Urban Farm Magazine

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Re-design of Urban Farm Magazine including a cover and nameplate, table of contents, mail slot, featured spread, and secondary spread.

Transcript of Urban Farm Magazine

GET BACK TO YOUR

ROOTSGrow ginger, car rots,

beets, radishes, & more.

PLANNING T IPS F O R A N Y S I Z E G A R D E N

20+

MA XIMUM - YIELD

FARMERSC i t y d w e l l e r s a r e b r i n g i n g f a r m

c l o s e r t o t a b l e t h a n e v e r b e f o r e.

CLEAN YOUR

F ILTHY SOULWITH BIOMEDIATION

$5.99 USA (CAN $6.99)urbanfarm.com

FEBRUARY 2014

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C ON T E N T S

What Lies BeneathCity soil can be scary stuff, but can bioremediation help save the day?

by Scott Kellog & Stacy Pettigrew

Heir ApparentHeirloom seeds are important to the future

of urban gardening & local food.by Roger Sipe

Pop (Up) Goes the Windy CityThe Peterson Garden Project in Chicago is

a new twist on the victor y garden.by Laura Matthews

Big Tips for Small GardensAn expert advises on what will work for

any size garden in any location.by Laura Matthews

Playing the PercentagesCommunity matters just as much as the

produce at this community garden in NY.by Elizabeth Scholl

Clean your Filthy SoulCity soil can be scary stuff, but can bioremediation help save the day?

by Scott Kellog & Stacy Pettigrew

We Have the CureIf your desire to home-cure meat is what ’s

ailing you, here’s the prescription.by Meredith Bethune

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Maximum-Yield FarmersBiointensive gardening methods seek to

increase calories per square foot.by Laura Matthews

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Get Back to your RootsHarvest buried treasure this year in the

form of ginger, carrots, beets, & more. by Margaret A. Haapoja

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COLUMNS // DEPARTMENTS

NEW! Urban LegendsReader-Submitted Advice & Tipsby You, Our Readers

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City BuzzThe Queen Beeby Kristina Mercedes Urquhart

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Green ThumbHerbal Wintergreen, A Bulb Planterin Name Only, The Write Stuf fby Frank Hyman

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Backyard CoopSlow Food Ark of Tasteby Lisa Munniksma

Urban FeastHerb-Roasted Sweet Potatoes

& Miso Butter Recipeby Amy Cotler

Urban Classifieds

Mail Slot05

NEW! Cream of the Crop51

Urban Storefront52

Advert iser Index72

UF Newsfeed88

UF Connects74

UF Chef83

What We’re Reading

Farm Pets

Marketplace

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I always look forward to reading Urban Farm magazine. I have had gardens for most of my life. Ever since I learned to talk, I’ve been planting tomatoes and identifying weeds. Being in a huge family made it necessary for us to produce much of our own food. A family with 11 growing kids eats a lot!

Now, when I plant my tomatoes every spring, I can feel my mom’s spirit with me and her hands on mine. Gardening helps to sustain me, and in a way, keeps my mom alive. Even though I have been gardening for all this time, I still find inspiration and ideas in every single issue of your magazine. Thank you so much!

I am a city girl now (not in my heart but in my location), but I still have a big, beautiful yard. I am even in the very early stages of planting an edible forest garden, right in the middle of my city. Next year, we are hoping to plant the front yard in food, so that people can walk by and “steal” sustenance for their families.

Tomato Lover

I just received my first issue of Urban Farm (the November/December 2012 issue) and read “Start Your Wining,” by Kristine Hansen. I want to suggest an addition to the list of urban wineries: Left Foot Charley in Michigan.

I am in no way associated with the winery other than being a customer who enjoys its wines and an envious entrepreneur-wannabe who appreciates the way the owner has created a very respectable niche in the midst of two Michigan American Viticultural Areas (an AVA is federally recognized wine-grape-growing region). Left Foot Charley’s wines are wonderful and I cherish them.

On The Right Foot

I had to laugh when I read Roger Sipe’s musings about getting an orange in his Christmas stocking as a child (At Farm and Main editor’s note, “Dreaming of an Orange Christmas,” in the November & December 2012 issue).

I am the youngest of 11 kids so money was always tight in our house when I was growing up. Although I am now 44 years old, a beautiful, perfect orange was a definite treat to see in my Christmas stocking back then.

