Wanted: More Plots for Willing Gardeners

As I worked in my shared community garden plot this weekend—alongside a woman named Elisa who spoke with a Spanish accent and a man named Webb with white hair and glasses—I realized we were preparing the soil to grow more than just spring peas and summer tomatoes. After all the books and articles and blog posts I’ve read about the magic of community gardening, there’s nothing like actually experiencing it.

So different from the other ways I’ve grown food—on a larger, partly commercial scale at the Local Food Project at Airlie, and with a more individualistic approach in the backyard of our former rental house—vegetable gardening at a community plot emphasizes the fact that we all have the same basic needs. Whatever your background or situation, you have to eat, and many different kinds of people choose to meet that need by producing some of their own food on this shared land. Because there’s barely any boundary between plots, these diverse gardeners can’t help but rub elbows with one another. Conversations center around soil or plants or water or pests. Talk is simple, but rich. Chatter doesn’t last long because everyone wants to get back to work.

A lot of people want to get in on this experience, but can’t. Arlington has only eight community gardens and the demand for plots far exceeds availability. While Greg and I loosened soil and pulled out weeds at the plot we have no official claim to (remember I randomly made a new friend who wanted to share hers), a man wandered up who said he’d been on the waiting list for three years. Riding my bike along Four Mile Run this evening I caught a quick view of a carefully tended vegetable garden on the bank of the stream out of sight from the road. I pedaled away with mixed feelings—excited that someone had found land in an unlikely spot to grow their own food, sad that with the next big rainstorm all their hard work will be washed away, and frustrated that Arlington isn’t meeting the enthusiasm of citizens to get out and garden.

For my independent study this summer I’ll be looking at the relationship between urban agriculture and citizenship. I’m looking forward to reading, observing, and pondering, but my big scary, thrilling idea is to use what I learn at some point down the line to form a pitch to convince Arlington decision-makers why urban agriculture should be a priority for our area. We’ll see what happens!

Urban Harvest: Trendy or Timeless?

Kitchen shears? Check. Salad spinner? Check. Pots of ready-to-harvest salad greens five steps from the dinner table? Check. Let’s eat!

If we’re defining local food by miles traveled, this delicious bowl of lettuce, tatsoi, arugula, and minutina was the most local meal I’ve ever had. Sprinkled only with salt and pepper, this first harvest from the balcony salad bar needed no dressing. The tender and succulent leaves with a mix of spicy, sweet, and tart flavors sang out springtime. It was probably best that Greg was away the night I ate this because all my attention was on the food—I would have been incapable of dinner conversation!

It has been fun to watch these easy to grow crops mature right outside my door. They’ve gone from little sprouts to heart-shaped seedlings to crisp salad leaves in just over a month. Now that I’ve tried it out, I’m going to get bigger containers so I can grow a greater quantity in the fall—after my first meal, I had wiped out half the patch! The cool thing is that only a few days later, the lettuce is already filling in for another cut.

I’m glad that the rising interest in small-scale food gardening doesn’t seem to be losing momentum. Whether it’s the shaky economy, greater concerns about food safety, or just folks jumping on the bandwagon, more people have decided to try urban gardening. The One Pot Pledge campaign is encouraging new gardeners to plant just one container to see how they like it. Community gardens have waiting lists several years long (I subverted mine and got in with a random person I met at a blog launch party—woo hoo!).


Growing your own is definitely in. But the U.S. has had other periods when vegetable gardening was in vogue (think WWII Victory Gardens). They eventually lost steam and it was the rare eccentric neighbor who continued to plant rows of peppers and beans during the less lean years. Will our most recent urge to get “back to the land” in backyards and community gardens stand the test of time? I hope so…and if it doesn’t, I hope I’ll be the crazy lady next door who never stops going ga-ga over the first bowl of freshly clipped spring greens.

Onions as Citizenship

Two of my onion tapestries are hanging in Arlington’s Central Library for the month of April as part of a group show called “The Art of Food.” Aside from being super excited to see my work displayed in public, I’ve decided to declare this an act of urban ecological citizenship. Reading Frances Moore Lappe’s Getting a Grip has gotten me thinking about creative ways to increase my participation in society and help transform our current system of what she calls “Thin Democracy” into a dynamic network of citizen-led decision making processes. (See this post for more.)


As I’ve come to discover in the last few months, urban ecological citizenship does not occur in a vacuum. Just as important as the individual behavior changes we can each choose to make are the actions we engage in collectively. I used to think that group action only meant dramatic events like staging a protest or organizing a boycott. Now my definition is much broader (and expanding every day!). Attending a committee meeting for my condo association is in there. So is becoming certified as a Master Naturalist and committing to related service projects. Even using the much-loved riverside dog park in my neighborhood feels like an act of community participation.

