Courtesy of eoringel (via Flickr)

You’ve set up your aquaponic or your guerilla garden, you know how to grow, and now you want to expand and get the community involved in your garden.

Here are some things to think about when creating a community garden:

Starting a committee

Invite community and congregation members, neighbors, and interested local farmers to join. Get people excited about bringing a community garden into the neighborhood.

Divvying the responsibilities

Make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for. Are some people working on finding or expanding your site? Are others working on creating your volunteer system? Maybe others are looking for ways to fund your garden?

Choosing or expand your site

Does the site you have now allow you to expand, or should you be looking for a new location? Is it a space that gets 6 hours of sunlight? Do you need to do a soil test? Is there a water source available nearby?

When thinking about finding a new site for a community garden, find out who owns it and if they are willing to donate it to the community. The National Park Service allows groups to form community gardens in parks. It’s a great idea to develop a lease agreement for at least three years.

Setting up rules and guidelines

You have to set up rules and guidelines to make sure that people will really work on the garden when they say they will. Here’s a great example of a set of rules and regulations for a community garden.

Making it legit

There’s a lot to think about if you want to make your community garden an official organization, like your goals, plans, funding, etc. Liability insurance is something the landowner may require you attain when taking over the land.

Making snazzy additions to your garden

Once everything is set, and you’re working on the design of your garden, create:

• A garden sign that displays partners and participants.
• A community bulletin board.
• A picnic table for gardeners to rest or enjoy the bounty of the land.
• Children’s areas with small plots or sand boxes.
• Plants on the perimeter that are drought resistant but draw in pollinating friends like bees or butterflies.

Lots of work, yes, but imagine the benefits for your community!

In episode three of Urban Organic, we meet Jimmy Ng – farmer and project manager of The Growing Experiences. He tells a little bit more about how The Growing Experience has grown (pun intended) to be an important part of the Long Beach community.

How did the idea for The Growing Experience come about?

The Growing Experience (TGE) started as a landscape training program back in 1996, and the grounds were originally for a wholesale nursery to grow ornamental plants for installation at different county sites. In 2008, in response to a growing need from residents in the community affected by diabetes and obesity, the grounds were transitioned to become an urban farm which would provide easy access to healthy produce, along with nutrition education programming.

Why is it an important part of the community?

TGE has grown to become an important community amenity, in which residents have access to safe, outdoor green space for recreation and growing their own food in the community garden, the opportunity to purchase low-cost sustainably grown produce in their neighborhood as part of the CSA, and become engaged through community events such as Earth Day, Fall Harvest, and farm-to-table fundraiser dinners. Youth also have the opportunity to participate in jobs/skills training programs and receive their first work experience.

What is the biggest obstacle you’ve faced that would be helpful for someone starting their own garden and CSA to know?

It is very important to have community involvement and engagement, otherwise activities and projects won’t be sustainable over the long term. By having youth engaged, we cut down almost entirely vandalism and theft, as their was ownership in the programs and they looked out for the site.

What is the easiest thing to grow? What is your favorite thing to grow?

Arugula grows like a weed and self sows–it’s great! I like to grow heirloom tomatoes with all the unusual colors and shapes.

Do you think that more people should grow their on food and why?

I think EVERYBODY should grow some of their own food, whether herbs in pots on a patio/balcony or tomatoes in the yard. It’s just a great feeling to harvest something you grew yourself and eat it on the spot, so simple and so good!

What is your favorite recipe to cook from the food you grow?

Here are the best food staples to prepare yourself:

Courtesy of Teuobk (via Flickr)

Bread

The downside to making your own bread is the time and planning it requires. If you need bread for sandwiches on Monday, you need to start the loaf on Saturday and bake it by Sunday night. The entire process, including time for the bread to rise, is about 20 hours. But if you make a lot once and then freeze it, it won’t seem like too much of a time burden.

And the price difference is the major upside to making your own bread. Homemade bread costs $0.66 per loaf ($0.04 per slice) whereas store-bought bread is $3.99 or $0.25 a slice! That’s a big difference. Plus it just tastes a lot better. Here’s a great recipe for No-Knead Bread.

