For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on–including their own excrement–to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial rot upon which new life [...]
Entries Tagged as 'urban agriculture'
Profiles in Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically
March 15th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Sustainability, garden, urban agriculture
My Croc at Rooting D.C.
February 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment · Recipes, urban agriculture
My, how the Rooting D.C. confab has grown. Even in it’s very first year, local gardeners overran the facilities and the conclave was moved to the refurbished Carnegie Library, site of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Now in its third year, however, even these new digs look to be cramped. From what I saw, [...]
Tags: fermentation·sauerkraut
WashPost Ups Volume On Backyard Chickens
January 7th, 2010 · 4 Comments · food news, urban agriculture
Washington Post garden columnist Adrian Higgins today lends his voice to the growing movement behind backyard chickens in the nation’s capitol with a front-page spread in the paper’s Home section.
Higgins recounts the story of Caryn Ernst and how D.C. police and animal control agents swooped down on her family’s Capitol Hill home in June when they [...]
Tags: chickens·District of Columbia·eggs
Backyard Chickens In The Nation’s Capitol?
December 2nd, 2009 · 3 Comments · food news, urban agriculture
Caryn Ernst had not seen herself as a chicken crusader when she hatched some eggs for her daughters’ elementary school project. But after D.C. Animal Control swooped in and snatched the six-week-old chicks out of her Capitol Hill back yard, Ernst found a new mission She teamed up with her local city council member and [...]
Tags: chickens
Growing Power
November 12th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Sustainability, urban agriculture
Liz Falk, founder of the District of Columbia’s most ambitious example of urban agriculture, Common Good City Farm, recently flew off to Milwaukee to spend time with farmer/genius Will Allen and his mind-boggling chain of farm operations in Milwaukee called Growing Power. Last night Liz gave a slideshow talk on the experience that was worth every [...]
Tags: aquaponics·greenhouses
Birthing A Community Garden
November 11th, 2009 · 7 Comments · garden, urban agriculture
The last time I sat in on a planning meeting for our neighborhood’s new community garden I was nearly run out of the room for suggesting it be built along the lines of a CSA farm, rather than simply providing plots to individuals. I reasoned that lots more food could be grown on a small [...]
Tags: community gardens
DC Food For All: A Blog Is Born
October 25th, 2009 · 3 Comments · food news, urban agriculture
People were spilling out of the Big Bear Cafe onto the sidewalks at 1st and R streets NW last night. You might have thought it was just another wild party night in the nation’s capitol. But the drinks were all donated, the long line of food on the bar was made from ingredients gleaned earlier [...]
Tags: blogging
A Home For Your Kitchen Scraps
September 27th, 2009 · 5 Comments · Sustainability, garden, urban agriculture
Making compost is a second occupaton for The Slow Cook. Since we garden organically, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, our source of fertility consists of what’s in the ground already and what we add to it in the form of compost. Being in the city, about a mile from Michelle Obama’s White House garden here [...]
Tags: compost·kitchen scraps
Big Night For Neighborhood Farm Initiative
August 28th, 2009 · No Comments · food news, urban agriculture
More than 120 people jammed Georgetown’s Letelier Theater last night for cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and a film screening to benefit the Neighborhood Farm Initiative, the novel urban agriculture program started by Bea Trickett and Joshua Wenz designed to teach people how to grow food.
The event was brilliantly organized, with help from Katie Rehwaldt of Rooting [...]
Tags:
Teacher Is In
August 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments · garden, urban agriculture
How do you know when a carrot is ready to harvest? When should you pick your cucumbers?
Those were among the questions I fielded on Saturday from a group of new gardeners who started plots this year with something called the Neighborhood Farm Initiative. It’s the brainchild of two passionate and engaged gardeners–Bea Trickett and Joshua [...]
Tags: harvesting·summer·teaching·vegetables
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