The path I’ve taken with my onions seems to symbolize the evolution of my thinking about citizenship. First, I got physically involved, planting thousands of tadpole-like onion starts, harvesting and storing and eating and dreaming about them. Then reflecting on my action and channeling it into art-making—a very internalized and independent process. And finally sharing the manifestation of my ecological relationship with not just family and friends, but strangers in my community through the art show. By hanging my onions in a public space, I’ve launched a kind of dialogue between me and the viewers, the other artists, the librarians who curated the show, maybe even the authors of the books on the shelves. My path to urban ecological citizenship spans this arc from the personal to the public and back again.

A Glass of the Good Stuff

At the beginning of our challenge, I looked at my packaging waste from a single day and honed in on a large juice carton as one of the things bugging me most about my trash. Since then, I have bought other cartons of OJ, but continued to wonder if I could find a more sustainable option. After reading an article last fall about the orange juice industry and what really happens to juice that’s “not from concentrate” (stored in tanks for up to a year after processing and laden with preservatives and additives to give it the orangey flavor), I’ve also stared to rethink drinking the stuff period. But sometimes there is nothing so satisfying as a glass of OJ…so the search is on.


When I was a kid, we got juice in cans of concentrate and mixed them with water. In terms of packaging, this definitely trumps the big carton. My dad always insisted on slicing the metal cap off the bottom of the cardboard canister so both pieces could be recycled. Weirdly, I still prefer the taste even though I’ve discovered that it’s often considered inferior.


At this point, all signs are pointing toward fresh-squeezed. But what about cost? The price for a 32-ounce carton of organic orange juice at Trader Joe’s is $3.99. A can of organic OJ concentrate is $2.49. And a four-pound bag of organic oranges grown somewhere in the US is $4.69. After squeezing two oranges I got about two inches of juice in a glass, probably about four ounces. With approximately 10 oranges in a bag, at two ounces each, that’s only 20 ounces of juice for almost five bucks. What kind of wacko system offers a processed product cheaper than a fresh one requiring less labor to make?



The taste though! Just-squeezed orange juice is amazing—the tangy smell, the sugary taste, the full body, the immediate impact of complete orangey-ness. So delicious! I don’t know if I’ll become a fresh-squeezed convert (I’d probably need hardware beyond my little lemon juicer), but I may return to it now and then for special occasions…and possibly pass on the carton in favor of holding out for the good stuff.

Hello, Dream Store

While tootling around the blogosphere I discovered this amazing grocery store called Unpackaged. Everything comes totally packageless (opposite of the foods currently in my cupboards!)—from the classic bulk foods like dried fruit and nuts, to products that are usually smothered in plenty of layers of plastic and cardboard like toothbrushes and “Biodegradable Nappies & Baby Wipes.”

They have any spice you could ask for, cacao nibs and goji berries, carrot cakes and fudge, organic yogurt and hummus, salads, cheeses, even wine! And it all comes without wasteful packaging. You bring your containers of choice from home and the friendly people at Unpackaged fill them up with delectable treats, all without the eco-guilt. I am so jealous of the Londoners who get to make this place their everyday food shop.

Since I’m not lucky enough to have such a dream store in my city, I think I need to take on the challenge proposed by Bea of The Zero Waste Home (shared with us by Myriah): refuse! How many times have I kept my mouth shut when the cashier at Rite Aid automatically puts my single nail file and mini box of cold medicine in a cavernous plastic bag? Somehow I feel like I’m going to offend them if I say no thanks to the bag after they’ve already taken it off the rack and fluffed it out. And part of me is afraid they’ll think I’m a judgmental eco-snob by refusing to take a bag.

Huh? Writing this now, I realize how crazy this is! Why is it so hard to say no to this stuff? I haven’t even gotten to the point where I’m passing up wine at a party because the host is serving it in disposable cups (the Zero Waste lady does this!). But I like this added wrinkle to the problem of consumption. I think it will help me think harder about what I actually need, as well as what I genuinely want. If avoiding waste means planning ahead, it also means less immediate gratification. I don’t think our culture could hurt to tamp that down a little. What if one day, after sidling up to a café table, the server asks, “What would you like to drink?” and the next question isn’t about appetizers, but rather, “Where’s your cup?”

Granola Bars, Hold the Plastic

After realizing how many granola/energy bar wrappers the members of my household throw away every week, I decided I’ve given snack foods a free pass for too long. Non-local ingredients and plenty of wasteful packaging earns my favorite crisps, crackers, chips, and bars two big red Xs and a deafening foghorn blast. Time to get cookin’.

The granola bar recipe I dug up called for 5 cups of granola so I flipped backwards in my big Whole Grain Baking Cookbook and found instructions for making a huge, heaping bowl of the stuff. Instead of buying two or three cardboard canisters of oats from the grocery store, I ordered two 2-pound bags of organic rolled oats from King Arthur Flour in recyclable brown paper bags. Norwich, Vermont is outside my 150 miles, but King Arthur’s products are awesome and probably the closest I can get this time of year. (One Virginia farmer I know is breaking into the local grains market, but his sales are still seasonal.)

I stirred sunflower seeds, walnuts, peanuts, and flax seeds in with the oats, then baked the mixture at a low 250 degrees (repressed childhood memories of burnt granola came flashing back). I wanted a plain jane base so I could jazz up my bars and make a variety of flavors that could compete with Cliff’s.

