Sustainability Curation Digest #6 🍒 🦋🌴 by Carpedimus - MSP

My own little garden...will update soon..

The months of April and May often remind us how much we love the summer and how much we all missed the sun.
Usually during this time most of the seasons frost and even rain in some areas (the middle east for example:)) are gone and its time to say good buy till next year.

If you have a garden then it is also the right time for you to roll up your sleeves and start with the essential maintenance work to prepare your garden for the hot summer.

And If you more into urban hydroponic farming like my self, then it is a great time to prepare your hydroponic systems for some new seedlings of the season, clean it up, and get ready to grow some juicy fruits and vegetables.

So with that said, I want to dedicate this week digest to spring, to renewal, to family and of course to sustainable food production and gardening in general.

Authors featured & referenced in this Sustainability Curation Digest include:

@mountainjewel @costopher @edthecanadian @nateonsteemit @leemlaframboise @exo-state @guanyu @goldendawne @llfarms @yahialababidi

This is my Sustainability Curation Digest for the week of 23/04/18 - 30/04/18 on behalf of the Minnow Support Project!

The Minnow Support Project has multiple curators on various subjects. Each week we pick five undervalued posts and the authors behind them to highlight through minnowsupport-curation. This way MSP and PAL (Peace, Abundance, Liberty) can help promote new promising writers and content creators on Steemit, and in effect reward them for doing a superior job.

Every week I will be making a list of my favorite post from the week on the subject of sustainability, eco-friendly solutions, permaculture, recycling, alternative energy, recycling, homesteading...or anything else that might help us all live in a more sustainable, eco-friendly world.

I hope you enjoy the list of awesome posts by those great authors, so without further ado

(these posts are shown in random order; I liked all of them!)

_{from Grafting Made Easy | Complete Tutorial of What It Is, How To, Tools You Need! by mountainjewel}

Grafting Made Easy | Complete Tutorial of What It Is, How To, Tools You Need! by mountainjewel

If you plant a peach or an apple tree from a seed, the fruit fruit from those trees will not be genetically identical to the original seed, as seeds contain genetics from several generations back.
The only way to produce a fruit tree that will yield the same fruit as the original tree is through grafting.

The other benefit that comes to mind is the ability to grow 2 (or more) different kinds of fruits on the same tree (like oranges and lemons).

And although it can be quite labor intensive, it can help you out in the long run with better resistance to disease and hardiness, shorten the time taken to first production of flowers or fruits (in some cases by many years), to better control the shape and the size of the tree and helps retain their desirable leaf, floral, or fruit characters, without the risk of these being lost through sexual reproduction.

If you interested in learning more about this oldtime technique, make sure to check out this amazing post by @mountainjewel.
He shares with us several grafting techniques and explains the reasons and the benefits of each one.

The great writing and the throughout explanation paired with some great photos... and I was hooked right away.

Trust me it will be a great investment to spend 10 minutes to read this post, you will know about grafting much more than you knew 10 minutes ago.

Thank you very much for sharing @mountainjewel.

P.s: This awesome couple are definitely one of my favorite writers on steemit , you will find ton of gems in their posts...so check them out, follow and share some love.

_{from My new vertical linear hydroponic system - part 2 by costopher}

My new vertical linear hydroponic system - part 2 by costopher

As you might have noticed from my previous posts, I am really into hydroponics.
I believe that this technology can be a great solutions to some of the issues we facing as humanity in regards of our food cultivation and consumption habits.

So this weeks post on the topic of hydroponic cultivation, is a wonderful post (or actually two posts) by @costopher (“beer drinking gardener” - my kind of gardener :) ).
The author shares with us how he built his awesome “Vertical Linear Hydroponic System”.

Judging by the size of it, it looks like he is gonna be having lots of new vegetables in his greenhous in no time.

So make sure to check it out and perhaps get some inspiration on building one of those or similar systems yourself.

Thanks for the tutorial @costopher, looking forward to see some update photos :)

_{from Grow food in your home. Delicious and healthy sprouts. by edthecanadian}

Grow food in your home. Delicious and healthy sprouts. by edthecanadian

Sprouts are the first stage in the life of a plant, the first few days after a tiny root started to pop out of the seed.
At this stage of a plants life it contains 10 to 50 times more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes than any other stage.
Except of the obvious health benefit, sprouts are very tasty, crispy and juicy.
Its flavors vary from type to type: sweet, spicy, savory and other flavors.
They can be added to salads, sandwiches, sushi, and a variety of other dishes.

