Posts from — September 2009

Photo by Michael Levenston

Maria grew three colourful varieties of corn this year at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. Visiting six-year-olds from a neighbourhood after-school program were fascinated by the new colours of their favourite food and each child got to taste a kernel from a freshly picked cob.

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NYC’s Cool New Backyard Farms: Growing More Than Just Produce from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Liza de Guia’s Videos – New York City Food Storyteller

Shot & Edited by storyteller, Liza de Guia.
On-air host, documentary filmmaker and editor.
Her hosted shows (Daily Greens, Media Mulch, Versus and Planet Police) featured on the on-line web channel TitanGreen.com was recently awarded a 2008 People’s Voice Webby Award for Best Online Video in Public Service and Activism.

NYC’s Cool New Backyard Farms: Growing More Than Just Produce

Urban NYC farmers have set their eyes on a new prize: transforming privately owned backyards into lush, fruitful farmlands.

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The Caucus – The Politics and Government Blog of The New York Times asks:
Fresh From the White House Garden?

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
New York Times Blog
The Caucus – The Politics and Government Blog of The New York Times
September 8, 2009

Is First Lady Michelle Obama working to bring her passion for fresh fruits and vegetables to the streets of the nation’s capital? Or at least to a stretch of Vermont Avenue near the White House?

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“I’ll be grown up,” said Caraway,
“And out of school Thanksgiving Day;
And that’s a good thing, too, ’cause you see,
They can’t make cookies without me.”

100 beautiful illustrations! Highly recommended! (Mike)

By Elizabeth Gordon
Illustrations M.T Ross
P.F. Volland and Co. Chicago
1914

A seed, little friends, is really a plant or a tree all wrapped up in a little brown bundle. If you plant it in the ground it will grow, and when it is old enough it will bear fruit, because God has made it so.

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More than 45,000 individual plants, shrubs and trees have been planted by Franklin Park Conservatory staff members and volunteers on The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Community Garden Campus. Forty individual plots are available for community rental on the campus. Photo credit: Franklin Park Conservatory.

Franklin Park Conservatory Unveils The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Community Garden Campus in September

(August 25, 2009 – Columbus, Ohio) – Franklin Park Conservatory announces the opening and dedication of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Community Garden Campus on September 9, 2009. Located on the grounds of Franklin Park Conservatory, the campus will serve as a national model for community gardening development, education and outreach.

“In communities across the country, Americans are experiencing the pride associated with the renewal of community gardening,” said Jim Hagedorn, chairman and CEO, ScottsMiracle-Gro. “At ScottsMiracle-Gro, we are equally proud to support this growing movement through the establishment of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Community Garden Campus, a national resource for community gardening.”
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Start Now Gardens on Bloomington Avenue

by Jean Schanen

My husband and I operate an urban farm on Bloomington Avenue in Bremerton, Washington. At first our goal was to grow our own food. That was easy. Then a neighbour who loved gardening, but no longer could, gave us space in her yard for garden beds, and the neighbour on the other side, who didn’t want to have to mow the inconvenient front strip of his yard, gave us more space.

More beds on the roof, more beds along the alley, and soon we were raising enough vegetables and berries to stock a table at the farmers market. We are now the proprietors of an urban farm, set right in our busy neighbourhood!

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See larger image here.
Lydia Williams feeding chickens in the garden of her cottage at Carlyle Street, Napier, [ca 1889]

Photographer William Williams.
Glass negative
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

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An artists impression. The ARKit studio on the grassed area, the small scale garden next to it. People gardening, learning, engaging in the space.

Docklands has come a step closer to achieving a community garden with the establishment of a demonstration urban agriculture project in Victoria Harbour.

A project of the Future Canvas organisation, the garden is a six-month experiment playfully called “reforestation” and is the brain-child of 25-year-old environmentalist Emily Ballantyne-Brodie.

Ms Ballantyne-Brodie said Docklanders could expect to see food grown in raised beds in a small plot on Victoria Harbour in front of Dock 5.

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Larger image here.

Photo: Vegetable garden, Dawson, Y.T., August 19th, 1905.

Album contains photographs of the Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario, fruit orchards in Ontario and Quebec and vegetable gardens and miners’ houses in Dawson City, Yukon. Photographs by Horatio Needham Topley.

“The importance of the city-farming agitation cannot be overestimated.”

Popular Mechanics Magazine
May 1917

“People in the cities are feeling the pressure of unprecedented prices. To combat actual want, it is imperative that they modify their system of living and become producers. Back yards, vacant lots, and unoccupied tracts of land in outlying districts are available for cultivation. National security demands that they be developed.”

