EXHIBITION // PROJECTS // EVENTS // ABOUT CONCEPT PLUS //SUPPORT // INFORMATION
A project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) , Vertical Gardens is an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof. It features over 20 projects, both imaginary and real, by artists and architects that envision solutions for building greener urban environments. The past decade has seen a greater emergence of green roofs and vertical gardens created by artists, designers, architects and urban gardeners to combat the lack of flora in the city. Buildings around the world — from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, to the Queens Botanical Garden in New York — have embraced green walls or roofs for all their economical, environmental, and aesthetic values. Vertical farms and gardens are also being envisioned as new ways to feed local and organic foods to city dwellers. Largely based on the principles of hydroponics, vertical gardens would also be mostly self-sustaining because they would capture large amounts of natural sunlight and water, and could use wind as an energy source. In a country where cities are suffocated by high rises, cement and industrial materials, where can green space exist? As this exhibition demonstrates, one possible answer is “up.”These and other urban parks and gardens provide areas for socialization and recreation; a location for a city farm or community land-trust; an outlet through which hundreds of people can learn about farming and agriculture; and the addition of much needed plant and animal life to the otherwise concrete jungle.
FEATURING PROJECTS BY:
Abruzzo Bodziak Architects; ATOPIA; Bob Bingham and Claire Hoch; Patrick Blanc; Bohn & Viljoen Architects; Dickson Despommier; Evo Design with Mica Gross; Todd Haiman; Haus-Rucker-Inc.; Edmundo Ortega and Dianne Rohrer; Claude Boullevraye de Passillé; Oda Projesi; Rael San Fratello Architects (Virginia San Fratello and Ronald Rael); Naomi Reis; Roomservices (Evren Uzer and Otto Von Busch); SITE (Denise MC Lee, Sara Stracey and James Wines)
Also featuring photographic documentation of existing buildings containing vertical farms, gardens or green roofs, including those by Hundertwasser; Renzo Piano with Chong Partners and Stantec; Emilio Ambasz & Associates; Humpert Wolnitzek; Chad Oppenheim Architecture and Design; Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, Downs/Archambault & Partners, LMN Architects; Scandinavian Green Roof Institute; Conservation Design Forum of Chicago and Atelier Dreieitl of Germany; Enrique Browne and Borja Huidobro with Ricardo Judson and Rodrigo Iturriaga; and others.
CURATORS
Papo Colo, Jeanette Ingberman, Herb Tam and Lauren Rosati
PUBLIC EVENTS
2day/earthday -A FREE two-day event celebrating Earth Day 2009.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Should Vertical Be Your Thing...
VERTICAL GARDENS
What To Do With Extra Plants or Rumble in the Tree Pits
What to do with these spreading plants. I started putting them in the new tree pits across the street. There is a dirt strip there full of grasses and amaranth and other unidentified weeds. So I put my spreaders in the new tree pits and we'll see what wins out.
Hopefully not the dog walkers. While planting, I found three plastic bags filled with dog shit and tied up -left in the tree pit. Why go through all the trouble of bagging your dog's business and then throw it on the sidewalk?
Anyhow, I don't water these guys in the garden, so my hope is they'll take root over there and spread.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Whats Up in the Garden
The daffodils (aka narcissus, jonquils, etc.) I planted when I first began the front garden. I've not tended to the daffs well, often I've accidently chopped them up when moving perennials. There was a moment when I schooled myself in all the different "divisions" of daffodils. But alas, I don't even remember what kind I have any more. On the left I feel pretty confident is a Double or Division 4, with pale apricot center and white outer petals. On the right, the pendant and fuschia-like form makes me think its a Division 5, Triandus.
The greens are coming up. I can thank the rain for helping out. I think plants prefer rain.
As for the broccoli, its coming along. The planter is nothing to look at, but I generally don't grow food with aesthetics in mind. You don't see them here, but the peas are doing okay as well, although they haven't grown as fast as the did in the warmth of the house. I wonder about inoculation, whether the seeds were innoculated, whether its a commercial scheme to get us to worry into buying more product, or whether there really is enough of the right organisms in my compost to fix the nitrogen for the peas. Either way I'm going with last night's brief thunderstorm as helping out in the matter.
My Soil Test
Today I sent in my garden soil to be tested at the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center at Brooklyn College.
