Blogs for 2013

Look up – what do you see?  (If your answer is clouds, or an airplane, or smog, bring it down a notch.)  The rooftop of a building may look all business from your sidewalk stance, the edge of stone and glass, but it might be a green oasis, helping to cool down your asphalt jungle.

The Sierra Club compared and contrasted two such rooftop farms in New York City:  “To visit [Brooklyn Grange], take the R train to 36th Street in Queens. Climb to the street, escaping the subway breeze that smells like hot iron, and walk two blocks east on Northern Boulevard. Enter a nondescript six-story office building. In the elevator, push the R button for “roof.” After the bald guy with a briefcase steps off on floor three, wait for the doors to slide open again. You will be met by a disorienting burst of sunshine and a view of the Triborough Bridge, and your best New York don’t-mess-with-me scowl will be directed at a lovely row of eggplants.”

New York is leading the way in urban farming: there are at least 7 green-growing rooftops that cool down the city that never sleeps, in contrast to neighboring blacktop roofs, where that dark dearth of life absorbs the summer sun and raises the city temperatures to as much as 7 degrees higher than surrounding areas. Plus, according to the Sierra Club story “there are 17 ground-based farms in the Big Apple and 1,000-plus community gardens, far more than in any other American city.”

I don’t know about you, but come September and October, the hottest months in L.A., I’d love to find green ways to slow the rising mercury on outdoor thermometers.  Have you ever asked your landlord about leasing a little extra space at the top of your building?  If you live or work where there’s a flat rooftop, consider the benefits of growing green up high.

Communities can learn lessons from Seattle, where the UpGarden is a rooftop space for approximately 120 gardeners to manage their own food-production, built and maintained almost entirely by volunteers.

If you have limited space to grow greens, check out American Community Gardening Association to find your own row to hoe.  Do you dig in the dirt alongside your neighbors?  Tell us your story here in the comments, or via Twitter @TheCityFarm and @RebeccaSnavely.

Photo: View from Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm, Photography by JJ Sulin, The Sierra Club

When I think of gardeners, I imagine zen, friendly folk – taking the time to carefully water, prune, and talk to plants.  They compost their food and find the right mix of soil to encourage a tree to grow, hunch over seedlings in a hat and funky colored garden gloves to protect themselves from the sun. But apparently, if you grow your own greens to make your daily menu, you are a REBEL. “To reclaim…control over one’s food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing: indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.”— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food.

In a brave new world where your next burger may have been raised in a petri dish, more and more people are discovering farm to fork restaurants in their neighborhood, and growing gardens to supplement their daily meals.

What is your favorite way to eat fresh foods?  Forage, in Silverlake, sources local farms for their delicious lunch and dinner menus. A recent menu gives a mouth-watering example of their always-changing food fare. My first visit was during stone-fruit season, and my green salad was surrounded by juicy peaches in a light balsamic dressing. Many of their growing community share their green lives online, as well. Check out their blogs here.

Wendell Berry, in a conversation with Michael Pollan, said, “Wildness can extend from the wilderness all the way into the city park. … Thoreau said (wildness) is the salvation of the world … it’s also the health of the world. There is a wilderness that we don’t know much about. … It’s underfoot, every square foot of healthy soil.  And we have to maintain that wilderness underfoot, in order to keep eating.”

Where is your wilderness in the city?  Are you growing a rebellion in your backyard, harvesting peppers, tomatoes, zucchini?  Have you ever hosted a community meal with your crop?  Do you have a favorite farm to table joint in your neighborhood?  I’d love to hear – leave a note in the comment section here, or tell us on Twitter:  @TheCityFarm and @RebeccaSnavely.

Photo: Forage menu

Have you thought about growing grapes for your very own vineyard and wine? I was reminded of a dream of another life as my boyfriend and I escaped Los Angeles and drove into central coast wine country. My fantasy features driving an old farm truck through my vineyard, inspecting grapes, a rangy dog, a mutt of indiscriminate origin, grinning next to me. I pour glasses of home-grown wine for friends at my outdoor dinner parties. Apparently my dream is possible on a smaller scale, even sans truck and dog, if I were to grow backyard grapes. Check out the University of California’s site to learn more about growing from vine to wine!

Though I love my life in LaLaLand, I needed the escape, to slow down, roll down the windows, look at wide open landscapes. This last weekend I tried very hard not to over-pack (a problem of always wanting options!), put some summer sweaters and sandals into the City Farm weekender, and the boyfriend and I drove up to Cambria, one of our favorite spots along the central coast. We found a place for sleep and morning coffee via AirBnB, and spent the rest of our weekend sipping local wines, eating fresh food, and catching up with old friends at our annual college reunion.

Before meeting up with our friends and their broods, we drove to Paso Robles, in search of a winery and the viognier we had enjoyed with seafood paella at dinner at Robin’s. We headed inland from Cambria, a gorgeous drive through golden hills dotted with trees, verdant valleys, and hillside vineyards.  I didn’t think I could be happier, til on a whim we pulled into SummerWood winery to try a tasting.

