Category — Book

Photo by Amy Senese.

Hear Feed ‘Em Freedom Grower at 31.30 minutes in the radio show. Slide the button forward to the chosen time.

By Krista Tippett
On Being – American Public Media
January 19, 2012

We travel to Detroit to meet the civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs. We find the 96-year-old philosopher surrounded by creative, joyful people and projects that defy more familiar images of decline. It’s a kind of parallel urban universe with much to teach all of us about meeting the changes of our time. Radio interview here.

“Detroit, because we have this position in the history of the country and the world, is creating that alternative — not in words but in action,” she says. “There’s a group on the east side called Feed ‘Em Freedom Growers; if you don’t have food you can’t be free. Detroit has over 1,000 community gardens. Urban agriculture started very simply with some African-American women seeing some vacant lots.

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By Susan LeVine and Tom Shepherd
Summerland Publishing
January 1, 2012

Many years ago, every citizen had a garden. Today, some of us are too busy or don’t know how to grow a garden. So, how do you make a garden and become a citizen farmer? This Handbook for Citizen Farmers was written by Tom Shepherd and Susan LeVine. Tom has been an organic farmer since 1973 and shares his secrets in this simple format to inspire children, families and schools to grow their own garden. Susan, a gifted artist, provides beautiful watercolor illustrations that help tell the story of growing a wonderful garden of your very own.

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Benchmarks were compiled by Wally Satzewich, creator of the SPIN-Farming system

By Wally Satzewich, Roxanne Christensen
Oct 06, 2011
94 pages

SPIN-Farming has released the latest print guide in its learning series for sub-acre farmers. SPIN-Farming 2.0: Production Planning & Crop Profiles quantifies exactly how much money a farmer can generate for 40 crops grown on less than an acre. SPIN stands for “small plot intensive,” and it is a system that combines intensive production with a direct marketing business model.

With SPIN-Farming 2.0 crop profiles, for the first time ever, sub-acre farmers can benchmark their sales revenue from selling produce directly to consumers at farmers’ markets. The benchmarks were compiled by Wally Satzewich, creator of the SPIN-Farming system, based on his experience at his multi-sited backyard urban/peri-urban farm operation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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The RUAF Foundation, the International network of Resource centres on Urban Agriculture and Food security

By Henk de Zeeuw
From the Editorial
Director RUAF Foundation
2011

Excerpts:

The RUAF Foundation, the International network of Resource centres on Urban Agriculture and Food security, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. This special issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine will highlight the development of the RUAF net- work, the type of activities developed during the past years, some of the main results achieved at city, national and international level, and strategic challenges in the coming years in a number of thematic articles and case studies.

Results

The results achieved in the past years by the RUAF partners can be summarised as follows. At city level – In (most of) the 20 RUAF partner cities progress has been made in the following areas:

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Children eat mango at the Garden at Westerly Creek Park in Denver, CO. Refugees from countries including Bhoutan, Somolia, and Sudan gather at this community farm where they now grow a city block’s worth of produce. Photo © Michael Hanson. See more here.

Book published January 2012

By David Hanson (Author), Edwin Marty (Author), Mark Winne (Foreword), Michael Hanson (Photographer)
University of California Press
Jan. 2012

Brothers David and Michael Hanson and urban farmer Edwin Marty document twelve successful urban farm programs, from an alternative school for girls in Detroit, to a backyard food swap in New Orleans, to a restaurant supply garden on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Each beautifully illustrated essay offers practical advice for budding farmers, such as composting and keeping livestock in the city, decontaminating toxic soil, even changing zoning laws.

1. P-Patch Community Garden Program, Seattle, Washington • The Neighborhood Garden
HOW TO: Change Your City’s Urban Agriculture Zoning Codes

2. Homeless Garden Project, Santa Cruz, California • The Farm as Therapy
HOW TO: Grow Good, Safe Food

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A Guide By The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance

By Booka Alon, Elan Segarra, Eli Zigas
A Guide By The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance
November 2011
25 pages

From SPUR – San Francisco Planning and Research Assoc.

Starting a garden or farm in San Francisco just got a little bit easier. Pulling together the most recent changes to city laws, the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance recently released a guide to the regulations for growing and selling food within San Francisco.

The guide covers a host of topics including:

Finding land
Gardening on private versus public land
Water access
Selling what you grow
Specific sections on rooftop gardens, animal husbandry, and soil testing.

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“Rabbits are the best survival system as they can eat almost anything growing in the urban area.”

