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Green gardens sprouting from vacant lots. Urban farmers hope to grow city’s economy.


Tobias Fox watches a grey cat slink behind a raised garden bed. In a blink, the furry feline nearly pounces on a squirrel digging through garlic cloves.

“It’s like the nature channel,” Fox says with a laugh. “The cats keep us rodent-free.”

Situated next to an abandoned home and in the shadow of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Fox’s urban farm has transformed a once-vacant lot into a space where cucumbers latch to chain-link fences, mint grows wild and all kinds of veggies spring from elevated plant beds.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.nj.com/essex/2019/12/green-gardens-sprouting-from-vacant-lots-urban-farmers-hope-to-grow-citys-economy.html

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Philly’s gardening community gets a chance to grow urban farming throughout city

There’s a push to make urban farming in Philadelphia more sustainable, and the city is asking residents to help them map out a plan.

Before the city puts out an urban farming plan, they’re getting feedback on people’s gardening habits.

“Let us know where they’re gardening, where they’re urban farming, where are their projects. We’re also asking folks to define urban agriculture,” explained Philadelphia Parks and Recreation’s Ash Richards.

Richards said there are roughly 400 urban gardens in the city, and they want to make sure they all have the resources they need to thrive.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://kywnewsradio.radio.com/articles/news/philly-asks-for-feedback-on-urban-farming-from-gardeners

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A SMALL URBAN FARM HAS A BIG IMPACT ON YOUNG LIVES

Bright and early one Saturday morning in downtown Austin, Texas, young people hustle to set up a farmers market stand piled high with leafy greens and freshly harvested vegetables. Just a short drive away on a three-acre farm, more youth are preparing to lead a group of adults through a day of planting, weeding, shoveling and learning. This is what Urban Roots is all about.

“One of the most powerful parts of our work is we can engage young people and adults from all walks of life to work across from each other,” explained Max Elliott, co-founder and executive director of Urban Roots. “They’re going to have some differences: They might come from different parts of town, they might have different ages, they might look different. But together we’re working toward a shared goal of nourishing the community.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.wcbi.com/a-small-urban-farm-has-a-big-impact-on-young-lives/

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Let them eat the city, say the urban farmers of Paris

Paris, France – Parisian mushrooms are reclaiming their space in the dark spaces under the City of Light.

“When cars arrived in Paris in the 1930s they pushed out “champignons de Paris” (known in English as button mushrooms),” explains Jean-Noel Gertz, CEO of Cycloponics, the start-up that has transformed an abandoned car park into La Caverne, an organic underground urban farm.

Huge quantities of button mushrooms used to be grown using the manure of the city’s horses, so the rise of the car led to an abrupt drop in production. But things have now come full circle.

“Now, with car use declining, Paris mushrooms are pushing out cars,” says Gertz, who is testing the growing of the variety at La Caverne’s existing site below the concrete near Porte de La Chapelle, with plans to launch larger-scale production in a new underground site in the city’s 19th arrondissement next March.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/eat-city-urban-farmers-paris-191205152844562.html

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Cuba’s Urban Farming Shows Way to Avoid Hunger​

When countries run short of food, they need to find solutions fast, and one answer can be urban farming.

That was the remedy Cuba seized with both hands 30 years ago when it was confronted with the dilemma of an end to its vital food imports. And what worked then for Cuba could have lessons today for the wider world, as it faces growing hunger in the face of the climate crisis.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, most of Cuba’s food supplies went with it. To stave off severe malnutrition the people of the capital, Havana, found an imaginative answer: urban gardening. That’s now seen as a possible blueprint for the survival of city populations in a warming world.

The Rapid Transition Alliance has published a longer account of Cuba’s very fast move towards self-sufficiency as part of its series Stories of Change, which describes cases of large-scale, rapid transformation that can seem difficult to achieve but which have often worked before.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.ecowatch.com/urban-farming-cuba-2641320251.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2

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Stepped Rooftop Creates Space for Urban Farming in Vietnam

The vast majority of rooftops are just wasted space, especially in crowded cities. At the very least, they should be collecting rainwater or covered in solar panels. Larger urban buildings are more likely to make use of their rooftops by turning them into terraces, but why do we so rarely do the same for houses?

