[Michaelangelica]

The growth of high-rise gardens: Let a thousand rooftops bloom
A dazzling horticultural revolution is breaking out over south-east Asia, as cities discover the many benefits that gardens can bring to the 21st-century urban environment.
. . .

A surgeon called Arthur van Langenberg has become the poet laureate and brave champion of urban gardening - and is on a mission to show that living in Hong Kong does not mean abandoning your connection to nature. He was surprised to discover there was no manual on how to garden in the city, so in 1983 he published Urban Gardening for Hong Kong.
In 2005 he published a follow-up called Urban Gardening: A Hong Kong Gardener's Journal. Dr van Langenberg's works look at some of the challenges of gardening in a high-rise environment.
Some avowed enemies include birds, dogs, cats and sceptical neighbours. His own simple beginnings commenced with "flower pots on window sills, wooden packing crates in verandahs, dragon urns at entrances, eventually graduating to a small garden"
. . .
Wilson Wong, 28, started the Green Culture website in September 2004, which provides information for local horticulturalists.
. . .
The website has helped Mr Wong to develop his own skills, allowing him to grow plants under fluorescent lights and even start to cultivate flowers, the first one being the flame violet (Episcia), as well as learn the basics of landscaping and about outdoor plants. The website forum has attracted more than 1,500 high-rise gardeners in Singapore, seeking advice and looking to track down seeds, swap plant cuttings and generally enjoy the community of other green-fingered enthusiasts. Late last year, he started a community garden near his home.

Last month Singapore unveiled Treelodge@Punggol, its first "green" housing estate. Plants growing on the walls keep the 712 apartments inside the seven 16-storey tower blocks cool and pleasant. On top is an eco-deck, a large garden with a jogging track and exercise stations.
. .
The government is keen to plant more trees before the Olympic Games in Beijing next year to help break down pollution and stop dust from the Gobi desert choking the dry city during the summer. The city plans to plant 510,000 trees in the Olympic Forest Park near the Olympic stadium..

The growth of high-rise gardens: Let a thousand rooftops bloom - Independent Online Edition > Asia
An inspiring article worth a read
the "west" is being left behind eating it's own dust.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

…See also http://www.aih.org.au/mburchett_transcript_040305.pdf for a transcript of a talk Prof Burchett gave to the Australian Institute of Horticulture

A very interesting and straightforward paper. Particularly, I think, the finding that a specific concentration of total volatile organic compounds – about 100 parts per billion – is necessary to “kick start the metabolic induction process for VOC removal”, indicating that the process is an interactive, dynamic one rather than a passive one, as one might expect from plants.

The obvious implication of the experiments Burchett, Wood, Orwell, Tarran, Torpy, and Alquezar’s paper describe is that common potted plants (the plants, not their soil) can effectively remove common VOCs – very useful, especially in buildings such as leased commercial offices, where the tenants have little control over VOC sources such as building materials.

The link in post one appears broken – I found Burchett, Wood, Orwell, Tarran, Torpy, and Alquezar’s paper at its last (10/4/2006) archive.org page.

[Michaelangelica]

Yes this was the only other paper I had seen other than the NASA research.
Have you seen anything else?

Unfortunately I find indoor plants boring. They rarely flower, you can't eat, smell or use them medicinally.

Whenever i try to buy wide spectrum lights to fit into my conventional fittings (in order to grow more interesting plants indoors) people look at me strangely and often wink. Bizarre!

I saw an amazing array of LED? lights at a NASA site. I don't know what they are using but I am too scared to ask in case the Fuzz knocks at the door
but
Indoor plants might just save our, or our progeny's life and/or health
EG

Air Pollution Linked to Genetic Mutations
by Ken Kostel
62: Air Pollution Linked to Genetic Mutations | Environment | DISCOVER Magazine

More than 10 years ago, Jim Quinn, a behavioral ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, determined that herring gulls nesting near steel mills around the Great Lakes displayed higher heritable mutation rates than their rural cousins. In May Quinn and one of his students, Chris Somers, were finally able to pin the blame on airborne particles just a few micrometers in diameter.

They found that offspring born from male mice exposed to industrial air pollution showed twice the mutation rate of those whose fathers breathed rural or filtered polluted air.
The most likely cause, Quinn says, are small particles that can carry known mutation-causing compounds, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, deep into the lungs. Because particulates as well as polycyclic hydrocarbons are found in cigarette smoke, it’s likely that smoking could cause similar mutations.

