Urban Gardening!!!

After many delays I have finally gotten on track with efforts in urban food production. Most "modern" cities aren't well known for being centers of food production. However, highly self-sufficient cities existed in numerous pre-industrial societies. The Ancient Mayans were well known for having garden cities where corn and beans were grown on temples and roof tops. The cities of pre-industrial China and Japan had a curious system where all "waste" in the form of effluence was collected and sold a valuable fertilizer to farmers within 20 miles of the city. Thus, cities with millions of people were literally eating their own recycled waste and eating well at that!

In this sense, modern cities such as NYC have been extremely wasteful. Hundreds of thousands of tons of organic biomass are thrown away each and every year to be buried in landfills. New York can just as easily recycle such valuable resources and convert them into food for it's citizen's to enjoy. To that end, my efforts have been two-pronged. On the one hand, most of my organic garbage in the forms of food waste/kitchen scraps and paper-based materials are being composted by an in-door Worm Condo. The condo produces valuable compost which are then fed to indoor(and hopefully outdoor) food bearing plants. Starting the planting process, I created a simple guild/poly-culture consisting of Oregano, Mint, and Arugula. 3 plants which supplies a food seasoning, a tea blend , and salad greens respectively. The 3 seedlings were transplanted firmly into a container which is roughly a foot in diameter and height. I filled the container with common potting soil and a small pinch of the freshly generated worm-compost.

And speaking of worms...these little critters have been getting quite comfortable in their new homes. They have been eating generous portions of kitchen scraps and paper wastes and producing large amounts of fine dark compost. It appears that some of them have decide to settle down and make babies. Worms are hermaphrodytes with very curious mating habits. 2 worms would begin the ritual by coiling with each other into a complex knot. Then more worms would join in until there is an enormous coil of a dozen or more worms. This worm orgy would writhe together for hours on end before splitting up. After the act, most of the worms would become pregnant with eggs since they have both fertilized and received fertilization from other worms.