“Heirloom” is an interesting term, and like the word “sustainability,” it means different things to different people. Recently, I read The Heirloom Life Gardener, a book written by Jere and Emilee Gettle. The Gettles are the co-founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which publishes a lush and incredibly informative seed catalog and has spun off a variety of gardening-related enterprises across the nation.

The Gettles define heirloom seeds as being “nonhybrid and open-pollinated” and as usually having been in circulation for more than 50 years. Some heirloom seed types currently in use could have been found in Thomas Jefferson garden at Monticello. Some appear more recently, during the Great Depression, including the Mortgage Lifter tomato (who couldn’t use one of these in today’s economy?).

While reading the Gettles’ book, I began thinking once again about the relationship between land and the American character. I was inspired to pull some of my favorite books off the shelf and revisit them, to consider the notion of “civic agriculture.”

The term “civic agriculture”–coined by the former Thomas Lyson of Cornell–is used by some to refer to the movement towards locally based agricultural models that tightly link community, social and economic development. Models of civic agriculture include CSAs, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, urban agriculture, community gardens, and farm-to-school/farm-to-institution programs. I also argue that civic agriculture includes school and home gardens . . . any place where people seek to connect land to the development of community or as an expression of engagement or citizenship.

The civic aspect of agriculture is much older than the current local food movement; it hearkens back to the nations founding. The connection between land and democracy has always held real meaning in American culture. Jeffersonian ideals about the civic virtues and value of gardening and agriculture were prevalent and shaped American cultural and political life; the U.S. Department of Agriculture, created in 1862, was called “The People’s Department” by President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln once told a group of Wisconsin farmers that as long as Americans knew how to cultivate even the smallest plot of land, that the nation’s citizens would be free from kings and moneylenders, free from oppression of all sorts.

Federal legislation such as the Morrill Act (The sesquicentennial is in 2012) created America’s land-grant institutions, which still have as a primary purpose research and education in support of the nation’s agricultural producers. (Land-grant institutions through their Master Gardener programs also support home and community gardeners). The Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, and linked the cultivation of land to the protection of the Union and the expansion of democracy during the nation’s Civil War. We were a nation of farmers at origin; we are still a nation of farmers at heart.

You farm, and we garden. Gardening links the myth and the practice of agriculture to one another. In practice, gardening is agriculture on a personal scale; it represents an individual’s relationship to a specific piece of land. This is a kind of relationship worth investing in.

As you formulate your goals and hopes for the New Year, I hope that you’ll consider adding another resolution to your list: to embark upon a gardening activity, no matter how small, in 2012. Occupy the possibilities that gardens create at our homes, and in our communities.

Originally published on Farm Progress

In Camden, New Jersey a jumble of railroad tracks, freeways, and abandoned factories lace through the Waterfront South area on the Delaware River just across from Philadelphia. During heavy rains, a nearby wastewater treatment plant frequently leaks raw sewage onto the streets.

An urban exodus from Camden has left 4,000 empty lots in a 10-square-mile area; half of the houses have been abandoned. This makes the city a prime place for people to dump stuff they don’t know what to do with. One day an old speedboat ended up on Broadway, one of the city’s main streets. Two weeks before, a huge abandoned factory caught fire and burned to the ground.

Camden, once a thriving manufacturing center, is today better known for its crime, corruption, poverty, and urban dysfunction. It also must contend with the consequences of the industrial era: high concentrations of polluting facilities, diesel emissions, and contaminated Superfund sites (highly polluted locations the E.P.A. designates for cleanup).

Parishioners at Sacred Heart Church have been trying for years to turn things around in their neighborhood, and most recently they have focused on food.

“Food is the most basic justice issue,” says Andrea Ferich, director of sustainability at the parish’s Center for Environmental Transformation. “If you don’t have it, what justice is that?”

Ferich and her neighbors are hoping that the plants sprouting in their city garden will bring new life to Camden. Before the land was turned into a vegetable garden, it was a trash heap amid boarded-up rowhouses. Now it features lush green growth on raised beds, a greenhouse, and a farmers market.

To turn the tide of urban decay in cities like Camden, residents across the country have invested in backyard, community, and school gardens in order to provide themselves with good, healthy food. Catholics are among those creating, promoting, and volunteering in this effort as they attempt to meet Jesus’ call in Matthew’s gospel to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger. What they are finding is that feeding people enhances dignity among the poor, promotes justice, builds community, and offers healing.

Ferich, a Mennonite who converted to Catholicism last year, grew up gardening with her mother. She also learned the value of peacemaking, especially among the “forgotten people”—the poor, minorities, prostitutes, and addicts—of which Camden has many.