The changes that Quinn saw showed up in genomic segments once known as junk DNA because they do not appear to code for necessary life functions. However, many of these regions are believed to play a role in diseases such as type 1 diabetes and Huntington’s disease.
A separate study that examined 18 years of data on the prevalence of neurological diseases worldwide concluded that environmental factors may also contribute to disorders like Parkinson’s disease.

Quinn is now looking more closely at the link between air pollution and mutations handed down from females. Because males continually produce fresh sperm, the apparent mutagenic effect of air pollution starts to disappear when they begin breathing clean air again. But in females, eggs are produced while an individual is still a fetus, raising the possibility that exposure to airborne pollutants in utero could cause lasting damage.
“There are many reasons other than mutations to be concerned about air pollution,” Quinn says. “This just adds strength to the argument that we need to do something about it.”

I haven't seen any specific stuff on plants and PAHs

Implication: PAHs are classified as probable human carcinogens.

High Amounts of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Found in Dust from The World Trade Tower Disaster - DERT

The group of PAHs comprises hundreds of individual chemicals. In environmental compartments, usually only a few compounds are monitored because of practical and financial reasons

Evaluation of ambient air concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Germany from 1990 to 1998

[Ganoderma]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Unfortunately I find indoor plants boring. They rarely flower, you can't eat, smell or use them medicinally.

an indoor plant is just a plant that is indoor, whether its useful or not, its all up to you to use it. look into other species. i can think of a few edible herbs, fruits, "special", fragrant, flowering blah blah blah plants that will do fine indoors under various circumstances...many times you will not need to change your bulbs, cause they are so far away anyway it makes little difference. your sliding glass door, or window is a great source, and glass only filters X% of UV and certain colours out.


i always thought a cool experiment (non probable i know) would be to grow a long stretch, few KM, of a single specie of plant then another few km of another etc etc. have it say 1/2 km wide and have it somewhere where the wind consistently blew through the line in the same direction. have various ways of detecting various chemicals/gases on both sides and see which one is filtered more effectively. be a fun game if i you were rich. and i am sure there are much smaller methods like this being done.

[Michaelangelica]

the interesting plants seem to need more light

I have been reading up on it but everyone thinks your a hydroponic MJ grower
I found a fascinating article from NASA from 2001.
You would think the technology would have moved on even from then
I have tried to track down more info but with much luck

It would be nice to just plug in wide-spectrum lights to my standard old house fittings.

And while a human expedition outside Earth orbit still might be years away, the space farming efforts are ultimately aimed at developing artificial light sources that promise to help make future explorers self-sufficient at space colonies on the moon, Mars or beyond.

Leafy Green Astronauts

"We know for a long-duration mission, say going to Mars, that there will be too much launch mass involved in order to take everything you need," said Gregory Goins, a research scientist with Dynamac Corp., the life sciences contractor here at NASA's coastal Florida spaceport.

"You just can't put enough in the picnic basket to survive."

So Goins and other Space Age gardeners are testing two high-efficiency light sources that future space colonists might use not only to grow food but also to generate and purify oxygen and water -- key sustainers of human life.

The removal of carbon dioxide from a closed environment is another added benefit.

"Plants are the only way we know of where we can generate enough food, water and oxygen to support humans for such a long flight because we know re-supply is not an option. And so plants are a very appealing approach to use," Goins said.

"But in order to use plants, you must have an energy source, and that energy source is light," he added. "And the lights we use in our homes are not energy efficient enough to get the job done. So that's why we're developing these innovative technology lights."

"Standard light sources that we use in homes and in greenhouses and in growth chambers for controlled agriculture here on Earth are not efficient enough for space travel. Not only that, they don't last a very long time," Goins said.

"And in space, heat is like trash. You make it, and you've got to get rid of it, so we don't want heat. We want light."

In recent years, dramatic improvements in lighting technology have provided NASA and its support contractors with new means to develop low-power space-farming systems that will last the life of a building -- or a greenhouse on the surface of Mars.

Working in plant growth chambers the size of walk-in refrigerators, Goins and other plant physiologists here are experimenting with blue and red Light Emitting Diodes, or LEDs, to grow salad plants such as lettuce and radishes.

