Urban farms in Kampala, Uganda, make the most of their limited space. Photograph: Nils Adler
Vertical farming, urban farming, innovations we have seen mostly from industrialized places, are important in developing countries as well:
Rooftop farming: why vertical gardening is blooming in Kampala
Ugandans are finding creative solutions to the growing challenges of urbanisation
Growth spurt: a child carries a tray of plants in eggshell flowerpots. Photograph: Nils Adler
When Martin Agaba realised his urban farm had run out of space, he decided the solution was not to expand outwards but upwards.
“We realised we had to use the roof,” he says. Of all the innovations that have galvanised people in his district in the Ugandan capital Kampala to grow their own food, these vertical box plantations remain his favourite.
Kwagala farm, located on half an acre of land, is the brainchild of Diana Nambatya, a professor in public health, who began growing vegetables to save money on food in 2010.
After receiving two cows as a dowry, she decided to use their dung to generate biogas for her home. Her burgeoning urban farm soon attracted the attention of the neighbours, and in 2012 she started training women at a small demonstration centre. Continue reading
The view above is a stretch of Continental Divide passing through Costa Rica’s central valley. The snapshot is taken from the road close to our home. I hike these mountains most mornings. On Saturdays I visit the farmer’s market in the town square. Beets were on my shopping list this week. One of the very few culinary banes of my youth, beets are now a favorite. A single shot glass of borscht, served to me in Leeuwarden, Holland solved that problem for me in 2004.
This time of year dragon fruit appears and if it is a sunny morning their color is motivational. That is, I find their color energizing.
Darwin, then twenty-three, was only three months into the nearly five-year adventure that would transform his life and, eventually, the way that humans saw themselves and other species. As the voyage’s so-called scientific person, he would collect masses of rocks, fossils, animals, and plants, periodically shipping his specimens to Cambridge in containers ranging from barrels to pillboxes. Like other naturalists of his time, though, his primary documentary tool was 
Syme’s guide, a facsimile of which will be released in early February by Smithsonian Books, contains samples, names, and descriptions of a hundred and ten colors, ranging from Snow White to Asparagus Green to Arterial Blood Red to, finally, Blackish Brown. Based on a color-naming system developed in the late eighteenth century by the German mineralogist Abraham Werner, the guide is full of geological comparisons: Grayish White is likened to granular limestone, Brownish Orange to Brazilian topaz. Syme, a flower painter and art teacher, added comparisons from the living world. To Werner’s eyes, the Berlin Blue that Darwin saw in the Atlantic sky resembled a sapphire; to Syme, the wing feathers of a jay. 
Organikos 