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Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s (2015)
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago“ This website runs on a solar powered server located in Barcelona, and will go off-line during longer periods of bad weather. This page shows live data relating to power supply, power demand, and energy storage.” Neat! https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html
- winrid 7y agoIt's not a Pi either. Hardware link on this page. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
- dang 7y agoLots of threads, if anyone's curious for more. A few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22184052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22184052 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038619 11 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19407847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19407847 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075143
- gdubs 7y agoThanks, both — I had seen this shared in the past but finally clicked through. Pretty neat site, beyond even just the solar-powered website factor.
- animalnewbie 7y agoDoes anyone have a handy 20 minute guide to getting started with balcony farming for apartments? 1) sunlight requirements, different for plants 2) soil and replacement. 3) water, frequency and outlet. What are some other things to care about? Where do I get soil? Is it okay to dig from an existing farmland? I live quarter mile from a river. Should I collect from river bank?
- syntaxing 7y agoI've been researching about this since I moved to a more urban area. I think the best bet is hydroponics in terms of cost and logistics. I know some people have a hybrid indoor/outdoor solution using the IKEA stuff[1]. The biggest problem with soil is bugs. I've had problems even with miracle grow bags. The only way to prevent this is to let the soil dry up in the sun for a day or two but it's very difficult for a small apartment balcony. [1] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/hydrophonics-pp002/ https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/hydrophonics-pp002/
- jsilence 7y agoThe limited area you have at your disposal will not be able to actualy feed you. With intensive farming one would need around 200 - 500 m² to produce the calories required. So with balcony farming I'd recommend focussing on greens that make your meals better. Microgreens are easy to do and add a lot of flavor to your salads and meals. For the rest herbs and leafy greens are the way to go. Herbs as perennials can be grown in soil pots. The plants in pots you can get in the supermarket usually do not last long. They are produced for maximum harvest yield at market time and usually have a hard time when trying to keep them. Get some heirloom seeds or cuttings and make soil from coco coir and perlite. For leafy greens hydroponics can make sense. Jeb the gardener on YT is funny and informative. It is easier to automate hydroponics than soil culture. Chili Chump on YT has a good series on that. Consider running a bokashi indoor compost. The liquid collected from that is excellent organic fertilizer for the coco coir and the hydroponics. Start small. Scale up as you gain more experience. Microgreens have a 10 - 14 day culture, so starting with those will give you a fast turnover and quick iterations for improvement. Try to purchase seeds in bulk, otherwise cost will be prohibitive. Organic seeds for commercial growers come in larger quantities at a reasonable price. Try to source those. Most important of all: Have fun! edit: fixed typo.
- supermatt 7y agoMaybe you mean square feet instead of square metres? Less than 50 sq m (approx 500 sq ft) per person using conventional row gardening would be the norm - and with intensive gardening, that same plot could support a 4-person family.
- winrid 7y agoI'd love to live next to something like this. Could you imagine walking through that? It'd put Filoli to shame. :) Also, notice how the walls are not in a grid formation. Maybe I missed that when skimming through, but I imagine that's for a reason?
- pengaru 7y agoThe broad side needs to face the sun for optimal thermal gain, so they all end up ~parallel to one another, and ~perpendicular to the sun's rays.
- dang 7y agoA thread from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921901 A bit from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10788619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10788619
- zokier 7y agoIf the greenhouses are built wall-to-wall like pictured in the article, the thermal losses through the walls should be minimal? Only the outermost perimeter would need any insulation
- madaxe_again 7y agoThis ties to something I was thinking about yesterday, while wandering around neck deep in brambles with a brush-cutter. We live in a steep sided river valley in northern Portugal, and the place came with 5 Ha of woodland, on a SE facing slope. We’ve only lived here some six months, and we’ve gradually realised that almost every square inch of the hillside has been terraced - the process is to build hefty walls along the contours, and then let the hill slump into the gap, making a level growing area. The thought that occurred to me/thing I noticed was just how much IR the wall I was working next to was emitting after the sun went down - felt like a patio heater pointed towards my face from a few meters away. I then realised that the reason that they’re all so incredibly overgrown is likely the combination of thermal mass warming the surrounding area, water being forced to ground level at the foot of each wall, and accumulated mulch being trapped by each wall. I can’t count the number of times since starting here that I’ve marvelled at the simple ingenuity applied towards working with nature, from the terraces creating a better growing environment than the now-farmed planes above us, to the positioning and orientation of the mill - it’s situated at the one point along the bank that gets sunlight all day, all year, apart from two weeks in midwinter - which just happens to coincide with an outcrop that they co-opted into a weir. Anyway. I wonder to what extent the idea of a fruit wall stemmed from people seeing this sort of terracing, and deciding to do it without a hill.
- omilu 7y agoWhat are the terraces made of? Landscaping blocks? Wood? Rock? I have a nice south facing hill that i would like to terrace but don't know what to use for the walls of the terrace.
- tmilard 7y agoI live in Paris in I have been very aware of the old peach and raisin we used to have from neighborhood villages in East suburbs ( Montreuil is touching périphérique so just an arm away from Paris). It was the 19th century. wethear could be cold like minus 8 for a few days in winter so yes thick wall protected them also from extreme cold winter waves. But do not forget that,at that time, Parisian did not often eat peach or raisin. I am quite sceptical that indoor farming or other (re)new trendy technique could ever produce mass market fruit we are used to have.
