Campus Road Garden / Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is planning to destroy the Campus Road community garden in order to put up a parking lot. Flatbush Gardener writes about it here: Save the Campus Road Garden in Flatbush


View Brooklyn Community Gardens in a larger map

Garden Donations

Just a quick note to let you know that we are accepting plant donations for the flower garden. Here's what we're looking for:

• Seeds
• Bulbs
• Plants
• Miscellaneous

I know a lot of gardeners are dividing perennials right now & perhaps getting rid of plants altogether. Now is also a good time to harvest seeds.

Recent Donations:
Elderberry Bush (Black Beauty)
Balloon Flower Seeds

MIT Gardeners

We mentioned the MIT Garden at today's meeting. See Gardeners on the Roof for a description of the project:

The pilot program in urban sustainable agriculture is the result of a months-long effort spearheaded by MIT Police Sgt. Cheryl Vossmer and Libraries Administrative Assistant and Public Service Support Associate Ryan Gray. Working with administrators and staff across the Institute, the two were able to secure seven little-used parking spaces and a strip of grass at West Garage to house the garden, which will comprise several dozen plots. The remainder of the spots on the garage's roof will still be open for parking this summer.

And there's a video too!

The MIT gardeners used Earth Boxes--it might be interesting to incorporate something like this into our garden plan for the Pratt Campus.

Weekly Meeting Report (3 in 1)

My apologies to the gardeners! We have been meeting every week, but I've been too busy to update the blog. Here are some brief notes from our last 3 meetings:

9.30.09

•  Barbara suggested that we should have a garden party at some point this semester. She can arrange for us to use the roof of her building.
• We talked about the possibility of arranging a viewing of a documentary about a garden in South Central LA: The Garden.
  

10.7.09

•  We talked about planting bulbs & getting donations for the flower garden by the ARC
• Garden T-Shirts--would you like to design one?
• Olga plans to watch The Garden & report back to the group
• Olga & Alicia plan to take pictures of the ARC garden & of the site by Classon Avenue
  

10.14.09

• Olga showed us the pictures of both garden sites--we'll add them to the blog soon!
• We discussed the meeting w/ new members scheduled for next week--I hope all current members can make it
• We went over some of the garden plans and discussed the use of cinder blocks in the central bed
  

Greenpoint Rooftop Farm Visit, Oct. 3rd

Sarah Stewart from SAS is organizing a rooftop farm tour in Greenpoint. If you want to attend please be sure to send her an RSVP. Her contact info is in the announcement:

Urban agriculture is an exploding in many unique ways in New York City; every corner seems to offer the imagination a new place for a community garden or backyard farming. In the case of Rooftop Farms, 100 tons of soil were lofted to the top of a factory in Greenpoint in an attempt to prove just how creative one can be to get fresh food to a community. Join me in touring this amazing farm.

Saturday, October 3
5:00 pm (through sunset)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn (more directions for those who RSVP!)

We will be led by Annie Novak, one of the founding members of the Rooftop Farm, who will show how a defunct bagel factory was turned into a proper veggie producing farm through hard work and ingenuity.

You can read lots more about the farm here <http://rooftopfarms.org/>. (Or through a good article More Than a Tree Grows in Brooklyn)

If you're interested in coming along, please RSVP to sastewar@gmail.com. A suggested donation of $5/pp is asked to help the farm.

bk farmyards

take a look at this video on bk farmyards


NYC's Cool New Backyard Farms: Growing More Than Just Produce from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

The bk farmyards mission statement:

bk farmyards is a Brooklyn based decentralized farming network providing local food to reduce the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and offering local jobs to boost the economy. We are seeking partnerships with developers willing to temporarily transform their idle land to farmyard; homeowners who want to eat from their own yard; and city agencies holding under-utilized land. Our strategy is to stay nimble, growing food between the cracks of urban development.

Weekly Meeting Report 9.23.09

At today's meeting Olga and Alicia talked about the garden design and presented some of their plans. We all agreed that we need to do more research into the construction of the circular berm. We also distributed more copies of the Garden Survey--please let us know know if you'd like some copies! The plan is to publish the results of the survey next week.


Note: The garden club is planning a kick-off meeting for new members on Wednesday, October 7th. Let me know if you'd like to be involved!

College Garden Guide

The College Garden Guide is a fantastic resource. Take look at the links to sample garden proposals in Appendix E .

Weekly Meeting Report 9.17.09

At today's meeting we reviewed:

• The garden society's participation at Student Club Day (9.15.09)
• The campus garden survey (I'll post on that separately)
• Plans to apply for official club status w/ SGA

We decided:

• To distribute more copies of the survey to faculty, staff, and students
• To move the weekly garden meetings to Wednesdays (instead of Thursdays) from 12:30-1:30pm

Next week's meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 23rd in the Rose Garden. We'll relocate indoors if it gets too cold. Alicia & Olga plan to share their recent work on the garden design. In the second half of the meeting we'll split up and distribute copies of the survey around campus.

Prattfolio Food Issue

In case you haven't seen it already, here's a link to the Prattfolio Food Issue.

From Tom Schutte's introduction:

"Many Pratt-trained designers and thinkers have gone on to create products and environments that involve food. Pratt alumni have designed such helpful kitchen tools as the OXO Good Grips line of products and the Cuisinart food processor, as well such high-end restaurants like The Modern at the Museum of Modern Art. Pratt-trained fine artists have used their skills to examine that place where food intersects with our emotions, to comment on the relative value of food in our societies, and to make statements about the political realities wrought by food and lack of access to it. Graduates from Pratt’s Food Science and Management program are keeping the legacy of that program alive with their work in food safety and technology, nutrition, and culinary arts."