BaltimoreDIY

Upcoming Workshops

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:49:00 +0000

Ms. Janine's garden plot weeded, composted, and ready to get planted at this Saturday's workshop!

This SaturdayApril 13th, we will be hosting the first of our garden workshop series this year. Here is what we have in store. Can't wait to see you there!:

Gardening Workshops at Boone Street Farm:

Saturday April 13th – Starting a garden- transplanting and seeding your garden bed

Saturday May 18th – Container gardening

Saturday June 15th – Managing weeds and insects organically

Saturday July 13th - Herbal medicine workshop- medicinal herb walk

Saturday August 10th – Transplanting and seeding your fall garden. Planting fall cover crops.

Saturday September 14th – Preserving your harvest- Share recipes, make and taste a few pickling recipes using vegetables from the garden. Learn how to can, freeze and dry your extra produce from the garden.

Saturday October 12th – Herbal medicine workshop- cold & flu prevention

Saturday November 16th – Winterize your garden

Boone Street community garden and farm are located on Boone Street between 21st and 22nd St.

Don't forget to friend us on Facebook or email us at boone.street.farm@gmail.com and ask to be put on our emailing list for more updates and announcements.

Volunteers Help Us Get Ready in Spring!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:18:00 +0000

Special thanks to all of the volunteers who have helped us build walkways, plant ornamentals, move soil, and more!

Maya from the Farm Alliance brought a tour group from Gettysburg yesterday. The college students are taking a class about food systems and ethics, and were given a tour of various urban farms around Baltimore.

The students even helped our star youth gardener Brian to weed his garden plot and plant it with kale, carrots, and peas.

We were outside all day yesterday and had the chance to say hello to many neighbors and friends.

What's going o. In the field? Our hoop house plastic is not on because of our lack of water access right now, but a few tiny sprouts of peas and lettuce mix have begun popping up their first leaves. Garlic, green onion, and some baby collards are our main crops to harvest right now. Our produce is available at the Waverly farmers market on Saturdays along with other Farm Alliance produce.

Want to check out the farm and join in the volunteering fun? Send us an email at Boone.street.farm@gmail.com and we will keep you posted.

Happy spring planting!

After School Garden Club

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:02:00 +0000

New garden beds have been built for our weekly after school program!

On Wednesdays we are now hosting a free after school garden club for a group of students from Cecil Elementary, which is located just a few blocks from the garden.

Cheryl, Aliza, two teachers from Cecil Elementary, and other interns and volunteers are hosting the class from free right now. We will be applying for a grant this April to see if we can receive funding to host garden club for the 2013 - 2014 school year.

The students planted a variety of peas yesterday and will be planting sorrel transplants as well. Sorrel is a perennial herb that has a sour taste and is very hardy. Kids love it.

As part of the garden club, the students learned about different seeds and the biology of a sprout, and the basics of planting a seed. Next they will be monitoring the plants as they grow. By the end of the school year in May they will harvest and eat their peas!

We are hosting a volunteer day at the garden this Saturday the 23rd from 9 am to 1 pm.

Cheryl is also at the garden on Wednesdays from 9 am to 1 pm if you would like to help out during the week.

If you can't make it this Saturday, our next volunteer day is Saturday April 9th from 9 am to 1 pm.

Rebuilding with Rubble

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:20:00 +0000

Hello readers!

I took these photos two weeks ago after a block of houses near the Boone Street Garden was torn down.

There are so many thoughts I have about housing vacancy and urban planning, but I am no expert (and if it's urban planning and community engagement you want, you may as well visit www.nextdoor.com). So, I will stay fairly quiet, and just use the photo to document the current state of many blocks in the Greater Greenmount neighborhood. For those of you who have visited us at the garden or who live in the neighborhood, you know all too well the terrible blight of vacant homes. One of my hopes for the East Baltimore - Midway neighborhood is that more neighbors get involved with the Greater Greenmount Community Association or other organizations, and that the neighborhood organizations, churches, schools and businesses come together to share their ideas, collect information, and have a direct say in the growth and rebuilding of their community.

At the garden, we are putting some of the bricks to use making mulch pathways to beautify the garden and make the space more functional.

