Onni Community Gardens in Vancouver BC from Michael Levenston on Vimeo. See HD quality by clicking on screen.
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.

400 People on Waiting-list Prompt Developer to Build Second Garden.

Onni opened its second garden in late September under sunny skies. Earlier this year, Mike Clark talked to us as the developer was about to open its first community garden. Once again he provides us with details about the second site, which is located adjacent to the first one.

Just 3 weeks ago, the downtown Vancouver city block was covered in buildings. They were removed and new garden beds, paths and an irrigation system were installed. This has to be a ‘Guinness Book of Records’ record for the development of a new community garden.

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In this December 1914 photograph, a British soldier of the London Rifle Brigade poses proudly behind his garden, festooned with stoneware rum jugs (on the extreme right). In the months to come, this location at Ploegsteert Wood in the Ypres Salient in Belgium would become the scene of horrific fighting. From the NPR website – from Imperial War Museum.

Kenneth Helphand published Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime in 2006.

“Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens — not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe’s ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance.”

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Location of Community Gardens in Portland, Oregon.

Demand grows for community gardens in Portland

By KGW Staff, Portland, Oregon
September 24, 2008

If you’re trying to get a plot in the city’s community gardens — get ready for a long wait. More than 1,000 people are waiting and there are only 1,200 plots available citywide.

The only expansion planned is 22 new plots in Southeast Portland. Volunteers say it’s not nearly enough to cope with record demand.

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Edamame Harvested at City Farmer from Michael Levenston on Vimeo.
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.

We all like to snack on salted edamame with our sushi when we dine out at a Japanese restaurant. But you can see in this video that they grow well in a home garden. Sharon chose our variety from the Salt Spring Seeds catalogue but there are also varieties in the West Coast Seeds lineup.

Wikipedia says: “The Japanese name edamame is commonly used in some English-speaking countries to refer to the dish. The Japanese name literally means “twig bean”, and is a reference to the short stem attached to the pod. This term originally referred to young soybeans in general. Over time, however, the prevalence of the salt-boiled preparation meant that the term edamame now often refers specifically to this dish.”

from Makerere University Press, 250 pages
Editors: Donald Cole, Diana Lee-Smith and George Nasinyama (Will be going to press in the next few weeks.)

“In an era of global urban food crises and rapid, unplanned
city growth, how can urban agriculture be transformed from a
potential source of health risks into a vehicle for healthier
urban households and local environments?”

• A novel guide to integrating agriculture and public health into urban policy
• “Policy dialogue” to engage researchers and policy makers in support of agriculture-based livelihoods of low income urban families
• A science-based approach to dealing with public health and food safety concerns
• Essential reading for professionals and academics involved in agriculture and the environment, public health, and urban planning and management

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Aboriginal Community Kitchen Gardens at UBC Farm, Vancouver, BC

Since 2002, members of the Musqueam First Nation have grown vegetables on the farm site for their community kitchen project. With an interest in expanding the potential benefits of this community nutrition project, the farm initiated a new pilot program in 2005. In collaboration with 17 different agencies working on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), a plot of land on the farm is dedicated towards the DTES Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project.

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Collingwood Neighbourhood House Rooftop Garden from Michael Levenston on Vimeo. See HD version. Click screen.
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.

Heidi Sinclair has spent the last few years developing this roof garden at the Collingwood Neighbourhood House in Vancouver BC. She gives Mike of City Farmer a brief tour of the newly opened community resource.

“This past winter, the rooftop garden of Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH) went under some serious construction; the old wooden plant boxes were removed from the upstairs deck and permanent flower beds made of cement were installed. The construction, finished in time for spring planting, has meant that the Renfrew Collingwood Food Security Institute (RCFSI) has been able to grow and harvest large amounts of fresh, locally-grown fruits and vegetables on the CNH rooftop.

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Photo by Stuart Gradon.

Historic community garden in line for city protection in Calgary, Alberta

Kim Guttormson, Calgary Herald
September 18, 2008

Marshall Libicz stands in the garden plot he’s worked on and off for more than 70 years, strawberries, zucchini, parsnip and beets at his feet.

“It’s got a history,” the 85-year-old says of the 825 square-metre lot where residents of Bridgeland/Riverside have grown food since the 1920s. “We thought we were going to lose it.”

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Farm Fountain is a collaborative project by artists Ken Rinaldo and Amy Youngs. See their beautiful videos, photos and a web cam!

Farm Fountain is a system for growing edible and ornamental fish and plants in a constructed, indoor ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a simple pond pump, along with gravity to flow the nutrients from fish waste through the plant roots. The plants and bacteria in the system serve to cleanse and purify the water for the fish.

This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans.

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Photo: High Point Market Garden. Larger image here.

Seattle Market Gardens is a partnership between in-city farmers and consumers resulting in weekly deliveries of high-quality, farm-fresh, organic produce during the growing season.

In 2007 Seattle Market Gardens provided produce for approximately 60 households over 22 weeks. It currently has two community supported agriculture (CSA) gardens located and farmed by residents in Southeast and Southwest Seattle.

