From Our Garden: Today’s garden plot becoming urbanized, revolutionized | Home & Garden

From Our Garden: Today’s garden plot becoming urbanized, revolutionized | Home & Garden

A news flash came across my phone recently, saying: “A major food shortage is coming again in the United States.” That headline coupled with what we are seeing in the places we shop is enough to cause a level of anxiety.

Deep down we have the feeling that we should grow some of our own food. You may be thinking you want to but don’t have room for a garden, or your HOA will not let you. I assure you that the vegetable garden has become urbanized and revolutionized over the past few years for a couple of reasons.

The first is thanks to great new varieties of tomatoes, peppers, herbs and even berries that fit today’s garden to perfection. The second reason is thanks to Brie Arthur, a visionary horticulturist and author of “The Foodscape Revolution: Finding a Better Way to Make Space for Food and Beauty in Your Garden.” I’ll explain the importance of the foodscape in a minute.

Whether it is in rural areas, historic districts or the newest neighborhood, garden plots have gotten smaller. Even the well-known community garden projects that display raised beds or boxes are a far cry from the farm-type plot of our grandparents’ era.

This small garden concept is not just here, but in Europe as well. I follow several UK gardeners on Instagram who refer to their garden as their allotment. An allotment is roughly 300 square feet, which may seem like a luxury in today’s modern neighborhoods. All of this has led to a host of new, compact vegetables. Tomatoes are, of course, first when it comes to popularity with those wanting to grow edibles.

Virtual real estate plot sells for record .4 million

Virtual real estate plot sells for record $2.4 million

LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) – A patch of virtual real estate in the online world Decentraland sold for a record $2.4 million worth of cryptocurrency, the buyer crypto investor Tokens.com (COIN.NLB) and Decentraland said on Tuesday.

Decentraland is an online environment – also called a “metaverse” – where users can buy land, visit buildings, walk around and meet people as avatars.

Such environments have grown in popularity this year, as the pandemic caused people to spend more time online. read more

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Interest surged last month when Facebook changed its name to Meta to reflect its focus on developing virtual reality products for the metaverse.

Decentraland is a specific type of metaverse that uses blockchain. Land and other items in Decentraland are sold in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a kind of crypto asset.

Crypto enthusiasts buy land there as a speculative investment, using Decentraland’s cryptocurrency, MANA.

A subsidiary of Tokens.com, called the Metaverse Group, bought a patch of real estate for 618,000 MANA on Monday, which was around $2,428,740 at the time, a Decentraland spokesman and a statement by Tokens.com said.

FILE PHOTO: Visitors are pictured in front of an immersive art installation titled “Machine Hallucinations — Space: Metaverse” by media artist Refik Anadol, which will be converted into NFT and auctioned online at Sotheby’s, at the Digital Art Fair, in Hong Kong, China September 30, 2021. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Reuters also saw the land’s purchase recorded on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.

Decentraland said it was the most expensive purchase of a plot of virtual real estate on the platform.

The land is in the “Fashion Street” area of Decentraland’s map and Tokens.com said it would be used to host digital fashion events and sell virtual clothing for avatars. read more

It is made of 116 smaller parcels, measuring 52.5 square feet each, making the land 6,090 virtual square feet in size.

Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com, said the assets would complement the real estate already held by Metaverse Group.

In June, a plot of virtual land in Decentraland sold for 1,295,000 MANA, worth $913,228 at the time. The buyers built a virtual shopping centre to sell digital clothing, but Reuters has visited this site multiple times since and not seen any shoppers. read more

MANA is highly volatile. It has gained around 400{d4d1dfc03659490934346f23c59135b993ced5bc8cc26281e129c43fe68630c9} this month according to Coinbase, spiking after Facebook’s name change.

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Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft; Editing by Saikat Chatterjee and Barbara Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.