$300 Underground Greenhouse Grows Your Food Year Round

images – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN722I2eg7Q

Due to the decreasing amount of space to grow healthy organic food, gardeners or growers are always looking for other ways to cultivate their crops. Gardening enthusiasts want to grow more and higher quality crops without depleting their savings. One of the methods they can use is the underground greenhouse, which can be constructed within a variety of geographic and climatic conditions.

Those who live in colder climates could build a walpini, which is a more affordable and effective alternative to the glass greenhouse. Walpini is an Aymara Indian word for ‘place of warmth.’ Also known as an underground or pit greenhouse, the walpini was developed in the 1980s for the cold mountainous regions of South America. This method is ideal for growers who want to maintain a productive garden year-round, even in winter!

Walpini is an innovative idea for off the grid living. It is a cheaper way to grow your own food and only costs $300 in building materials.

There are several advantages of an underground greenhouse. You cannot lose any warmth in walpini compared to a traditional greenhouse. According to one walpini owner, his greenhouse keeps steady warmer temperatures when it is 10-degrees outside. A Walpini greenhouse does not take up as much visual space on the landscape. You can also use a walpini greenhouse as an alternative place for keeping some livestock. The walpini is especially beneficial for cold-sensitive livestock.

A typical walpini greenhouse is built 3 to 5 feet underground. Its design allows for the collection and storage of daytime solar radiation. A plastic sheeting covers the greenhouse, with the longest area of the greenhouse facing the winter sun. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, the longest area of the walpini would face the north, and vice versa for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

This type of greenhouse has been proven effective and resilient in western China. Walpini greenhouses have helped farmers increase their yield and revolutionized the surrounding economy there.

Other countries that adopted the partially subterranean greenhouse method include Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S. Farmers in these locations incorporated some kind of runoff system and built the walpini on a hill to deal with times of heavy rainfall.

When constructing a walpini, it is vital to consider its placement. There should be improper water drainage to prevent water penetration of molds which can lead to mold, causing damage to the crops.
Your walpini must have enough space to grow your plants. There should also be a small area to walk into the greenhouse. The ideal size for an underground greenhouse is 8 x 12 feet.

The underground greenhouse method is cheaper than aquaponics but requires more effort than urban homesteading. But its best selling points are its viability, affordability, and sustainability.

Grow Food All Year Round Inside Your Home With This Heat Storing Greenhouse

images – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcb7EtoaDdw

Food self-sufficiency is often synonymous with living in an off-grid shack that is far away from civilization. But it is also possible to live a self-sufficient abundant life straight from the comfort of your home. You can build your own abundance oasis by constructing a year-round passive solar greenhouse that you can connect to your house.

A group of innovators at Solution Era brought us The Greenhouse of the Future project which created an eco-friendly and cost-effective greenhouse that can grow organic produce in any climate while offering residents a space to connect with nature. This initiative used upcycled materials and solar energy technology.

Last year, the group teamed up with award-winning engineer Luc Muyldermans to develop a DIY approach to sustainability, The Greenhouse of Abundance, which is a solar greenhouse designed to be adjacent to an existing or planned house.

You can build this heat storing greenhouse by enrolling to an interactive online course which offers information on how to construct and use the groundbreaking domestic food production system. The course started in February 2017 and focuses on the same principles of permaculture and sustainable energy technologies, minus the use of tires. The course is designed to allow participants to receive support from the Solution Era team while they set up the greenhouse. Design blueprints are also available for those who want to hire a contractor to build the greenhouse.

The Greenhouse of Abundance course is your first step to creating your own self-sufficient and abundant lifestyle. It will guide you to master the conception and construction of an abundance greenhouse. It unveils Luc’s secrets for producing fresh and local food, all-year long. It outlines tools to choose the ideal location for your greenhouse. Luc himself will communicate with you while you are building your greenhouse.

The curriculum provides information on the history of greenhouse and the technical and design aspects of building a greenhouse. It also swipes on the financial aspects of the greenhouse including the cost of a self-made greenhouse and the cost of a carpenter-built greenhouse. Information on implementing cultures, plants cycle, useful animal, and microclimate is also incorporated.

It might take a bit of time and a bit of financial investment to construct a greenhouse inside your home. But once the structure is running, you can grow vegetables indoor when everyone else is staring at barren fields in winter.

This Self Sufficient Community Will Grow Its Own Food And Create Its Own Renewable Energy

images – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh2g05sonTU

While advances in agricultural technology have increased the production of food, the techniques adopted had a heavy toll on the lands used for crops and livestock and in the surrounding atmosphere. To reverse this situation, a project was introduced last year that aims to develop a more sustainable neighborhood community which will grow its own food, live off-grid, recycle water, and handle its own waste.

The project was a collaboration between regenerative residential real estate developer ReGen Villages and Danish architecture firm Effekt. It first started in the Netherlands where a pilot community was completed this year. The concept will soon be coming to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany.

The Amish people are known for having long lived off the grid and promoting communal farms to sustain their living. While ReGen Villages are partly inspired by these communal farms, they are not another attempt to recreate pastoral living.

ReGen Villages’goal is to create off-grid capable neighborhoods that include energy-positive homes, renewable energy and energy storage, vertical farming, aquaponics, water management and waste-to-resource systems. According to the project’s founder, James Ehrlich, they want to build resilient communities that power and feed self-reliant families around the world.
Effekt co-founder Sinus Lynge describes ReGen as the Tesla of eco-villages. The initiative relies on existing technologies to provide clean energy, water, and food right off the village residents’ doorstep.

The first ReGen Village opened last summer in Almere, The Netherlands with 100 homes. Sites across Europe followed. The project wants to expand globally including in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India, China, parts of Africa, the U.S., and Canada.

ReGen is targeting developing countries where billions migrate from rural communities in the search for better living conditions. By 2060, 2.5 billion people will be living in urban areas. The residential project will bring regenerative and resilient platform design thinking into peri-urban and rural areas, says Ehrlich.

ReGen Villages combine sustainable farming and land management with tech infrastructure to produce more food, more clean water, more clean energy and mitigate more waste than if the land is used to grow organic food. Ehrlich envisions a vertical garden system that continually yields vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes. He also sees fish, chicken, eggs, and small animal dairy, all produced by the village. This food will be produced by utilizing a combination of aeroponics, aquaponics, permaculture, food forests, and high-yield organic farming.

To generate their own energy, the villages will rely on geothermal, solar, solar thermal, wind, and biomass sources. A biogas plant will be installed to convert non-compostable household waste into power and water.

ReGen Villages residents will take responsibility to ensure that the ecosystem continues to function properly. There will be areas for communal dining, playgrounds, and community learning centers as well as electric car charging stations which will be made available in public squares.