Similar to devices now used to manufacture advanced traffic lights, the LEDs enable researchers to eliminate other wavelengths found within normal white light, thus reducing the amount of energy required to power the plant growth lamps.

The LEDs generate less heat, and while leaves take on a black hue due to the lack of green light to reflect, the plants grow normally and taste the same as those raised in white light.

Another bonus: The LEDs can last the length of a round-trip mission to Mars, unlike incandescent or fluorescent bulbs, which require frequent replacement.


Research scientist Greg Goins of Dynamac Corp. demonstrates the sulfur microwave lamp that provides continuous broad spectrum white light to plants. It can be adjusted to be twice the brightness of the noon sun on earth. © 2001, Tim Shortt, FLORIDA TODAY.
A second long-lasting light source being tested here: Sulfur Microwave Lamps.
Twice as efficient as other high-intensity sources, the microwave lamps can generate as much light as the noonday sun. The light in fact is so bright that it can be funneled through pipes and then distributed over large areas, such as a hothouse on the Martian highlands.

Lettuce and LEDs: Shedding New Light On Space Farming

Has anyone heard of this technology?
Has it gone anywhere? The above article is over 6 years old.
Is it commercially available?
I would imagine the lights would use small amounts of power or could run on solar panels(?)

It would not only be good for my house but would help get a lot more plants into offices and also more interesting varieties into Commercial Buildings.
You may even be able to grow your own lunch!

Would it also solve our vitamin D deficiency problems?

[Ganoderma]

LED are really an interesting topic for plants...i looked into it a couple years back and got no where fast....but i think it has HIGＨ potential as it is not a hot light and doesnt waste as much. over here they are installing 100+ lumen/w lights on the streets....very cool! i think Japan has made it to 130 lumens/watt.

LED is the future, and even now it is fairly cheap (similar to the more expensive flouro units here).

as for indoor plants i still think that either plant rotation (that knocks off 9/10 people cause we are a lazy specie) and/or lighting. or more windows which will no doubt change heating/cooling costs....

i tried having plants inside here, and it looked great...but every pot will soon have an ants nest...back outside.

[Michaelangelica]

Today I had a browse though a new hardware superstore lighting section

They had led "Party Lights" which were infra red!?
The package warned they could cause burning (sunburn?)
About $15 each
They were 20W equivalent to 100W
They were black.

Would these be better for plants?
Cant, imagine what they would look like

[Ganoderma]

what i want to know about the nasa ones are thinks like temperature, efficiency output etc...then we can go shopping for similar products.

what sort of efficiency/temp etc were those party lights? anything with "party" on the box isn't too likely to go int much detail i wouldn't think.

i think we, taiwan, are the second largest LED maker in the world, second to Japan....and yet i cant dig up much more info than you....but i know japan is by far the leading edge on it...i have an article on it discussing they have gotten the most efficiency out of anyone (officially). they are a little more difficult cause they dont screw in....you gotta get them on a board, which is messed up ad a hassle....maybe they will make a board on a screw in fixture soon...wouldn't think that would be too hard....

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

I have been reading up on it but everyone thinks your a hydroponic MJ grower I found a fascinating article from NASA from 2001.
You would think the technology would have moved on even from then
I have tried to track down more info but with much luck

It would be nice to just plug in wide-spectrum lights to my standard old house fittings.

Has anyone heard of this technology?
Has it gone anywhere? The above article is over 6 years old.
Is it commercially available?
I would imagine the lights would use small amounts of power or could run on solar panels(?)

It would not only be good for my house but would help get a lot more plants into offices and also more interesting varieties into Commercial Buildings.
You may even be able to grow your own lunch!

Would it also solve our vitamin D deficiency problems?

Watcha growin' with all them lights!? Here is a source for a variety of LED lights that fit standard screw-socket fixtures, as well as some LED light-bars.
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx
Still rather expensive initially, but the power savings and long-life appears to offset initial cost over time.

[Michaelangelica]

The problem is every country has different systems
We work on a fairly lethal 240Volt system
So buying from the USA (110V?) is not an option

The "party" lights weren't that "partish" they looked like normal led lights. They claimed the equivalent of 100W from 20W electricity use.
What I need to know is that sort of light better for plants?