You can get these boxes (and envelopes) for free from the post office. Don't forget to type up a sheet with the tests you want completed and a check. Tests I'm getting done: Standard Nutrient and Toxic Metals Analysis, Soluble Salts, Organic Matter Content, and for the side garden only -Soil Texture Analysis. This last test I could do well on my own with a jar of water and soil added, but I thought I should try out all the tests ESAC offers.
If you want your soil tested, click on the link SOIL TESTING SERVICE at right.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Perennial Division How-To Updated With Photos
Click on the HOW-TO PERENNIAL DIVISION on the right.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Green Roofs and Other Dreams
After reading on the subway today a rather pessimistic article in the New Yorker "Talk of the Town" about the state of environmental affairs in the well-heeled, industrialized world in a good and bad economy and watching the NOVA special on the dissapearing ice caps and glaciers last night, I see how bad we need the dreamers of the world. A little post on green roof possibilities in Green Perspectives perked me up as I imagined these spaces as sanctuary for birds and other wildlife.
Actually Gardened Yesterday
I actually did some real gardening yesterday. I felt I should go to the studio before work, but as I stood outside trying to remember what plant was where in my overcrowded space, I took out the shovel and started moving things around. I divided a fat aster, I moved the maximillion sunflowers to the farthest corner near the stoop. I moved the boltonia closer to that corner as well. I moved the geranium "johnson's blue" to the front of the bed along with the heuchera which was smothered by the sheffield pink mums (boy they spread). I pulled out some yarrow 'cause that is always growing fat. I had extra of this and the aster, so I had to find a place to put them. I placed some yarrow in a tree pit of one of our new trees across the street. We'll see how it fares. I moved extra sunflower to the far end of the side garden, and I planted the aster and more yarrow in between some long unmoved telephone poles. It felt good to dig. And I knew there'd be some rain on the way (today, hopefully). Only sadness is that my cold-frame is blocking the sun of some bulbs popping up. The daffs are about ready to bloom.
Neighborhood Resistance Tactics
Our neighbors regularly lay active mines throughout the neighborhood. Its part of our defense system. If you step on one, you'll know it immediately, boom -you've paid the ultimate price.
That's right, it's fresh and it's ripe.
Our neighbors plant mines along the "planting" strips next to your parked car.
And this? This is what we call the tank-buster. Hope you got armor.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Should They or Shouldn't They
Veronica is blooming well and maybe I'm the only fool who actually invited her to the party. I found Persian Veronica (Speedwell) in an athletic field in Red Hook, growing at an bland time of the year and picked her up and brought her home. Weeds only in name.
And look at this, yep -you know what it is! Its the "doesn't over-winter around here" Salvia Elegans. And this winter was pretty cold compared to the last several. We didn't have that warm January we've had so frequently. I think the reason it survived, beyond all the micro-climate stuff provided by my building, was the fact that I planted it last spring, giving it much time to sink deep roots. My previous attempt was autumn planted and failed.
NYC Resources
This list of resources used to be listed in the side bar. It now resides here.
- TOO MANY CATS? (help the feral cats, humanely)
- NYC GREENTHUMB (city gardening, community gardens)
- GROWNYC (Greenmarket, recycling, city gardening)
- CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION (agriculture, garden help)
- UofGA FERTILIZER CALCULATOR (how much fertilizer should I use)
- NY NATURAL HERITAGE PROGRAM (guide to NY animal and plants communities)
- CONNECTICUT BOTANICAL SOCIETY (excellent what's this plant guide)
- RODALE INSTITUTE (organic gardening and farming)
- FOUNDATION FOR LANDSCAPE STUDIES (landscape and us)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Why Volcanoes Matter to Gardeners
The year without a summer is the famous summerless year. I am familiar with it because of art historical speculation that J.M.W. Turner's paintings were influenced by the unusually colorful sunsets of that year. But why should a gardener care if we don't live 2 thousand miles from the nearest volcano?
The volcano at Redoubt Mt. in Alaska is blowing its top these days, and it will have little affect on our climate say the experts, but tropical volcanoes have much greater consequences. Check out this brief, but scientific post by Jeff Masters, meteorologist.
We're talking snow storms in June and ice floes in August here. A far away volcano could do in your tomatoes!
The volcano at Redoubt Mt. in Alaska is blowing its top these days, and it will have little affect on our climate say the experts, but tropical volcanoes have much greater consequences. Check out this brief, but scientific post by Jeff Masters, meteorologist.
