If you’ve got available dirt in your backyard or have managed to schlep it up to your roof, you can cut down on your shopping trips for fresh veggies. This has long been true as a minority of city dwellers have kept small gardens, but the practice of “city farming” is experiencing a renaissance these days and it has a blog to report about it.
City Farmer News: New Stories from Urban Agriculture is based in Vancouver, B.C., and is provided by the City Farmer group that has been active for 30 years. Its latest article, pointing to a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, describes a new business in San Francisco called MyFarm that installs and maintains gardens for customers. Where the garden is so large that the residents can’t consume all of its harvest, MyFarm sells the surplus to its commercial customers for resale to the public or for serving in restaurants.
July 15, 2008 at 10:05 pm
the balcony herb garden has grown up in Europe, now the patio box tomato has acquired some classy company.
lettuce, romaine, radiccio, arugula for your mesclun, wheat in the window for a quick energizer clip of grass drink.
the cemented landscape evolves into practical solutions for the freshness starved.
aside from vertical hydroponic towers and other architectural urban wonders, the individual can cultivate his own from the pot to the salad parsley.
snip and enjoy, the new rose is a rosemary sprig.
October 19, 2008 at 6:53 pm
anyone in the Bay Area been to see the New Vctory gardens infront of SF’s City Hall? I;ve hard than something like 30%-4% of the fresh vegetables (maybe of all vegetables) eaten in the US by civilians during WWII came from home VOctory gardens; makes sense, the war effort tied up, but also revitalize, much of industrial farming during those years. (and the frozen and canned vegetable markets expanded exponentially when the war was over and businesss needed tofigure out what to DO with all these new tecnologies of mass ood preservation.
anyway,I’m doing some kitchen growing at my small place,all in containers because the soil is filthy with ehavy metals and god knows what other pollutants. there;s a fine old tradition of tearing up the lawn to grow berries and greens; Italian Americans were at the forefront of this in the US 9though oten held suspect because of ethnic prejudice and the Allied v. Axis lines.. long live the kitchen garden!