My mom was a nurse, and nutrition was always a priority, so we had fruit, yes, but the very perfect oranges (and sometime grapefruit) that we got were always from a fundraiser for the school marching band. The best 11 from that box found their way into our stockings, and we loved them! I used to love that orange even more than the chocolate Santas or homemade hard candy. Thanks for making me laugh with the wonderful memory.

Orange Ya Glad?

Thank you to author Kristina Mercedes Urquhart for her excellent City Buzz column in the September issue (“Anatomy 101”). We are a new, special-educating, home-schooling family. My 10-year-old son set up the “yard bed” under the cedar tree on a crisp Sunday afternoon, and I read him the column as he colored the drawings of a bee anatomy.

We covered science, reading, writing, handwriting, and fine-motor occupational therapy in one exercise! The article was so well-written. I scanned and printed the elegant drawings and printed them in black-and-white for my son to color. Thank you for enriching our lives. We hope to start beekeeping next spring!

A Wonderful Lesson

Mail Slot

Drop Us A Line

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something you want to share with our readers?

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Harvest buried treasure th is year in the form of ginger, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, &

more dur ing this root-crop renaissance.

by Margaret A. Haapoja

Root crops are among the first and last vegetables in the garden; think radishes to rutabagas. Ideal for cool climates, many of them are also ideal for small gardens because they take up little space. All root vegetables prefer a pH balance between 6 and 6.5, and they grow best in a deep, loose soil that retains moisture, yet is well-drained. All are best seeded directly into the garden.

Harvesting these vegetables is like digging for buried treasure, and banking them in the root cellar is akin to saving money for a rainy day. They may not be as glamorous as artichokes are radicchios, but carrots, beets, ginger, radishes, kholrabi, and turnips are garden staples that previous generations have depended on. Often referred to as lowly vegetables, root crops have recently enjoyed a renaissance.

THE BURIED TREASUREClockwise from Left to

Right: Kholrabi, Radishes, Galangal, Ginger, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, & Turnips

are among some of the delicious root plants that

can take any urban garden to an entirely new level.

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Carrots are one of the most popular vegetables from Territorial Seed Co. in Cotton Grove, Oregon, according to Product Development Director Josh Kirschenbaum. “Carrots are probably the most particular as far as wanting nice, sandy, loamy soil because, keep in mind, they are getting long roots that you’re going to be harvesting,” he says. “So you want to have nice, loose soil that will not inhibit the root from growing down.” His favorites are Mokum and YaYa, both Nantes types of cigar-shaped carrots. “They’re not really useful for mechanical harvest, so a lot of the carrots you get at the grocery store aren’t going to be of this type,” Kirschenbaum says, “but they’re perfect for a home garden, and they’re a lot more flavorful.

Renee Shepherd, of Renee’s Garden in Felton, California, also favors Nantes types of carrots, and she keeps them in the ground over winter, simply mulching with straws to keep them from freezing. “You can keep carrots and parsnips in the ground over the winter,” she says. “The first frost actually sweetens them up since the cold brings up the sugar.” Folks with little space should consider planting some of the round, French carrots. Shepherd suggests Paris Market and Round Romeo varieties.

Gettle grows all of his root crops in an average, fairly good garden soil, and they all seem to do well. “The main thing is that there is enough nutrition in the soil,” he says. “They need good, average garden soil, and then they just need to have enough moisture and cool weather until they set roots.” Gettle fertilizes his gardens with a couple of inches of organic turkey manure, working it into the soil as early as he can in the spring or late into the fall. He also mulches with straw to help loosen the soil. Germination can be a problem with carrots if gardeners don’t keep the seeds evenly moist afterplanting, according to Shepherd. ( continued )

“I t has a nice, bright- red root,” he says, “and if you cook it, it gets a wonder ful flavor. It’s really great eating: roasted, fried, grilled or however you cook carrots. ”

According to Rebecca Rupp in her book, How Carrots Won the Trojan War: Curious (but true) stories of common vegetables (Storey Publishing, 2011), the first carrots originally came from Afghanistan and

were purple. Jere Gettle, co-owner of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed in Mansfield, Mo., sells many colored carrots, but he concedes that carrots developed in the past hundred years do have more beta carotene because that’s what breeders have focused on. Gettle’s favorite carrot variety is Atomic Red. “It has a nice, bright-red root,” he says, “and if you cook it, it gets a wonderful flavor. It’s really great eating--roasted, fried, grilled or however you cook carrots.”