One night Ferich noticed a frail woman in oversized clothes shivering in the rain. She invited her in and gave her some food. As they talked, Ferich learned the woman was a prostitute. She asked her what she wanted, and the woman said she liked the garden. So the next day, the two gardened together. The garden was later named for the woman and now is called Eve’s Garden.

“The real vision in the Book of Revelation is Jesus returning to the city where a garden lies beside a river next to trees that heal,” she says. “I hold on to this narrative as I sit in our garden and love my neighbors.”

Excerpted from U.S. Catholic 

Whatever you call him, Steve Ritz is an extraordinary example of how one person can make a difference.

He has two missions: The first is to get his Discovery High School students to grow and eat vegetables. The second is to ignite the Green Bronx Machine and get all of the borough residents to grow and eat healthy food. (Watch out for the soon-to-come Web site and meanwhile follow Green Bronx Machine on Facebook and Twitter.)

Ritz is fueled by the irony that although the Bronx is the distribution point for produce to all five boroughs, its residents have very little access to high quality, fresh vegetables.

“If my kids can’t buy good produce at the local supermarket, we’ll get them to grow it,” Ritz decides. And grow they do! Hundreds of pounds of it a year. Where? On the classroom walls.

Given a boost by the largesse of Boston-based Green Living Technologies, the students began growing vegetables on vertical shelves packed with earth. I saw the result last Friday when I attended a farmer’s market at the school.

Students, teachers, parents, and neighbors of the school were all shopping: bins were loaded with collards, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, scallions, and onions–and everyone was filling up their bags and heading to the front of the classroom to pay.

Have you ever seen a chalk board in front of a classroom listing vegetables and their prices? The sight gave me goosebumps. Can you imagine holding a weekly farmer’s market in classrooms all over the country?

The Discovery High School farmer’s market was a fantastic success. Steve Ritz wrote to me a few days after the event:

“We were very profitable, had over 500 visitors and folks from across NYC and NJ including State Senator Rivera and several other elected officials! Had we been able to have an EBT machine–we would have sold even more…

“All the kids went home with bags of produce and after school we went to a local soup kitchen to donate the rest. All the edible plants and seedlings also went to local high-need communities and gardens and the Green Bronx Machine helped plant thru the weekend.

“…Watch the ABC TV Special on June 18, 7 PM–Above and Beyond–which features our program and of course, I hope you can join us in Manhattan on June 22; 6-9 PM at Cafe Iguana for the formal launch of Green Bronx Machine.”

In case you aren’t already convinced that there’s a Pied Piper in the Bronx, here’s Steve telling us about his passion for greening the Bronx and providing math skills, community, and career alternatives for Bronx youths at the same time:

Now listen to one of Steve’s students, Netali Soriano, telling us how much he loves growing vegetables and how tomatoes and avocados have become a personal favorites. Take note of his Green Bronx Machine T-shirt!

Originally published on Lorna Sass At Large

It’s 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. The loudspeakers blare, “Garden Program is Good.”  Then, out of grey military barrack-like buildings meander 30 or so men, headed to the “chapel” for class and some days, to a garden bursting with color. Dressed in their “blues.”

The group of men is predominantly African-American, with a healthy mix of other races. On the yard, razor wire and heavy chain-link fences surround them, with several guard towers looming over the area.

They are the class participants of the Insight Garden Program (IGP) at San Quentin State Prison.

Having served over 800 prisoners over an eight-year period, the IGP rehabilitates men through the process of organic gardening. By connecting with nature, men also reconnect to themselves, their communities and the natural environment. It is based on the principles that nature can teach us everything we need to know, and that through connection to nature we can heal individually and collectively.

On brilliant sunny days, the men tend to a 1,200 square foot organic flower garden on the prison yard with great care. They work in teams, helping each other. Sometimes they name the bugs (“Michael, the Praying Mantis”) and pet the bees (“they love to have a back massage!”).

When the men tend to their outer garden, they start to tend to themselves–and each other. They collectively become a community of care. In this work, they also learn the personal and professional skills they can use inside and outside the prison walls.

Aside from the organic fertilizing, pruning, flower planting, mulch laying and weed pulling in the garden, they also meet inside the “chapel”–essentially a barren room that becomes a quiet haven for deepening understanding. It is the place of inner gardening work.