The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City
By Helga and Bill Olkowski, Sim Van der Ryn, Tom Javits, Sterling Bunnell
Farallones Institute 1979
494 pages

This was one of our ‘bibles’ at City Farmer when we began in the 70’s. There is still much to be learned from it by the same authors who wrote The City People’s Book of Raising Food in 1975. The Olkowskis then went on to promote IPM, Integrated Pest Management, and published a book we still use named Common-Sense Pest Control.

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Farm Design is crucial to the quality and quantity of food production.

Eugene has been growing food and developing creative, community partnerships for over a decade. He believes that artistic expression and sustainable living are the keys to vibrant social systems. Eugene has been engaging both the youth and adults with hands on learning experiences and lectures to help cultivate the nurturing sensibility that is crucial to our human evolution. He has been helping people grow food at homes, schools, churches, community centers and parks.

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Britton Abbot’s cottage garden near the town of Tadcaster, England, a productive quarter of an acre

Excerpts from An account of a cottage and garden near Tadcaster, by Thomas Bernard, 1797

The land required for each cottage and garden, need not be more than a rood (quarter acre); the value of which would bear no possible comparison to that of the industry to be employed upon it. The quarter of an acre that Britton Abbot inclosed, was not worth a shilling a year. It now contains a good house and a garden, abounding in fruit, vegetables, and almost everything that constitutes the wealth of the cottager. In such inclosures, the benefits to the country, and to the individuals of the parish, would far surpass and petty sacrifice of land to be required. “Five unsightly unprofitable acres of waste ground would afford habitation and comfort to twenty such families as Britton Abbot’s.”

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City Farmer – Adventures in Urban Food Growing by Lorraine Johnson

Urban Agriculture: Ideas and Designs for the New Food Revolution by David Tracey

Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr

The Urban Food Revolution – Changing the Way We Feed Cities by Peter Ladner

Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution by Jennifer Cockrall-King

Beginning with Lorraine Johnson’s City Farmer in 2010 and including Jennifer Cockrall-King’s Food and the City coming out in February 2012, Canadian writers have produced five well-researched, well-written and fascinating books on urban agriculture. Not since the seminal Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs, and Sustainable Cities was published over ten years ago has there been such attention paid to this global movement.

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Broad Bean Wine, Pine Needle Cordial, Nocino, an Italian green walnut cordial, Carrot Whisky, Sloe and Damson Rum, Parsnip Sherry, Elderberry and Blackberry Wine, Pumpkin Beer, Broom Tonic, Meadowsweet Tea, Elderflower Champagne, Sloe Gin and Prison Brew

By Andy Hamilton
Eden Project Books
1 Sept, 2011

A guide that contains over 100 recipes including beer made from hops and also yarrow, mugwort, elder and other foraged plants, great tasting wines from fruit, vegetables and the hedgerows, cider and perry from apples and pears, cordials from the leaves of a range of trees, and teas and fizzy drinks from herbs and wayside flowers.

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By Helen Babbs
Timber Press
2011, 144 pages

Helen Babbs is a self-proclaimed city girl who lives on the second floor of a flat in a chaotic corner of London. An urge to find more green in the city and a stronger connection to the natural world leads her to create her first garden, an organic edible garden on her rooftop. This year-long adventure is the story behind My Garden, the City and Me.

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By David Toht
Creative Homeowner
December 5, 2011

David Toht has more than 60 how-to books to this credit. He considers harvesting a sun-warmed tomato from his own garden one of life’s sweetest pleasures. He and his wife, Rebecca, live in Olympia, Washington.

From the author David Toht:

We once had a flock of brown-egg chickens. We called them our “illicit biddies” because they weren’t strictly legal in town. My wife and kids and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, relishing the fresh eggs and delighting in the antics of the hens. They were great fun to work with, grateful for weeds and vegetable scraps, donating manure for the compost pile, meticulously scratching up insects and grubs.

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By Twigs Way
Shire
2008

The humble allotment has a surprisingly turbulent history. Initially the right to an allotment was proposed as a charitable means by which the poor could grow their own food and stave off starvation, but it quickly entered political and social debate. During the World Wars the allotment became the focal point on the home front, as families took part in the Dig for Victory campaigns. The post-war years saw a decline in the popularity of the allotment as the supermarket took over from home-grown produce. Successive governments condemned allotments in favour of new housing.

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Breaking Through Concrete Book Promotional from Michael Hanson on Vimeo.

