Plant Sentience and Stevie Wonder: The secret life of plants (1979)

With a experimental-funk Stevie Wonder soundtrack, this documentary is based on the 1973 book of the same name. 'The Secret life of Plants' explores way-out concepts and entertaining pseudo-science such as plant sentience (plants can feel, man!) orgone accumulation (plants can focus energy, man!) and plant emotions. Yes, plant emotions. Great timelapse photography and the film's interesting alternative take on our green leafy friends make this worth a watch.





Was Roald Dahl onto something when he wrote 'The Sound Machine'?

His 1949 tale of a man who invents a machine that can hear roses shreiking as they're cut and trees groaning as they're felled?

Soil.

Soil. Lovely lovely soil. It isn't just mucky brown stuff that makes your mum angry when you don't take your shoes off and accidentally tread it on her carpet, it's fuel for plants. And well looked after soil can be ROCKET FUEL for plants. Of course, not all plants like the same kinds of soil, and knowing about the super fascinating secret world of soil is important if you want to be a good gardener.


The university of Lancaster is running this free online course, so if you're interested in super-duper SOIL (which everybody should be!), sign up!


https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/soils

subterranean gardening

What lies beneath our feet? Dinosaur bones? Earthworms? Stinky sewage pipes? Gardens? GARDENS???!!! Surely Not!? Well, after our bit of stargazing the other week with 'gardens in space', it's time to turn our attention to the world of the troglodytes. Yes, this post is a little round-up of subterranean garden projects.
People have grown mushrooms in caves for many years, but who would expect farmers to be growing crops of rice and assorted greens, and even flowers in an old bank vault beneath one of Tokyo's bustling business districts? At around 1000sq m the Pasona 02 underground farm is used as a training facility for jobless young people who might have a future in horticulture and agriculture.

mushrooms in the troglodyte caves of the Loire valley, France.

 

The Pasona 02 underground farm in Tokyo, Japan, via pruned



 

For a less agricultural take on underground gardening, how about the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California. Started over 90 years ago by Baldassare Forestiere and all dug by hand, these gardens almost count as a piece of outsider art. With tunnels and light wells, they are home to trees, plants and climbers reaching up to the sun above.

The Forestiere Underground Gardens, Fresno, California.

As for public underground gardens, after the triumph of New York's Highline gardens; which transformed a long disused stretch of elevated railway track into beautiful gardens, there is now a team dedicated to raising funds for a 'lowline' gardens. Planning on turning empty subway tunnels into below-ground gardens, the website has more details on this novel and ambitious idea.

Projected vision for the Lowline, New York City.

The weird world of Walt Disney's epcot greenhouses.

Disney World doesn't just do rides with little dolls singing an annoyingly catchy tune and people dressed in slightly sinister animal costumes,  it's also got a greenhouse at it's Epcot park which aims to show people the future of food production. It's clean, white, lab-like environment harbours the monstrous 'Tomato Tree' 

as well as torture devices to force pumpkins to grow into Disney's trademark mouse ears

A little car takes people round this strange soil-free place, a sci-fi glimpse into growing food in the sanitised, Disney way:

It's a crazy robo-veg-patch. How do I build me one at home?

High tech vs. low tech

This sounds like it could be interesting...
International Conference on Vertical Farming and Urban Agriculture 2014
http://vfua.org/

A technology orientated conference on urban farming. Lowering our food miles and increasing self sufficiency is something I am extremely interested in. However, I wonder if the increased mechanisation, complication & industrialisation of growing things is a self defeating aim when it comes to attempting to lower the environmental cost of agriculture. I also think that for the small scale grower, happiness and an enjoyment of this pastime are important considerations, not just productivity and profit.

This book:
the One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

sums up the opposite of the high-technology, high effort approach to growing things. A great read for anyone interested in permaculture, I certainly found his low impact 'slow farming' approach inspiring.

Masanobu Fukuoka in his high-yielding rice field, 

grown using a very low-tech approach inspired by carefully observing nature.

It explains one Japanese farmer's highly successful 65 year experiment with low-tech permaculture. 

These two approaches are seemingly at odds with each other, but maybe there's a place for both in our world? The appliance of science could well help reduce the environmental impact of traditional factory salad farming, and technological wizardry/growing gadgets certainly have their own appeal. As a gardener, rather than a commercial farmer, this range of choices enables us to weigh up our own environmental impact when making decisions about what we grow and how, as well as providing us with more options to play with and more fun!

An experimental indoor ecosystem in Dalston.

a project to inspire city dwellers to grow their own, using hydroponics and fish farming to create a green and productive indoor space:

http://farmlondon.weebly.com/farmshop.html