by Louis Glowinski.

Grow vegetables from seeds

• Although it is tempting to go out and buy seedlings, it is important to learn how to grow seedlings from seeds because:
  • you learn about differences between direct sowing and sewing into pots (then transplanting)
  • raising seedlings can be tricky
  • experience with seeds also extends to collecting seeds
• There are two types of ways to grow plants from seeds:
  • Direct sowing - where the seed is planted in the location where it will grow
  • Transplant seedlings - where seedlings are started off in small trays or punnets and nurtured until they are big enough to plant in the garden
• Growing plants from seeds is tricky, but and important skill set to acquire.

Transplant seedlings

• Prepare a soil mix using 1/3 garden soil, 1/3 compost and 1/3 coir fibre. This material should be coarse and open in structure to allow water to drain freely. Sand can also be added to the soil mixture to assist with drainage.
• Plant seeds to twice the depth of the seed thickness.
• Keep the soil mixture moist by watering each day.
• It may take from 3 to 10 days for seeds to germinate.
• Seeds no not have to be in direct sun (before they germinate) but they need to be kept warm. A warm location could be the top of a refrigerator or in a warm room in a house. Many seeds require a soild temperature above 20degC before they germinate.
• Once the seedling emerges from the soil it needs exposure to sunlight.
• Insufficient sunlight can make the seedlings long and lanky.
• Too much sunlight from one direction can make seedlings bend.
• Time management is also important. You need to grow seedlings 4 to 6 weeks before their scheduled date for transplant.

Greenhouses and Shadehouses

• Greenhouses trap the sun's energy and provide shelter and protection for seedlings.
• The temperature within the greenhouse is higher than the surrounding environment.
• Many seedlings require higher soil temperatures before they will germinate (e.g. soil temp > 20degC)
• Greenhouses also allow you to grow seedlings and plants much earlier in the growing season while outdoor temperatures and still too cool.

• A shadehouse helps to moderate extremes of temperatures using a semi permeable and transparent fabric to protect seedlings and plants from direct sun exposure.
• Excessive high temperatures, frost and windy conditions can damage young seedlings. A shadehouse offers seedlings additional physical protection.
• If you don't have a shadehouse you can improvise by keeping seedlings in the shade of larger trees and shrubs.

Mulch you garden

• Replace hard surface and grasses areas with mulch such as pine bark chips, bush mulch, or simply collect and place any organic material on the ground to cover the soil.
• Mulch will:
  • allow for rainwater and grey water to soak into the ground
  • help keep moisture in the ground and reduce evaporation
  • reduce stormwater runoff and allow more water to infiltrate the ground to recharge lost moisture in soils
  • reduce weed growth
  • is how Nature does it (leaves fall from trees to form a natural mulch)
  • prevent soil erosion during large rain events
• All you need to do is remove any concrete or impermeable surfaces and then apply a thick layer of much (10-15mm)
• You can put down cardboard or newspaper to help suppress weed growth.
• Top us mulch as required or establish vegetable ground covers to help create more mulch (e.g. leaves falling from a loquat tree, or ground covers such as Nasturtium or Warrigal Greens

Cover crops

• Cover crops can be planted at the end of a growing season or can be planted when you want to give a growing bed a rest.
• Some cover can fix nitrogen, other help add more organic material back into the soil, others even release chemical back into the soil to help break disease cycles.
• Cover crops can be harvested and mulched back into the soil or to cover the soil where they will gradually break down.
• They are a way to naturally produce mulch for your garden.
• Planting cover crops over winter guards against soil erosion. Nature abhors a vacuum, so its always good to have someting growing in a garden bed.
• Cover crops are normally planted in Autumn and remain in place during winter.
  • Legumes - Legumes are great because they grow quickly and they are able to fix nitrogen nitrogen from the air and make it available to other plants. Example plants include peas, beans, clover, mustard and lucerne. You can tell if a legume is producing bio-available nitrogen because they will have little nodules on their roots that are home to nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These nodules should be left in the ground so that the stored nitogen can be available to other plants. Try the CSIRO Clever Clover kit which contains full instructions.
  • Control for nematodes. Nematodes are tiny threadlike wormy creatures that live in the soil. Most are beneficial but some can invade roots and starve or kill plants. You can plant cover crops that release chemicals in the soil that harmful nematodes don't like Example crops include: corn, sorghum, peanuts, marigolds or spear grass. Marigolds are great for the beginner gardener because they are an attractive flowering plant that produces copious seeds for harvesting.