Must see video. Mike

Breaking Through Concrete: Building an Urban Farm Revival – Book available January 2012

David Hanson (Author), Edwin Marty (Author),
Mark Winne (Foreword), Michael Hanson (Photographer)
January 2012
Hardcover, 200 pages

People have always grown food in urban spaces—on windowsills and sidewalks, and in backyards and neighborhood parks—but today, urban farmers are leading an environmental and social movement that transforms our national food system. To explore this agricultural renaissance, brothers David and Michael Hanson and urban farmer Edwin Marty document twelve successful urban farm programs, from an alternative school for girls in Detroit, to a backyard food swap in New Orleans, to a restaurant supply garden on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Each beautifully illustrated essay offers practical advice for budding farmers, such as composting and keeping livestock in the city, decontaminating toxic soil, even changing zoning laws.

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Eighteen diverse kitchen gardens, from subtropical Queensland to the arid zone of central Australia, from the suburbs of Adelaide to the countryside of rural Victoria and Tasmania.

By Kate Herd
Penguin Books Australia,
28/02/2011
Hardback, 232 pages

Excerpt:

Twenty years ago my stepfather was horrified when my mother planted corn in our ‘nice’ and ‘respectable’ front garden in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. For him it was embarrassing; it smacked of urban peasantry: ‘What will the neighbours think?’ Thankfully, vegie gardens are again a more accepted part of the urban landscape. Groovy inner-city cafes boast their own potagers and there are monthly neighbourhood vegetable ‘swap-meets’ where fresh unused or excess backyard produce is swapped for the different surplus of others. The busy city family doesn’t even need to get its hands dirty to benefit from its own garden any more – you can pay companies to install and maintain your vegetable garden for you.

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Indira Naidoo embarks on a mission to transform her tiny thirteen-floor balcony into a bountiful kitchen garden. Penguin Books Australia, 31/10/2011, Paperback, 224 pages.

The Edible Balcony charts a year in the life of Indira’s balcony garden and gives a season-by-season account of the triumphs and challenges she faces.

Roslyn Grundy
Sydney Morning Herald
November 14, 2011

Excerpt:

Naidoo’s balcony vegie patch was an idea that could easily have withered on the vine. “A lot of people in apartments just automatically rule themselves out,” says Naidoo. “They just think, ‘Well, there’s nothing I can grow in an apartment so I won’t even think about it. I’ll fantasise about one day having a tree change or a sea change and having my little plot of land somewhere, but it’s not going to happen while I live in the city.’”

One of 261 people former US vice-president Al Gore trained in 2009 to educate the public on climate change, Naidoo is involved in communicating complex scientific and political concepts relating to climate change, carbon trading and consumer food miles.

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War is the natural occupation of man … war-and gardening.
Winston Churchill to Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

By George McKay
Frances Lincoln Publishers
May 2011
George McKay is a leading British author on aspects of alternative culture through music, protest, lifestyle. He is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Salford.

In the common public perception, contemporary gardening is understood as suburban, as leisure activity, as television makeover opportunity. Its origins are seen as religious or spiritual (Garden of Eden), military (the clipped lawn, the ha-ha and defensive ditches), aristocratic or monarchical (the stately home, the Royal Horticultural Society). Radical Gardening travels an alternative route, through history and across landscape, linking propagation with propaganda.

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Mayor Gregor Robertson debates with NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton.

The urban agriculture movement is gaining strength across B.C., enthusiastically adapted by everyone from businesses to backyard growers to pot-growers. So why is it being used as a wedge issue in Vancouver’s latest election?

By Peter Ladner
Crosscut
Nov 7, 2011
Peter Ladner is the founder of “Business in Vancouver” newspaper and a former Vancouver City Councillor. He is currently a Fellow at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue. His new book is named: The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities.

Excerpt:

As the Nov. 19 municipal election deadline nears, the struggling right-of-center Non-Partisan Association (NPA) has been challenging the ruling Vision Vancouver party’s misspending through its Greenest City Action Plan. The one project singled out for high profile ridicule is the “wheat fields” — a modest $5,000 grant to the Environmental Youth Alliance dedicated to planting enough wheat in numerous front yards to harvest 100 pounds, redefine the notion of the “city farm,” and teach young people how bread is made. It’s definitely a stretch of taxpayer dollars, but hardly significant for a city with a $1 billion budget.

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Doing Time in the Garden

By James Jiler
New Village Press
2006

In his book, Doing Time in the Garden, James Jiler combines an engaging personal account of running a highly successful horticultural vocation program at the largest jail complex in the United States with a practical guide to starting and managing prison and re-entry gardening programs.

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