We're talking snow storms in June and ice floes in August here. A far away volcano could do in your tomatoes!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
99.44 Picturesque or Notes On Michael Pollan's "Against Nativism"
Below is an excerpt from the 1994 NY Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan on the subject of the native landscape movement. I came across it in a comment by Susan Harris of Garden Rant under the post Pollan Takes On The Great American Lawn. Although Pollan's article goes on to describe other complications (xenophobia) of the nativist movement, he also touches on some aesthetic themes I've been thinking about for some time, and my focus here is on these.
The quote:
"Environmental pretensions aside, the esthetic of the natural garden would appear to represent an extreme version of the 18th-century picturesque-gardening style, which was the first to maintain that gardens should closely resemble "natural landscapes." It turned out, though, that the natural landscape the picturesque designers strove to emulate was one they found not in nature but in the 17th-century landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Although today's neopicturesque garden designers claim to be emulating actual natural habitats, they too seem to rely on an artistic model. Instead of landscape painting, however, these gardens aspire to the condition of a contemporary nature photograph, an Eliot Porter, say, or an Ansel Adams. Whenever I visit a natural garden I can't help thinking I've walked into the pages of a Sierra Club calendar."
The first "natural picturesque" landscape design that comes to this Brooklyner's mind after reading the above quote is Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. When I look at Prospect Park, designed by Olmsted/Vaux, I see emulation of the picturesque, in this case its the picturesque, trancedentalist realism of the Hudson River School style, an American offshoot of the European, largely English, picturesque. Vaux was English, Olmsted had studied in Europe, both well known to Andrew Jackson Downing, the son of a horticulturalist and progenitor of the Hudson Valley's Romantic-Picturesque architectural style out of Newburgh, NY. All three would have been well acquainted with the work of the Hudson River landscape painters. Inherent in the work of all these 19th century landscape practitioners are romantic elements that I cannot ferret out of new native landscape design.
Fallkill Falls, Prospect Park
Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand, 1849
Maybe today's natural gardens are not at all "neopicturesque" as tagged by Pollan, but instead are neo-realist. It was the Realist painters of the 19th century that imagined what was actually there, as opposed to artful conventions and idyllic representation. Of course, Realism was not at all real or virtuous, yet the pretense disturbed many taste-makers, artists, and critics. It was also no coincidence that this realist painting rose alongside, and was influenced by, the invention of photography.
Asher B. Durand's Interior of a Wood, 1850
In the words of Kenneth Clarke, landscape painting "was the chief artistic creation of the 19th century," but the burgeoning process and product of photography (see William Henry Jackson) began a process that eventually pushed painting away from verisimilitude. By the time we see the work of the photographer Ansel Adams, 1902-1984, we see that 19th century romantic landscape eulogized in the stone monuments of the American West. Eliot Porter, 1901–1990, strikes me somewhat like J.J. Audubon with a camera -his interest was almost taxonomical. Pollan is correct to see in Porter's photographs a dialogue with our current conception of landscape "naturalism" because taxonomy is necessarily put into the service of ecology. What Pollan rejects is the photographic conventions represented by the work of Porter or Adams as a model for designing parks and gardens. More precisely, he rejects the notion that our relation to nature as represented by gardens should be mediated by pictures at all. The garden, itself, is the mediating space.
Ansel Adams' Gates of the Valley, 1938
Book cover of Eliot Porter, 1987
Photography supplanted painting as the choice medium of landscape imagery in the 20th century, but for many photographers the beauty of natural scenery became all too common and suspect -as did the photograph as a means of representing truth. New themes in landscape photography rose out of this: human changes to the landscape, machines in the garden, the overwhelming tide of waste and spoil, beauty and the brown field, and the mundane. Photographers who come to mind are Robert Adams (b. 1937) and New Topographics, Mark Klett (b. 1942) and the Rephotographic Project, Robert Glenn Ketchum (b. 1947), Richard Misrach (b. 1949), Edward Burtynsky (b. 1955), and many others.
If designing "natural" landscapes has been shaped by 20th century photography, then what of the work of these mid-late century photographers? They turn the American wilderness and Old World pastoral conventions on its head, but where does that leave landscape architects and garden designers? After all, they need to create landscapes that attempt resolve the crisis highlighted in the work of these photographers without resorting to old forms.