Yogurt

I would never that yogurt was a simple thing to make, but apparently it is! Though, like with bread rising, yogurt takes a bit of time to incubate. The trick is to pick a time where you can leave it and come back to it later.

Here’s a quick run-down of how to make it (for more detailed instructions visit theKitchn website):

• You’ll need a 1/2 gallon of whole or 2% milk (skim can be used to).
• You’ll need a 1/2 cup of commercial yogurt with active cultures (you’ll only need this the first time you make it).
• Heat the milk in a saucepan to just below boiling. Make sure to stir.
• Let the milk cool until it’s just hot to the touch.
• Pour the milk into a bowl, and whisk it with the yogurt.
• Warm your oven to 115 degrees. Then turn it off. Put the yogurt-milk into a lidded pan, wrap it in layers of towels, and then put it in the oven for 4-6 hours until it sets.
• Cool your yogurt in the same pan until it’s completely chilled. Then you can put it into containers to store it.

Mayonnaise

Courtesy of little blue hen (via Flickr)

In order to make mayonnaise, all you need is:

• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup grape-seed oil or peanut oil
• Salt and pepper (to taste)

Ketchup

Are you one of those people who puts ketchup on everything? Well, homemade ketchup is beyond easy to make. To make ketchup, just purée 1/3 cup water, 3 small tomatoes, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon maple syrup, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch in a food processor or blender.

Other things that are cheaper to make:

• Salsa
• Potato Chips
• Crackers
• Tortilla Chips
• Hummus

If you want to have even more homemade foods, Jennifer Reese’s book Make the Bread Buy the Butter has 120 recipes.

“It’s important for people to grow their own food because ultimately food production is power and self-determination.”

What advice would you give to someone hoping to start urban farming?

Start small. Don’t take on too much or you’ll get frustrated. Also, grow food that you buy at the store/farmers market–this will guarantee you will harvest and eat your crop. For me that is carrots, potatoes, and salad greens–easy and delicious. My new book, the Essential Urban Farmer, covers how to start, and keep urban farming.

What is your favorite thing to grow? What is your favorite dish from the food that you grow?

My favorite thing on the farm is the honeybee hive. Bees are lovely creatures that help pollinate my fruit trees, and I get the most amazingly tasty honey from them. One of my favorite snacks is milk from my goats with a dollop of honey, warmed up.

Do you think it’s important for people to grow their own food, and why?

It’s important for people to grow their own food because ultimately food production is power and self-determination.

Do you think the urban farming movement is growing? Why?

Urban farming is growing, more people live in cities now more than ever and people are more open to urban agriculture. There’s more information on the internet and in books that advise best practices for growing food in a small scale. Also, increasingly, people are motivated by flavor, and home-grown food is usually the tastiest.

So, where do you begin?

1. Find the right spot for your garden, and if you can’t find the right location, you can make one.
2. Choose the right plants for your specific space.
3. Set a schedule for when you can work in your garden, and also make sure you assemble a team of volunteers.
4. Gather your materials, and think about using recycled items anywhere you can in your garden. Soda bottle bird feeder, maybe?

And last but not least, get some inspiration from Annie Shaw who created the guerilla garden Pennsylvania Gardens in San Francisco (thanks to our friends at the Neighborhood Empowerment Network for the use of their beautiful video!):

Pennsylvania Gardens from NENtv on Vimeo.

In Episode 2, we visit Novella Carpenter’s urban garden. Are you ready to start your own? Here are some tips from La Buena Vida and The Beehive.

Growing a vegetable or kitchen garden will bring you many health benefits: eating better food, staying active and reducing stress. It also is good for your pocketbook by saving you a great deal at the grocery store. Here are ten helpful tips on how to grow a vegetable garden:

