Hail to the Dinosaurs!
On Facebook the other day, I shared a
link about a former professional
basketball player named Will Allen,
who now works as an urban gardener.
It was pretty popular, so for those
who missed it, let me tell you a bit
about Will Allen and his inner city
farming operation.
He has an incredible gardening system
where he uses food scraps, plant stalks,
coffee grounds, etc. to create an amazing
nutrient dense compost to grow vegetables.
He has worm bins, and the worms eat the
food scraps, and the worm castings are
added to the compost. It's a super
supplement for the soil.
He also has indoor fish tanks and growing
tanks for hydroponic vegetables (i.e.,
vegetables grown in water rather than in
the dirt).
He does it inside unheated greenhouses,
and he grows food all year round. And he
does it in inner city neighborhoods in
Milwaukee and in Chicago. The Chicago
"farm" is built right on top of an old
basketball court!
He practices container gardening, and
vertical gardening, and he does everything
possible to maximize the yield from every
square foot of land.
And get this -- he has produced one million
pounds of food on three acres of land in one
year.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.growingpower.org/
There are plenty of reasons why this is a
great thing to be doing. It creates local
jobs, it helps communities develop food
independence and food security, it helps
enormously with carbon capture (run the
numbers on three acres of ugly blacktop
compared to three acres of garden), and
it helps people get plenty of super
nutritious and affordable locally
grown food.
And since a healthy diet does so much to
put the smackdown on obesity, diabetes,
heart attacks, etc., a massive effort
to grow plenty of fresh, healthy, and
nutritious food in every neighborhood
in the country -- or indeed, in the
entire world -- might just be one of
the very best public health initiatives
ever undertaken.
The interesting thing is, this isn't all
that new. There was a time when virtually
all large cities had extensive urban
gardens.
In Paris, for example, there were Market
Gardens that used intensive gardening
methods to grow enough food to provide
fresh vegetables to everyone in the city,
and to have enough left over to export
to England!
All of this was done with what we would
now call organic farming methods. They
collected horse manure from the city
streets and stables, and mixed it with
stable straw, and composed the mixture.
It was an incredible growing medium.
And think about this -- at the same time
that the Market Gardens of Paris provided
an enormous amount of super nutritious
fresh produce for every citizen of the
city, some of the strongest men in the
world lived there -- and ate plenty of
those market garden veggies.
Coincidence?
I don't think so!
In any case, Dino Headquarters gives Will
Allen a big tip of the hat for a job well
done. One million pounds of food on three
acres is pretty darn impressive.
As always, thanks for reading and have a
great day. If you train today, make it a
good one!
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. Eating right and training right is a
sure-fire key to success -- and I cover
the right kind of training in detail in
all of my books and courses. You can find
them right here at Dino Headquarters:
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
P.S. 2. Thought for the Day: "Training is
hard work, but without adequate nutrition
it becomes impossible work." -- Brooks Kubik