We were greeted by the most informed intern I have ever met, a Cal Poly student who walked us through the varietals and growing practices for specific regions. It didn’t take much to convince us that their viognier was the best I’ve tried.  If you want to grow your own vine to wine, viognier might not be right for you, as it requires the hot days and cold nights of that particular part of Paso Robles, but I do recommend you drink it while you plant the best varietal for your region. Delicious and light, it has aromas of honeysuckle and flavors of orange, peach, and apricot, with a hint of vanilla.

We bought a few bottles for special occasions as well as some to share with our friends: “mommy juice” for the parents overwhelmed with a weekend of five families of young children. Two of our college friends married in Central Coast and have settled in to a little homestead in Arroyo Grande, a few miles inland from Pismo Beach.

Wendi, who loves to garden and creates her own floral arrangements out of vintage ties, now has space for chickens, barrel gardens (to protect her greens from gophers), and a place to pitch colorful tents, where the offspring of the five families camped out over the weekend, running around the yard, chasing chickens.

Their house is tucked into the valley, where an ocean breeze makes for a lovely, moderate climate. Though it is not often hot enough for tomatoes until the fall, spinach, zucchini, kale, and chard grow wonderfully well there. Wendi’s two wee ones love to snack on snap peas and make fresh zucchini bread.  The chicken coop is home to 12 girls, some rescued, some adopted, commanded by two grouchy grande dames that are the most beautiful of the bunch.  They all run free most of the time, eating the family’s scraps and creating compost for the garden, as well as laying up to seven eggs a day.

It was a lovely getaway to chilly coastal climes and hot valley hillsides.  What’s your favorite way to escape the city in summer?  Are you thinking of growing vines to make wine?  Check out that University of Caifornia site, or California Vineyards for advice on planting your grapes based on microclimates, soil, and sun.  What might work in your yard?  Comment below or tell us via Twitter:  @RebeccaSnavely & @TheCityFarm.

Born in the 70’s, my early memories include John Denver crooning from the over-played record about country roads taking him home. And though we lived in the city, my mother’s green thumb made our house feel a little more country garden than the busy four-lane thoroughfare outside our tall fence might suggest. Growing green served as much of my mother’s interior decorating, adding color and life to corners, swinging from the ceiling on braided chains, rustling in the breeze from the open windows in summer and fall.

How do you decorate with plants, bringing the outdoors in to your city space? Take a look at Design Sponge’s collection of creative ways to display your flora, from re-purposing goblets and mugs to verdant fern rooms.

Have you ever framed your foliage? “Airplantman” Josh Rosen creates frames to “plant a picture,” as Sunset Magazine highlighted in its June 2013 issue. All his work is created locally in California.

An added bonus of growing green inside? Plants that remove harmful toxins from your home. Be sure to befriend these beauties, best know for their detox habits, including the areca palm, known for adding moisture to your air, and the peace lily, which “excels in the removal of alcohols, acetone, trichloroethylene, benzene and formaldehyde.”  Because really?  Who needs formaldehyde in the kitchen?  Check out EnglishGardens.com for more ideas of healthy indoor plants and the best light for them to thrive.

Are you a DIY kind of designer?  A bike wheel, kitchen cooling rack, or a tree branch are other options Sunset suggests for hanging green in your home. I’d love to know how you decorate with indoor greens: please leave a note in the comments, or tweet a photo to us at @TheCityFarm and @RebeccaSnavely.

(Photos: Design Sponge & Airplantman)

Home Grown Jack-o-Lanterns (and Pumpkin Pies)

I love Halloween – the air is crisp, walkways are lit with jack-o-lanterns, adorably costumed kids traipse neighborhoods demanding candy, and adults are allowed to let their freak flags fly – sitting in an office cube dressed as a banana (it’s the last minute costume buys you always regret).

Don’t be last minute this year – it’s never too early to start planning your costume and planting your pumpkins to make your very own, home-grown jack-o-lantern (and pumpkin pies, and pumpkin cheesecake bars, and … the list goes on over at BHG.com).  Northerners may be out of luck on this one, but for us in the southern states, the Farmer’s Almanac notes: “pumpkins require a lot of food and a long growing season (generally from 75 to 100 frost-free days) so you need to plant them by late May in northern locations to early July in extremely southern states.”

While the modern day jack-o-lantern is very American, the pumpkin being native to North America, the first jack-o-lantern was carved in Ireland, based on the legend of Stingy Jack and his drink with the devil. Tradition has it that after Jack tricked the devil time and again, Jack’s ghost was banished from both heaven and hell, and was sent off into “the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as ‘Jack of the Lantern, and then, simply ‘Jack O’Lantern.’”

According to History.com, “in Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins … make perfect jack-o’-lanterns.”

Pumpkins are also peculiarly American as they want wide open spaces to flourish, but don’t worry if your outdoor space is too small for your pumpkins to spread their vines – you can also grow pumpkins in big 5 to 10 gallon buckets, or opt for the miniature varieties. I can already see the Pinterest photos of mini-jack-o-lanterns lighting the walkways for wee trick-or-treaters. Check out the Almanac for growing tips, and tweet us photos of your favorite jack-o-lantern or pumpkin recipe: @TheCityFarm & @RebeccaSnavely.

Photo credit: Playing in the Dirt