Imagine thirty men sitting comfortably in a large, somewhat haphazard circle with their eyes shut, meditating. As they gently reemerge from the silence, they speak up, state their first name and express a one-word feeling.  Super Dave is usually “super.”  A lot of men are just “OK.”  Some are “blessed.”  Others are “grateful” or “peaceful.” Even being able to express a feeling is a step in the right direction, since so many have lived lives of numbness.

During “inner gardener” classes, the men tend to their weeds and manage their pests, appropriate metaphors for their healing processes. Often, they break into small groups to have more meaningful, intimate dialogue, peppered with provocative questions like: What are the crossroads you face at this point in your life? What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room? How can you make the most of your time with us? Becoming responsible and accountable for their healing means they will be more empowered to create a different future from the pasts they’ve left behind.

The question, however, that always elicits a bit of confusion and discomfort is, “what are the gifts that you have to offer the world?”

In such a controlled, retributive environment, it is shocking to hear those words, which indicate hope, possibilities, and humanity. Their answers reflect the beginning of restoration, despite the environment in which they live and from whence they came.

Over the years, the IGP’s curriculum also has evolved beyond the “inner” and “outer” gardener processes. The IGP now includes human-eco connections; food, farming and urban agriculture; and green jobs training–a holistic design that’s meant to create sustainable human/eco systems inside and outside the prison walls.

And of course, food is a favorite topic–probably because their food on the outside is fast, and prison grub is horrid. Prison must be the greatest food desert of them all. Watching Food, Inc. has had a shock and awe impact on the men who’ve never before considered the origin of food. But afterward, men have spoken of leaving prison and building healthy food farms in their low-income communities to start healing their neighborhoods, both physically and emotionally.

To practice their food-knowledge, the program continues to seek approvals to build organic raised-bed vegetable gardens. Although the men won’t be able to eat the food they grow (due to prison restrictions), the guys have decided to make it a community service project by donating food to local charities and families of people in prison. It is another example of the possibilities, and of the fact that change (and prison approvals) can take a very, very long time.

Most people in California State prisons will eventually leave and go back to our communities. So in the name of creating a safer, more humane, and healthier society, we can’t afford not to do this work. Indeed, the connection to nature exposes hearts behind bars. The IGP just gives men a chance to dig deep, plant some seeds, and bloom.

If there’s one thing Michelle Obama and Glenn Beck can agree on, it’s the notion that growing some of your own food is a good idea (though I suspect the Obamas get their seeds from sources other than Beck’s shifty, grifty seed bank sponsor).

You might think that level of bipartisan support would light a fire under our collective (gr)ass. But the much-ballyhooed kitchen garden revival has yet to make a dent in the bentgrass. As NASA reported in 2005, lawns now constitute “the single largest irrigated crop in America,” taking up at least three times the acreage we devote to irrigated corn. Has any nation in the history of mankind ever squandered so many resources to cultivate so much vegetation of such dubious value?

Meanwhile, we currently grow less than 2 percent of our own food.

“This,” Michele Owens declares in her just-published Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, “is not yet enough of a revolution to satisfy me.”

Owens, who cofounded and contributes regularly to the uber-popular, highly respected GardenRant blog, is a self-taught amateur gardener. And that may be why her book is one of the best manifesto/memoirs so far this century on growing your own veggies.

With nearly two decades of experience under her own backyard greenbelt, Owens makes the case that the simple act of growing food is just that–simple. “Years of vegetable gardening have turned me into a complete minimalist who uses nothing besides shovel, seeds and mulch.”

Finally, a Bittman for the backyard! Owens also manages to distill the essence of vegetable gardening into a breezy precept that carries just a whiff of Eau de Pollan: “…give your crops lots of sun, fertile soil, and sufficient water.”

Of course, this kind of admirably concise advice is so simple, Owens admits, that it’s “hardly enough to fill a page or two, let alone a book.”

But, just as the Minimalist has filled multiple massive tomes with recipes short and sweet (or savory), and Pollan has created an apparently infinite franchise around the seven words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” Owens has no trouble weaving a compelling read from the thread of her Twitter-length thesis. Grow The Good Life begins with an incisive analysis of why so few Americans garden, then rolls full steam ahead into a cheerful campaign to recruit more of her fellow citizens into the cause of homeland (food) security.

Owens knows a thing or two about how to rally the troops; she’s a former speechwriter for, among others, governors William F. Weld and Mario Cuomo. Her day job clearly helped her hone her instincts about what inspires people, as well as what turns them off.

One factor that discourages folks from planting a kitchen garden, Owens believes, is “the incredibly off-putting literature of vegetable gardening,” which she credits with “driving so many would-be gardeners into scrapbooking instead.”

