Greenhouse
YEAH, YEAH! USUALLY, it’s a bummer for us when it rains outside, because it puts us behind schedule, since we aren’t able to get any outdoor work done. But when it started to precipitate late night, none of us were very upset — just the opposite — because it meant that we could move forward on the indoor Living Wall project, which is very near and dear to our hearts. Today, Victor and I went to pick up the 120 individual plants, six score from 16 different varieties. And wouldn’t you know it, just when we’re loading up to transport the tropical plants across town, it starts to snow outside! Well, no matter; instead of laying them in the back of the flatbed truck, we packed the plants with us into the crowded cabin, and hightailed it back to Green Apple HQ. Big thanks to Musa, plant prophet, for all of the help picking and choosing the plants that are most appropriate. Stay tuned to see what we did with them…
WHILE RESEARCHING THE TECHNOLOGIES that enable us to build living walls, I took a look at conservatories, glass greenhouses that are used to grow fresh vegetables. I didn’t think anything of them until a researcher that we were consulting with from the Department of Agriculture at the University of Guelph pointed their importance out to me. Two hundred years ago, prior to the invention of the steamboat, intensive intercontinental trade and economies of scale, some very rich Northern Europeans had home-grown pineapples and other sun-hungry sweet fruits — even in the dead of winter! If it’s possible to grow these kinds of luxury items without industrial technology, then we needed to take a long hard look at how they managed to do it. Surely we too can grow exotic tropical foods in our own time, as well!