1. Know what to plant. To find out what and when to plant in your region, contact the nearest Cooperative Extension office. You can also talk to neighbors who have a garden or visit a plant nursery nearby.
2. Use a planting calendar. It’s a good idea to make a planting chart that takes into account the seasons and life cycles of the plants. Think about the weather and be prepared for possible problems, such as a dip in temperatures. Knowing when and how to water and fertilize your garden will make it more productive.
3. Pick the best location. You can grow vegetables in your yard, a community garden, containers or planters in your porch, terrace or balcony, or even in window planters. The most important thing is not to plant your fruits and vegetables in locations that don’t get much sun. To get a good harvest, your crops need to be in a sunny and open location.
4. Build a raised bed. Raised beds can be made by creating low mounds of soil or by building a large frame out of wood. They help you improve the quality of the soil, avoid compacting of the soil and promote better drainage. You should design your raised beds so that you can reach all your crops without having to stand inside the bed.
5. Prepare the soil. Buy or make your own organic compost. Another option is manure mixed with compost. Chemical fertilizers should be your last option, since they can burn the crops and be harmful to your health.
6. Buy seeds. If this is your first time planting, it’s best to plant your seeds ahead of time in seed trays and then transplant them. Buying a few plants may simplify things if this is your first time growing a garden or if it’s getting late in the season to plant certain varieties.
7. Use your space wisely by growing the same type of vegetable at different times. If you plant small numbers of the same fast-growing vegetable throughout the planting season, you’ll be able to harvest your crop at different times and it won’t compete for space and sun. This way you will enjoy your harvest throughout the growing season. If you plant all crops at once, they will all be ready at the same time.
8. Rotate your crops to grow fruits and vegetables more than once a year and conserve nutrients and avoid diseases in the soil.  You should plan ahead and learn the basics about vegetable families and how they grow.
9. Remember that certain plants don’t grow well together and some help each other. You can have the following plants in the same garden, but not next to each other. Avoid these combinations:

On the other hand, companion planting can help protect against pests and disease. Try planting some of these plants together:

• Beans, carrot, celery, corn, eggplant, peas, potato, broccoli, cauliflower, radish, beet, strawberry, cucumber
• Carrot, beet, garlic, scallion
• Cucumber, corn, beans, sunflower, radish, dill, nasturtium
• Lettuce, cabbage, Brussels Sprout, cauliflower, lettuce, radish, spinach, Swiss chard, turnip, beet, carrot, cucumber, onion, strawberry
• Squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, cucumber, corn, marigold, oregano, nasturtium
• Tomato, eggplant, okra, pepper, asparagus, beans, carrot, cucumber, onion, basil, marigold

10. Get ready to work outdoors.  Wear long pants, sunglasses and a hat. Use sunblock, especially between 10 am and 4 pm, and bug repellent if necessary. Protect your hands with gloves and your feet with socks and shoes. On hot days, try to garden early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Drink lots of water, but avoid alcohol and sugary drinks. Take breaks in shady areas. Children under 4, the elderly and those who are not in good health should not be exposed to high temperatures for extended periods of time.

Please tell us a little bit about Mama Springs.

MamaSprings is a small CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] in Durham, North Carolina. We offer both paying and working shares. We grow a variety of local produce, including: lettuce mixes, leafy greens, carrots, beets, turnips, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, okra, potatoes, pears, cantaloupe, green beans, field peas, cut flowers, and fresh herbs.

What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?

Basically, a CSA is a community of people who pay for shares of an upcoming season’s harvest upfront and directly to one farmer. In exchange for the upfront payment, customers receive one basket of food per week for the duration of the growing season.

The benefit of the CSA model is that the farmer knows she has ‘x’ number of guaranteed folks to grow food for, her marketing is done early in the season when time is more plentiful, she has the money up front to get the farm going for the season, and she gets to know her customers personally.

The benefit of the CSA model for the consumers is that they know their farmer (and her growing practices) and their food is as fresh and local as it can get. In addition, many CSA customers feel that local food and preserving agrarian pockets in an urban area is crucial for food security and ecological health. By supporting farming in such an intimate way, they are part of what is right with food consumption in this country. Many of MamaSprings’ customers have, at some point, actually worked alongside us on our farm. One of the things we cherish most about this model is the community that it builds.

Why did you decide to start Mama Springs?

It wasn’t really a decision to start MamaSprings. It evolved. I have always loved growing things and dreamed of gardening on a large scale.