And the best part is that you can easily can grow them at home.

If you want to learn more how you as well can start growing some fresh sprouts right on your kitchen top, make sure to check out this great tutorial by @edthecanadian.
The author shares with us a step by step process on how to turn a bag of seeds into delicious and fully nutritious super food, for you and your loved ones.

Thanks for the share @edthecanadian.

_{from Planting, sprouts, and an experiment! by nateonsteemit}

Planting, sprouts, and an experiment! by nateonsteemit

To love and passion to work in the garden is not a trait that can easily be inherited.
True, when you grow up in an countryside, close to nature and love for plants and flowers, it will be probably easier for a child to understand and enjoy gardening, but even in more urban setting, it is still possible to pass it on to children.

A family activity in the garden is a great and a worthwhile experience for us to have as families from time to time.

The enthusiasm and excitement you will see on the faces of your children when leaves of the plants they just helped put in the ground (or some other growing medium ;) ) start to grow, buds turn into flowers,the ripening of vegetables and countless other wonderful sights will worth all the effort, not to mention that you get a partner to work together with you in the garden, which in itself is a great advantage …

So make sure to check out this wonderful post by @nateonsteemit to get some inspiration on how a day in the garden can be a wonderful not to mention fruitful (pun intended) investment of your time.

Thanks for the share @nateonsteemit, you got an awesome family!

_{from From ice fishing to gardening?! by leemlaframboise}

From ice fishing to gardening?! by leemlaframboise

The last for today, is a post by @leemlaframboise.
She shows us how she prepares her ‘unattended garden’ winter garden to an awesome ‘Raised Beds’ Garden.

Raised beds can help you prevent soil compaction, provide much better drainage, keep pathway weeds from your garden soil, and serve as a physical barrier to unwanted pests such as slugs and snails.
The walls of the beds will also prevent you valuable garden soil from washing away during heavy rains and in some cases it can even allow us to plant earlier in the season due to the soil being warmer and better drained when it is above ground level.

If you would like to get some ideas and inspiration on how to build your own raised beds garden, make sure to check out this great post by @leemlaframboise.

_{from Growing and Cooking - Being healthier and wealthier in a city by exo-state}

Honorable Mentions

Below are a few interesting articles and exceptional posts I found that either do not fit in to a category or did not get first pick, yet I wanted to mention. Please check them out and give them some love where needed.

Growing and Cooking - Being healthier and wealthier in a city by exo-state

Thai Eggplants in Rockwool drip feed by guanyu

Ready For Some Gardening Action: Greenhouses Up & Creek Bed Cleaned by goldendawne

Making A Complete Beehive From Scrap Pallets | Part 5 | Beehive Top by @llfarms

Preparing for our Summer Garden :) by @yahialababidi

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed the posts picked for my first curation digest.

If you did like it, make sure to give us your vote, follow and perhaps even a resteem.

Hope to see you next week. Till then I leave you with this quote :)

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.“

— Voltaire

If you never heard about Minnow Support Project, I encourage you to visit our Discord Channel.

We are always looking for new steemit writers to curate and support, and I promise you will meet some awesome fellow steemians there.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for this weekly Sustainability Digest, make sure to write up your ideas in the comments.

Also, if you would like to be considered for next weeks curation, drop a link for your post in the PAL-sustainability channel, or in the comments of this post.

Hopefully you will feel some of the authors or posts mentioned here are worth an upvote and follow.

Thanks for reading!!

See you next week.

_{Proud member and supporter of the Minnow Support Project - Brought to you by:}

hey @anneporter, thanks for the compliments :)

You have a great question, hydroponics is all about "treating the water", in order to have a successful growing, several things need to be constantly monitored.

First of all we need to makes sure that all the systems never run out of water, so auto-filling need to be taken into account, then we need to make sure that the water is in the right temperature, that it doesnt have any unwanted residues from its source...then we need to make sure it is properly balanced with nutrition and the PH is calibrated to the optimal range...

So quite a few things to take into account, but as I strive for automation, we already planed a whole system of irrigation that will do just that and hopefully fully automatically.

I am actually gonna be writing about it in one of my next posts (i already finishing the next part in the series , so i will probably write about it in the one after that), so make sure to stay tuned :)

Thanks again for the feedback, it is much appreciated!