Compost Confidential

My Very Cool Weekend Taping Pilot for PBS Series

Joe Lamp'l — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:54:30 -0400

Last Friday and Saturday, I assembled a very impressive pool of talent from Boston, Atlanta and Philadelphia to converge on Greensgrow Farm, nationally recognized as the leader in urban sustainable farming. Its location is just three miles north of downtown Philly, barely noticeable amongst tightly packed row houses that surround it.

Until recently, I didn’t know about Greensgrow Farm, but I did know about its co-founder and chief farmhand, Mary Seton Corboy. We had worked together when she guest-hosted with me on a GardenSmart episode a couple years ago. I was impressed with her then, but now I know why I felt such a deep admiration for this woman.

Just over 10 years ago, Mary was in search of a place to cultivate locally grown lettuce to supply area chefs and restaurants. With such a high demand and limited supply, the idea was a sure winner…if she could just find something close and affordable. The site she found was hardly the type of location you’d expect for growing organic fruits and vegetables. You see, the one-acre plot of land was a former galvanized steel plant, now abadonded as an industrial brownfield. What would stop most people dead in their tracks didn’t faze Mary. She saw the potential, rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

Since this plot of land Mary chose to call home was unfit to plant her lettuce directly into the ground, she developed a system for growing her lettuce hydroponically, above ground and without soil. Her makeshift troughs were rain gutters. In short order she perfected her system and soon her customers were clamoring for other varieties of Mary’s delicious produce. Since not every crop is best suited for hydroponic growing, she had to find a way to utilize this finite space in a more traditional way. So she trucked in many tons of organic soil and loaded it into very deep raised beds. Soon she was not only supplying her clients with a wide variety of fruits and veggies, her bumper crops allowed her to open her business to her neighbors and community. Area residents quickly ventured into Mary’s tiny farm. On Saturdays, they would snatch up the fresh in-season produce and fruit; for many a novelty as such a treat is uncommon and unavailable in urban neighborhoods such as these.

It didn’t stop there. Rural farms and orchards just outside of town began supplying many of the edibles Mary was unable or simply didn’t have the room to grow. And from that, her “City” Supported Agricultural co-op was born. Similar to a traditional “Community” CSA, Mary likes using her version to emphasize the symbiotic link between urban dwellers with the local growers in neighboring rural communities.

And while all of this is going on, Greensgrow successfully manages to make their bio-diesel that fuels the big yellow delivery truck. The raw material is spent cooking oil from area eateries; a resource that is in no short supply! Adjacent to the fuel making operation lies a dozen or more honeybee boxes, filled with combs and oozing with honey. The bees are an important component to the success of Greensgrow’s bounty. In such an intown setting, attracting sufficient quantities of pollinators can be a daunting task. But with these happy hives, there is a plethora of pollinators and an abundance of honey. So much so in fact it too is sold at the weekly farm stand under the label Honey from the Hood.

As excited as I was to see all that was being accomplished with limited funds, space and human resources, there was still more. Between the beehives and bio-diesel, a lush and lovely living roof covered the large storage shed. Its purpose, in addition to being beautiful to look at, was to capture and retain rainwater, reducing runoff, sequester carbon and return oxygen, reduce the heat island effect and promote biodiversity. Not a bad use of space and something we could all do at our homes and businesses.

Finally, there was the community kitchen. Located at a church just down the street, Mary has arranged for Chef Corbin Evans to teach local residents everything they need to know to cook and prepare delicious meals and extend the menu with fresh in-season produce. It’s the culmination of the complete cycle and a wonderful example of sustainability in action.

You can likely understand my infatuation with this urban agricultural wonderland and why I was so excited to be there for the location of my first episode and pilot of my new series. I’ve always wanted a forum to tell stories of people, places, and companies that are doing their part to grow a greener world. I’d say Mary and her small but talented staff are prime examples of that! It just goes to show you, abandoned land only is only unproductive if you choose to leave it that way!
JL

Logo Design Contest for New National PBS Series

Joe Lamp'l — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:22:44 -0400

OK all you professional or wanna be graphic designers (like me), here's your chance to have your work seen on National TV every week and more. If you come up with the design we choose to use for our new national series on PBS, you'll get a cash award of $500 and we'll credit you and/or your company in every episode! This will be a show that will be seen across the country by millions of viewers! The logo in this post is good but we think a different look would be better. We want fresh, simple and bright; a catchy clean look is what we're after (we think).

Here's a brief write up on the show in case you need more:

Growing a Greener World is a groundbreaking new series that delivers the latest trends in eco-friendly living mixed with traditional gardening know-how to a 21st-century audience. Each episode will feature the people, organizations, and events that are making a difference in our world today by raising awareness and influencing others to better stewardship of the environment we all share.

Submit your entries by midnight on October 16, 2009 to heyjoe@joegardener.com.

Thanks and good luck!

Good People Doing Good Things with Locally Grown, Organic Vegetables

Joe Lamp'l — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:21:00 -0400

Last week I was in Baltimore to install another Community Garden for Fiskars, under their Project Orange Thumb initiative. Believing that community gardens can provide the catalyst and inspiration for great change, it’s common for the company to select sites for these major gardens in neighborhoods where poverty rates are high and urban blight is all too apparent. The neighborhood chosen for this particular installation was just such a place. Known as the Oliver community, it is located in the east-central part of the city.