For many, the ecological restoration landscape -a landscape garden version of the photographic "realism" alluded to in Pollan's essay, has been the answer. Ecological parks and gardens, landscapes of verisimilitude, are a reaction to the conception of a spoiled landscape. I am not as sour on this movement as Michael Pollan may be (or was in 1994). It offers a new motivation for developing new parks in and around our cities. If our conception of urban parks was only 19th century picturesque strolling (Central Park) or 20th century athletic leisure (countless athletic fields, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park), we would find it hard to develop new parks within the limits of available urban land. Ecological-restoration offers motivation for the building of new parks in niches previously undesirable for park development.
There are fifty-one Forever Wild parks throughout New York City. Although NYC Parks chooses to call these "preserves," most are anything but that. These parks are created or "restored" out of spoiled but not yet "developed" regions in each borough. A majority of these parks are on the waterfront, an outgrowth of the decline in commercial shoreline activity, the public enjoyment of water, and a concern for sea level rise and storm surge attenuation. Consider the possibility that a park can function for the public outside of the context of individual or group pleasure, as a protective formation for the public good that also happens to provide habitat for migrating species, strolling, and ecological awareness.
Yet, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking we're about to restore nature to a "pure" state in any park. Restoration gardens and parks are created out of a set of intellectual and financial limitations and should only be taken on with humility. Added to the garden is an understanding of our role in changing ecosystems and an awareness of the value of the system to our own needs, beyond accepted forms of aesthetic pleasure.
What Is It?
I can name most street trees in NYC, but this one is allusive. It was planted late last fall on my block. Lower down the trunk, the sap-colored bark is peeling. Its not a young Plane, is it? Some "Million Trees" trees are labeled, the trees we got are not and I think came from Parks.
Anybody know?
What I've Needed All Along
GARDEN HISTORY GIRL
a couple samples:
The fantasmic topiary of Pearl Fryar
Wang Tingna's Gardens of the Hall Encircled by Jade
SOME LANDSCAPES
a couple samples:
View of Delft
The West Lake of Hangzhou
Garden History Girl also has another site called GOOD CHURCH DESIGN.
Both her blogs are delightfully filled with so much good stuff.
Angling the Pews
It feels better just looking at the angled pews, and so much easier to enter and exit.
Better Parking
I never really thought about this usage, church P-lots are used less than 30 hours a week at max capacity. Makes for a perfect grass paver installation.
I've added these to my blog follow list.
Macy's Flower Show or Not
I saw an advertisement for the Macy's Flower Show at Herald Square. The dates are April 5th through April 19th. I totally forgot about this event, and cannot really remember its depth or breadth. On Macy's flowershow website, however, the information is for last year's show. No mention at all of their current "Dream in Color."
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Should Be Called Spring Joy
Yesterday evening, as I covered my peas because of threatening frost (clear night), a neighbor from down the block stopped and gave me my first ever NYC gardener to gardener "poo-poo." I was poo-pooed for putting my peas in as early as I did. I enjoyed it, actually -the gardener to gardener exchange, the confidence, the wink.
She said she was surprised at how early I had put my peas in. I said, well they were getting large in the cold frame and you know they'll be fine, but better safe than sorry after all, putting on the plastic. She said, yeah, they'll be fine with the plastic and, well it'll look good as always. Then mentioned her tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers will be hanging upside down this year to keep them from the chickens. I said, keep me posted on that!
I don't think there's another house quite like hers in all of Brooklyn. The house is set back all the way, so that its 90% front yard. The wood-framed house is maybe 500 square feet. Its cute as hell with its traditional roof line and nice garden. And chickens!
How To Make an $8 Loaf of Bread or Alice Waters' March on Washington
It is time those in the media stop calling a vegetable garden a "Victory garden." That's it really. Why are they recalling WWII wartime vegetable planting?
The U.S. government (and U.K) asked its citizens to produce some of their own food to make up for shortfalls affecting the agricultural industry supply during the war. Eleanor Roosevelt had one planted at the White House. There were complaints from the Ag industry, but by and large, the effort was popular and successful.
Much of this gardening ceased after the war. I'm sure the Ag business did what it could to promote this change through lobbying and advertising. Not growing some of our own food has been a 20th century invention, at least for most of us. Lifestyle changes, yes, but also the promotion of leisure and solid-state (copyright!) landscapes created a vision of wealth and prosperity that used to have the cornucopia, wheat bundles, dead fish and fowl, and grape vines as its symbol.
It does seem that little motivates people more than the desire to attain or to mirror wealth and prosperity. What the local food movement, Alice Waters, organic movement (still a movement?), etc. has done is create a new conception of wealth and prosperity that is as old as they come. Some people don't like it because it calls into question many of the hard-earned symbols of their prosperity, and requires a different set of skills and knowledge, some long-forgotten cultural memory.
