VertiGro - A New Age Gardening Approach

Imagine a world where the produce you eat comes from a local grower rather than a distributor clear on the other side of the country, or worse, the world.

That was once the case. But because we've allowed for concrete jungles to sprout, we've eliminated much of the land area we once used for farming. (Locally, Irish Acres on SR 441).

Imagine the repercussions this choice has caused: increase in cost of produce due to distribution charges, gasoline, farmers and handlers pay, pesticides, taxes, the list goes on.

And had you asked me two days ago whether I thought we could reverse this type of situation, I would have said it was very likely impossible. I would have been wrong.

In a conversation with my brother last night, I learned about a revolutionary new way to approach farming. It's called VertiGro, and it's just what it sounds like.

Farmers who think outside of the box have recently discovered that with an eighth of an acre (that's literally a fraction of ONE acre) of land*, they have successfully grown as many as 2500 heads of lettuce. 

I put the asterisk on 'land' because I need to define this more clearly. The land I speak of is nothing more than an area of surface in which one can build on.

So you own a row house in Baltimore? You can VertiGro on your roof. You live in an apartment building in New York? Get some of the other tenants to go halfsies and build a green room on the roof to VertiGro and supply fresh produce to the whole building.

There will be more written on this in the coming days. My brother has a friend who has a VertiGro garden started not far from where I work. I'm hoping to go by there today when I leave here so I can see this stuff first hand.

Help End Hunger With Free Rice.

I think using Free Rice so often has subconsciously beefed up my vocabulary.

A few months back the word 'emergent' rolled from my mouth as if it had been a long time resident of my tongue. But the very second I said it, my head cocked and I asked myself "where did that word come from?"

Still, I never looked it up. It seemed logical to me that if something can be an emergency than things too can be emergent. But the more I used it, the more I realized no one knowingly knows that word. People I know and consider to be highly intelligent were caught off guard by my use of 'emergent' in conversation. Then they'd laugh, ask me where I heard it, and call me "silly" or "cute" for making up my own words.

Alas! The great internet dictionary tells me that it is a word and, greater than that, I have been using it correctly. Since many of my smartest friends had never heard the word before, I have determined that I must have Free Rice to thank for this new addition to my vocabulary. Back to the game! Time to learn new words!

And by the way, if you haven't played Free Rice before, I highly recommend it. It's fun, brain-stimulating, and for each answer you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice through the World Food Programme in an effort to help end hunger. It's a simple and beautiful model for helping from home, work, or on-the-go.