The Slowcook at Spydog Farm The Slowcook at Spydog Farm

Don’t Wait for a Community Garden Plot!

March 27th, 2009 · 14 Comments · Posted in Uncategorized

We don’t publish many guest posts here at The Slow Cook (this may be the first). But this story was too good to pass by. Nat West, of Portland, Oregon, got tired of waiting for a community garden plot. So he went to Google’s satellite map, located a vacant lot near his home and turned it into his own CSA urban farm.

By Nat West

I live in urban Portland Oregon on an average-sized city lot of 5000 square feet. That’s 50 feet by 100 feet. My house takes up almost 1000 square feet, my garage another 750 square feet or so, and an always-shaded driveway about another 500. Throw in a grand old cedar tree on the southern neighbor’s property, a nice deck to relax on during summer months, and I find myself happy to have squeezed in about 250 square feet of raised beds.

Now 250 square feet of good dirt produces a heck of a lot of zucchinis, cherry tomatoes, peas and lettuce, provided I plant intensively. But I’m one of the lucky ones because of the orientation of my property, the placement of the house on it, and the surrounding neighbors’ structures and trees. Some of the properties on my block could not grow anything more than a few tomatoes in pots, no matter how much grass they gave up.

After a few years of growing on 250 square feet, I decided it was time to expand. I never had the room for voluminous crops like cabbage, winter squash, pumpkins or corn. And I would frequently prune my yellow crookneck squash to a single vine. I’ve even tried trellising beans, peas and tomatoes, but once I decided to seriously grow food for my family, not just pretty summer fruits, I simply had to expand.

So I did what most urban gardeners do when they find themselves in a similar situation. I found the closest community garden owned by the city and put my name on a waiting list 18 months long.

After mulling it over for a bit, I realized that an “18 month waiting list” is worse than a “twenty minute wait” at a swanky restaurant. The maître d’ has no real idea how long it will take to get me seated. She’s just guessing that table 22 will get up soon. But unlike eating a meal, gardening never “ends”. After all, why would it? There’s no forced-eviction after a couple years so everyone gets a chance. You can rent a plot forever, or even sublet it like rent-controlled apartments in New York. The likelihood of getting a plot is even slimmer since, in recent years, many home garden seed suppliers are selling more than they’ve ever sold before. Those seeds have to go somewhere, and I haven’t notice people razing houses and chopping down trees in my neighborhood.

I concluded that I could not wait for a community garden space to open up. I had to find my own garden space.

The first thing I did was to think about my neighbors’ yards. Some of my neighbors had patches of relatively unkempt grass. Would they mind if I killed the grass, tilled the dirt and planted vegetables? I would have to share some produce, but they also get out of mowing. And of course I would have to use their water for irrigation. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to put together three or four small parcels, each about the size of my own garden at home.

But as I thought about the daily effort and workload of managing multiple plots, and dealing with multiple people, I realized that it might turn into a lot of work very quickly. What if a neighbor cut me off in mid-season? Or what if a neighbor ate everything, thinking they were entitled? How many sets of hoes, shovels and wheelbarrows would I need to buy? I realized that these issues would have to be dealt with no matter what, but it was in my best interest to have the fewest number of plots as possible. Which meant that I needed to “go big” – find the largest contiguous plots I could.

Other than riding my bike around the neighborhood and keeping my eyes peeled while on walks, I used Google Maps’ satellite view, in high magnification. Starting at my house, I made concentric circles, searching block by block for empty lots or very large back yards. Using this strategy, I was able to quickly identify a number of potential sites that I would not have found had I been searching on foot.

Now that I had a list of nearby large yards and empty lots, I used Portland Maps, an online database of property records. Navigating through the maps, I was able to find the name and address of the owner of each property. The same information could have been found using public records at the county courthouse, but I saved an immense amount of time. In some cases, I also cross-referenced them in the phone book since the address on file with the county is oftentimes not a current address, especially in the case of empty lot owners.

I planned to contact them in person if I could not find the mailing information for a particular lot. I sent an introductory letter to the landowners, explaining who I was, where I lived, and what I wanted to do on their land. I got one response, for a full empty lot directly across the street from my house. 5000 square feet of flat, full-sun dirt, absolutely perfect.

The landowner had recently received a nuisance complaint from the city about the buildup of refuse on the lot. She was elated that I would clean up the lot and turn it into a garden. In exchange for the use of the land, I am providing her with approximately one CSA share of produce for 16 weeks. We drew up an agreement, and she promises to give me as much advance notice as possible should she decide to sell. She also offered me a lot four times the size of this one, about 20 blocks away, which I hope to use next year.

Eventually I came to the realization that my new lot is much better than a community garden plot. I did not have to wait 18 months, or for that matter, 18 years for a small plot. I pay no rent for my 5000 square feet, but I would have to pay rent for a fraction of that size in a community garden. Also, I get to manage crop rotations, soil amending, and pest management holistically.

Community plot gardeners have to either work together or more often than not, grow weaker crops beset by pests because they are surrounded by crops grown using different practices, oftentimes on depleted soils. Working to encourage more collectivism of community gardens would solve some of these problems, but why wait? I’m sure there are usable, empty lots around your neighborhood.