This blog post about rebuilding has another meaning as well.

By the end of the month, I hope to have created a new website for Boone Street Farm. This blog has been serviceable, but photos have been disappearing, and there are not as many bells and whistles as the potential website will have, such as integration with social media and a cleaner format.

And so, please pardon our dust and our silence on this website as we make the transformation to a stronger, better Boone Street Farm.

Found in the pile of demolished houses

What We're Up To in March 2013

- starting transplants indoors: peppers, tomatoes, marigolds, basil, creeping thyme, echinacea, and more!

- hosting a free weekly after-school garden club at Cecil Elementary from March - May 2013

- planning some strategies for littering and other waste remediation in the neighborhood

- consulting with various students and/or organizations interested in studying community engagement and urban farming, local food assessments, and more

- participating in the Farm Alliance of Baltimore

- tackling the water access issue (as you can see in the photo above, we water the garden with a fire house attached to a hydrant right now)

- planning our upcoming volunteer days and next steps towards beginning the growing season

Pickled Beet Recipe on the Marc Steiner Show

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:19:00 +0000

Cheryl and our farm assistant Baba harvesting beets during our first year.

Today (Thursday February 14th) at 6pm, the Marc Steiner Show on 88.9 WEAA will be airing a seasonal local food recipe presented by Boone Street Farm!

We selected a recipe for "Pickled Beet Salad." The recipe uses seasonal ingredients, the majority of which are available right now at the year round Waverly Farmer's Market on 33rd St.

Plus, the beets will dye everything in your kitchen pink, just in time for Valentine's Day!

Pickled Beet Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

Fresh Salad greens- spicy mix- ½ lb

Shallot/Onion

Pickled Beets- 8 oz

Radishes- 1 bunch

Goat Cheese

Lemon

Orange

Dijon Mustard- 1 tsp

Olive oil – ½ cup

Sea salt

Serves 6

Salad Dressing

Grate the lemon and orange until you have 1 Tbsp lemon zest and 1 Tbsp of orange zest
Squeeze fresh juice from the orange and the lemon until you have ¼ cup of lemon juice and ¼ cup orange juice
Mix the orange and lemon juice together.
Then whisk in 1 tsp of Dijon mustard
Finally whisk in ½ cup of olive oil until they emulsify (blend together)
Add sea salt to taste

Putting the Salad Together

First thinly slice the onion and pour ¼ cup of the pickled beet juice(brine) over the onions and let them stand for ~10 min
Slice up the radishes into rounds
After you rinse and spin the greens, toss the fresh salad greens with the onions and radishes
Top the salad with the pickled beets and crumbled goat cheese

We’re finished!

Some beets are available now from farmer's who have kept their beets in cold storage since the fall harvest, or who may still be growing beets in a hoop house.

Now through early March is the time to be planting beets for a May harvest.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a great resource guide for canners. We modified their recipe to make our pickled beets. We prefer a more savory blend of black peppercorns and mustard seeds instead of the cinnamon and cloves. You can also adjust the sugar to taste. Start with less and taste the canning liquid to sweeten it to your preference.

Pickled Beet Recipe

7 lbs of 2- to 2-1/2-inch diameter beets
4 cups good quality apple cider vinegar (5 percent)
1-1/2 teaspoons canning, pickling, or sea salt
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 tsp of black peppercorns
1-2 tsp each black and yellow mustard seeds
4 to 6 onions (2- to 2-1/2-inch diameter) if desired

Yield: About 8 pints

Please read Using Boiling Water Canners before beginning. If this is your first time canning, it is recommended that you read Principles of Home Canning.

Procedure: Trim off beet tops, leaving 1 inch of stem and roots to prevent bleeding of color. Wash thoroughly. Sort for size. Cover similar sizes together with boiling water and cook until tender (about 25 to 30 minutes). Caution: Drain and discard liquid. Cool beets. Trim off roots and stems and slip off skins.

Slice into 1/4-inch slices. Peel and thinly slice onions. Combine vinegar, salt, sugar, and fresh water. Put spices in cheesecloth bag and add to vinegar mixture. Bring to a boil. Add beets and onions. Simmer 5 minutes.

