Welcome.
At Xposure, we are just starting some of our seeds.
The kids planted their own clusters of carrots (above), cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and dahlia flowers. However, my friend Lewis decided to get a head start because he gets such great light in his apartment…
Pictured above: corn, peppers - fantastic city veggie, herbs - these are mint in particular, and tomatoes - you could tell by the fuzzy leaves.
Frost is waning away in zone seven, according to Jeff’s weather blog. To pick the types of vegetables to incorporate into my lessons and community projects, I referenced a page of the Church of Deep Ecology website about applying permaculture into an urban environment (PDF).
The document, in a nutshell, tells you to pay attention to the following things when setting up your urban garden:
- ways of maximizing space — vertical growth is probably more of an option in built-up environments such as NYC
- ways of maximizing yields — long producing, high yielding shade plants like lettuce (for boxes) or full-sun plants like peppers, tomatoes and zucchini (for gardens or bigger planters) are always a great choice in our climate. One could also maximize sunlight using mirrors for plants that need more sun.
- avoiding toxins — if you are growing your veggies outside, make sure to get your soil tested for lead, cadmium, etc. If you don’t feel like forking up the $35 it costs to get it done by a university, then the general rules are as follows: (1) leafy veggies soak up the toxins in higher concentrations, so don’t grow cabbage, lettuce, etc. in anything but window planters. (2) root vegetables are also out of the question for city soil, obviously — potatoes, radishes, etc. — those could be grown in window boxes or outdoor dirt boxes (pictured below) (3) for soil with less 300 ppm for lead, vine plants can still filter out most toxins before the soil contents reach the fruit, just make sure you harvest with gloves on (4) anything that grows on trees is fair game in a city — I believe many community gardens need to get better use of their allocated tree productivity by incorporating food trees to begin with…
I just came upon this Urban Homestead in SoCal that looks like a good resource for ideas, especially in a city.
Link: “”To feed a meat eater for a year requires 3-1/4 acres of land. To feed one vegetarian for a year requires 1/2 acre of land.” — I’m trying to figure out how much land one person needs to provide for their yearly caloric intake… Google keeps referring me to vegan sites that are incredibly biased and I’m looking towards how much bio-integrated land is needed to sustain one person, which I am positive is it way less than 1/2 acre for a vegetarian. I would be willing to bet that 1/2 acre would be enough for even a carnivore following permaculture design. In fact, live stock is an important component to a healthy homestead, most say. I suppose How much land can one human live survive from? is an inquiry we shall throw to the future. Likely it is the quality of land/climate that decides on the necessary space for proper yield. We shall try to do our best until then. Practice is the parent of Perfect!