Aerial shot of
Despite it's impressive rooftop garden space, the Red Roof is built on a very small plot of land
Planted rooftops can also help lessen heat exposure, reducing the need for air conditioning outside. But one of the biggest benefits of a usable rooftop is its ability to expand access to the outdoors. Many existing houses could be modified to support retrofits, but building new ones specifically with this feature in mind allows for even more creative possibilities.


READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://news.yahoo.com/stepped-rooftop-creates-space-urban-220031346.html

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Whether or not Roundup is safe, the gardener has better options

Unless you have been living on Mars, you have probably seen the TV ads from law firms seeking cancer patients who have used the ubiquitous herbicide brand Roundup.

Three recent high-profile cases in California have brought verdicts against Roundup’s maker, Monsanto, one with a jury award of $2 billion, later reduced to $86.7 million. To date, more than 18,000 plaintiffs are suing Monsanto in state and federal courts alleging Roundup-related cancers.

Monsanto insists Roundup is not carcinogenic, says it has no plans to pull it from the market and is appealing the verdicts. “It’s clear these products are safe when used as directed,” said Rakesh Kilaru, a Washington attorney for Monsanto.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/whether-or-not-roundup-is-safe-the-gardener-has-better-options/2019/09/17/8ccb8a5e-ca95-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

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4 out of 5 Native American women are survivors of domestic or sexual violence. A Colorado Springs garden is helping them recover.

Monycka Snowbird, of Ojibwe descent, is one of the main Haseya advocates and leaders in the organization. She had the idea and implemented the healing garden as a space for victims of violence to connect with another in a comfortable space.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Every year, during powwow season, Monycka Snowbird prints fliers with tear-off tabs for Haseya Advocate Program, a Colorado Springs-based nonprofit that serves Native American women who have suffered domestic abuse or sexual assault.

She hopes to find only one or two tabs pulled by the end of each event, but often most are gone. This, she says, is because four out of five Native women experience some form of abuse in their lives.

Haseya, which helps abused women connect with one another and provides resources for healing, this spring began creating a new kind of safe space for its clients, high on a hill with Pikes Peak as a backdrop.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://coloradosun.com/2019/10/22/native-american-women-violence-haseya-colorado-springs/

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Project Green Light to surveil first community garden in Detroit

Detroit — If all the high-definition cameras happen to catch is rabbits eating carrots in her garden, that’s just fine, says Barb Matney, who savors the safety cameras provide as she tinkers in her green space.

Matney is the co-creator with husband Joe of the “In Memory Of” garden at Minock and Whitlock on Detroit’s west side.

As president of the South Warrendale Neighborhood Watch Radio Patrol, Matney, 53, takes a proactive approach to security in the neighborhood she’s never left.

Now, with the Detroit Police Department’s Project Green Light adding its first outdoor space in her community garden, cameras will be part of the landscape.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2019/11/03/project-green-light-surveil-first-community-garden-detroit/2450198001/

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5 Tips To Start An Urban Garden

Limited space is no reason to keep you from having the garden of your dreams.

From vertical gardens to mason jar and container gardens, with a little creativity you can utilize your space to effectively grow plants, no matter the limitations, said Kevin Espiritu, founder of Epic Gardening and author of the new book, “Field Guide to Urban Gardening: How to Grow Plants, No Matter Where You Live.”

Espiritu’s interest in gardening came on a whim, and when his first foray ended in a cucumber failure, he quickly realized there was limited easily digestible information on where he went wrong.

“There’s some statistic where like 40 percent of first-time gardeners don’t ever garden a second year, and that to me is just a bit sad,” he said.

Espiritu broke his book down into three main sections to get you started on an urban garden.

  • Green Thumb Basics: the foundational concepts of gardening like how does a plant use water and light? Where should your garden be located?
  • Growing Methods: there are six different growing methods within the section that give the best growing options, depending on your set up. For example, raised bed gardening, balcony gardening and indoor gardening.
  • Troubleshooting: this tackles some of the most common things you may run into that could hinder your progress as a gardener — like pests, diseases or watering mistakes.

LEARN MORE: https://www.wpr.org/5-tips-start-urban-garden

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Delhi, Techie-Turned-Farmer Will Get You Growing Air-Cleaning Plants in Just 2 Hrs

Kapil Mandawewala had a cushy job in a leading IT firm in San Francisco, USA. The position of a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting meant that Kapil had easy access to all the luxuries he wanted. And yet, something pricked at him. Kapil wanted to pursue something that will bring a positive difference in society.