Remove spice bag. Fill jars with beets and onions, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Add hot vinegar solution, allowing 1/2-inch headspace.

Adjust lids and process according to the recommendations in Table 1.

Variation: Pickled whole baby beets. Follow above directions but use beets that are 1- to 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Pack whole; do not slice. Onions may be omitted.

Getting Started: Year #3 at Boone Street

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 03:36:00 +0000

This past Sunday, February 10th, we had our first volunteer day to get started for the 2013 growing season. I can't believe we are already at year #3!

It's been a long, interesting road learning how to grow on a large scale, getting started with the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, coordinating volunteers and community programming, being visited by many neighborhood kids, writing grants, and maintaining community relations, but here we are!

I didn't take any photos on Sunday, but thought I would re-post a few photos from past years. The top photo is a memorial to our sign that Cheryl coordinated our first year, which was created by our five YouthWorks employees, five teenage girls who were employed by Baltimore City to help us out on the farm. Sadly, the sign was vandalized about six months ago, so we repainted over the blue interior and will have a new sign soon.

The photo below shows our first work day in March 2011! Special thanks to the Greater Greenmount Community Association for their partnership on that first day and over the years.

If you would like to see more photos of Boone Street, here is a link to a Google photo album with photos from the blog over the past year. I hope to have improved photo albums on the website soon. I also apologize for all of the missing photos on this blog, I am having some issues with Blogger and hope to be fixing it soon.

Here is a photo from one of our first volunteer days from year #2.

By year two, we were able to triple our profits from $1000 to $3000. We grew over 1000 pounds of produce in our second year. Another blog improvement I hope to make soon is a separate page for Year 1 and Year 2 at the garden, and a list of our accomplishments and challenges each year.

This note we found last year written on a sign next to the garden is a positive memory!

And now, Year #3!

Top Three Favorite Moments from this past Sunday, 2/10:

1. High School Volunteers

Two high schoolers from DC volunteered at the farm for a whole six hours! They volunteered as part of an assignment from their science class. They helped us plant seeds in seedling trays, pick up trash, planted about 60 feet of peas, and grab a bunch of bricks from a nearby block of demolished houses. One of the students was from Rome, and was excited to have our number #1 volunteer Brian teach him how to play football.

2. A Visit From Former Homeowners

A nearby church, St. Ann's, has several congregants who used to live in the East Baltimore - Midway neighborhood, including some who used to live on the block where the farm and garden are now located. A couple stopped by on Sunday to visit the old site of the husband's home. The marble step of the home is still in the ground. Mr. Jonathan's garden bed is now located where his mother's old flower bed and their garage used to be. It was wonderful speaking to them about what the block used to be like back in the day, and we hope to capture their oral history soon! They pointed to the home shown below, which had the back of the house collapse, and remembered how immaculate it's former owner kept the house. One interesting fact they told us: the first African American pilot shot down and captured as a POW in Vietnam grew up on the community garden side of the block.

3. Visits from Friends and Supporters

Mr. Jonathan was there battling away with the vicious bermuda grass, even going so far as to dig a trench all the way around his bed. He is a very experienced and determined gardener, and I hope to get some photos of his bed and composting methods, and to do an interview with him soon. His garlic and green onions are peeping out of the ground, and I'm really excited to see his ginger grow.

Brian, Ferb, and Kamera, some of our frequent young visitors showed up to visit and lend a hand. Brian was a real champion helping us move bricks from the demolished houses, and had fun teaching Francisco how to play football. Even Kamera helped me fill seedlings trays with compost, although she couldn't resist squishing her fingers into each cell packed with with soil, so we had to keep refilling the trays! She and Ferb found a lot of worms to play with.

Ms. Katia, a local homeowner, carted many carloads of bricks from nearby demolished houses so that we can use them at the garden. She has been a great supporter of the garden and has donated many fruit trees, grape vines, and perennial shrubs, as well as the funding we needed to pay for city water access last year. If you are on our email list or Facebook page you saw the recent link we posted of the house that she has available for rent. The photo gallery of the house includes photos of the garden.