So many gardening how-to’s dwell on all the potential pitfalls a gardener might encounter that “a beginner might reasonably conclude that growing food is nothing but a series of problems.” Problems for which plenty of companies want to sell you solutions, as Owens notes. She’d love to overthrow the military-industrial-horticultural complex that promotes gardening as a form of chemical warfare requiring frequent trips to the gardening aisles of Lowes or Home Depot for reinforcements. If guerrilla gardeners needed a general, I’d nominate Owens.

But she’s equally underwhelmed by the tree-hugging bat guano boosters at the other end of the spectrum (like me) who stockpile their own artisanal arsenals of finely crafted specialty tools and exotic dung from far-flung places.

No bit of conventional gardening wisdom is too sacred to be shredded. In her chipper fashion, she makes mulch of such nuggets as “send your soil off to a lab to be tested”:

…as if the vegetable garden were a delicate chemistry experiment rather than a partnership with nature that’s generally proved successful for the last 10,000 years. By all means, test your soil if you suspect lead or industrial waste–but otherwise? I know a lot of serious gardeners and not a single one has ever had his or her soil tested.

And what of the deeply entrenched notion that you need to double-dig your vegetable beds? Don’t think twice, it’s not right. Aside from being ludicrously labor intensive, it actually messes up the soil’s structure and gives old weed seeds a new lease on life by exposing them to light.

The best way to make a bed your veggies will thrive in, Owens says, is also the easiest–quite simply, to employ the no-dig method known as sheet mulching or lasagna gardening.

Not that Owens has anything against working up a sweat; on the contrary, she notes that gardening gives you a workout that’s as good–or better–any routine you could do at the gym. And as a bonus, you’ll be rewarded with good things to eat and a nicer yard.

“When I’m done cleaning out a flower bed, I’ll sit back and admire my work,” a doctor who studies the effects of gardening on aging told Owens. “If I’ve done 30 minutes on a treadmill, I don’t stand there admiring the treadmill.”

Owens’ common sense stance that you don’t need a garden expert to show you how food grows echoes the refrain that “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” But though Dylan would presumably prefer not to be the inspiration for the bomb-building revolutionaries who took their name from his song, I suspect Owens wouldn’t mind terribly if her book ignited an explosion of homegrown terroirists and seed bombers.

Grow The Good Life is less a breath of fresh air than a blast of gale force gumption. Gardening newbies, seasoned seedsters and the somewhere-in-betweensters will all find much to enjoy in Owen’s eloquent, witty and empowering guide, which redefines the joy of gardening for our fraught and fractious times:

…in a world where so much is beyond the control of any one of us–as much as I’d like to, I cannot personally rid us of the internal combustion engine and replace it with something less noisy or dirty or less likely to turn a beautiful landscape into a field of asphalt–there is a lot of pleasure to be had in reshaping the little piece of earth that is under our control. Thanks to my garden, I can take a small stand against everything I find witless, lazy, and ugly in our civilization and propose my own more lively alternative.

I’d love to see Owens offered a spot on Oprah’s sofa, but at the very least, Grow The Good Life deserves a slot on the bookshelf of every dreamer who’s got visions of sugar-sweet plum tomatoes dancing in his or her head. This is the book that could bring those dreams to fruition.

Originally published on AlterNet

For four years Kim Allen has served as garden program manager for Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA), which provides a minimum-wage, internship program for socio-economically challenged adolescents ages 14 to 18. Some come to the garden through word-of-mouth from family or friends, others as part of mandated community service.

During the school year Allen’s youth garden crew, typically a group of six to eight, work and learn alongside her in two community garden plots in West Berkeley. There’s the half-acre Bancroft Community Garden, which the BYA shares with two dozen community gardeners on Bancroft Way, and the smaller Community Orchard garden on land the nonprofit owns on Bonar Street. The fruit tree garden includes many heirloom varieties, donated by Trees of Antiquity–among them citrus, apples, and pluots. The Bancroft Garden boasts typical farmers’ market fare.

In the summer, BYA offers an eight-week program for a dozen youth, who put in about 20 hours a week. The organization runs a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) during peak harvest season. It sells flowers and whatever is in abundance in the garden to Bill Briscoe, who owns The Bread Workshop. Briscoe puts surplus fava beans, sunchokes, garlic, and other vegetables to good use in his in-house soups. BYA youth harvest about two to four boxes of produce a week for The Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice program, which serves low-income residents. Every other week the garden provides perishables for a local food bank pick-up point.

