Vertical Food Gardens in the Urban Core – Pollinators Galore

Exit 207 and I-95, St. Augustine, Florida.  Awesome soilless vertical food garden, supplying vegetables, strawberries, herbs and more.

Living walls of food, Vertical Farming in St. Augustine, Florida

So let me ask you, is a strawberry a fruit or is a strawberry a vegetable?  Right!  A strawberry is neither.  Rather the red plumpness is a pseduo-fruit, forming part of the stem holding the the seeds rather than the actual ovary.

Hydroponic, vertical strawberry farming by Robert and Colleen

Regardless, this vertical strawberry and vegetable farm is a three dimensional, living, buzzing, pollinator-filled wonder land, even in late November.

Robert & Colleen and St. Augustine's Vertical Food Farm

Robert & Colleen manage the U-Pick Hydroponic Farm (aka local foods) on the outskirts of St. Augustine, Florida.  They both extended southern agricultural hospitality this weekend when I stopped to take photos and investigate this vertical mass of food.

Hydroponic & Living Wall Spinach

First of all it is important to discuss the setting.  The vertical food farm is in the middle of a mowed field covered in crimson clover, Taraxacum, Betony and other multiple native wildflowering weeds.

Sugar Snap Peas are adored by the Gulf Fritillaries

I immediately knew the masses of Gulf Fritillaries, Honey Bees, Dashers and Skippers suggested not only a clean (Robert uses BT) growing environment, free of POPs (persistent organic pollutants) but a highly integrated buffet of biodiversity at higher taxa.  Flowering native groundcovers (weeds?) surrounded the one third acre vertical farm.

Beans thrive in Robert & Colleen's vertical garden.

The complicated coordination of pollen and pollination was functioning smoothly and attracting countless beneficial insects.  Countless pollinators means lots of vegetables, fruit and produce.

Fragrant Basil, four weeks old.

Robert uses native underground well water rather than chlorinated city water and the food plants are obviously quite happy with the arrangement.

Robert and the 'brains of the vertical farm'.

Food is extremely important, especially locally grown and clean food.  I say food is going to be the next large component of our gros national product (GNP).

Kale's blue hues against a Florida afternoon sky.

But just as important is the creation  of habitat for wildlife.  Without wildlife there is no pollination and hence no food.  As we have seen on many of our Green Roofs the more wildflowers and wildlife we have the better the food grows.  Complex interactions.

Vertical living wall of dill & fennel, St. Augustine

Of course the collateral benefits are huge too.  I tell people often, ‘close your eyes and imagine what Florida’s shores looked like when Ponce de Leon landed in St. Augustine.”  Of course there was volumetric green, vertical vegetation everywhere.

Swiss chard growing high in the sky.

Today mostly though we have horizontal green, mostly St. Augustine (no pun intended) grass.

Growing food vertically in the Urban Core can help feed the cities across our nation.

Robert & Colleen have begun restoring the vertical component of green and so obviously is the fact that the pollinators, insects and wildlife appreciate their efforts.

My favorite vertical farm aisle was the cilantro row.

Though I suspect Sandhill Cranes will not be allowed to stroll the aisles, plucking the plump, juicy pseudo-fruits, I can say for certain that even though food plants there are mostly an exotic plant phenomenon, there are many winners not only across the site but across the nation.  Just from Robert and Colleen’s efforts.

Of all the vertical farm plants, the lettuces and spinach were the most colorful!

You see, the average mileage food on the tables of most of us native plant writers and bloggers has travelled is an average of fifteen hundred miles, and it is fifteen hundred miles on the back of big diesel rigs, spewing NOx and emissions, choking delicate respiratory systems of pollinators.

Local food not only reduces food carbon footprints but provides local economy, local ecology and local community.

Robert & Colleen, St. Augustine's first vertical farming experts.

Robert and Colleen’s vertical food farm in St. Augustine is amazing.  Be sure to check out their Facebook page.  All of my green roofs now contain a significant food component, either for the pollinators or for us humans.

Understanding how the integration of native wildflowers and plants not only helps with pollination and pest control but with overall production efficiencies is important.

Stop in and see Robert and Colleen’s vertical farming efforts when travelling along I-95 in St. Johns County.  You can’t miss it, just look for the masses of buzzing and hovering pollinators.

© 2011, Kevin Songer. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us