[Greenbuilding] rooftop or apartment gardening

[JOHN SALMEN]

I've had to look at humidity issues for indoor pools, indoor gardens, living
walls -  and it is a really difficult issue to deal with.  Plants
(especially food plants) need moisture and they transpire so you have two
choices. One is to maintain a moist environment to reduce transpiration
rates or to water heavily and ventilate heavily. So the growing environment
needs to be made of materials that can handle moisture and has some
antifungal properties - our living environments (including soft furnishings,
clothing, etc.) are not made of these materials so there is a big conflict.
Our health is also compromised by excessive humidity.

 

So, ideally you isolate the growing environment from the living environment
and accomplishing that in an urban environment (without greenspace,
roofspace or deckspace) is difficult.  Food production also requires a lot
of human energy that I have found people have a hard time maintaining. 

 

I like collective gardening approaches where some local greenspace or
roofspace is shared in some way. In my community I have found people that
are much better at growing things than I am so I support them.

 

That said - I like window boxes - miniature greenhouses that hang out (or
in) and replace an existing window.  A 3x4 window using the square foot
gardening approach on two layers can have about 60 foodplants in production.
Easy to isolate and can be heated with ventilation exhaust and could even be
vented to a HWHP.

 

John

 

 

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of
Benjamin Pratt
Sent: April 11, 2011 11:02 AM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] rooftop or apartment gardening

 

I was responding to John Salmen's point that growing crops indoors can
be very harmful to the structure.
I'm sure there are ways to solve the problems, I'm just not sure there
are efficient ways to do so.
Ben

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Leslie Moyer <unschooler at lrec.org> wrote:
>
> Why? Michael Pollan has said that marijuana growers have contributed more
to horticultural science knowledge than any other area of hort. science.
Why? Profit motive is high. Why not use some of what they know and build
upon it?  The only parts that may not be helpful are the parts that make it
necessary to do it secretively....that is what leads to the destruction of
houses, unfortunately.  Still--they have climate control (temperature and
light) down to a state-of-the-art science and that is the hurdle in growing
plants indoors.
>
> --Leslie
>
> On Apr 11, 2011, at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Pratt wrote:
>
> > Maybe i should direct him to rooftop gardening only.
> > Ben
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Greenbuilding mailing list
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> Greenbuilding at bioenergylists.org
>
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioener
gylists.org



--


b e n j a m i n p r a t t

professor art+design
the university of wisconsin stout

_______________________________________________
Greenbuilding mailing list
to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
Greenbuilding at bioenergylists.org

to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioener
gylists.org


-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1209 / Virus Database: 1500/3565 - Release Date: 04/11/11

  _____  

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1209 / Virus Database: 1500/3565 - Release Date: 04/11/11

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20110411/05e97149/attachment.html>