Allen, 33, lives in a semi-cooperative house with a garden (that her roommates tend) in walking distance of her job. She hails from a horticulture and outdoor education background and represented the national grassroots network Rooted in Community at last week’s EcoFarm Conference, where she spoke about working with youth in urban farming settings. We talked in the garden early last week.

What do you enjoy about your job?

I love working outside and witnessing things grow—both the gardens and the youth. Everything in life is always changing and evolving. There are always new challenges and things to learn. A garden is a good metaphor for life.

What do you like about working with youth in a garden setting?

I like the confidence it gives them; they leave knowing how to create their own garden. They also learn about the life cycle, the value of growing food and the interconnectedness of plants and garden species. Some of our youth come in scared of insects but they leave with an understanding and respect for their role in nature.

Maybe more than anything else the garden is a safe, peaceful place where these adolescents can come and forget about other things—whether it’s personal struggles, academic issues, family problems, or concerns about violence in their communities—and just work together doing physical labor in a social setting.

Are there any misperceptions people have about what you do?

When I tell people that I run a garden program for youth in Berkeley they always assume it’s the Edible Schoolyard, because they’ve heard about that garden. Many people don’t realize that there are school gardens in every public school in Berkeley. And of course that particular garden is beautiful. It’s nice to see what’s possible if you have resources like they do.

We’d like to be able to hire more youth and give step raises or incentives to our crew as they move into leadership roles. In terms of equipment: our wheelbarrow is about to fall apart and we can always use tools. We don’t have a truck so it’s a big help if someone with a truck can pick up soil. We can always find jobs for people who can repair things. It’s good to have more money to do the things we want to do, but finding people willing to do physical labor is key.

Are there any wrong assumptions that people make about food in Berkeley?

A lot of people don’t realize that hunger is a real issue in this city. Because Berkeley has a reputation as a food town people forget that there are a lot of poor people here who don’t have access to good food.

Who are your local food heroes?

The people who have the passion and dedication to nourish our under-served communities. I’m thinking of Farm Fresh Choice, run by Gerardo Marin (who just left) and Hunia Bradley. School food reformer and food justice advocate Joy Moore has tremendous positive energy and teaches youth about growing and cooking healthy food. Daniel Miller at Spiral Gardens is another food security activist in our area doing good work. And Willow Rosenthal, who lives in Berkeley now and started City Slicker Farms in Oakland, which builds produce gardens in people’s backyards and sells locally grown produce through its food security program. She’ a role model and a colleague and I admire that she knew when it was time to move on, she worked her arse off doing hard, physical labor at that non-profit and recognized she needed to find balance in her life.

What plans do you have for the garden?

If we could find both the funding and someone to manage it, I would love to put a chicken coop in the garden.

I’d like to move the front fence and open up the entrance so that more people in the neighborhood can come and visit. I’d like to make it a place where people can sit and enjoy the peace we have here.

I’d also like to create a memorial garden space. A lot of youth in our program have dealt with family or friends dying. Violence is a constant in some communities. I’d like the memorial space to evolve, with new and different plants, just as life evolves, but the space would be a permanent refuge and a safe haven in nature.

Photos: Kim Allen, top. BYA garden crew share a Thanksgiving meal, middle. From left to right: Nahom Fasil, Kithorny Porter, Andranee Nabors, and Davion Barnes. Photo: Kim Allen. Growing greens for the community, bottom. Photo: Courtesy BYA.

View a student video of the Berkeley Youth Alternatives garden program.

Originally published on Berkeleyside

When Katie Stagliano was in third grade, she planted a cabbage in her family’s small garden. When it grew to an astounding 40 pounds, she donated it to a soup kitchen, where it was made into meals for 275 people (with the help of ham and rice). “I thought, ‘Wow, with that one cabbage I helped feed that many people?’” says Katie, now entering sixth grade. “I could do much more than that.”

So Katie started planting vegetable gardens as part of her nonprofit Katie’s Krops — she has six right now — including one the length of a football field at her school in her hometown of Summerville, S.C. Classmates, her family and other people in the community help plant and water, and Bonnie Plants donates seedlings. This past year, Katie took her commitment to a new level: she has given soup kitchens over 2,000 pounds of lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables. Katie and her helpers are now harvesting the spring planting, and another 1,200 pounds will be donated by October.

“She just walks in like a proud little girl with her treasures in her arm,” says Sue Hanshaw, CEO of Tricounty Family Ministries, the soup kitchen in Charleston, S.C. where Katie first brought her 40-pound crucifer. “I love what she exudes, caring for others. It’s made a big impact on a lot of people.”