In 2007 I learned the part-time programming work I’d been doing from home was going to be outsourced and I was going to be laid off. I ended up having a year’s notice that my job would end and plenty of time to plan. At that point, we purchased a lot of our food from natural food markets and/or farmer’s markets. And we had a 6-year-old and a 3 year-old. We were very dedicated to having a parent at home until the youngest child went to school. But the budget with just one income was going to be tight. One area where we could really cut expenses was the grocery budget. So I started seriously growing food. And canning, and freezing. My friends saw what I was doing and how much produce I had and they wanted in. So I started selling excess produce.

The plan had always been for me to go back to work when our youngest entered Kindergarten. Then the economy went belly-up and my belly went out: I got pregnant again. From that point on, I’ve been very serious about increasing my food production each year and expanding into what is now a small CSA.

How has your life changed going from working part time as a programmer to being a full-time gardener and mom?

I would say my life is more centered and less compartmentalized now. Programming is very cerebral work. To work from home with one kid underfoot was challenging. Adding the second kid to the mix made it extremely challenging. Programming is not the easiest job to do with kids around. I ended up working into the wee hours most nights or getting up super early. I was constantly working and/or constantly stressed about what I wasn’t getting done. I was not the easiest person to live with.

I probably work more hours per week now, but what I do is the kind of thing our kids can be included in. We have kid-sized tools and our toddler, now 2, knows how to use them. Our older kids, now 10 and 7, know how to harvest and love making row labels and other signage. The garden is pretty as a result of their art. The garden area has multiple kid play zones throughout. Most of our working shares are moms just like me, so our work time doubles as play dates. And the garden has become our second living room…on a weekend you’ll find all of us hanging out there. The grandparents, aunts, and uncles get involved, too.

What have you learned in the process of starting and running a gardening business?

I’ve learned that nobody is going to get rich (in the conventional sense) growing food. I’ve learned to look at what I’m contributing to my family in broader terms: all the fresh produce we eat three seasons a year, the wholesome food I am able to store away for winter consumption, the benefit of not needing childcare to go to work, the pure health benefit of hard physical labor, the values it is modeling for our kids. I’ve learned to network and scavenge: never buy new when you can find it used and maybe even free. I’ve learned to barter. I’ve learned to accept and give gifts of free labor, advice, tool sharing, etc.

Have you faced any challenges along the way?

Many! Deer, squash bugs, potato bugs, Japanese beetles, Mexican beetles, too much rain, too little rain, summer temperatures in the spring, unexpected frosts …. I could go on, but I won’t. Farming is all about challenge and unpredictability. But there are lessons in every failure.

Are there things you wish you had known about before you started your gardening business?

I am constantly learning more about the actual process of growing food and soil health. So there have been many mistakes I could have avoided if I’d just read this book, or heard that talk earlier. But I think that is going to be the case 20 years from now as well. There is so much to learn. In business terms, in retrospect, I wish I had started out pricing my product at market value. I sold too cheaply for many years because I was dealing with friends and because I lacked confidence that I actually knew what I was doing. So in that sense, to newbies I would say: know market pricing and sell accordingly. Don’t give your product away.

Recently, many more folks who live in urban areas have become interested in gardening. Do you have any tips you can share with them on how they can get started?

Just start! Like I mentioned before, I’m learning more all the time; you have to start that learning process at whatever level of knowledge you currently have. Check out your local library….they’ll have shelves full of how-to books. The Internet is a great resource. As is your local Ag office. Until you start getting your own hands dirty, though, that knowledge isn’t going to grow except in the theoretical sense. There is nothing sweeter than sitting down to dine on something you grew yourself.

Courtesy of LizMarie_AK (via Flickr)

Do you want to buy more local and sustainable foods, but you just don’t know where to find your nearest farmers market?

With the rise in popularity of local markets, the Agriculture Marketing Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) now offers an online tool to find the closest farmers market to you. You can search by their proximity, the products they have available, and the payment they accept.

Did you know that some farmers markets even accept WIC and SNAP?

But like Bryant mentions in episode 1 of Urban Organics, just because it’s at your local farmers market doesn’t mean it’s locally grown. If eating hyper-local is important to you, the best thing to do is to start talking to the growers and find out which stalls are producing food nearest to you.