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.

That’s how big changes take place, with small changes. Important changes always start from the bottom up. We think they come from the top, or start with millions of people. No, they start when some people respond to the historical context and do what needs to be done. That’s how revolution takes place.”

Quote from article here.

Index shows “urban agriculture pages 115-132″.

Link to book on Amazon here.

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.

Teaching Farming to the Next Generation – Tom Shepherd and Susan LeVine Co-Author A Handbook for Citizen Farmers

By Katherine Guzman
Santa Barbara’s Independent
January 21, 2012

Excerpt:

With terms like “urban homesteading” and “locavore” becoming nearly as ubiquitous as “tweeting” and “blogging,” one can say that things in this country may finally be on the right track. People are realizing that taking care of their own health also means taking care of the health of this planet, and the movement to eat better and live better now also involves making a conscious effort to lessen the impact we make on the environment.

For some people, like Tom Shepherd, this awakening happened long ago. Shepherd starting organically farming in 1973 after he became aware of the chemicals in our food supply and their damaging effect on human health and the environment. “I just started paying more attention,” said Shepherd, who then taught himself to garden, and eventually farm, organically. Owner of Shepherd Farms in Carpenteria, Tom sells his produce to schools, restaurants, and in farmers markets, and has become rather iconic on menus that simply announce “Shepherd’s greens” as their salad offering.

Read the complete article here.

See the book here.

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.

“Agriculture is one of the most extensively researched, analyzed and documented industries in the world,” says Satzewich. “But not much of the data and analysis are relevant or useful to the SPIN farmer whose success depends not on hundreds or thousands of acres, but on producing high yields from small land bases and selling locally.”

According to Roxanne Christensen, co-author of the SPIN-Farming guides, “Crop prices at farmers’ markets have not been tracked because, until recently, it wasn’t a big business. But direct marketing of local foods has become a $1.2 billion industry in the U.S. and has grown exponentially over the past decade. SPIN-Farming is working to encourage and support the professionalization of an industry that has historically been fragmented, unorganized and unrecognized.”

According to Satzewich, SPIN’s next objective is to work with seed companies to offer seed quantities specifically tailored to the needs of professional urban and suburban-based farmers. “Once we get the seed industry aboard, SPIN farmers will be able to very easily plan production based on what their crops are worth and calculate how much income they can earn.”

Purchase here.

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:

Enhancing the knowledge of stakeholders on the poten-
tial and risks of UPA.

Acceptance of UPA as a legitimate urban land use
category and its integration in local urban land use
planning.

Improvement of communication and cooperation
between local stakeholders.

Formulation and adoption of a city strategic agenda
on UPA by the multi-stakeholder platform, leading to the development of new policies, regulations and programmes on UPA by local authorities and other local actors.

Inclusion of UPA in the municipal institutional structure and in the annual budget of the municipality as well as in the regular programmes of various other institutions.

52 local UPA projects have been implemented involving over 9000 poor urban households. These projects have improved livelihoods and have provided opportunities for learning and demonstration.

18 agri-businesses with their own marketing channels have been established with/by groups of urban poor.

Table of Contents:

Editorial

International Conference “Urban Agriculture for Resilient Cities: Lessons learnt in Policy, Research and Practice”

International Support to Research and Policy on Urban Agriculture (1996-2010): achievements and challenges

Multi-Stakeholder Policy Formulation and Action Planning on Urban Agriculture

Creating the Urban Agriculture Forum in Belo Horizonte: a multi-stakeholder experience

Developing Institutional Synergies for Effective Urban Agriculture Development in Sri Lanka

Agromere: Integrating urban agriculture in the development of the city of Almere

Financing Urban Agriculture: Current challenges and innovations

Effects of the Global Financial Crisis and Food Price Hikes of 2007/2008 on the Food Security of Poor Urban Households

Cities, Climate Change and Urban Agriculture

Integrating urban agriculture in the urban landscape

City Resilience: Building cultural repertoire for urban farming in Almere

The RUAF “From Seed to Table” Programme; an approach to participatory innovation in small-scale urban and periurban agriculture production, processing and marketing

Developing Value Chains in Amman, Jordan

Strengthening the Production and Sale of Agrosilves Pigs in Villa El Salvador, Peru

