Eco Garden Grows Community While Encouraging Kids to Play in the Dirt

Luke Ebner and Angela Stanbery were fine art majors who also had an eye (and a few green thumbs) for organic gardening. Ebner started working at Permaganic Co.’s Eco Garden, a community garden, educational program and non-profit in Cincinnati, Ohio, part-time in 2003. Stanbery joined him in 2004.

While Ebner had previous experience working at various organic farms and Stanbery worked as a ‘horticulture helper’ with the Cincinnati Park Board, the couple never dreamed they’d take over and transform Eco Garden into a non-profit, educational organization. Read More

Urban Ag Organization Hopes to Get All Residents on Board to Keep Growing Detroit

Photo Credit: Keep Growing Detroit

Keep Growing Detroit, a nonprofit community gardening and urban agriculture support organization, has a mission to achieve nothing short of sovereignty for Detroiters.

Food sovereignty, that is.

The organization’s vision is one of a Detroit where Detroiters grow the majority of fruits and vegetables they consume. The group also serves Hamtramck and Highland Parks, autonomous cities surrounded on all sides by the City of Detroit. Read More

Seattle Neighborhood Transforms Patch of Grass into Community Orchard

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a community orchard?” That question posed by Aviva Furman to her neighbor, Narcissa Nelson, was the beginning of the Community Orchard of West Seattle (COWS). This 1/8 acre demonstration garden showcases what a bit of networking, volunteerism and community support can achieve.

For newcomers to the orchard, the grass alongside its edge is a reminder of what the area used to be – a strip of grass that had to be mowed every year. The challenge initially for the organization was finding a site as the grant money from the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods and support from key stakeholders was there, says Nelson. Without a site, “we were concerned with time and missing the planting opportunity of spring and the possibility of having to forfeit the grant money.” Read More

Facilitating Food Alliances, Ag Innovations Network Aims to Boost Local Food Production and Health of Citizens

Is healthy, locally produced food on the endangered ‘agri-list?’ Some think so and are taking a round-table approach to ensure local fare stays on the menu and local farmers keep their hands in the soil. Cultivating those grassroots is what this movement is all about, as volunteers address systemic issues in food production with a focus on local, sustainable cultivation.

The Sonoma County Food System Alliance created a forum to bring public-health advocates, farmers and ranchers together in a round-table work group. The goal according to the group’s website is fostering an awareness that cultivation of healthy food in a community is an ecosystem, with each part essential to supporting the whole.

The Sonoma County Health Department partnered with Ag Innovations Network (AIN), the Redwood Empire Food Bank and the Ag Commissioner’s Office to convene the Alliance in 2007, according to the group’s website. Read More

Belief in Future of Small-Scale Urban Farming Prompts Company to Offer Free Garden Planning App

Farmscape, a company that installs and maintains urban gardens throughout Los Angeles, CA, decided to take two spectacular things – fresh produce and a dinosaur – and create an app out of them. The app, Agrisaurus, is designed to take the guesswork out of small-scale gardening and farming, and help farmers plan and plot produce sites.

On March 12, Agrisaurus became available for anyone to download. I recently got in touch with Rachel Bailin of Farmscape and Agrisaurus, and found out why Farmscape’s founders thought the app would help gardeners, and how the app works. Read More

Enriched in Organic Soil, Johnny’s Selected Seeds Grows Seed Stock for the Future

Cherry Tomato Harvest at the Johnny's Selected Seeds growing farm in Albion, Maine. Photo Credit: Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Rob Johnston, founder of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, got an early lesson in the importance of seed diversity back in 1972, when he formed a communal truck farm in southern New Hampshire, growing 15 acres of vegetables that were marketed through a co-op in Boston and New York.

A Japanese distributor in New York wanted specialty produce and Johnston had to go to Japan simply to find the seeds. The resulting odyssey into exotic seed sourcing awakened a different kind of seed, planted long ago in him by his grandfather, a Pennsylvania farmer who used to take Johnston out into the fields of a summer evening to “listen to the corn grow.”

He set up Johnny’s Selected Seeds (originally called Johnny’s Appleseeds, until he was informed that name was already trademarked) and issued his first seed catalogue in 1974. Read More

Panel Highlights Growth and Importance of Urban Agriculture in the US

To highlight the growth and importance of urban agriculture in the U.S., Seedstock hosted a panel on Urban Agriculture and Local Food Systems at the company’s recent Seedstock Sustainable Agriculture Innovation conference. The panel explored the social and … Read More

Ohio State University Study Examines How Residents of Rural Food Deserts Access Fresh Produce

News Release — WOOSTER, Ohio — “Food deserts” are normally thought of as low-income, blighted urban neighborhoods with little access to fresh, reasonably priced fruits and vegetables.

But rural areas, despite their wide-open spaces and fertile farmland, can be food deserts, too.

An Ohio State University Extension community development specialist worked with two student interns to examine this seeming paradox to discover more about people who live in rural food deserts and how they access fresh produce. Read More