The urban biosphere is thriving!!!!

My tiny urban herb pots are doing rather well of late. As closed systems, the limited ecologies of these pocket sized biospheres has been unfolding with astonishing speed. In one pot, the English variety thyme has grown significantly larger. It's thin green tendrils reach towards the "sunlight" of my CF lamps. At the sub-surface layer, the worms are making a fine living tilling the soil. Every time I water the pot, some worms inevitable get flooded out of their subterranean dens. To my surprise, a least one other form of animal life has developed a niche in this pot. A population of tiny gnats seems to have colonized the canopy tops of the thymes. Under the lamp light, one can see dozens of them hovering above the thyme "forest". These animals are truly small, a fruit-fly would easily be 20 times larger.

The other pot seems to have developed a more diverse ecology. For one thing, the Arugula is almost entirely gone, edged out by the faster growing Oregano plants. The mint plants seems to be holding out against the Oregano. One notices an interesting dynamic between these two plants which are now sharing the entire pot biosphere. The Oregano plants are comparatively fast growing, but needs higher amounts of light input to maintain itself. Whenever the Oregano leaves encounter shade, the leaves will turn yellow after awhile. And then a kind of fungus will begin growing on the leaves. Shortly thereafter the leaves would wither up and die. Interesting enough, the Mint leaves can endure partial shade without any problems. However the Mint grows much slower than the Oregano. So after a few weeks, the Oregano had expanded to partially surround the Mints. All along the Mint/Oregano border, one can see the browned edges of the Oregano leaves. Strangely enough, if one looks very closely at the fungus on the leaf edges, you sees tiny mite-like insects eating the fungus. At the ground layer, one can see tiny sow bugs going to and fro. The worms are of course doing well here, they seem to survive adequately anywhere.

More urban gardening and trendy conservation

My urban gardening system has been expanded this week. Now it includes an additional pot for growing English Thyme. The worms have multiplied significantly within their condo due to my generous garbage scraps. So to thin out the surplus population a bit, I have transplanted roughly 20 worms into each of the two herb pots. These little herb pots are in a sense like small islands or worlds unto themselves. Each pot has a relatively simple ecology with the herbs(as trees), the worms(as animals), and an assortment of soil borne micro-organisms. Aside from inputs of light and water, these tiny ecosystems are effectively cut off from the rest of the biosphere. The worm colonists themselves were fairly quick to scramble into the loamy potting soil. With such low numbers per pot, there simply isn't enough genetic diversity within the worm population to be self-sustaining. Thus new worms will have to brought in from the worm condo to periodically "freshen up" the gene pools of the Herb islands.

On another front, I have realized that a little known campaign in NYC to reduce the waste of plastic shopping bags have been wildly successful. Basically, a company took disposable plastic bags which were thrown away as garbage and recycled them into durable, re-usable "designer" shopping bags. These bags are then sold for between 1 to 2 dollars to trendy shoppers. I shelled out a dollar in hard currency and bought one of them. The bag was quite trendy-looking to be sure. But more importantly, they were very well made and held-up to heavy loads of groceries without any problems. Each designer tote has the carrying capacity of a large brown paper grocery bag. When in a hurry, an empty tote bag can be folded up into a pack smaller in area than a piece of printer paper folded in half. When shopping and looking around, I have noticed that there has been a recent surge in the usage of these bags. People apparently seem to be switching to trendy and re-usable shopping bags in very large numbers here in NYC. The average U.S consumer throws away about 30lbs of plastic bags per year, plastics, being a derivative product of oil, is a limited resource that should be re-used as much as possible. The trend of plastics conservation, if continued would be a very positive thing for the city and the country. To get your own "designer", re-usable grocery bag, go to EcoBags.

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.