Urban Agriculture development in Minhang, Shanghai

The Kibidoué Cooperative in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

Recovery and Reuse of Resources: Enhancing urban resilience in low-income countries

Urban Agriculture for People Affected by HIV/Aids

Read the complete magazine 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

3. Fairview Gardens and the Center for Urban Agriculture, Santa Barbara, California • The Historic Farm
HOW TO: Plant Perennial Fruit Trees in the City

4. Denver Urban Gardens, Denver, Colorado • The Garden as Community
HOW TO: Turn Your Waste into Black Gold Compost

5. Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri • The Farm for Profit
HOW TO: Access Start-Up Capital for Urban Food Projects

6. Versailles Community, New Orleans, Louisiana • Backyards of Bounty
HOW TO: Develop a Congregational Urban Farm

7. Jones Valley Urban Farm, Birmingham, Alabama • The Education and Production Farm
HOW TO: Engage the Community with Education Programs

8. Greensgrow, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • The Nonprofit, For-Profit Farm
HOW TO: Rehabilitate Contaminated Soils

9. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn, New York • The Rooftop Farm
HOW TO: Convert Rooftops to Residential Gardens and Urban Farms

10. Catherine Ferguson Academy, Detroit, Michigan • The Alternative Curriculum Farm
HOW TO: Raise Urban Livestock

11. Growing Home’s Wood Street Urban Farm, Chicago, Illinois • The Job Training Farm
HOW TO: Extend the Growing Season with Hoop Houses and Greenhouses

12. Sandhill Organics and Prairie Crossing, Grayslake, Illinois • The Peri-urban Farm
HOW TO: Start an Urban Farm

Conclusion by Edwin Marty

See book here.

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.

The booklet was produced based on the guidance of staff from eight city agencies, ranging from the County Agricultural Commissioner to the Department of Building Inspections. It consolidates, for the first time, the specific wording of agency rules as well as relevant departmental contact information.

The guide won’t help your plants or animals thrive, but it does serve as a road map to the rules and policies specific to the City for aspiring gardeners and urban farmers.

Read the book online here.

“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.

See The Integral Urban House book for sale here.

The Integral Urban House – A Victorian mansion in Berkeley California is converted into an urban homestead.

By Julie Reynolds
Mother Earth News
November/December 1976

Excerpt:

For all the current talk about getting “back to the land” and becoming self-sufficient, darn few folks have taken the lead in showing urban residents—apartment dwellers and city homeowners—how they too can enjoy a more self-reliant way of life. One organization that is doing encouraging work in this area is the Farallones Institute of Berkeley, California. Here’s a report on just one of the Institute’s project: the conversion of a Victorian mansion into an urban homestead!

Away out here in Berkeley, California—in an aging semi-industrial neighborhood—an enthusiastic group of “doers” has come together to restore (and display to the public) a 100-year-old Victorian house. What’s so unusual about that? Nothing . . . except that the stately dwelling—now known as the Integral Urban House—has become one of the country’s most innovative and successful “urban homesteads”.

Half a dozen IUH residents grow their own fruits and vegetables, raise chickens, rabbits, and fish, recycle 90% of their wastes, solar heat their hot water, and conduct a variety of alternative technology experiments . . . all on a 1/8-acre city lot!

“The Integral Urban House exists,” explains house resident Charles O’Loughlin, “to serve as a model for a more ecologically sound urban habitat, and to provide urban dwellers with physical and conceptual tools for creating a more self-reliant lifestyle.” In other words, the IUH staffers want to show by example how city folk can “live better for less” . . . while doing a good deed for the planet at the same time.

Read the complete article here.

The Integral Urban House Revisited By William Olkowski

Excerpt from his blog, Dec 25, 2011

We had started a class at UC, Berkeley within the first Conservation and Natural Resource Management Program, a large scale educational responses to Earth Day. Students were working on these components and we were teaching how to kill a chicken, for example. This was a great experience as we had shocked vegetarians and all sorts of urban folk who had never really understood where their meat came from.

Being the radical I am and my feeling about food and animals as food, I was really too much. I used to go through the steps of first holding the chicken, then breaking its neck, then bleeding it by cutting its throat right there in the classroom. Then it was really an anatomy lesson, which itself was an eye opener because most students at the college level never see anything real and learn such skills, nor do they ever fully appreciate how the vertebrate body is constructed.