Install a rainwater tank and divert all excess roof water and grey water to the garden

• Install a large rainwater tank (ideally 10,000 - 30,000 litres if you have space.
• To size a tank use this example calculation:
  • Roof size of 100m2
  • can receive up to 60mm of rain in a big downpour
  • which requires 100 x 60 = 6,000 litres of storage capacity.
• A 10,000 - 30,000 litre storage tank will be able to hold many rain events during winter, so that the tank water use can be extended through Spring and Summer.
• The greatest water use will be in Summer.
• Additional items to consider for rainwater tanks include:
  • a leaf strainer so that organic debris from the roof does not enter tanks
  • relocating the television antenna so that it doesn't encourage birds to poop onto the roof
  • regular cleaning of gutter
  • a pump to provide pressurised water for watering the garden
• Rainwater can also stored in the ground, because soil also holds water.
• Install downpipe diversion systems to direct excess roof water to mulched garden beds.

Hot composting of food and organic waste

• Build a hot compposting bay using old pallets or pieces of wire mesh.
• Hot composting works very well with food waste (high in nitrogen) surrounded by sugar cane straw.
• Use a Reotemp thermometer to monitor the temperature of the pile.
• Keep the compost heat well watered and moist throughout (however not excessively wet or waterlogged)
• Add urine diluted 1 in 10 with water to help accelerate degradation and generate higher temperatures within the pile. Compost piles are most often carbon rich and nitrogen limited.

Plant a pollinator garden to attract bees

• There are many vegetables they require a visit from pollinator insects before they will set fruit.
• Any flower can help attract pollinators, but some plants are more of an attractor than others.
• Simple pollinator attracting species for the beginner include:
  • Lavender - cuttings can be taken from lavender and cloned to create additional seedlings for planting. The blue flowers of some lavender also attract the native blue banded bee.
  • Borage - you can sow seeds in different locations in the garden to see where they take best. Let the borage flower and go to seed. Each year you will be greeted with new borage seedlings.
  • Daisies - are avery hardy plant. You can prune these bushes very hard after flower senescence (death of the flower). New growth will then appear with a fresh flush of flowers.
• Large shrubs and trees such as Bottlebrush, Gum Tree, Grevillea, Tea trees, Sweet bursaria are excellent at attracting pollinators. Trees and shrubs have a large vertical presence.
• Even grasses such as Kangaroo grass will attract more diverse pollinators to your backyard.

Plant diverse plant species in your garden to attract biological control agents

• An emerging concepts in gardening is the forest garden.
• There gardens look more like a wild setting, with vegetation present at many levels creating a diverse range of habitats and microclimates. The garden looks more wild and less orderly and tries to mimic the sometimes chaotic arrangement of plants species in nature.
• The end result of this concentration of diversity is that more animals species can make their home in your garden.
• This invariably also results in the establishment of insect predator species which will help you to control some insect pests.
• Examples of insect predators include:
  • spiders - they make webs and capture a diverse range of insects
  • lady bugs - they prey on aphids
  • hoverflies - fly around looking for aphids
  • wasps - control agent for caterpillars
• Plant plants that produce flat-topped flower clusters known as umbels (e.g. parsley, dill, celery) which help to attract pest predator insect species to your garden (biological control agents)

Keep rabbits, chickens or quails

• Keeping small animals as pets is a great way to learn about recycling nutrients for local food production:
  • small animals eat small amounts of locally produced food
  • their litter waste can then be composted
  • the mature compost is spread out on the garden to produce more locally produced food
• Chickens and quails produce eggs. Chickens, quails and rabbits provide high quality meat and makes us reflect on where our food comes from and the animals husbandry practises.
• Small animals are also good for our mental health, they provide countless house of entertainment and they connect us with nature.

Install a waterless composting toilet

• By keeping chickens, quails and rabbits you will understand the fundamentals of nutrient recycling in the home garden.
• A waterless composting toilets is essential for the safe production of humanure.
• Most manures sold through gardening stores (cow manuare, chicken manure) come from industrial feed lots. These animals lead terrible lives and purchasing the manure from this industry condones this practise.
• Alternatively, a waterless composting toilet will help prevent the loss of nutrients contained in the food waste eliminated from your body.
• A waterless composting toilet provides a temporary storage for humanure, giving the material time to slowly decompose, dewater and for pathogenic organisms to perish.
• The humanure contains all the essential nutrients required for the production of food.
• Humanure production can take up to one year. This is to ensure that the humanure is free from pathogenic organisms.
• As an additional safety measure humanure should only be applied to food producing trees and to non-food producting garden beds. Humanure should not be applied to vegetable production beds.
• Installing a waterless composing toilet also reduces household water consumption to sustainable levels.
• Humans and animals have always been returning their wastes to the environment. It is only in the last 150 years with the invention of large centralised sewage treatment systems that humanure has been diverted to landfill or to the ocean for disposal.