Marie, a graduate student from Johns Hopkins, stopped by to talk to neighbors about doing an interview for a study about community perceptions of urban farms. It was great to see her, especially as we are going through some growing pains this year as pass the honeymoon phase and are beginning to work out how this project fits into the long term vision of the neighborhood.

We look forward to engaging even more volunteers and supporters this year.

Thank you to everyone who read this very long post!

We hope this gives all of you readers a picture of what is going on at Boone Street Farm and Community Garden as we get started for year #3.

If you would like to get involved, please email us at boone.street.farm@gmail.com to get on our email list, follow us on Facebook, or come to our next volunteer day this SATURDAY, February 16th from 10 am to 3 pm.

See you Saturday!

Pickles & Upcoming January Events

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 02:34:00 +0000

Boone Street Farm pickles are now on display at our friend Dane's new coffeeshop located at 34 Lanvale Street.

It's the perfect spot to grab a pastry, a hardboiled egg, and a cup of really great coffee while you're waiting for the Bolt bus, taking a train, going to a show at Metro gallery, or watching a movie at the Charles. It's an absolutely beautiful and bright little cafe, and will be focusing on local foods.

All produce in the canned goods grown at the garden over the summer: pickled okra, pickled green beans, and a sour & hot green tomato relish that goes great on a cheesy quesadilla or with tortilla chips. You can even get some super local eggs that Dane is making into an amazingly simple egg salad, with thyme and a little bit of very good mayo.

Other updates from the farm in late January?

It's still grant writing and crop planning time! More info to come soon about the plants that we are excited about growing, how you can sign up to purchase Boone Street produce, and more.

Don't forget to check out these upcoming events:

CGRN Summit

Baltimore's best community gardening resource hosts its annual summit to plan for 2013! CGRN was essential for us, they gave the first $1000 grant to Boone Street Farm so that we could purchase compost, seeds, and tools. I don't know what gardening would be in this city without this organization. Can't wait to attend.

January 31, 2013 — 6:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: 2640 Space, 2640 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD 21218
For more information or to RSVP, please contact Anna Evans-Goldstein at anna.evans-goldstein@parksandpeople.org or (410) 448-5663 ext 128.

Greening University

Event Description: Workshops and resources detailing the best practices for gardening and managing open spaces, led by Baltimore’s premier gardening experts!

Keynote Speaker: Beth Strommen, Director of the Baltimore Office of Sustainability

Audience: This event is for Novice & Experienced Gardeners, Community Leaders and Community Professionals.

Fee: $1 to $3 donation requested.

Course options will include:

Beekeeping & Animal Husbandry
Fruit Trees 101
Large-Scale Gardening (farming)
Gardening With Kids
Cooking Good Food from Easy Veggies
Laws and the Land: What you might want to know
Get Started with Power in Dirt-Land and Neighbors
Stormwater Management for Community Green Spaces
Just Starting? You Need Site Evaluation
Ask the Experts

Levering Hall (on the West side of Campus)
Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Getting Ready for Gardening 2013

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:20:00 +0000

Getting ready for gardening 2013!

It's January and the seed catalogs have arrived. Yesterday we met with some of our main community gardeners to pick out seeds and discuss plans for next year. The main two requests: a fence for the garden and more space to garden. We made a list of seeds to get, and it seems that red potatoes, tomatoes, spinach and peppers are popular.

Ms. Vera checking out the Baker Creek heirloom seed catalog. Definitely one of my favorite catalogs for sure.

Everyone was in the Ravens spirit! Seriously every single person we saw was on their way to watch the game. Caw!

During the month of January Cheryl and I are busy writing grants, organizing our crop plans, purchasing seeds, and cleaning up our storage areas for next year.

In February we will be busy doing a variety of construction projects at the farm, such as putting doors on our hoop house, a roof and rainwater catchment system on the storage shed, and building anther community garden and a children's garden.

This spring we hope to partner with Cecil Kirk Elementary School to host a weekly after school garden program, so we are also planning for that partnership.

Our work is certainly cut out for us! If you would like to stop by the farm or volunteer, please send me an email at baltimorediy@gmail.com and I will add you to our email list.

Thanks everyone, and happy garden planning!

p.s. Apologies for the missing photos on this blog. I am having an issue with my photo albums in Google, and have not yet had the time to fix it. A dream of mine is getting a better website up and running before spring, we will see if I can get it done! Thanks so much for reading.