Says Elois Mackey, 49, a formerly homeless mother of two who has received a weekly vegetable delivery from Katie since September: “She is showing that you can help other people no matter how young you are. I love the vegetables she brings.”

Katie is a well-spoken 11-year-old who juggles the life of a school child with that of a world-changer. Swim practice, tennis matches, and studying (she has had the highest GPA of her class for the last four years) are sandwiched between daily waterings and tending.  “It makes me feel good,” says Katie. “I feel bad for those people who have to go to Palmetto house [a homeless shelter where she and residents recently planted a garden], but I feel good that I’m helping people.”

Katie’s desire to help as well as create sprouted early. “She’s always been very inquisitive and wants to go above and beyond,” says her mom, Stacy, 41. “It’s like, ‘What about this and why aren’t we doing this?”

Since the age of four, Katie has placed first in competitions that include inventing a toothbrush now on sale that teaches water conservation, for the Dr. Fresh company. “When you put the toothbrush in your mouth to brush,” says Katie, “it plays a rap song that says, ‘Turn off the water when you brush your teeth, and you can save eight gallons of water.’”

As a third grader, upset about a local drought, Katie decided her school, Pinewood Prep, needed to conserve water. Katie wrote the headmaster over Christmas break, suggesting how the school could better conserve. Soon after, the high school’s advanced placement environmental studies teacher called to meet with her and work on a water conservation project. Katie’s suggestions for rain barrels to catch water and other ideas were soon implemented throughout the school. “As a parent, I am so moved,” says Stacy. “I say to her, ‘I hope some day when you are a parent, you have a kid who is as amazing as you so you can see it from a mom’s perspective.’”

Much of the thanks goes to Stacy and Katie’s devoted group of helpers, including her 7-year-old brother, John Michael, who has toiled in two of the gardens to plan pumpkin patches.

Since February of last year, master gardener Lisa Turocy has not only sat shoulder to shoulder with Katie planting and giving advice, she’s transformed her entire front yard into a garden with 600 seedlings. “If I can help her change the world,” says Turocy, “that’s awesome.”

Locals Linda and Bob Baker, golf professionals with 41 acres of farmland set along a rutted dirt road on the outskirts of Summerville, gave Katie some acreage for a garden. Bob lugged his John Deer tractor to Katie’s school to till the soil, and taught Katie how to drive the machine. Says Bob: “It makes you feel so good to see someone that young with that amount of compassion, step in there and really make a difference.”

As one of Katie’s best friends said, most kids their age mainly like to watch TV and play on computers; they don’t like to do what Katie does. Another friend, Anna Semar, 11, inspired by Katie to grow her own vegetable garden, says: “If there were more people like Katie the world would be a better place.”

Katie wants to get more kids across the country growing gardens to help others, so she’s holding a contest and offering the winners a grant. And, Katie will come and help start each garden. Click here to apply.

If you want to donate to Katie’s nonprofit, Katie’s Krops, she needs money for irrigation equipment, fertilizer and other supplies for her six gardens.

Originally published on Tonic

Part of the reason for the new interest in the simple but yet so intensely complex act of growing food is that we have a clear problem and myriad solutions. The problem: obesity rates increased in 28 states in the past year. As recently reported in “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010,” obesity is one of the biggest public health challenges our country has faced. With 1 in 3 US children age 2-19 overweight or obese, we need to end this trend and fortunately, many organizations, initiatives, and resources aim to solve child obesity in a generation.

Part of the solution starts with students and a seed. The benefits of gardening are far beyond the average 270 calories burned while digging in the dirt. The Royal Horticulture Society reported in new research that “as well as helping children lead happier, healthier lives today, gardening helped them acquire the essential skills they need to fulfill their potential in a rapidly-changing world and make a positive contribution to society as a whole.”

Our society craves a connection to a sense of place, to where our food comes from, to the community that used to surround a meal. We are so far removed from agriculture that over 20 million people daily use a mouse instead of a hoe to harvest on FarmVille. While living in DC during snowpocalypse 2010, I achieved level 30 in FarmVille in a few short weeks—albeit extremely frustrated at the ridiculousness of never actually ‘harvesting’ the farm animals and collecting chocolate milk from a brown cow.

The Obama Administration is working to get us to do more than milk virtual cows. The First Lady rolled out the new Let’s Move website earlier this week and the Take Action section suggests “helpful tips and step-by-step strategies for families, schools and communities to help kids be more active, eat better, and grow up healthy” specifically promoting community gardens, school gardens and Farm to School programs for elected officials , schools, and community leaders.

