Philly you've treated us well

Growing with style

They just keep growing

For Kristina

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/23k3qS/www.womansday.com/Articles/Shelter/10-Magnificent-Urban-Gardens.html

because our blog is your homepage

Rebel without a cause

We didn't plant any tomatoes, hoping that our plants from last year would take care of that for us, and sure enough, they did! We've got tons of little tomato plants all over the area where we planted them last year, and this one plant that hopped across the garden and outside the fence.

Swiss chard

Bright lights!

Romaine lettuce

We're running out of ideas for what to do with the lettuce. Suggestions?

Back to work!

We're slowly settling into summer and our life as college graduates, and we're getting back to the garden. We started spinach, kale, pole beans, and watermelons from seeds, and planted romaine lettuce and Swiss chard starters. They all look great, except that we've can't find any watermelon starts. We suspect that they didn't grow because the seeds were dry and we have not been the most diligent waterers, but we're not totally sure...maybe they just don't like our soil! That's gotta be it...

Getting ready for summer

Some baby leeks, some baby onions, some baby arugula, and some baby bright lights!

Check out this Cuban revolution re: Urban Gardening.

http://kitchengardeners.org/blogs/roger-doiron/havana-homegrown

Close up

Romaine lettuce

Beets

and some starters

New season-SEEDS!

Last year we used starts, but this time we're going to try direct seeding. Let's hope it works! We planted cold crops, including kale, watermelon, and spinach.

Through rain and shine

Collard greens may be the most resilient plants on the planet. Here are our collards from LAST SUMMER.

Picking our dinner

The year of urban agriculture

Here's an interesting article on what's going on in Seattle and the actions that the city is taking to promote urban agriculture: http://civileats.com/2010/02/19/rain-city-farmers-get-a-year-in-the-sun/. Organizations like Philadelphia Green (run through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society) have provided similar support for gardens in the city, but Seattle seems to be a little farther along.

Mind the Food Gap

Photo credit: Allen Ruan 

This past week Ingrid, Ori and I worked together to organize an event focused on food justice for Penn's Food Week. The event was a smashing success, with over 100 attendees sitting down to a dinner of delicious local food and discussing issues related to food justice. The evening kicked off with a presentation by Sayre High School's Nutrition's Most Wanted on healthy eating. We then proceeded to talk about issues related to food access, availability, and education. The goal of this dinner was to present unique perspectives on food justice, which we hoped we accomplished by bringing together Penn students, local activists, and professors at the dinner table.

Did we ever tell you about our ROOF GARDEN?!

We had a roof garden of herbs along with everything that was growing out near the street. We neglected to showcase this in the blog so far, but thanks to Sammie Lammie, devout water-er of said roof garden, and fellow third floor inhabitant, we now have the photos to prove that we not only had a plot up there (which we fashioned out of drawers we found while West Philly shopping), but we had feasts up there too!

We had a marvelous dinner of fish tacos!!

good friends, good food, good weather, good garden....what more could you ask for?!




ANOTHER NIGHT, ANOTHER DINNER
complete with homemade tortillas, homemade hummus, home grown peppers and cucumbers, artichoke and collard cheese dip, sauteed garlic and collards, onion and gruyere tart, roasted vegetables, broiled tomatoes, and home grown/made rosemary salt bread

Not our garden but...

Little garden along the Nile in downtown Cairo. Cool, right?