Agriculture at the Speed of Thought

Pluck it and plant it....that's my goal.....or semi-realistic agricultural fantasy.

I've always been an acorn snatcher and pine cone gatherer.....
What would it take to simply grow whatever seed pods I can forage from my whereabouts?

As a kid, we would gather the grapefruit seeds left over from breakfast and shove them in some dirt in a cup and place them reverently into the sunlight streaming in onto the window ledge and watch delightedly as they grew into real live plants.....nice and tall and then would topple and never quite become the grand indoor grapefruit trees we imagined would appear. But it did teach us what was possible. Grapefruits could potentially be grown from seeds, if only the right environment was created and nurtured.

But is it merely fantasy or more than possible? What would it take to grab any ole acorn or shake the seeds from a pine cone, bury it in some good dark earth , water it and set it under a grow light?
Would it be so hard to grow a proverbial forest indoors ? ")

It would be so thrilling to watch something that I plucked and planted easily sprout roots and a firm trunk and then be able to see it flourish into a hardy strong plant....or even a short tree?

Have you ever had any luck with adding rooting compounds to your indoor plant/indoor tree experiments?

Ever used a grow light?

My son used to play Farmville online for hours....and I dabbled with it upon occasion some years ago. What a delight to be able to grow things virtually overnight...and be rewarded with a speedy and visible harvest :)

Hey, with today's technology and "anything is possible" mentality, I believe that we are just on the cusp of massive agricultural breakthroughs. Vertical farms are just the start. I just pray that I will be able to play with some of these new hi tech "easy grow" food crops right here in my home....and voila...poof...an almost instant harvest ")

Peace,
Carla


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Vertical Farms

Perhaps you're all are getting used to my random thoughts on a huge variety of non-related ideas. That is kinda how I roll....
On that note, the idea I was mind rolling today was due to a documentary film I watched the other day about
modern food production in the USA entitled "Ingredients--the local food movement takes root".

Basically the film was lamenting about how prime agricultural land is not valued as much as it should be and how some folks believe that human beings should build "up" and live in very tall sky-scraping apartment buildings and that would ensure that the areas that have been labeled as prime "farm land" would be protected from suburban sprawl.

But I find it strange and somewhat discomforting to consider the idea that humans "should" curb their ambitions for lifestyle to adapt to apartment style living.
  Why should the corn stalks get better real estate than we do???

And so on that thought....I was hypohesizing about how it would make more senste to me to figure out how to farm "up" with vertical farms than to force human beings to cram their lives into apartment buildings for the next millenium

Sooo....what then is a vertical farm....
Well, in my imagination it would be a manner in which crops can be grown in layers using the same square footage that would under "traditional" farm methods would only grown one crop per season....but under this new "vertical farm" idea would be able to produce up to 10 crops or more using the same square footage.

So what would it look like? Well, it might involve sharing sunlight by using mirrors to reflect sunlight from the upper layers of crops to the lower layers. Or it would involve hanging types of steel grids in layers
in order to rotate each crop's exposure to the necessary amounts of sunlight and rain/irrigation.

Or....we could get old school and think of an idea that has already gained some traction in the last few years and that is the modern invention of "pocket gardens" such as those
feature by the company "Woolly Pockets"....check out some of their inspiring videos of their products at
http://canada.woollypocket.com/videos  .


So just to sum up my rambling....let's just say that we don't have to consider
traditional horizontal farming as the way of the future. We can be much more creative and inventive in figuring out how to maximize food production by growing crops vertically instead of taking up yet even more acreage. We can "grow up" not "out".
I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas.
Perhaps some of you have already tried to grow some veggies in a "Woolly Pocket" or other vertical growing apparatus.  Blurt some alphabets friends, ....this blog's for you.

Peacefully productive,
Carla.