The Worm Colonization

This weekend, I finally picked up the "worm condo" offered by the NYC Compost project. Basically, as part of the City's green effort, the municipal council made the decision to subsidize the distribution of home composting devices. After attending a 2 hour instructional session, a worm composting bin and a worm "founder" population can be had for $10 instead of the usual $50 price. The "condo" itself is a rather simple design. It's a large, rectangular bin made out of clear plastic, with a flat top lid and 4 aluminum-mesh, lateral, ventilation ports. An 8-inch deep layer of shredded newspapers are set down onto the bottom of the bin, this becomes the bed of the worm condo.

Under the light of 2 CF bulbs, I move the worms out of their tiny cardboard container along with a handful of their home soil. The little red worms were deposited onto the middle of the shredded newspaper bed. The worms began wriggling frantically under the light. They were palpably burrowing away from the light. They were heading in all directions into the shredded paper, creating a circular colonization wavefront of sorts. I can't help but associate this act of disembarking to a scene from some science fiction novel. A group of brave colonists, heading out of their generational spaceship onto an wholly alien planet, underneath the light of two suns.

My little colonists are of the red worm breed. The original stock of these creatures once inhabited the forest floors of central Europe. Their natural environment being a semi-damp carpet of dead leaves and twigs with scattered deposits of edible berries, nuts, and fungus. The ancestors of these worms developed the ability to metabolize both human-edible foods as well as cellulose. Due to the harsh demands of their Eurasian homeland, these hardy worms developed high disease resistance and quick breeding cycles.

In any case, after 3 hours, all of the worms have burrowed into the paper layer. The lights are then turned off, and the worm condo is deemed operational. The worm condo can compost a variety of wastes. Most biodegradable paper and cardboard scraps can be fed to the worms. Almost all food scraps can be deposited there as well. This particular condo has a capacity for processing 3 lbs of food wastes and another 5 lbs paper waste per week. Effectively, that is over 50% of my total weekly garbage output.



For all of you in NYC wanting to compost your own garbage, check out the NYC Compost Project

The first frost

The first hard frost of the year had hit PA this weekend. The complex ecosystem of the garden was shocked into disarray, as I anticipated. Over the course of Saturday night, countless ice crystals pierced the unprotected cellular walls of non-cold adapted plants. After the frost, those crystals thawed out and the life fluids of the plant cells literally drained out of their bodies. The beans, tomatoes and eggplants collapsed into messy heaps by Sunday. My father collected the still developing eggplants, last of the beans and a basket full of green tomatoes. The remains of the plants were fed to the compost heap.

At it's closing 24 lbs of tomatoes, 3 lbs of white eggplants, and 13 lbs of beans were harvested. The garden life cycle as completed itself.

Cold fish!!!

This is turning into a very strange year. The above normal temperatures have extended the fishing season by a month or more. 56 pan-fish were captured over the last 3 weeks, yielding 38 lbs of cleaned meat and another 15 lbs of offal for the compost piles.

Garden Update

The days have gotten much colder now.
Enclosed within the hemp mesh, my lovely little garden still produces!!!! The eggplants have finally grown up. The tomatoes and bean plants continue to bear fruit. 7 lbs of beans and 1 pound of tomatoes were harvested within the last 2 weeks.

Massive Fishing Haul!!!!

It has been a glorious weekend for the reel. Under cold weather conditions, 64 pan fish were harvested. As an aside, 1 small mouth bass(8 lbs) and 1 carp(14 lbs) were also captured. After cleaning, 54 lbs of fish meat were put into the freezer, another 20 lbs of fish guts were applied to the composting piles.

More food from Garden and Reel...

This past week has yielded a goodly amount of edibles. The beans are still holding strong, and so are the tomatoes. The onions are dying of the cold while the turnips and beets are thriving. All in all, 13 lbs of beans and 1 lb of tomatoes were harvested.













On the fishing front, my father went at it alone this weekend. The yield was not nearly as good as last week but still quite respectable. 15 large pan-fish were caught, after cleaning over 12 lbs of fish was sent to the freezer. The remaining offal was of course fed to the compost bin.