GREEN GOODNESS A close-up of the leafy

greens of the kholrabi root:Inside its thick skin lies a

crisp, juicy vegetable that everyone loves equally raw or cooked. A cross

between an octopus and a space capsule, it’s bound

to be the ugliest vegetable you’ve ever loved.

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1 Ca r rot s

2 K hol rabi

Easi ly the most popular root vegetable, carrots are easy to grow in sandy soi l and are even resistant to most pests and diseases.

A member of the brassica family whose nutr ient-r ich phytochemicals are highly regarded for their antioxidant properties.

3 Ginger

4 Radishes

Not only is i t great for f lavoring your favorite drink, ginger has been used as a natural cure for countless ai lments for many centuries.

These roots are cool season, fast-growing, & easy to mature. They are low in calories and have an abundance of f lavor and delicious crunch.

5 Tu rnips

6 Galangal

Like most root other vegetables, turnips are a great storage vegetable to use when you want to keep eating locally throughout the winter.

Galangal is a type of ginger used in the Thai kitchen as well as other Southeast-Asian cuis ines. The roots of galangal contain al l the f lavor.

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The Pe te r son Ga rden P ro jec t i s a new tw i s t on t he v ic to r y ga rden .

Gardening is essentially nurturing. Toss on top of that a bit of science, some math and measurement, and a good dose of planning and thought, and you have biointensive gardening. The practice seeks to increase the number of calories grown per square foot through a series of steps. Wilson and Natasha Alvarez from Lancaster, Pennsylvania have been employing the method in their garden for seven years. The couple teaches workshops on vegetable gardening and designs edible gardens and garden tools specific to biointensive gardening.

by Lau ra Mat thews

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THE BASICSBiointensive growing eases life for the gardener and the planet. The method seeks to maximize the amount of calories produced in a small space. Initially born from a mix of French intensive agriculture and the biodynamic principles of Austrian writer, educator and social activist Dr. Rudolf Steiner, biointensive practices were further honed by John Jeavons, the executive director of Ecology Action, in the 1970’s. Wilson Alvarez says the method is important as the world population grows and soil becomes increasingly depleted.

MAKING YOUR BEDBiointensive soil preparation is different from traditional double digging. Soil is lifted and loosened to preserve soil structure, rather than turned over or flipped. To build a biointensive raised bed, first choose a bed width. Exacting math and measurement are applied and revolve around a 100-square-foot garden. This is done to take the guesswork out of crop production and make the method applicable to any situation anywhere in the world. It allows yields to be tracked and compared.

Beds need to be wide. Alvarez suggests 4 or 5 feet wide with only 1 foot of space between them. Traditional row spacing isn’t used. Biointensive beds are raised, not necessarily because they are boxed, but because the soil is fluffed and mounded. Double digging in this method adds air to the soil structure.

Alvarez admits that the first digging of the beds isn’t easy; it’s lavor-intensive. Double digging begins by digging a trench 12-inches deep and wide at one end of the bed. That lifted soil is not returned to the garden but used to inoculate compost or start seeds. At the bottom of the trench, use a garden fork to loosen, but not lift, an additional twelve inches.

Next, with the garden fork, loosen the next-foot-wide adjacent topsoil. Once the soil is loosened, use the fork to gently lift and slide that row of topsoil, taking care not to turn over the soil, into the initial trench. Repeat until the bed becomes the desired length. True to this precise method, the soil should be loosened exactly 24 inches deep when complete. The top 12 inches is again gently lifted and aerated after each crop matures. One inch of compost is topdressed on the bed before fork-digging between each crop. Once a bed is dug, never step on the bed. Never double dig wet soil.

SOIL AND COMPOSTAttention to soil health is reflected in the ratio of crops prescribed. Using a wide variety of crops is important. Biointensive farmers do not monocrop. The system dictates 60 percent carbon crops, 30 percent calorie crops, and 10 percent vegetable crops. Carbon crops produce food and biomass for compost. There’s no room ( continued )

FARM FRESHClockwise from Left to

Right: leafy vegetables grown in the Alvarez

garden, the farm chickens, Ruth & Rita, fresh harvested

dark black beets, and a wonderful new crop of

freshly harvested galangal

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