This action flows well from the White House Childhood Obesity Taskforce Report that recommended both Farm to School and school gardens. To that end, there are three current rows that need hoeing that you can help with:

1. Policy: Child Nutrition Reauthorization. Once every 5 years, Congress addresses the legislation that determines what school children eat in the cafeteria. The time is now. You can help create more Farm to School programs and school gardens.

1. Practice: FoodCorps, an AmeriCorps Farm to School and School Garden Program. The ultimate goal of the project is to increase the health and prosperity of vulnerable children while investing in the next generation of farmers. I am proud to be one of the co-Founders of FoodCorps working on the development of the program thanks to generous funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and AmeriCorps.

1. Prose: “How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers” by Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle. This book just landed in my mailbox so check back soon on Civil Eats for a review.

Now let’s move kids and adults from the screen to the soil. Ready. Set. Garden!

I made a decision in early April that has improved my quality of life immensely: I broadcasted hundreds of lettuce seeds throughout two, 2 ft. x 6 ft. raised beds on my rooftop.

One bed was seeded with “European Mesclun Mix,” from the Baker Creek Seed Bank in Petaluma, California (a gift from my lovely fellow editor here at Civil Eats, Naomi Starkman). The second bed was filled with “Ultimate Salad Bowl,” from my other favorite place to procure seeds, the Hudson Valley Seed Library. For four weeks, the sun, soil and water has worked its magic. Now, I have delicious red and green curly lettuces, baby kale, radicchio, endive, mizuna, mustard greens, mache and orach (a relative of spinach). And arugula!

Now, every day for a week, I’ve gone up to the roof, picked a variety of greens and herbs, washed and prepared a salad — and if its nice weather and not too windy — I take some time to eat my lunch up there, where there’s a spectacular view of the city. This is a necessary respite for me: There is no wi-fi up on the roof, and I leave my phone down in the apartment, giving myself the time to be “out to lunch,” as Cathy Erway described in her apt post about our changing food vernacular on the newly relaunched markbittman.com.

I will admit that there was a round of initial work here — building the infrastructure of the garden, which required dedicated hours for bringing 1500 pounds of soil up six flights of stairs (I live in a tenement building with no elevator), along with the boards, tools and amendments to build and prepare the beds.

But the growing part is easy. To paraphrase Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen, if you grow good soil, the plants grow themselves. Good soil is all about compost, and I add a little seabird guano now and then, too. As an added bonus, when you are working with good soil sowing closely is not a problem — and you can thin seedlings out, eating the baby leaves and letting the other plants get bigger. For lettuce, even a windowsill is adequate for growing. There is no space too small for happy-in-dappled-sunlight greens, and there is absolutely no special expertise needed.

Having a garden in the city is not about meeting all of your food wants and needs. Instead its about highlighting what you eat — adding something freshly picked to a dish (it really does make light years of difference taste-wise), or for me, starting ten bush bean plants from seed so that I can get enough of a harvest by early June to make my pickled ‘Dilly Beans’ to give away and serve as snacks.

But its also about the simple pleasures of planting a seed and watching it grow. It is only now, when I have perennial herbs and plants re-appearing, garlic coming up from last fall’s planting, and towering Tuscan kale that tastes sweeter after the winter frost, do I realize the value of the hard work of building a garden on the roof: a place to work a little patch of soil in the city and reap abundant rewards.

Last fall I planted spinach and arugula, which stayed dormant under a cold frame throughout the winter. I removed the cold frame at the end of March and the plants bounded into giant green bushes that we ate from in April. Now, as the arugula goes to seed on one side of the garden (which is really not so bad, as the leaves haven’t lost much flavor and the flowers are delicious), I have even more arugula thriving and taking root in my lettuce bed. The unpredictability of gardening lay in its creative challenges: when life gives you too much arugula, make pesto!

Arugula Pesto

Serves 2

a big bunch of arugula
two cloves of garlic
1/2 lemon (or to your taste) or 2 tablespoons cider vinegar works, too
1/4 cup of olive oil
1-2 tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

In a food processor or mortal and pestle, combine the ingredients and process until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.

I served my arugula pesto over gnocchi, the recipe adapted from Mark’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I was serving two, so double it if you like more. When the gnocchi were done, I added shallot and butter to a cast iron pan with salt and pepper. After it cooked for a few minutes, I added a splash of white wine and let it cook off a moment, then added the gnocchi and about 1/2 cup of the arugula pesto. I cooked it until warm, then served the gnocchi with fresh-grated Parmesan.