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Harvesting Satina Potatoes at City Farmer from Mike Levenston on Vimeo. You can follow the links above and watch this video in HD (High Definition).
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.

Maria pulls up a large harvest of delicious Satina potatoes at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. We’ve boiled and baked these and made potato salad – all delicious dishes.

Photo: Williamsburg

By Wesley Greene, garden historian in the Landscape Department at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Most plantation accounts refer to kitchen gardens, but it is far more difficult to determine how common kitchen gardens were in an urban setting and, in particular, in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. The 1782 Desandrouins map of Williamsburg does show garden areas on several properties, particularly on the fringes of town where the larger estates were located. Thomas Jefferson, in a 1776 letter to John Page, compares Annapolis, Maryland, to Williamsburg and concedes that the buildings in Annapolis were “in general better than those at Williamsburg, but the gardens are more indifferent.” All of the stores in eighteenth-century Williamsburg offered vegetable seeds for sale, so there were certainly a number of fine gardens in town that were most likely vegetable gardens.

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Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Food Banks Finding Aid in Bounty of Backyard

By Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times
September 13, 2008

Thus was born North Berkeley Harvest, part of a small but expanding movement of backyard urban gleaners — they might be called fruit philanthropists — who voluntarily harvest surplus fruit and then donate it to food banks, centers for the elderly and other nonprofit organizations.

The concept of gleaning, or collecting a portion of crops on farmers’ fields for the needy, before or after harvesting, goes back to ancient cultures. But it has more recently been taken up by people like Joni Diserens, a 43-year-old program manager for Hewlett-Packard and founder of Village Harvest in Silicon Valley.

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Photo: Members of Redeemer Covenant Church help plant a community garden in Dutton.

Urban Agriculture is Supporting Faith, the Environment and Community

By Jac Smit © Sept 13, 2008

It is fair to say that faith-based groups have been leading urban agriculture for 25 or more years. Something has changed this movement in the 21st century. It is the merger of religion, social science and natural science. We now see faith based groups working with groups concerned with our civilization’s environmental survival as well as community building organizations. There may well be a new leadership for farming the city.

Church and other religious property is a major land use in urban areas. In general religious property does not pay taxes. Often it is a purposed gift not a purchase. Commonly the place of worship is centrally located within a community, town or city. This ‘idle’ land has a substantial potential to contribute to locally-based food systems.

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How does your backyard garden grow?

By David Colker, Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2008

Marta Teegen, who owns Homegrown, a Los Angeles-based garden consulting company, will come to your house and install a vegetable garden with your choice of plants. She generally puts in about four 4-by-6-foot raised beds.

The average cost — $2,000.

At that rate, and because this is Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that several of her clients are celebrities (whom she declined to name) with private chefs.

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All the way from Byron Bay, Australia, Lesley Bayliss describes an herb business she started for people with intellectual disabilities. Part of the program is funded by the herbs that clients grow. Sales are upwards of $50,000 per year, all grown on a half acre of land in an industrial area of town. Over 150 varieties of herbs for sale:

Bush Tucker
Lemon Myrtle (backhousia citriodora)
Davidsons Plum (davidsonia pruriens)

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Our Maria is not just a Bug Lady, she’s a ‘Mushroom Lady’ as well. Hidden amongst the large squash leaves in the Youth Garden are some wonderful edible mushrooms she started last spring. Maria shows us how she grew her King Stropharia – Garden Giants.

See this piece about Garden Giants. ‘Grow edible mushrooms in your vegetable garden!’ By Carolyn Herriot

A video by Rebecca Gerendasy.

“More grows in a garden than what the gardener plants” – Old Spanish Proverb

“Each year, through the Janus Youth Programs, a group of up to 10 teenagers from various NE Portland neighborhoods have a chance to give back to their community, and themselves, by growing food.

“They became urban farmers by planning, planting, and harvesting their crops on a farm within a metropolitan area. They learned about the value of food by selling at the local Farmers Market.

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Photo: Marg and Homer. Gnomes from the Inuvik Greenhouse Fall Fair gnome decorating contest.

People love to read about food gardening in the Canadian Arctic. We put up a web page for the Inuvik Community Greenhouse when it first went into operation back in 1998 and it is still a well-visited page. In 2002, coordinator Carrie Young wrote me to say, “I should tell you that I’ve had a lot of feedback from your site. Many people have found out about our project through it and contacted me.”

And the project continues to attract attention. The following Reuters’ story, ‘Raising vegetables under Canada’s midnight sun’ by Allan Dowd, September 4, 2008, paints the picture yet again.

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Illustration: Carin Goldberg in Wired magazine.

(You know urban agriculture has gone mainstream when it is written about in the premier high-tech magazine. Mike)

By Clive Thompson
Wired Magazine 08.18.08

But what I love most here is the potential for cultural transformation. Growing our own food again would reconnect us to this country’s languishing frontier spirit.

Once you realize how easy it is to make the concrete jungle bloom, it changes the way you see the world. Urban environments suddenly appear weirdly dead and wasteful. When I walk around New York City now, I see the usual empty lots and balconies and I think, Wait a minute. Why aren’t we growing food here? And here? And here?

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