Category — United States

See the rest of these photos in New York Times slideshow here.

By TRACIE McMILLAN
New York Times May 7, 2008

“For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.

“The Wilkses now cultivate plots at four sites in East New York, paying as little as $2 a bed (usually 4 feet by 8 feet) in addition to modest membership fees. Last year the couple sold $3,116 in produce at a market run by the community group East New York Farms, more than any of their neighbors.

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Alethea Marie Harper, May 2007
Award-Winning Master’s Thesis, 160 pages
Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
University of California, Berkeley

“West Oakland is a community with limited access to healthy food. My work for People’s Grocery, a local nonprofit, will help the neighborhood and the nearby agricultural community work together to repair the local food system. Local production, self-sufficiency, and restoration of knowledge and local bonds are emphasized throughout. This project exemplifies how analysis and planning can combine pragmatism with idealism, creating a realizable vision for a thriving neighborhood and a robust local food system.

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Article in The Wall Street Journal.
By KELLY K. SPORS, April 22, 2008

“… Start-up costs for a one-eighth-acre farm run about $5,500, says Ms. Christensen of Spin-Farming. That includes a walk-in cooler to wash and store fresh produce, a rotary tiller and a farm-stand display. Annual operating expenses, including seeds and farmers-market stall fees, can add about $2,000. Such a farm can generate $10,000 to $20,000 in annual sales, she says. That’s “an entry point into farming to see if they have a talent for it,” Ms. Christensen says. “Those that do will eventually be able to expand and increase that income level quite substantially.”…”

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“Far more than simply a ‘how to’ manual, this guidebook is a collection of a wide variety of experiences depicting school gardens across the state of Hawai`i. This book features teachers who plant gardens with their students to educate across multiple disciplines—math, geography, history, biology, and language arts.

“Stories of gardens that are more than just gardens abound, such as the school that parlayed lessons of growing things into lessons of entrepreneurship by turning a productive garden plot into a model farm business to assist in funding field trips.

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Interview on Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio #586

USDA Photo by: Arthur Rothstein

“The price city people around the world pay for animal protein is going through the roof. And so we ask: Can livestock be raised in the city?

“As the economies of developing nations produce more prosperity, more people seek to add the highly concentrated protein of animals into their diet. Where beef, pork and poultry were once luxuries, they are now day-to-day staples. And given the huge populations of developing nations like China and India, the demand is huge.

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“The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape. It was initiated by architect and artist Fritz Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. Since then three more prototype gardens have been created.

“Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn documents the first four gardens with first-hand accounts written by the owners, garden plans, and photographs illustrating the creation of the gardens, from ripping up the grass to harvesting a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs.”

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When we started City Farmer in 1978, our staff spent a good deal of time researching wartime gardens. The term “Victory Gardens” is making a comeback as you can see in this April 12th, San Francisco Chronicle article, Bring Back the WWII-era Victory Garden.

The US World War II film embedded above (20 minutes long), a favourite of ours, shows us how people were encouraged to grow food by their governments - - the US, Canada and Britain all promoted Victory Gardens.

“The Holder family in Maryland lays out a quarter acre Victory Garden during World War II. Most of the gardening work is done by Grandpa Holder and his teenage grandchildren Rick and Amy and from the looks of the film, it is backbreaking work. There is the garden of peppers, tomatoes, pole beans, potatoes, asparagus and sweet corn. Then, there is the late garden with beets, squash, late potatoes, late cabbage, kale, collard greens and three rows of turnips.

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New York Times article. March 19, 2008
By Allison Arieff, the former Editor in Chief of Dwell magazine
132 comments on this article already.
Photo: Marion Brenner

“Not long ago, any visions of an agrarian return would have been chalked up to nostalgia: today, such conjurings don’t seem so far-fetched. And indeed, the purposeful reclamation of urban and suburban lands is serious fodder for artists, architects and academics alike.

“Creating open space where others wouldn’t think to look for it is a trademark of architect David Baker, who, for Curran House, an affordable housing project in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin neighborhood, designed roof gardens with small individual container garden plots allowing residents to cultivate their own crops.

See article in the New York Times here.

1996 Documentary, re-issued on DVD in 2005.

City Farmers takes a deep and startling look at the community gardening movement in New York where determined inner-city residents overcome the threat of drug wars, murder, and decay to create gardens that are compelling metaphors of survival.

The gardeners themselves narrate vivid and poignant stories of their experiences. They describe personal visions about the struggle for life that exists both in and out of the gardens.

“A horror, a war zone, you couldn’t walk on the sidewalk - all the furniture, the refrigerators, stoves, the meat, rotten meat, the vegetables - the stink, the bees, the flies, the worms - it was gross.” (Gladys Gonzales, East New York, Brooklyn)

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“This past summer, my friends (Art and Heidi) and I tried to grow heirloom vegetables on our respective rooftops in Chicago using homemade Earthboxes. Heidi would come over every few weeks and take some photos of my plants, which she then sent me along with some shots from their roof garden.

“We’re trying to figure out how to automate the watering of all those tubs on my garage roof without spending a lot of money. Here’s what I’ve got so far: Out of a reservoir kept full with a Hudson valve, I’d run supply lines to each of the boxes. If I suck all the air out of these lines, the siphon/water level effect should keep all the tubs watered as long as the vacuum seal isn’t broken.”

See all their photos and more on Earthboxes here.