#floating gardens

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Silkstone Barbie in Floating Gardens (1967)

[lmsintmedia]

Floating Urban Gardens: Harnessing Rainwater Collection for Sustainable Hydroponic Farming

In a rapidly urbanizing world, where space and freshwater resources are becoming increasingly scarce, innovative agricultural systems are redefining how we grow food. One of the most groundbreaking solutions transforming cityscapes is the Floating Urban Garden, powered by rainwater collection and hydroponic farming technology. This system is not only eco-friendly but also a sustainable solution…

Floating Urban Gardens: Harnessing Rainwater Collection for Sustainable Hydroponic Farming

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Floating Urban Gardens: Using Rainwater Collection for Hydroponic Farming

Turning City Spaces into Thriving Green Havens Urban spaces are getting tighter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grow our own fresh food. Floating urban gardens powered by rainwater collection and hydroponic farming are a game-changer. Imagine lush, green floating farms on rooftops, balconies, or even repurposed city waterways. Sounds futuristic? It’s happening already! Why Floating…

Floating Urban Gardens: Using Rainwater Collection for Hydroponic Farming

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Destiny | Floating Gardens — Venus

[probablyasocialecologist]

Outrage: the false promises of floating gardens

Despite bucolic utopian appearances, floating gardens are a charade, concealing a bleaker reality.

At the moment the inflated vision of these ‘gardens’, mired in maintenance fees, a narrative of control and their ‘One per cent’ residents represents more portfolio addition than ecological triumph. Floating garden residences smack of self-congratulation and privatised virtue. See how ethically we live! It’s hard to resist the image floating gardens have cultivated, though it remains unearned.

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Four Sting Farm When Cortez discovered the Aztec Empire in the year 1519, he found 200,000 people living on an island in the middle of a lake.  Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was the biggest and best-fed city in the world, and this fortress city was completely surrounded by water.

To feed their enormous population, the Aztecs ingeniously built chinampas, or floating gardens, to convert the marshy wetlands of Lake Texcoco into arable farmland.  These floating gardens were a masterpiece of engineering.

Each garden was 300 feet long by 30 feet wide.  To make a garden, workers weaved sticks together to form a giant raft, and then then piled mud from the bottom of the lake on top of the raft to create a layer of soil three feet thick.

The rectangular gardens were anchored to the lake by willow trees planted at the corners.  Each garden was lined on all sides by canals to allow canoes to pass with workers and materials.  This network of gardens extended for 22,000 acres across the surface of the lake.

The floating gardens were companion planted with corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and flowers, and these incredible gardens yielded seven crops per year…

September 14 2021

[gardeningwithpina]

Floating Gardens of Bandladesh: Dhap/ Baira

Farmers stack several compact layers of aquatic weeds like water hyacinth, duckweed or paddy stubs – the stubble of what remains after the rice grain has been harvested. The weeds are allowed to rot, and then mixed usually with cow dung and silt. Crop seeds are placed in small balls called tema that are made out of peat soil, and wrapped in coconut fibre.

After a week, when seedlings are about 15cm high, they are transplanted to the floating garden beds. Traditionally, seeds of leafy vegetables, like red amaranth, are sown directly on the floating beds. They [the floating beds] are then anchored with bamboo poles, so that they don’t drift away.

Both men and women work to make these organic floating beds, which last for around five to six months. Besides vegetables, rice seedlings can sometimes be grown. During the monsoon, farmers use small boats to navigate between these small islands.

Fish are grown in the water, too, which fertilizes the water for the plants, and prevents mosquitoes from breeding.

[gardeningwithpina]

The Intha people of Inle Lake (Myanmar) are known for their unique rowing style, and floating gardens.

These gardens are intentionally created to float on the water, rising and falling with the water level rather than flooding.

The beginning of their construction unclear; some say reeds are woven into mats as a base, while others claim existing plants growing in the lake are piled on. Maybe both methods are utilized!

Nonetheless, farmers gather piles of water hyacinth and seagrass to heap onto the base, and anchor them with bamboo poles that reach the bottom of the lake. It's unclear if mud from the bottom of the lake is piled on now, or just before sowing crop seeds.

The newly created island is allowed to grow from the weeds, so the roots and vegetation knit together. Eventually, these floating gardens become 1 metre thick mats. Once the base is thick enough, the aerial plant growth is cut down, dried, and burned to create ash as a fertilizer before sowing crop seeds.