Now, several organizations are attempting to revitalize the area. Installing a major community garden in such a place will hopefully be a serious shot in the arm. But this post in not about that community garden project. It’s about another grass-roots effort taking place on that same block, as well as in other neighborhoods across the city. I wouldn’t have known anything about it, except for the four or five fresh vegetable-laden tables and handmade signs lined up on a nearby street corner that quickly caught my eye and drew me in.

It was a bit of a strange site. So many fresh vegetables, obviously picked only hours earlier, stacked tall and wide, just waiting for people to buy them at bargain basement prices. But where were all the people? Recreate this scene in a heavily trafficked part of any city, or place them for sale at a farmers market on Saturday morning, and they wouldn’t last the hour. But that was the beauty of this program as I soon learned.

As it turns out, he project is a joint partnership between Knox Presbyterian Church and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) (specifically, the Baltimore Food and Faith Project. I introduced myself and met several of the volunteers, including Angela Smith, Project Coordinator for CLF. She fills in the rest of the details for this amazing program.

“CFL recently undertook a food assessment of Baltimore and found there were certain areas where people didn't have much access to healthy, fresh foods. Often, these neighborhoods were located where poverty rates were high and which had suffered from urban blight for decades. Because the poor are at greater risk for developing diet-related diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, etc., and are the very people who have the most trouble finding and affording good food, we were particularly interested in finding a way to bring healthy food to them.

Knox Presbyterian is located in East Baltimore, an area that suffers from poverty and blight. The majority of its food outlets are corner stores, which typically don't sell fresh produce. Knox has hosted a weekly soup kitchen, serving around 120 people each week for years now, and the church was interested in further reaching out to the community. They saw the opportunity to bring fresh, organic fruits and vegetables to neighbors as a natural extension of the work they were already doing.

Joan and Drew Norman operate Maryland's largest organic farm, One Straw Farm , and they operate a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. In a CSA, an individual pays to become a shareholder at the beginning of the season and receives several items of fresh produce each week until the end of the season. It's great for the farmer because it diminishes their financial risk; and it's great for the consumer because they develop a relationship with their farmer and know exactly where and how their food was grown. (Many people do this because they want to support locally-grown and sustainably-produced foods as well).

Since many people can't afford the large upfront cost of becoming a shareholder (sometimes hundreds of dollars), especially in East Baltimore, we purchased 10 CSA shares with money donated from a private foundation. For every 10 shares a congregation purchases, One Straw Farm throws one in for free, so, Knox receives the equivalent of 11 shares (plus a few donated by CLF), and we price the food as individual items based on what individuals would pay in a nearby grocery store for non-organic produce. All proceeds are put into a fund that will be used to purchase shares in upcoming years, the hope being that within three to four years, it will be economically self-sufficient and no longer need grant money to help maintain.

Unpurchased produce is either donated to Knox's soup kitchen or to local residents in need. Since many individuals are not used to eating seasonally, or cooking certain types of fruits and veggies, we give samples and recipes to take home and try out.

We've been doing the co-op every Tuesday since the beginning of July and it's really starting to pick up now. Members of the congregation, their kids and grandkids, and folks from CLF come every week to help man the table” (Angela Smith).

I applaud you and every person and organization mentioned here for your genuine desire to make fresh, healthy produce available to all in such a creative and sustainable way. Good things really to come out of a garden, especially when you add the efforts of so many good people!
JL

105 Pounds Harvested and Counting - My Quest for the Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden Challenge

Joe Lamp'l — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:23:20 -0400

This week marked a big milestone in The Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden. I officially crossed over the 100-pound mark of harvested vegetables! But what do I really show you to mark this momentous occasion, a big pile of veggies? Nah…how about the awesome tomato pie I made from those homegrown tomatoes that put me over the top? Thanks to my very funny west coast Internet friend I know and love as “finnyknits”.

If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t know about one of the most awesome meals anyone can ever make with tomatoes! She emailed me to share her version of the recipe she got from her favorite blogger. Finny described it as one of those meals you can’t stop thinking about after you eat it and I have to agree. It was fabulous! I encourage everyone to give this easy to prepare meal a try and you’ll impress everyone that is lucky enough to get a taste. Thanks finnyknits! (By the way, finnyknits was also one of people that provided seeds for my Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden so it only seems fitting that I share this milestone occasion with her in some way).

Back to the garden; When I took on this project, I had no idea how much would come out of my little 240 square foot garden based on weight. All I knew is that it had to produce enough food to keep my family of four supplied with all their summer vegetables. Well, I’m here to tell you, 100 pounds is more than enough! Most of the time, the production outpaced the consumption in my house, which gave us the pleasure of sharing the excess with friends, neighbors and especially the local shelter.

But now that summer is winding down and school kicks in this week, I suppose in the near future, I’ll declare “victory” in my little 30’ x 8’ garden. Like many people across the country and especially the east coast, my garden has suffered in these last few weeks. It’s now a constant race to keep ahead of the diseases that are gaining a stronghold on many of my tomato plants.

And just for the record, this is NOT the official “wrap” on the Twenty-five Dollar Victory Garden Project, …just a late season update to share with you my excitement of breaking through an important milestone while realizing that things really are winding down. Who would have thought a total investment of $15.05 would yield a harvest of over 100 pounds that is still going strong?

Once I do make my official victory declaration post, I’ll post a final video to summarize the entire story. That should be fun and I expect to have that ready within a couple weeks, when I finally do tally up the numbers on a pretty darn successful and very fun project.
JL