Vegetable Garden at Cook County Jail in Chicago

By Mr. Brown Thumb of Chicago Garden
See more great urban agriculture stories by Mr. Brown Thumb by following the ‘reading more’ link.

Excerpt:

The last place you expect to see a vegetable garden is behind tall fences topped off with razor wire, but at the Cook County Jail there is a 13 thousand square-foot vegetable garden grown by inmates. This vegetable garden is a joint effort by The Cook County Sheriff’s Department of Community Supervision and Intervention and The University of Illinois Extension. The inmates who work the garden are non-violent offenders serving time under county sentencing guidelines for cases involving drugs or a DUI.

Mike Taff wrote this letter to the Brown Thumb blogger.

My name is Mike Taff and I have been the garden coordinator for the last 7 seasons. Seven years ago I volunteered to take over this garden not knowing anything about gardening. I attended the same classes in horticulture as the inmates do, I received my Master Gardeners certificate and have loved every minute.I will give you some short facts. All the food we harvest is donated to soup kitchens, homeless shelters and food pantries throughout Cook County.Since the inception of this garden back in 1993 we have donated over 52 tons of produce.The national recidivism rate is about 54%, The recidivism rate of inmates graduating from our garden program is 17%.Quite a savings of tax payers money. Every year we try to grow something extra ordinary. Last year it was peanuts this year it was giant pumpkins. As you shown in your video we do have a pumpkin that we believe will make it to 400 LBS.Today we broke ground for our new greenhouse. I believe it will be the first of its kind.The greenhouse will give us an opportunity to extend this program all year round.We hope to graduate double the amount we are doing. We also plan to package and sell what we grow to Chicago restaurateurs. Charlie Trotters has agreed to start purchasing our product next spring. Our goal is to make this program self sufficient and not use tax payers money.

See photos and article about the jail garden by Mr. Brown Thumb here.

More great posts by Mr. Brown Thumb in Chicago

An Uncommon Rooftop Farm in Chicago

To see Chicago’s first certified organic rooftop farm you’ll have to look up. This urban farm is situated on the roof of Uncommon Ground, 1401 W. Devon Ave.

You would think that with a 2,500-square foot organic rooftop farm to look after on a full-time basis Natalie wouldn’t want to spend her free time playing in the dirt. She lives on the second story of an apartment building just south of Wicker Park that has no garden, so she farms the two fire escapes outside her kitchen and bedroom windows.

Link to the organic rooftop farm story here.

Potager: French Kitchen Garden

When I asked Mayor Daley why Chicago didn’t place an emphasis on Victory Gardens, like the rest of the world did this year, he mentioned that we had one in Grant Park. Unless, I’m completely mistaken; he was talking about this garden. The kitchen garden in Grant Park, really a mini-farm, is a project by Growing Power, a national nonprofit organization and land trust that focuses on urban agriculture.

Link to the kitchen garden story here.

Hull-House Heirloom Urban Farm on UIC campus

Steps away from the Hull-House Museum and the Hull-House Soup Kitchen, where Re-Thinking Soup is held every Tuesday, an urban farm dedicated to growing heirloom crops for the soup kitchen grows.

Link to the heirloom urban farm story here.

Rick Bayless’ Urban Edible Garden

The garden, really more of a working urban farm, produces $20,000 worth of crops that are used in Mr. Bayless’ restaurants. To grow that much produce they spend $3,000 on seeds every year. The urban edible garden sits on three city lots in the Bucktown neighborhood, but the area used for agriculture is a pretty standard-sized backyard in Chicago, at least compared to the ones I’ve seen. Bill Shores takes advantage of the garden’s microclimates to plant lettuce three times a year. It gets planted pretty close to one of the houses that provides shade and cool surroundings during the summer heat.

Link to the edible garden story here.

Also see this Chicago networking group – Chicago Advocates for Urban Agriculture – here.