For another ingenious approach, read about Murray Hill Row-by-Row, an urban CSA started by a school teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, who got 22 neighbors to share their back yards to grow food. And for even more stories about how the food system is changing, check out “Fight Back Friday.”

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  • Eco Yogini

    This is super fantastic! What a wonderful way to think about community gardening- so many of us feel that someone else needs to have the entire thing organized, but this post is TRUE community, neighbours helping neighbours 🙂

  • Sylvie, Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener

    I love it. This is simply so beautiful!

  • ppolischuk

    Nat, this is great. Have you committed yourself full-time to your urban farm, or do you split your time between the farm and another job?

    If there are any individuals in DC looking for partners for a similar set-up, I’d love to do something like this. Anybody have the space?

  • Elizabeth

    Thanks for sharing Nat’s story! What a genius idea, truly a win/win for everyone involved. This is the true spirit of community.

  • FoodRenegade

    Now that's the kind of go-getter attitude more people need!

    I live next door to a giant plot owned by my HOA. It would be perfect for a garden, but they're nowhere near accepting the idea. They want to keep it a nice, manicured lawn. Perhaps one day their ideas will change, but for now it's just green grass.

    Thanks for joining in today's Fight Back Fridays carnival. I'm really enjoying reading what everyone has written & shared!

    Cheers,
    KristenM
    (AKA FoodRenegade)

  • Nat West

    @ppolischuk: I work two days per week “in the office”. The rest of the time, I’m a stay-at-home dad and tend the garden. That being said, the big garden would have happened whether or not I had a full time job – I was committed to making it happen. However, I probably would not have attempted a CSA if I worked fulltime. With only a 1/10th acre plot, is nearly impossible to make a living. Once I get up to about two urban acres, I think it’s a possibility to quit my job outright.

  • future reference

    Is the soil clean or do you have to build raised beds?

    Where I live most vacant lots are contaminated.

  • Nat West

    @emily: The soil is good. There has never been a house on it, so there has been a limited possibility for contamination. The landowner had a garden on there in years past, so that’s another plus. And finally, I’m working the pH to reduce any potential lead uptake in veggies. Unless I were to test in many dozens of places on the lot, any testing would be insufficient.

  • amyp

    We have launched a website to cultivate relationships like these in Seattle and are looking to expand to Portland in the coming months!

    http://www.urbangardenshare.org

    Check it out!

  • Ellen

    Nat-

    The biggest concern regarding lead on garden vegetables comes from the residue on the unwashed or unpeeled produce. The lead from leaded paint tends to remain rather inert in soil, so there really isn’t much concern about plants taking it up through their root hairs. Most of the research that I’ve read has involved lead in solution fed to plants being considered for bioremediation of soils, but this is quite different from the situation most home gardeners encounter with the presence of leaded paint in their soil. A soil test positive for lead doesn’t necessarily mean that that soil cannot be used to garden; it just means that one should be quite careful about washing residue and dust from fruits, and peel root crops, as the soil is very difficult to remove completely from something like a carrot.

  • Nat West

    @Ellen: so true, and peeling roots is something I’m strongly recommending to my CSA customers. With that in mind, I’m growing some special carrots in my (imported soil) yard garden for immediate consumption by my daughter who likes them right out of the ground with even some dirt on them.

  • natjwest

    Over on Ed’s old blog, (http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2009/03/dont-wait-for-community-garden-plot.html?showComment=1239682080000#c4693042195570466457), Gardengrrrl asked: “Here’s my question…How are you getting water onto the lot? There is an empty piece of land next to my apartment in Eugene, but as far as I can tell there is no way to water.”

    I am lucky in this regard. One immediate neighbor to the lot offered a hose provided I pay the overage from the previous year, for which I’m very grateful. Additionally, I have been offered water by the other two immediate lot neighbors, and if worse came to worse, I could run a hose across the street during watering times. You can get long, large-bore hoses, and although they’re expensive pieces of rubber, they can make the difference between irrigating and not.

    If no water supply works, check out Steve Solomon’s advice on dry gardening. In our pacific northwest, we can grow nearly all crops without irrigation nearly every year.

  • Fatima Nieves

    A neighbor who owns a restaurant has asked me for permission to use my back loan for an organic garden to supply the restaurant. I’m happy to do so because I would love to see that piece of land use for a productive purpose. I don’t plan to change him for it. My question is: should we have a written agreement of some sort with some guidelines or requirements? Thanks you for any advice you can provide.

  • Ed Bruske

    I’m not a lawyer, Fatima. But my instincts tell me you should have a written agreement. You could be liable for any injuries that occur on your property. Someone who uses your property could, over time, acquire rights to that use and you might have a hard time getting your yard back if the people using it refused to leave at some point. So any agreement should spell out how the restaurant indemnifies you from any injuries or harm that might occur in the course of their using the property, that they would pay for any damages they might cause, that permission to use the yard can be revoked at any time, and that when they stop using it they return the yard to you in substantially the same condition as when you loaned it to them.