Johnson's Backyard Garden

I had a full work day at Johnson's Backyard Garden yesterday. This is currently a 15 acre organic vegetable farm that has an 800 member CSA program. It started as a small personal garden in Brenton's backyard about 5 years ago, and is now the largest CSA in the southeastern United States. They have plans to expand and just recently purchased a new plot of land.
During my work day we separated garlic, sorted tomatoes and transplanted cabbage. To transplant we sat on a tractor attachment similar to this one with a rotor in front of us that we dropped the seedlings into. It was pretty bizarre. Pictured above are pipes for their irrigation system.

I brought home one of the seedlings that got left behind when we planted. I think this is a russian red kale.
The interns and several of the workers were twenty-something college graduates. They were listening to the Decemberists and other hipster music. The other workers were all Hispanic (most likely Mexican) men in the 30-50 age range.

This is the first time I have seen okra plants. They look a lot like hollyhocks, because they are both in the Mallow family.

Victory Gardens

In this op-ed article in the New York Times, Ms. Arieff talks about various land reclamation projects that use new innovative spaces for growing food. These projects are popping up all over cities, including St. Louis. For example, on my first expedition to the botanical gardens, I discovered that there is a entire section devoted to food crops. Funny that we have to visit the botanical gardens to know what plants look like before they reach our table. I'm curious where these crops will end up when they are ready to be used.

Amy Franchesni started a Victory Garden project in San Francisco (mentioned in the article) part of her art work was designing fun tools for gardening such as this awesome bike.


Franchesni convinced San Francisco City Hall to transform their lawn into a giant garden. Most of the food will be "donated to those with limited access to healthy, organic produce through a partnership with local food banks and meal programs."

People's Grocery

Two very inspiring projects called the People's Grocery in Brooklyn and The Greenhouse Project in Johannesburg. They address how to make a community in need more self-sustainable by creating jobs, reusing waste, and producing food within the community.

baby radishes!

At the first summer Kumquat workday, we harvested about 25 sell-able radishes, here are some of the babies that were quite tangy.

The Burning Kumquat Farm Party

A collective of Washington University students are starting a campus farm called the Burning Kumquat. The first planting season will be next semester. I stopped by their Farm Party today to meet some of the members. I was happily surprised to see such a large turnout. If you are a Wash U student I'm sure they would love to have more people volunteer to farm next semester.

You can read the Wash U. Student Life article about the farm here.

The Vertical Farm

Currently, over 80% of land suitable for raising crops is in use.* Columbia Professor Dr. Dickson Despommier believes that skyscrapers designed for urban farming are a solution that will allow reforestation of current farmland, and local production and distribution of food to urban areas. Read about the project in this article, or at the project's website.

*source: The Vertical Farm Essay