What we read: Gardening fights depression, robot tomato picker and more
Posted on: May 19, 2019 | Written By: Everybody Gardens |
Just as the plants are starting to bloom, there are plenty of fascinating reads in the world of gardening. The stories stretch from “green therapy” being prescribed to fight depression, all the way to an ancient Jewish tradition of letting the land rest every seven years. Read on to find out more.
Gardening fights depression
“Green therapy” is being prescribed to help patients, who receive physical, social and physiological benefits from gardening.
Robot tomato picker
Root AI’s first agricultural robot, named Virgo I, can pick tomatoes without damaging them and it can also detect ripeness better than people.
Jewish farming technique gathers interest
Shmita is a Jewish farming practice that dates back to biblical times. It involves letting the soil rest for a year after six years of farming — no cover crops or no-till farming, just nothing. It’s not practiced widely yet but the ideas behind it are getting noticed.
“By literally taking down fences, we created inclusive public space,” says Nati Passow, co-founder of Philadelphia’s Jewish Farm School. “We have been planting more fruit trees, berries, and perennials, and during the last Shmita year, we restricted ourselves from storing surplus harvest — because that creates an accumulation of wealth — so that we could only take what we needed at the moment.”
Chaos gardens
What should you do with all those old seeds that you never got around to planting or had left over? How about a chaos garden?
Ancient swamp tree
Researchers have discovered a bald cypress tree in the swamps along the Black River in North Carolina that is believed to be at least 2,600 years old.
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