The good garden continues to yield

All of the drying corn stalks have toppled with the autumn winds. The intricate bean vines of that bed have collapsed with the stalks. But out of the old and dying, emerges the new. The humble eggplant which has done not so well this year has rebounded with a vengeance, it has doubled in size over the last week. The onions are rapidly fading away, I suspect that one more cutting is all that it'll yield this year. The turnips will provide one more harvest. I am going to leave 1 bed planted with beets and another with the remaining turnips to overwinter. These two crops will yield a fine early spring harvest. The other two beds will be covered with dried bean vines and clover. The beans and tomatoes continue to yield, but they are both fading fast now. In a month, both shall be gone, alas, death is an intricate part of life's tapestry.

In any case, 15 lbs of beans, and 4 lbs of tomatoes were harvested this weekend.

Fishing for the holidays!

Of Friday, I headed home to see the parents for the annual Mid-Autumn festival. This ancient, far eastern holiday is celebrated with family gatherings and massive consumption of moon-cakes. Eaten at the conclusion of the traditional rice/wheat harvest, the circular moon-cakes is supposed to represent the eternal unity of family and the cyclical nature of existence, or so I have been told.

In any case, by Saturday afternoon, much eating had commenced and we were all a bit stuffed. So my dad and I decided to go fishing and catch up on old times. We drove to a nearby reservoir and began casting the lines from above a bridge. The fishing proved to be extremely good, which was in fact very odd for this time of the year. We quickly got into the zone and were catching fish left and right, consistently. Pretty soon most of the other fishermen on the bridge started glancing over periodically, since no one, except for one old man caught with the same rapidity.

Fishing is an art that takes quite a long time to master. When fishing under optimal conditions, the skilled fishermen manages to catch fish almost continuously, as if by magic. To beginners and novices, it does appear to be a mystical feat, fish of every type seems to magically appear out of the waters. I was like that once, many years ago. But after fishing every spring/summer/fall for 12 years, one manages to learn a few things.

Firstly, the seasoned hobby fishermen CANNOT fish like a pro everywhere, but only within his specific region. Secondly, during a single fishing day, the tactics of the skilled fisherman would change significantly with fluctuations in temperature,humidity,daylight and water level. Some fish species are optimized to feed during dusk, others during full sunlight, yet others during cloudy weather to evade birds. Darker bait such as earth worms or meal worms presents a sharp contrasting target to the daylight prowling fish with good eyes. Lightly colored bait(wax worms) presents great contrast to bottom feeding or dusk prowling fish with good eyes. Strongly scented bait(dough balls, fermented corn, blood worms) attracts the fish without highly developed vision. Cold water can dampen the enthusiasm of most fish, but other fish enter their mating season during a sudden water temperature drop and thus become more active.

Fishing efficiently with the reel requires a very keen understanding of the ecological niche and basic life cycles of numerous fish species. The man who regularly catches fish like it's magic fundamentally knows WHAT kind of fish to catch WHEN and under WHICH set environmental conditions. With that said we did very well today, in 3 hours we caught:

Saugers => 3
White Bass Hybrid => 2
Sunfish => 9
White Crappies => 16
Black Crappies => 14
White Perch => 5
Yellow Perch => 3
Rock Bass => 7
Pumpkin Seed => 6
Bluegill => 13

In totality, we caught 78 fish of all kinds, after cleaning, we yielded a staggering 42 lbs of fish meat. There were around 10lbs of fish guts and scales which were buried deep within the composting bins. Next year, the garden beds will be even richer, and the cycle is renewed once again!

Garden Update

This week's yield is quite impressive. 22 lbs of beans, 7 lbs of tomatoes, and 2 lbs of Turnips.

Massive Numbers of Fish!!!!

Went fishing with my father today. I still remember the good old days when father and son went fishing every weekend during the summer. Those days are gone with my childhood, so such outings that do manage to happen are rare and very precious to me. In anycase, We managed to catch 39 fish from 7 different species: black crappie, sunfish, pumpkinseed, blue gill, white perch, yellow perch, and northern crappie. over 23 lbs of fish were caught. After cleaning them, the fish guts were buried within the cold compost mounds.