But if push comes to shove, knowing how to kill and dress an animal like a chicken or rabbit could be important for survival. I felt this way then and still do. If our food supply takes a dive, a lot of people are going to starve. Rabbits are the best survival system as they could eat almost anything growing in the urban area. Chickens need protein to make their eggs and getting that from food wastes is usually not enough to make the system efficient. Rabbits could be raised on alfalfa which could be grown in the garden. In WWII rabbit growing was big in the San Francisco Bay area as the climate is amenable to alfalfa as I saw reports of over 10 cuttings per year on earlier alfalfa farms. They are all gone now, however. No matter what, knowing how to produce your own food is a revolutionary activity.

Read the complete article here.

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.

See Eugene’s books here.

Eugene has assisted in developing gardens and mini-farms in California, Georgia, Washington D.C., Oregon, Florida and Kenya. He has been teaching visual art, environmental and agricultural science to children and adults for over 10 years. His artwork has been collected by the California State University at Fullerton, University of Colorado and many private collectors.

Visit Gebsite here.

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.”

Productive gardens to cottages would, by increased consumption of vegetables, make a considerable saving in bread corn: the same observation may be applied to cottager’s cows. Of butter, eggs, and poultry, our markets might have a regular and cheap supply from cottagers.

You can read the complete 15 page pamphlet as scanned by Google Books here.

More history of British gardens can be found in Allotments by Twigs Way.

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.

City Farmer – Adventures in Urban Food Growing

City Farmer celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers are getting closer to their food. Not only are backyard vegetable plots popping up in places long reserved for lawns, but some renegades are even planting their front yards with food. People in apartments are filling their balconies with pots of tomatoes, beans, and basil, while others are gazing skyward and “greening” their rooftops with food plants. Still others are colonizing public spaces, staking out territory in parks for community gardens and orchards, or convincing school boards to turn asphalt school grounds into “growing” grounds.

See more about the book here.

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

You don’t have to journey to a rural paradise to find the farm of the future. It’s your neighbor’s suburban lawn, the roof of your uptown condominium, or the co-op market garden in the vacant lot down the street. Urban Agriculture is a detailed look at how food is taking root in our cities. It offers inspirational advice and working examples to help you dig in and become more self-sufficient with your own food choices.

See more about the book here.

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

Appealing to both design professionals and individuals curious about current ideas and initiatives for growing food in close proximity to the point of consumption, CARROT CITY: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr presents 40 projects, created by designers from the United States and around the world, that explore innovative approaches to making space for urban food production.

See more about the book here.

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

Producing food locally makes people healthier, alleviates poverty, creates jobs, and makes cities safer and more beautiful. The Urban Food Revolution is an essential resource for anyone who has lost confidence in the global industrial food system and wants practical advice on how to join the local food revolution.

See more about the book here.

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

One answer is urban agriculture. Food and the City examines alternative food systems in cities around the globe that are shortening their food chains, growing food within their city limits, and taking their “food security” into their own hands. Award-winning food journalist Jennifer Cockrall-King sought out leaders in the urban-agriculture movement and visited cities successfully dealing with “food deserts.” What she found was not just a niche concern of activists but a global movement that cuts across the private and public spheres, economic classes, and cultures.

See more about the book here.

And a link to Urban Agriculture: Food Jobs and Sustainable Cities by Jac Smit Joe Nasr Annu Ratta, 2001, 2nd edition here.

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.

How to make horseradish vodka

Excerpt:

See the book here.

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.

The journey begins in the dark of winter, where Babbs finds herself at a seed swap on a February morning, seduced more by packaging than by any true understanding of the plants. As the year progresses, Babbs revels in failures, like waking up bleary eyed and stomping on her seed starts, and triumphs like her summer-ending dinner party made with homegrown produce. Along the way she discovers “that I like gardening in my pajamas and that growing something from seed, watching it develop and then eating its fruits is truly joyful. I’ve daydreamed out there and entertained out there. It’s the force behind new friendships that I’ve forged. The garden has opened my eyes to a whole new side of London and urban living.”

My Garden, the City and Me is a lyrical narrative about a twenty-something in search for a bit of wild in her city. The journey is charming, honest, and steeped in the lore of London, a city equally known for its gardens and its grit. In the end Babbs has achieved a new perspective on what it means to live green in the city she loves.