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By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
from The Daisy; or, Cautionary Stories in Verse
1807

Poisonous Fruit

As Tommy and his sister Jane
Were walking down a shady lane,
They saw some berries, bright and red,
That hung around and over head;

And soon the bough they bended down,
To make the scarlet fruit their own;
And part they ate, and part, in play,
They threw about, and flung away.

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Photo from the Kansas City Star. Bad Seed Farm is an urban farm and a Crossroads District farmers market run by husband and wife team Daniel Heryer and Brooke Salvaggio. Above, Salvaggio fertilizes a bed with turkey manure before seeding.

‘Bad Seed’ Urban Farm

By Lee Hill Kavanaugh
September 1, 2009
The Kansas City Star

Brooke Salvaggio’s arms are strong. Muscled. Her hair, swooped up in two tiny pigtails wrapped with a scarf she bought in Vietnam. Dirt under her fingernails. Dirty jeans. Dirty sky-blue garden Crocs on her feet. And a rising welt from a mosquito bite above her eyes just minutes ago.

But she’s found her piece of heaven. She and her husband, Dan Heryer, both 27, are happiest when they’re here in south Kansas City, playing in the dirt in this place they named “Bad Seed Farm.”

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Cowslip or More Cautionary Stories in Verse
By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
1811

The Worm

As Sally sat upon the ground,
A little crawling worm she found,
Among the garden dirt;

And when she saw the worm, she scream’d,
And ran away and cried,
As if she had been hurt.

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Photo by Carrol Krause. The PVC hoop house shelters carrots and peppers and will serve well into the winter as a season-extender for other crops.

Story and Photos by Carrol Krause
Bloomington Herald-Times
September 5, 2009

The phrases “urban agriculture” and “urban farming” have become more common as people gain awareness of organic growing techniques, permaculture design, and food security. The city of Bloomington recently noted this national trend when it amended its UDO to approve urban agriculture, which it defined as “the growing of food crops through plant cultivation.”

That came about thanks to John Galuska and his wife Alice Dobie-Galuska, who joined others in lobbying the city for the change. Before the amendment was unanimously approved by City Council, it had been unclear whether the city might conceivably restrict a homeowner’s vegetable gardening activities. Now, urban gardeners can breathe a sigh of relief.

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by Albert Alden 1834

A Scene at Sunrise

“This picture represents a scene in the country at sunrise. The farmer with a hoe in one hand, and in the other a basket, is going forth to his daily labour. He rises early and is very industrious, toiling cheerfully with the hopes of an abundant harvest. At a distance we see a cottage which belongs to the farmer and the maid who takes care of the dairy is milking one of the cows. Another cow is lying down on the green grass.

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Hamadi Jumale, the volunteer head of San Diego’s Somali Bantu Community Organization, dumps soil into a wheelbarrow at the New Roots Community Farm. Photo: Sam Hodgson

New Roots Community Farm Takes Root in City Heights, San Diego

The New Roots Community Farm, developed by refugee aid group the International Rescue Committee, celebrates its official opening day on Thursday, September 10, 2009

What once was a vacant lot in a barren neighborhood in the City Heights section of San Diego has been transformed into a thriving community farm that promotes sustainable agriculture.

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Photo by Willi Galloway on the roof of the new Bastille Restaurant in Seattle.

by Willi Galloway
DigginFood
“West Coast Editor of Organic Gardening magazine and the Garden Expert on eHow.com.”

This is a must-see new rooftop food garden. See the excellent story on Willi Galloway’s website. (Mike)

“A couple of weeks ago I found myself standing on the roof of Bastille—an exquisite new restaurant in Seattle’s historic Ballard neighborhood. A blue sky was overhead, a sea of salad greens were at my feet, and the smell of freshly fried frites was in the air.

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By David Tracey

This six-part series explains why the time is ripe for an urban farming revolution in B.C., and who’s showing how to bring it about. Supported by a Tyee reader-funded Fellowship for Solutions-oriented Reporting, David Tracey surveys the urban farming landscape of B.C., visits Cuba to learn from that nation’s city gardening success story, and explains the utility and benefits of bringing agriculture within our urban boundaries.

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Activists make a point as they make compost and grow vegetables on land in Downsview

Aug 05, 2009
Catherine Porter
The Star

Sunny Lam walks down his farm row pointing out the epazote here – “it’s a Mexican herb” – and the flowering kale there, which is “growing like crazy” as another TTC bus roars by.

“In farming, even in the city, you have to experiment,” he says, holding a straw hat in one hand and snatching a clump of earth at his feet with the other. “You got to get to know soil, which crops grow well there.”

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Inside the White House: The Garden

Michelle Obama:

“How will {my kids} make choices about what they are going to eat when they are away from me? what will be the messages in their head when they are deciding if they are going to drink the soda or a glass of water? [...] I hope the garden will be an introduction to a new way for our country to think about food.”

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