Lots more veggies!!!

The garden has yielded yet more food this fine weekend. I have also found a particularly interesting pest attacking the now flourishing bean plants. There are these tiny grub-like hairy larvaes eating away at the leaves. They seem to lay eggs under leaves sometimes. But on one occassion, I saw one of them "give-birth" to a tiny larva. I wonder if this kind of pest can clone themselves? In any case, I killed hundreds of them, and the spiders probably took more.

I harvested the largest turnip in my garden. Dissapointingly, the turnip itself was tiny and woody. The greens are good to eat so I opted to keep it. In anycase, I harvested 11 lbs of pole beans, 2 lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of turnip greens.

Fishing time!!!

I'm spending Labor Day weekend at home in PA. The city was feeling too crowded for comfort. In any case, I took the opportunity to go fishing this afternoon. The water was rather chilly but the catch wasn't too bad at all. 12 blue gills and 1 perch rounds up 7 lbs of fish. The maturity of the fish could be a bit better. I usually try to specialize in trying to capture "panfish", 8 species of small fish which grow to be about the size of an outstretched palm.

Garden Update

As prelude to a land finding trip, I rode home to PA Friday on the train. It has been a good week at the happy organic garden. The entire structure of the beds have changed with the season as certain key species undergo sharp population changes. The corn stalks, now that the ears are removed, are showing their age and sagging heavily. Soon the spent corn plants will join their ancestors in the compost bins. Likewise the eggplants are fading fast, as their fruits have been devoured by squirrels. With the Japanese beetle threat gone, the pole beans have expanded like weeds. All of the corn stalks, all of the bamboo supports, and most of my neighbor's fence is now covered with bean vines. They have grown so much that now there seems to be a competition between the beans and the tomato plants for valuable sunlight. A few days of cool weather have greatly boosted the growth of the turnips, a harvest will be possible within 2 weeks. The animal ecology of the garden has also changed drastically. In the bean vine dominated habitat, there seems to be hundreds of small spiders, all of them furiously spinning webs to capture thousands and thousands of tiny winged leaf-hoppers. In the turnip areas, the struggle now appears to be between green worms and ants. The green worms are taking advantage of the rich turnip greens, while the ants seem to be busy hunting the green worms.


The produce has been abundant this week. All in all, 14 lbs of pole beans, 10 lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of green onions have been harvested.

The corn harvest!!!!

My square meter corn patch has finally ripened. This weekend I'm home in PA harvesting the fine corn. After some inspection it appears that heirloom corn looks a bit different from regular genetically modified corn. For one thing, no two ears are of the same size. Upon closer inspection it looks like as if even individual kernels on the same ear are differently sized. As I worked in the garden picking beans and corn, I noticed the appearance of a familiar and much detested character. There is this squirrel in my back yard, a scruffy looking thing. He's slender, gray, and has an unusually thin tail. I had already lost several beefsteaks and some corn to this tree rat, and now he's back for more. So I decided to tip toe back to the garage, where I strung up my long bow, and tip-toed back ready for action.

And there he was, sinking his teeth into a small ripening tomato. I tried to get as close as possible but it wasn't long before he saw me. So there I was, being stared at by the critter. So I promptly notched a blunt arrow that I made, drew, took aim, loosed....and MISSED!!!! The squirrel scurried up my neighbor's fence, hopped a few meters and disappeared up a tree. My arrow had lodged itself between the wooden planks of my neighbor's fence. There has to be a better way to take out this villein. In any case, about 20lbs of corn was harvested. 3 ears had suffered some squirrel damage but not too severe. The yield for corn per unit of cultivated area seems to be substantially lower than the yield for potatoes.

Aside from the corn, the beans and tomatoes continued to yield. I picked up 2 tomatos(1 lb) and 4 lbs of pole beans. The onions should be ready for another cutting next week it seems.