See the book here.

See her blog here.

Urban farming: the inside track

by Helen Babbs
The City Planter
December 22nd, 2011

Excerpt:

I’m welcomed in by the owner – the ever-enthusiastic Charlie Paton. He gives me a guided tour of the building where he runs his family business and also grows an impressive array of fruit and veg. It’s an old bakery that he bought in the 1970s and has recently transformed into an incredible workshop and office by extending upwards.

The top floor of the building has been designed and built specifically to grow food. There’s a glass roof and many windows, so it’s full of the sunlight needed to grow plants. It looks like a futuristic garden laboratory, with pipes running through it, various busy control panels and huge plants shooting up to the roof.

“2011 was our first growing season – we had cucumbers, peppers, strawberries and lettuces in the summer. We’re still getting red tomatoes and ripe chillies now,” says Charlie.

Read the complete article here.

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.

Our flock inspired me to contact Creative Homeowner about doing a book on chickens. They had a better idea, a book on the broader topic of food self-sufficiency. Backyard Homesteading is the result. I hope you find it a useful introduction to the joys of raising your own food.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on the book because I got to visit scores of backyard farms and talk with people passionate about things like top-bar bee hives, heritage tomatoes, and pygmy goats. Their hard-won knowledge and canny tricks of the trade were invaluable in putting this book together.

That exposure dovetailed with the summers I spent on my grandparents’ farm in west-central Illinois. The farm was that rarity, a diversified farm, with not just row crops like corn and soybeans, but fields of alfalfa, oats, and hay, as well as chickens, hogs, and steers. In addition, a huge garden yielded a cellar full of canned vegetables. I watched my grandfather butcher chickens, using the axe and chopping block method. The smell of scalded chicken feathers is something you don’t forget. That farm gave me an early exposure to how our food is produced and a lifelong love of working the soil. It also taught valuable lessons about the ingenuity and hard work self-sufficiency requires–and its substantial rewards.

See the book here.

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.

Recently, however, with increased concerns about the environment and the organic movement, allotments are in vogue once more. This book charts the rise and fall of the allotment – and the factors behind its most recent resurgence. Drawing on original documents and illustrations, the author explores the fascinating and surprising history of the allotment within the context of its social and political history.

Contents
Introduction
Plots and Politics
The Allotment Army
The Post-War Slump
A Future for Allotments?
Allotments Worldwide
Organisations
Index

See the book here.

Gardening Inspiration from Wartime Garden Guide

‘Allotment and Garden Guide’, written by Twigs Way

November 02, 2009, Press Dispensary. ‘Allotment and Garden Guide’, written by Twigs Way and published in December 09 by Sabrestorm, brings to the 21st century Britain’s essential month-by-month wartime gardening guide , as relevant to today’s amateur gardener and vegetable grower as it was in 1945. Twigs Way has compiled a full 12 months’ editions of ‘Allotment and Garden Guide’ – the flagship title in the wartime government’s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign – and adds commentary and insight, not only into gardening but into the war years, with the urgent threat that food might simply run out counterbalanced by the timelessness of seasonal routines.

In 1938, Britain imported 55 million tons of food. Just a year later the country was at war, shipping lanes were closed and the country’s larders had to be filled by amateur growers: householders who tore up garden lawns, public parks and town squares to grow cabbages and potatoes. Under ‘Dig for Victory’, the ‘nation of shopkeepers’ had to transform itself instantly into a nation of gardeners, entailing a massive educational programme which took these novices through the basic tasks for each month in the near-desperate hope that sowing and planting by the inexperienced would actually lead to productive harvests.

See the book here.

See Twigs Way’s website here.

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.

Excerpt: Chapter One

P-Patch Community Garden Program

Seattle, Washington

The Neighborhood Garden

Dennis Moore, fifty-four, helped Antoinette Crotty dig out the blackberry-laced hillside that helped establish the Interbay Bay P-Patch in 1974. Back then, as young twenty-somethings, Moore and his friends were fairly typical Seattleites-community-minded individuals with a do-it-yourself spirit-and the P-Patch community gardens popping up around the city represented that sensibility. Thirty-six years later, the P-Patch program is a national model for community gardening and a catalyst for progressive city policies that recognize and support urban agriculture in Seattle.

