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.

Balcony Salad Bar

Last week I sowed seeds for my balcony salad bar. Despite a few days of torrential rain, the seeds withstood a washout and have germinated. The waiting list for a community garden plot in Arlington is one to two years (really irritating considering all of the untended plots I count while running by) and I no longer have even a rented backyard to dig around in, so container gardening it is!

I planted Encore lettuce mix, arugula, Tatsoi (an Asian green related to bok choy), and Minutina (a succulent green that looks like grass)—all varieties we grew at the Local Food Project at Airlie, but this is my first attempt at cultivating them in pots.

There’s something very intimate about having these baby plants right outside my door. Rather than being out in the field, away from my house, my kitchen, and my dinner table, these greens seem like members of my household, more like houseplants than crops, except that I will eventually eat them, the ultimate plant/human connection. Already I am doting on them (see how many baby pictures I posted?) and I imagine they’ll become a regular fixture in my everyday life as the temperatures warm up, the sunlight stays later, and the leaves become mature enough to clip for salads.

Growing food in pots has its limits (last year’s tomato plant got fried to a crisp before putting out more than a few leaves), but there’s something special about it that ties into household subsistence. In a city, people depend on imported goods for even their most basic needs. Harvesting a bit of supper from a balcony (or front stoop or back porch or windowsill) emancipates city dwellers from the oppressive role of constant consumer and turns them into producers, if only on the smallest of scales. I’m looking forward to eating off my own land.