urban farming
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Urban farming essentials: Authors of a new, definitive guide tell all
Urban farming veterans Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal used to joke about writing a book just so they'd have a quick response to the flood of questions they'd both get. The Essential Urban Farmer might just get them off the hook -- for a little while anyway.
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Guerilla Grafters make ornamental plants bear fruit
Duck and cover, it's a drive-by fruiting! Guerilla Grafters stick fruit-bearing limbs onto San Francisco's ornamental trees, making city streets into food-producing mini-orchards. (Grafting has been standard practice with fruit trees since basically forever, so there's nothing Frankenfoody about this.) It's not technically legal — the city discourages planting fruit trees, because of worries that […]
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Here’s a parking garage that doubles as an urban farm
Even the most utopian visions of a low-carbon world include cars, and even if they're fueled on electricity or ethanol, cars need places to park. But if parking structures have to exist, at least they can double as urban farms. In Vancouver, a company called Valcent Products is building a high-density "VertiCrop" farm on the […]
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New Agtivist: Edith Floyd is making a Detroit urban farm, empty lot by empty lot
Photo: Patrick CrouchEdith Floyd is the real deal. With little in the way of funding or organizational infrastructure, she runs Growing Joy Community Garden on the northeast side of Detroit. Not many folks bother to venture out to her neighborhood, but Edith has been inspiring me for years. I caught up with her on a […]
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Baltimore’s can-do approach to food justice
Beehives from Five Seed Farm and Apiary, one of the farms expected to begin production on Baltimore city land in 2012. Photo: Courtesy of Five Seed Farm and ApiaryCities all over the country are addressing the lack of access to fresh and healthy food on the part of their residents, but few are in as […]
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Public school’s rooftop greenhouse teaches kids about food
At New York's P.S. 333, the Manhattan School for Children, science class takes place on the roof. A rooftop greenhouse, built in partnership with Science Barge creators New York Sun Works, houses a year-round farm where kids can learn about plant life cycles, green technology, and sustainable farming practices. This farm is seriously rad, in […]
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Peebottle Farms: Talking to plants
A friend sent Nina an urgent text message that said: “Alert! Today is a good day for planting garlic!” KK Haspel talks to the plants on her farm. She also grows astoundingly delicious vegetables and bonkers-gorgeous flowers. The connection between these facts is not something I can confirm, but I’m happy to believe there is […]
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The trouble with urban farming: What if your turkeys are cute?
Kiera Butler is not a farmer. She and her friends have been raising their Thanksgiving turkeys in a backyard for six months, but they're not accustomed to killing animals for food, and they've gotten kind of attached to the little guys. Here's Kiera's story, originally Storified by Mother Jones, about the weirdness of knowing that […]
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Peebottle Farms: What to feed your chickens to get the best eggs?
“I have a theory, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it.” Justin was seated across from me at a communal table in a “Secret Restaurant.” We had met not half an hour before, but were now deep in discussion about what chickens should eat to produce the best-tasting eggs — an obsession of mine […]