Always conscious about his health, diet, and lifestyle, Kapil decided to leave the well-paying job in favor of starting organic farming in India to suit his goals. His family owned a 22-acre farm in Gujarat, thus he shifted base to his hometown. Instead of continuing with chemical farming on this vast patch of land, he cultivated wheat, rice, millet, and vegetables organically.

For the first couple of years, Kapil faced losses in lakhs. But his perseverance soon reaped rewards. This invoked the curiosity of people from far and wide. Especially Delhi.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.thebetterindia.com/201872/delhi-smog-solution-how-to-grow-indoor-plants-air-clean-weekend-workshop-lifestyle/

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The city trying to make urban living good for your health

If you live in Glasgow, you are more likely to die young. Men there die a full seven years earlier than their counterparts in other UK cities. Until recently, the causes of this excess mortality remained a mystery.

The phenomenon has become known as the Glasgow Effect. But David Walsh, a public health programme manager at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, who led a study on the excess deaths in 2010, wasn’t satisfied with how the term was being used. “It turned into a Scooby-Doo mystery but it’s not an exciting thing. It’s about people dying young, it’s about grief.”

He wanted to work out why Glaswegians have a 30% higher risk of dying prematurely – that is before the age of 65 – than those living in similar post-industrial British cities. In 2016 his team published a report looking at 40 hypotheses – from vitamin D deficiency to obesity and sectarianism. “The most important reason is high levels of poverty, full stop,” says Walsh. “There’s one in three children who are classed as living in poverty at the moment.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191017-the-city-trying-to-make-urban-living-good-for-your-health

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Smart Forest City with in 7.5 million plants for Mexico

Italian architect Stefano Boeri has unveiled plans to create a forested smart city in Cancun, Mexico, that is designed to be a “pioneer” of more eco-efficient developments.

Smart Forest City Cancun is intended to be built on a 557-hectare site near the Mexican city. According to the architect, it will contain 7.5 million plants, including numerous species of trees, shrubs, and bushes chosen by botanist and landscape architect Laura Gatti.

“Smart Forest City Cancun is a Botanical Garden, within a contemporary city, based on Mayan heritage and in its relationship with the natural and sacred world,” said Stefano Boeri Architetti. “An urban ecosystem where nature and city are intertwined and act as one organism.”

The project forms of part of Boeri’s Forest City concept – which will see cities made up of plant-covered skyscrapers rolled out across China’s urban areas – and the abundance of greenery is intended to depollute the surrounding environment.

Boeri’s firm hopes the project will be built in lieu of a huge shopping mall, and reforest a site that was turned into a sand quarry for hotels.

“Thanks to the new public parks and private gardens, thanks to the green roofs and to the green facades, the areas actually occupied will be given back by nature through a perfect balance between the number of green areas and building footprint,” said the firm.

“The Smart Forest City will absorb 116, 000 tons of carbon dioxide with 5,800 tons of CO2 stocked per year.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/10/25/smart-forest-city-stefano-boeri-cancun-mexico/

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HUDA Clinic prescribes food as medicine for uninsured Detroiters

For the first three years Babar Qadri worked as a physician assistant at the HUDA Clinic in Detroit, he says he was “just following everything I learned in medical school.”

“You see a patient with high blood pressure and you give them high blood pressure medication,” says Qadri, known as “Q,” who is now attending physician at HUDA. “You tell them the usual thing that every doctor knows: don’t eat this, don’t eat that, increase your fruits, increase your vegetables, drink more water, blah blah blah. Every patient heard that ’til they’re blue in the face and that’s a story that hasn’t changed.”

But Qadri’s approach changed dramatically when he asked a patient he’d been seeing for three years what she was doing to help her high blood pressure.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.modeldmedia.com/features/hudaclinic102919.aspx

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Philly is creating first-ever urban agriculture manifesto

Kensington residents have cultivated fresh vegetables on abandoned lots in the corner of Norris and Lawrence streets for seven years. Last year, a portion of the César Andreu Iglesias Community Garden was bought by a developer, and now the owner of the rest of the land wants to reclaim it. The garden will probably lose its ground.