But let's remember that people have always grown vegetables for their sustenance. Poor and rich alike have grown, or had their gardener's grow, their own vegetables. Late day immigrants to big cities grow their own in buckets on concrete. Its economical and provides them with the vegetables they need for their culture's recipes.
So I wonder if our culture is forcing the "V" for victory instead of vegetable because there is a sense of cultural warfare -a largely middle, upper-middle class warfare. What is middle class? What do we aspire to? Are we golf-playing, micro-waving, lawn mowing, backyard pool party lounging with cocktails middle class or are we vegetable growing, every meal cooking, CSA joining, garden party with a glass of local wine middle class?
This is not a battle I am having and I believe this to be true of many of us. Of course, these activities are not exclusive of each other, but I can't quite shake the feeling that this middle-class identity war is what's going on. Thoughts?
Brooklyn Food Conference
I'd like to call your attention to an event that's happening right here in Brooklyn, NYC. Its called the Brooklyn Food Conference. Registration is free, and its all about growing food in the city, sustainability, farmers' markets, local agriculture, CSAs, healthy eating, restaurants that use local produce, farming in the region, and a lot more. Again, registration is free, so sign up at their website above. The conference is on Saturday, May 2nd in Park Slope.
Brooklyn Food Conference Logo
Brooklyn Food Conference Logo
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Garden Soil Testing
For any questions regarding the ESAC soil testing service, click on the link below. I have used this soil-testing service, and you can see how I put my sample together here and the results of my tests here. For other thoughts on lead in our soils, read this post and that post. See my page above for other testing services.
Any Questions:
Contact: Dr. Joshua Cheng
Phone: (718) 951-5000 ext. 2647
Fax: (718) 951-4753
Email: zcheng@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Brooklyn College Environmental Sciences Analytical Center
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210
Phyto Photo Philia
Tomato and basil seedlings inside the cold-frame.
When they sprouted, I was away in Philadelphia. It was a really warm weekend and I had plastic wrap draped over their seed beds. In 36 hours these guys were pale, leggy and curved under the plastic. My response was to get these guys out into the cold-frame as soon as possible. The bright light, occasional sunshine, and cooler night temperature kept stem length in check. They also started to develop their first set of leaves and stouter stems.
Now their stems are purpling and growing the fine hairs of maturity.
So far no sprouting of the arugula, or greens mixes. Its only been a couple of days.
Training the snap peas
I have broccoli starts in a variety of places, including these two: a perennial pot and wooden planter.
Last, but certainly not least, the over-wintered spinach. Looking good, but soon to be outnumbered by the sprouts of this spring's spinach.
Rain
A band of rain is on its way. I love the rain scented air on a mild day. I went outside and the drizzle had already begun. This is good, because it really has been dry. This month we've had about 3/4 inch of rain and normally we'd be near 2 1/2 inches. Let's hope this is not a sign of the season to come.
Image Courtesy of Wunderground.comWednesday, March 18, 2009
Spring
Oh warm sunny day on my spring break, there's little time and so much to do with you!
Garden's planted, watered. Only rose pruning left to do and this year I'm pruning hard!
Off to work in the studio then.
Drink later?
G&T please.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A Few Words
Saturday I planted the broccoli into their planter. I had extra, so I put some in a couple of perennial pots. I also planted the asian mix, the arugula, and the mesclun mix seeds in all the extra planters I had available. I put 2 inch mesh on top of every planter to keep squirrels from digging. The tomatoes are in the cold-frame, toughening up, getting fuzzy, purplish stems.
So all the early season, cool weather veggies are in the ground.
On another note, I finally saw the News12 Brooklyn story about the man who got tazered outside my window. They have a video where me and my neighbor are interviewed, but you might need some plugin to watch it. I found out from my upstairs neighbor that he was apparently from the methadone clinic down the block that is advertised as a medical office. On the video you can see the man in front of my building and pacing, but surrounded by cops. Then they tazer him. They're not using the word tazer anymore, its like Kleenex for tissues. They're calling it a conducted energy device. Thats a mouth-full. Anyhow, News 12 used some of my posted photos in their story, for whatever its worth.
Friday, March 13, 2009
I Really Should Be Working
broccoli, tomatoes, basil
Today I took out the watering can. That's it then, the official beginning. A new neighbor who saw me about asked if I was planning the garden. Planning?, I questioned smugly, I've already started. Peas right there, they survived the freeze last night and a ground assault by squirrels! Oh, who do I think I am?