Homemade Gnocchi

Serves 2

1 medium spud, preferably the starchy brown russet type
1/2 cup of flour
Hardy pinch of salt and pepper

1. Peel and boil the potato in a pot of water until soft, but not falling apart. Keep your boiling water, just turn it off for a few minutes. Put the potato in a bowl and mash it with a fork or process through a potato ricer if you have one (I don’t). The goal is to remove all of the lumps. Add the salt, pepper and flour and combine them well until you have a malleable dough. (I break down and use my hands here, which really helps produce a dough-like consistency.)

2. Roll out a section of the dough into a 1/2 thick tube, using a knife to cut it into one-inch pieces. Then use the back of a fork to press each one into a gnocchi, starting at one of the cut ends (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has a great visual; see above). Start the heat under your water again, and you can begin dropping the gnocchi into the boiling water, without overlapping too much. They will cook for about a minute before rising to the surface, at which time you can place them on a plate, and they are ready to combine with your sauce and eat.

This week in New York City, get to know the nature around you (and eat some local, wild and seasonal meals featuring native plants, too) during Wildflower Week, from May 1st – 9th.

New York City has 53,000 acres of open space, more than Philadelphia and Los Angeles combined, and around 778 native plant species. You can explore some of this natural wealth beginning on Saturday by participating in guided walking tours of gardens, green roofs and park land in all five boroughs, as well as attending planting events, lectures, events for kids, and more. There will also be an opportunity to get free seedlings, see sustainable gardening demonstrations, and get information on native species at a NYC Wildflower Week booth in the Union Square Greenmarket this Saturday from 8am- 3pm.

Once you’ve explored the natural beauty of New York City, you’ll surely have built up an appetite. Fortunately, there are lots of opportunities to dine on “Edible Natives” all across the city. Here are some places to cook and eat local, seasonal plants this Wildflower Week:

Herbaceous Eats: Cooking with Spring Greens, Herbs and Flowers
Time: Fri. May 7, 7-9pm, $25
Location: Whole Foods Culinary Center, 95 East Houston St.

Join Louisa Shafia, chef and author of Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life, for easy ways to cook with wild edibles like ramps, lamb’s quarters, sorrel, and other seasonal ingredients.

On the Menu: Stinging-Nettle Pesto with Crostini and Market Vegetables; Lamb’s Quarters-and-Pea-Shoots Soup; Shiso-Cucumber Salad; Spot Prawns with Garlic, Sorrel, and White Wine; Rhubarb and Pistachio Parfait.

Restaurants featuring special wildflower week menus:

MANHATTAN

The Green Table
Time: Throughout Wildflower Week
Location: 75 Ninth Ave., Chelsea Market, 212-741-6623
Green Table’s daily menu reflects what’s freshest at local farms and greenmarkets. Featured menu items: Wild Vegetable Tempura–wild ramps and fiddlehead ferns along with other “domesticated” spring vegetables.

MAS (farmhouse): Wild Tastings
Time: Salon dinners Sunday May 2 and Monday May 3
Location: 39 Downing Street, 212-255-1790
Join chef Galen Zamarra and special guest speakers for an enlightening conversation about cooking with local native foraged ingredients. $65 prix-fixe dinner. Limited seating, reservations required. Nightly menu to include: Trout piscator stuffed with wild ramp and smoked trout mousse.

Pure Food and Wine: Wild Tastings
Time: Throughout Wildflower Week
Location: 54 Irving Place, (212) 477-1010
Pure’s raw vegan menu is entirely plant based, uses no processed ingredients, and nothing is heated above approximately 118 degrees to preserve vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. Featured menu item: Sweet Violet Herb and Orange Salad.

BROOKLYN

James
Time: Throughout Wildflower Week
Location: 605 Carlton Ave., Prospect Heights, 718.942.4255
This seasonal American restaurant with Old-World European influences will feature nightly specials with NYC native plants such as ramps and fiddlehead ferns, including a Spring Onion Soup with Boar Lardon and Pecorino.

iCi
Time: Throughout Wildflower Week
Location: 246 Dekalb Ave., Fort Greene, 718.789.2778
iCi’s pholsophy: the best-tasting food is naturally grown and harvested in ways that are ecologically sound and socially responsible by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. Featured menu item: Braised spring lamb shoulder with Brooklyn-made caviatelli, baby artichokes, ramps, and pea shoots.

QUEENS

Vesta
Time: Throughout Wildflower Week
Location: 21-02 30th Avenue, Astoria, 718.545.5550
This neighborhood restaurant offers simple and Italian-inspired favorites guided by the local green market. Featured menu item: Spaghetti with charred ramps and sheeps milk ricotta.