- gdubs 7y agoIn-season, local fruit, is a million times better anyway. We’ve traded taste for shelf-appearance and the ability for fruit to travel from New Zealand to California. If people really want strawberries in January (and as a parent of young picky eaters, believe me I understand) they’ll just have to pay a carbon tax on it.
- thomasfl 7y agoThey have fruit walls in the George Washington museum at mont vernon in Virgina. At first I just thought is was for adorning the garden, but it is very practical too.
- aaron695 7y agoPart of our decadent past. You are basically stealing sunlight from x% of the land to somewhat improve the 1-x% The in-efficiencies of the past are quite beautiful.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoThink of it in another way: you divert light to the land that benefits from it the most.
- prennert 7y agoIn the linked article about passive glasshouses here https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-greenhouse.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-gr... It says: "Another issue with a solar powered greenhouse is the lack of a CO2-source. In modern greenhouses, operators aim to have a CO2-level at least three times the level outdoors to increase crop yield. This CO2 is produced as a byproduct of the fossil fuel based heating systems inside the greenhouses. However, when no fossil fuels are used, another source of CO2 has to be found. This is not only an issue for solar greenhouses. It’s also one of the main reasons why geothermal energy and electric heat pumps are not advancing in the modern glasshouse industry."
- elric 7y agoI'm sure I remember reading about some kind of solar setup that used part of the electricity generated to extract CO2 from the air and feed it into a greenhouse. Seems to be hard to google for, given that CO2 and greenhouse automagically translate to climate change, instead of actual greenhouses.
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- noahl 7y agoI wonder if anyone uses greenhouses as carbon capture for traditional power plants, rather than running their own mini-power plant mostly for the CO2 output.
- makomk 7y agoDunno, but if you're going to do that you pretty much might as well turn it into a CHP setup and use the waste heat to warm the greenhouses as well.
- ThePhysicist 7y agoIn Germany this is called "Spalierobst" and is still widely practiced. As far as I know certain fruits like apples are also produced on plantations with trees that are forced into specific shapes for easier harvesting.
- unnouinceput 7y agoWith today's pollution this is no longer healthy. Fruits will absorb pollutants and the acid rains will stick to their skin slowly penetrate as well. That's why we have currently trees that are very resilient against cities harsh conditions, like Linden Birch Beech and Poplar (Populus).
- jefflombardjr 7y agoWhere is this coming from? There are certainly things you can do to grow fruit in the city or at least reduce the effect pollutants have. I've seen so many figs that thrive in cities. i.e. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/9/868/4080176 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/9/868/4080176 Check out permaculture, it's entirely possible.
- unnouinceput 7y agoYour health, please consume fruits from trees in polluted cities. I prefer not to.
- oever 7y agoThe server seems to be holding up fine to all the traffic even though it is a solar powered Olimex A20. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech-website.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-low...
- jacquesm 7y agoPlenty of old manors will have these. Here is an example from NL (near Velsen-Zuid in Noord Holland): https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4618655,4.6455238,3a,48.9y,18.19h,83.12t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjOTSIotI3X2pxjpuGR0r5w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DjOTSIotI3X2pxjpuGR0r5w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D115.556885%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4618655,4.6455238,3a,48.9y,1... The fruit trees are long gone but the wall still stands.
- m-i-l 7y agoThis is mostly about the heat absorption properties of walls. Another property of walls, which they do allude to, is the protection from wind, which can be even more important in more hostile environments. When wind hits a wall (or obstacle) there is a period of space behind the wall where the shelter is actually higher than the wall. I think this is called the Law of the wall[0] in fluid dynamics. If you place your fruit trees the optimal distance from the wall you can provide maximum shelter, and if you place the 2nd tree an optimal distance from the 1st tree then the 1st can shelter the 2nd, and so on. My parents were able to use this theory to grow some of the only fruit trees on a windswept island notable for its almost complete lack of any sort of trees. So while a walled garden has something of a negative connotation in technology, in horticulture it seems much more positive. Interestingly, looking at the definition of walled garden on wikipedia "A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls for horticultural rather than security purposes"[1] (emphasis mine). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_wall [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden
- walshemj 7y agoInteresting in the UK I live in a house that is in the courtyard of a 16th/17th century farm house (John Bunyan Preached there) Until a few weeks ago there was an old pear tree trained against one wall - presumably to take advantage of the effect.
- lostlogin 7y agoGreat article. Query though, it says “Protruding roof tiles or wooden canopies often shielded the fruit trees from rain, hail and bird droppings“ I get most of that but are bird droppings really a problem?
- jamiek88 7y agoIn the city, yes. Think pigeon shit rather than sparrow droppings. Cleaning the fruit would be labour intensive and if not done lead to spoilage.
- jotm 7y agoFun. I've grown, uh, certain plants. Everyone said you should do it indoors, in a controlled environment. But with the availability of sun I have it makes little sense to waste so much energy on growing them indoors. Last year I had 6 plants grow perfectly happy outdoors, and these were from seeds of plants bred indoors for probably generations. The last plant was ready in freaking November. Some of them cross pollinated (yeah, if you buy "feminised", that's not a guarantee lol), and now I have a few hundred new seeds that I plan on growing outdoors come May. Should be fun. On that note, everyone around here has a small garden, mostly staple vegetables and fruits. But the soil is perfect for anything. And yet I see people growing stuff in controlled greenhouses even in the summer. Wasteful, if you ask me.