By Vanessa Richins

It all comes down to money.

Administrators in the Los Angeles Unified School district find themselves with a $460-million budget deficit, which will likely mean increasing class sizes and discontinuing programs.

One of the threatened projects is their blossoming urban garden educational program.

It was started years ago when a man named Mud Baron started volunteering in the district. Years later the district was able to hire him and others as garden instructors.

As quoted in an article from Read the rest of this entry »

By Reggie Solomon

Square foot gardening is the ultimate urban gardening solution!

I stumbled upon this book at the Yale Bookstore this afternoon, and it has changed the way I will forever approach urban gardening.

The Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew who also once hosted a similarly-titled television series on public television, is built around gardening in a 4’ x 4’ square subdivided into a grid of sixteen 1’ squares. Mel’s system, which can be organized via a raised bed or at ground-level, incorporates an ingenious vertical trellising design to accommodate vining vegetables such as tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, squash and melons.

The square-foot gardening system is ideal for the urban gardener because it’s suited for small spaces, maximizes growing space by eliminating wasted space between rows, and accommodates vertical growing.

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By Reggie Solomon

Attending a local gardening workshop is a great way to prepare for the summer gardening season and get tips from other urban gardeners in your area.

Though it tried its darndest, the 10-inches of fresh snow didn’t stop me and my gardening buddy from attending a gardening workshop hosted by the New Haven Ecology Project [NHEP] at Common Ground High School, a local charter school that sits atop a 20-acre farm.

Surprisingly given the wintry conditions, the workshop drew a solid crowd of 25-30 people. The assortment of urban dwellers in attendance included - young people, older people, renters, homeowners, and a vibrantly-dressed group of Muslim women. You could feel the immense energy everyone was waiting to channel into their gardens resting beneath the snow.

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