I planted new pea seeds into the planters today since I learned they can be grown on top of one another. Also, squirrels! So on goes the mesh.
I planted spinach seeds in the spinach planter where some spinach has over-wintered.
And should I want to destroy something this year, it'd be this Yew tree that puts shade on the vegetable garden. The veggies need more sun, particularly in March and September. I secretly hoped the snow would weigh this guy down to his demise.
Sorry, webiworld, crocus on the march!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Mutterings on the Mutter (thats mooter to you ter)
One of the side trips of our 36 hours in Philadelphia was a return to the Mutter Museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. It is a small and gruesome display of medical maladies and oddities collected over the years. As was the case for me and my wife, the blown glass display cases and low lighting, not to mention the subject, leads the visitor towards feeling a little woozy. I was interested to go for a second time because they had a small exhibit on the effects of lead on humans throughout history.
I use lead white paint in the studio, but not so much that I should worry about it. However, I was interested to read about painters and makers of paint back in the day who became ill due to their exposure to lead. One symptom of their disease was limp wrists, leading me to speculate on the origin of the phrase "limp-wristed artist." There was also a section on the association of lead with Saturn and melancholia. This in mind, I read Goya's painting anew -this time it is melancholy devouring his offspring, melancholy destroying what it created.
As the exhibition winds down it crosses into lead as a poison and then its use as a pesticide. What? Yep, pesticide. Funny, so often you hear that pesticides were a product of WWI or WWII chemical industries. But previous generations were looking for pesticides of their own and lead was brewed into lead arsenate for their purpose. Apparently, we in the good ol' U S of A have used lead arsenate as late as 1988. Lead makes for a great pesticide partly because it sticks real good to the leaves, just as lead-based paints stick real good to the trim. As mentioned in a previous post, lead stays put in the soil and is taken up by leafy greens more than fruiting bodies.
I use lead white paint in the studio, but not so much that I should worry about it. However, I was interested to read about painters and makers of paint back in the day who became ill due to their exposure to lead. One symptom of their disease was limp wrists, leading me to speculate on the origin of the phrase "limp-wristed artist." There was also a section on the association of lead with Saturn and melancholia. This in mind, I read Goya's painting anew -this time it is melancholy devouring his offspring, melancholy destroying what it created.
As the exhibition winds down it crosses into lead as a poison and then its use as a pesticide. What? Yep, pesticide. Funny, so often you hear that pesticides were a product of WWI or WWII chemical industries. But previous generations were looking for pesticides of their own and lead was brewed into lead arsenate for their purpose. Apparently, we in the good ol' U S of A have used lead arsenate as late as 1988. Lead makes for a great pesticide partly because it sticks real good to the leaves, just as lead-based paints stick real good to the trim. As mentioned in a previous post, lead stays put in the soil and is taken up by leafy greens more than fruiting bodies.
A final display shows Mexican candy (lead sweetener???) and mentions that lead arsenate is still used in Mexico as a pesticide (but where else???). One thing I never understand is why all those kids are eating lead paint chips. I had no idea that lead mixed with acetic acid (lead acetate) created a sweet tasting substance. Anything sweet is good to a kid. But the adults, they even used it in wine!!! And skin creams, but that's another story.
By the way, as a painter I use the white pigment titanium dioxide more than the lead or zinc whites. This titanium pigment ends up in skin creams too, but also food products like cream cheese, mozzarella, and other must-be-super-white foods.
Recently I received a comment on my Bio page from a professor , Dr. Joshua (Zhongqi) Cheng, Director of the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center at CUNY Brooklyn. In our brief exchange, he expressed interest in getting the word out about his lab.
In a subsequent email, Dr. Cheng told me:
"My lab can analyze heavy metals for all kinds of samples (soil, plants, vegetables, sediments, etc.). Another lab I associate with can do hydrocarbons. The price for heavy metals are $10-20 per sample, depending on the number of samples."
These are exceptional prices for these services and done locally, supporting Brooklyn College employees. For those of us who garden in front and back yards with questionable histories, like the storage of CCA and Creosote treated telephone poles for instance, this can help create some peace of mind. I have asked Dr. Cheng for a list of lab services and pricing. If he agrees, I will add this info to the RESOURCES listing. I plan on sending him some samples of my soil soon.
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