The P-Patch name derives from the first garden, begun in 1973 by a group of University of Washington students. They saw a patch of land that had laid fallow since its days as a truck farm in the 1920s and 1930s. The Picardo family owned the land and allowed the students to grow food and use the garden as a teaching space for area youth and other university students. A general back-to-the-land sentiment was running through much of the West Coast at the time, and Seattle, with its job losses following the 1967 to 1971 Boeing cuts, saw an opportunity for positive community growth via shared garden spaces. The city bought the original garden patch land from the Picardo family, and the concept for community gardens spread quickly on underutilized city lands, such as public right-of-ways, the ground beneath power lines, and abandoned lots. By the time Antoinette Crotty, Dennis Moore, and others were converting a blackberry patch into a P-Patch in the Interbay neighborhood, over ten community gardens were in the P-Patch organization. By 2010, there were seventy-three P-Patches farming twenty-three acres of city land.

The community garden infrastructure mimics the allotment gardens that have been popular in Britain and other countries for centuries. As opposed to an urban farm that has a manager and a staff of employees or volunteers who collectively plan, sow, tend, and harvest the produce and flowers for market sales, the community garden model allots small beds to individuals who apply for a plot, pay a nominal fee (roughly fifty dollars per year), and adhere to a basic set of shared guidelines. Each bed is its own small farm, and the plot’s owner can do what he or she wants with the food, though the majority use the produce for their respective households. In that way, the patch acts as a sort of surrogate garden for city dwellers who might not have the land or, as is common in Seattle, the sunlight to grow food.

See the book at publisher site here.

See the Breaking Through Concrete website here.

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.

On the other hand there are gardening makeovers based on reciprocal volunteerism like those instigated by the organisation Permablitz, where volunteers will come over and transform your garden into a productive space in a single weekend.

Digging up the front lawn for a productive garden might still constitute an anti-social act of radical gardening in some suburbs, and should by all means be encouraged! For those without land or an appropriate space of their own, a plot in a community garden or a land-sharing arrangement of some kind can be the answer. I love that a contemporary kitchen garden might be created on some unused urban land appropriated by a guerrilla gardener somewhere in a street near me; a ‘vegieplante’ who risks a council notice or two to make a low-tech and affordable edible garden out of recycled materials like pallets or car tyres. The country or rural kitchen garden is a different matter; regional gardens being marked by their access to open space and to large quantities of resources like manure and straw and, often, by their isolation. These days, however, country and city produce gardens can be equally challenged by lack of water.

Penguin Book website here.

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.

Growing a few tomatoes on her 13th-storey balcony seemed like a simple way to reduce her own carbon footprint and put a little oxygen back into the atmosphere while waiting for politicians to agree on a carbon trading scheme. And how hard could it be? A hundred years ago, everyone grew and cooked their own food, she reasoned. The reality was both simpler and more complex than she imagined.

Read the complete article here.

Penguin Book website here.

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.

For everyday garden life is not only patio, barbecue, white picket fence, topiary, herbaceous border.… From window box to veggie box, from political plot to flower power, this book uncovers and celebrates moments, movements, gestures, of a people’s approach to gardens and gardening. It weaves together garden history with the counterculture, stories of individual plants with discussion of government policy, the social history of campaign groups with the pleasure and dirt of hands in the earth, as well as original interviews alongside media, pop and art references, to offer an informing and inspiring new take on an old subject.

See excerpt here.

And the book here.

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.

In another attempt to create a wedge issue, NPA has challenged Vision’s approval of urban chickens. Candidates for the party make public appearances with a chicken mascot, holding up a sign that says, “Chickens for Gregor” — a reference to Vancouver’s mayor, Gregor Robertson.

“Chickens. They love the mayor,” NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton wrote in the Vancouver Sun last summer. “Their chicken brothers, sisters, and cousins can all retire to Vancouver. And if they wear out their welcome in somebody’s backyard, they can always move to the mayor’s $20,000 shelter for homeless chickens.”

Read the complete article here.

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.

The Greenhouse Project gives horticultural job-training to male and female inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island jail system. After release, ex-offenders can intern with the GreenTeam, which provides landscaping and gardening services to community groups and institutions throughout New York State.

Jiler’s humor and heartfelt stories about prison community and clear explanations of what works broaden this book’s appeal to all social activists, especially those involved with at-risk populations.

See the book here.