City officials often recognize the various benefits of growing food in the city — it increases food access, it creates community, it makes kids and adults engage with their environment, and it even reduces crime. But when it comes to prioritizing resources to secure the land existing gardens occupy or to help community members to open a new garden, city agencies and representatives don’t always move in ways that support the cause. As a result, well-tended and productive urban farms are threatened every year in Philadelphia. Last year, just a couple of blocks from the César Andreu Iglesias Community Garden, La Finquita closed its doors after almost 30 years of existence.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://whyy.org/articles/philly-is-creating-first-ever-urban-agriculture-manifesto/

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Indy’s “Young Urban Gardener” off to NYC for Disney+ screening

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – Austin Hurt, the “Young Urban Gardener” from Indianapolis, is now sharing his story with the world.

We first introduced you to Austin two years ago, sharing his mission to feed the hungry from the food he grows in his east side garden.

Now, he’s being featured in an episode on Disney+ as part of Marvel’s superhero project.

Austin says none of this would be possible without the help from the community.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.wthr.com/article/indys-young-urban-gardener-nyc-disney-screening

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Kids learn about sustainability at the Boise Urban Garden School

BOISE, Idaho — We’re going to the Boise Urban Garden School this week to meet our innovative educator.

Education, sustainability, community and growth are the values at “BUGS.”

Teachers serve about 10,000 kids at the school every year.

The Boise Urban Garden School called “BUGS” for short — is for everyone.

“We are all about reaching students, families, community,” said Pohley Richey, BUGS culinary instructor.

The main focus though is kids.

“It’s super-duper fun and I feel like I’m helping to hopefully invigorate these kids, hopefully empower, and teach them some good life skills they can use for the rest of their lives,” said Richey.

She teaches cooking classes where the students make simple dishes.

“Right now, we’re making our favorite foods from scratch,” said Mia, a student.

“We’re making ketchup, SpaghettiOs, granola bars, and other things that are healthy for you to eat,” said Aislyn.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/education/innovative-educators/innovative-educator-pohley-richey-boise-urban-garden-school/277-7d82a34e-7f48-4325-98b4-82a2baa481bd

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Meet the ‘plant influencers,’ millennials teaching the ways of urban gardening

‘Plants keep our souls alive,’ says Anuella Alexandre, Founder of A Green Community and one of the ‘plant influencers,’ working to keep local schools and businesses green. Roderick Johnson, the founder of Revolutionary Garden, says society is in a “food war,” battling against the chemicals and pesticides that taint our food. The mini biome, their wood-built world of organic greenery, serves as an “emotional support system” and “therapeutic learning environment” for the children, says Anuella Alexandre, who helped bring the garden to the school.

LEARN MORE: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/entertainment/20191011/meet-plant-influencers-millennials-teaching-ways-of-urban-gardening

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Urban, home gardens could help curb food insecurity, health problems

Food deserts are an increasingly recognized problem in the United States, but a new study from the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, indicates urban and home gardens — combined with nutrition education — could be a path toward correcting that disadvantage.

Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco partnered with Valley Verde, a community-based urban garden organization in Santa Clara County, California, to better understand participants’ perceptions of the health benefits and acceptability of urban home gardening programs. Interest in such programs has been on the rise, and this is a critical next step before beginning large-scale trials of how effective they are.

“This home-based model can play a vital role in urban agriculture and has the potential to directly impact health by tying the garden to the household,” said lead author Kartika Palar, PhD, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. She added that home and community gardens are complementary approaches to urban agriculture, together promoting a more resilient local food system.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191007180035.htm

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How To Roast Your Own Pumpkin Seeds At Home

Next time you carve a Jack-O-Lantern or cook a pumpkin for pie filling, save those seeds! Roasted pumpkin seeds are nutritious and delicious, great as a salad topping, and best of all, they’re easy to make.

Pumpkin Seed Nutrition

Pumpkin seeds are a good source of healthful oils, magnesium, and other nutrients that enhance heart health, bones, and other functions. And the fatty acids in pumpkin seeds contain a range of beneficial nutrients, such as sterols, squalene, and tocopherols.

GET THE RECIPE HERE: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/roasting-pumpkin-seeds-2192?fbclid=IwAR1sBRmpLi8r5z5JC6HNXQz_0vhFYci0nxywXWJBKY_fYRu_TK07TBRRTsk