The U.S. Marines are supposed to be on our side, protecting the American way of life. But community gardeners on Capitol Hill are trying to prevent an invasion by the Marines, who are eyeballing their garden as a potential new site for expanding their barracks.
We first heard of these plans from our friend Sam Fromartz, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'community gardens'
Marines Threaten Community Garden
June 8th, 2010 · 1 Comment · food news
Tags: community gardens
We Were #3 At Garden Rant
January 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
The new year brought a surprising revelation: my guest post questioning the current model for community gardens came in third place for the year at the internationally renowned Garden Rant blog. That would be in terms of the number of comments the post elicited from readers. My reward: the “Top 10 Garden Ranter” badge you [...]
Tags: blogging·Blogging awards·community gardens·food gardening
Building New Community Gardens
November 14th, 2009 · 5 Comments · food news
Do you know this woman? If you care at all about food gardening in the District of Columbia, you should. She is Kelly Melsted, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation specialist in charge of overseeing the city’s community gardens.
Kelly moved here two years ago from Arizona where, she says, food gardens are an everyday part of [...]
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
Free Vegetable Seeds?
September 6th, 2009 · 1 Comment · garden
Our friend Pattie at FoodShed Planet writes today about a remarkable couple in San Antonio, Texas, whose full-time occupation is running a small non-profit that provides heirloom garden seeds free to anyone who wants them. You don’t even have to pay for the postage.
Pattie for some time has been crusading for victory gardens and lately [...]
D.C. Gardens On The Big Screen?
July 19th, 2009 · 2 Comments · food news
Cintia Cabib doesn’t really garden herself. But she knows how to capture the spirit of gardening on film. And soon we may all get a chance to see the film she is making about the many dimensions of community gardening–and the communities that gardens create–here in the District of Columbia.
Viewers of Public Television may know [...]
Just Call Me Comrade, Comrade
May 9th, 2009 · No Comments · Blog
Before I ever dreamed of becoming a newspaper reporter my hero was Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko. As well as being an incredibly skiflfull reporter and inciteful commentator on all matters municipal, Royko had a wicked sense of humor. At one point he suggested a new motto for the great Chicago seal. He said it should [...]
Tags: community gardens
Community Supported Gardens
April 30th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Blog, food news
If community gardens are going to be relevant to a sustainable future they’ll need to cease behaving as quiet refuges for individual gardeners and start reaching out to the broader community.
In case you haven’t noticed, areas of the city that most desperately need fresh produce are the same areas that have the fewest public gardens. [...]
Have Garden, Will Trade for Sausage
April 6th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
Last year I began trading some of the produce we grow in our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia for venison a neighbor harvests on a family farm in Virginia. So far we had received two large packages of venison stew meat and some tenderloin. My last gift to them was a [...]
Don’t Wait for a Community Garden Plot!
March 27th, 2009 · 12 Comments · 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 [...]
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.