With a choice of apricot, cherry-coconut, or chocolate-peanut butter, *and* a zero-waste reusable container, how can I resist these babies? I still have to take into account the packaging for the ingredients—paper bag for oats, plastic for apricots and nuts, glass bottle for vanilla, etc.—but because these come in bulk, I get way more than one use out of each. Although I didn’t use locally grown products and I did (shh!) use a tablespoon of corn syrup, I’m pretty excited about the fact that I can make my own granola bars. The question is—will I keep it up or revert to the conveniently (yet oh so wastefully) packaged ones?

What My Freezer Told Me

In the winter, I usually carve out time on Sunday mornings to head to the Columbia Pike Farmer’s Market, about a mile from my house. The market is tiny compared to some of the other year-round markets around here (Dupont Circle is legendary), but I can still get my fill of delicious local foods—rosemary lamb sausages, free-range eggs, full-fat yogurt from grass-fed cows, aged cheddar, sour pickles, apples, cider. Yum, yum, yum.

But since we had Snowmageddon this past weekend (near record-breaking snowfalls shut this place down), the market was closed and I had to do without my weekly staples (I am rationing the yogurt and the cheese is almost down to the rind—but that mold is mouthwatering). By the time I walked down to the grocery store, the lines were long and the produce had been wiped out. I did find some apples behind a “Locally Grown” sign, but there was no information saying exactly where they came from. Around here, Pennsylvania is local. Even New York state could be local by Whole Foods standards. So much for 150 miles!

I realize that I’ve developed a bias against grocery stores in the last few years. At least their produce sections. And their meat counters. And probably also their dairy cases. (Somehow the uber-processed snack food aisle has escaped my scrutiny. My favorite chips, crackers, and pretzels also fail the wasteful packaging test. Doh!) Because I don’t know the sources of grocery store products, and because I’m lucky enough to have access to a wide range of locally-grown food, it’s come to the point where if I can’t get certain foods at a farmer’s market (or the garden where I worked or from friends), I won’t buy it.

But winter makes that tough. Although some farmers continue to sell veggies grown in greenhouses, the vendors at my little market aren’t bringing much fresh produce. The main vegetable in my diet the past two and a half months has been winter squash. I had stashed about eight of them from our harvest at the Local Food Project garden and now I only have one left. Just the sight of it sends me into a funk. I’ve done winter squash so many ways I’m seriously doubting my ability to come up with another creative use for it. (Confession: the winter blues and the fear of scurvy finally got to me a few weeks ago. I bought a bunch of fresh organic California spinach from Whole Foods. Totally not local. But it was so good.)

How to keep the non-green winter months from dragging? My freezer had a few suggestions. Wanting to jazz up some spaghetti sauce one night, I remembered my little hoard—a bag each of chopped green peppers and green beans, prepped and stashed in the freezer back in October. Our bean vines and pepper plants at the garden had both been in danger of being wiped out by frost and my co-gardener Ruth had insisted that I take home a huge mound of each and freeze them. At the time, I felt like I’d never run out of fresh food. Even as the season drew to a close, many crops were thriving. Why did I need to put away extras?


Now, in dark, cold February, the bright bursts of green in my spaghetti sauce take me back to vibrant summer. I’m thankful that I took the time back when fresh food was abundant to squirrel away this treasure trove. Even though I used crushed tomatoes from a can, I got a little taste of local food thanks to the beans, peppers, some dried sage and rosemary from the Local Food Project herb patch, and a jalapeno dried by the chef.

What is my freezer telling me? Don’t fiddle away the summer and forget to store something away for winter. Take eating locally to the next level and don’t just do it when it’s easy. Think seasonal, but also think ahead. Find a class on canning. Ask my dad about the raspberry jam he made that one year. Learn how to make my own sour pickles. Summer in a hot kitchen, sweating over jars and boiling water and cans of tomatoes and greens and berries? I’ll take it.

Doggy Bag Do-Gooder

Wasteful packaging challenge—go! I faced my first opportunity to say no while finishing up dinner at Busboys & Poets (one of the coolest restaurants in Arlington). How to transport home the second wedge of my super savory tempeh-roasted pepper-grilled onion sandwich? Styrofoam box? Plastic carton? Or the cocktail napkins under our water glasses?


The oil that soaked through the napkins and into my purse while we went to the movies (Crazy Heart=awesome) encouraged me to think about ways to make eating out a little more sustainable. I could think ahead and bring a zip top bag or my own reusable container to stealthily stow any leftovers. Or maybe it’s time to break down and spend the 7 bucks for one of these washable sandwich pouches (or $9 to get one made in the US!).


When I got home I did transfer my sandwich to some aluminum foil. And I added the disintegrating napkins to my pile of the day’s packaging waste. As I eyed the (surprisingly artful) pile, two particular pieces of trash jumped out at me—an enormous juice container and a Cliff Bar wrapper (one of about a dozen consumed in my household every week). Can I find a way to enjoy these yummy foods while avoiding that decidedly unsustainable packaging? I can’t wait to try.