Winter Garden Photos

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Baltimore City got its first sticking snowfall on Christmas morning, and I was finally able to get some shots of a snowy garden.

These photos were taken at the Remington community garden. While not many people are gardening at this time of year, there are still a variety of plants growing with many uses.

Shown above: garlic shoots coming up through the snow. Garlic is planted in fall, and will be ready for harvesting in July.

For more information on growing garlic, you can check out this article on Mother Earth News. At Boone Street Farm we mulch with straw around the garlic to insulate the soil and keep the temperature more even, and to prevent pounding rain from compacting the soil.

Below you can see one of the most prolific garden beds in Remington. It has been a warm December so far in Baltimore, and this lettuce mix has been doing quite nicely even though the nights have reached a light frost. I believe the lettuce was planted in late September or early October.

In the background you can see our rain barrels (seldom used since we now have a city water permit and a hose), and a beautiful mural that one of our community gardeners coordinated.

Shown below is a small section in one of the beds we have been using. I planted some wheatgrass for feeding our animals and for a neighbor to juice, and wish I had planted more! The winter wheat was planted in early October and is doing fine in the cold weather.

Like lettuce, wheatgrass, mustards, kale, collards, swiss chard, and parsley are a "cut and come again" plant. When the plant is cut at the base of the stalk, new leaves will continue to grow again and again for continued harvesting.

Every other morning or so I bring scissors to the garden and snip off some wheatgrass and other greens for the animals (I usually choose the older looking leaves that aren't as appetizing for humans). The grass and greens grow back in a few weeks.

I have never stored chopped parsley in the freezer before, but a friend recommended it to me so I am trying it for the first time. After snipping off the parsley leaves, I chopped them and am storing it in ziploc bags in the freezer. My friend told me that the chopped parsley should be pretty easy to get out of the freezer bag even if it is frozen together in a block. I will let you know how it works out. I have seen dried parsley in the store but I think the frozen parsley will have more flavor.

If you look closely at the trimmed parsley plant below, you can see the new leaves growing among the cut stalks.

Below is swiss chard growing in the snow. You can see the new chard leaves coming up in the middle of the plant. Simply cut off the outer stalks and chard can grow for an entire year or maybe more. We will definitely have to fertilize with worm compost and/or rabbit manure in spring to replenish the soil.

Even areas of the garden that aren't actively being planted are useful to us at this time of year. These dried basil stems are a favorite treat for our rabbits.

And this area might look like simple weeds to some, but it is quite a banquet for our chickens!

Garden crops currently growing but not pictured here: carrots, daikon radish, turnips, kale, and green onion.

Favorite meals using preserved veggies from over the summer and/or seasonal produce growing right now include:

- Fried eggs in a flatbread with lettuce mix. Add hot sauce and/or cheese if you like.
- Chili made with frozen roasted tomatoes and peppers from the summer.
- Miso or meat broth soup with daikon, carrot, cabbage, or kale. Serve with rice or add noodles.

December Chicken Coop Tour

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Happy holiday season everyone!

Even our chickens are getting in on the holiday party action. Here you can see them enjoying leftover baked ziti and salad from a holiday party we attended. They love it!

This video shows our new and expanded coop, so that our chickens now have two different feeding and roosting areas in addition to the middle of the run. Chicken Man is the brains and brawn behind all of the animal housing in our yard. Much of it is build from recycled wood.

FYI: apologies for the low video quality. I shot it using my Ipod touch and didn't realize the quality would be so terrible. I am buying a new battery charger for my camera soon!

Essentials for any chicken coop include:

- Feeder
- Waterer
- Roosting area for sleeping
- Nesting boxes lined with straw for egg laying

Optional amenities for chickens include shavings and/or straw for them to scratch and peck around in, a dry area where they can take a dust bath, and a compost heap or other area where they can dig for bugs. I have a separate compost bin where I can collect soldier fly larvae to throw to the girls.

The end of this older video from July shows what our former coop used to look like.

The yellow chick in the video below is the "Maran" chicken in the video above. She is the white chicken with black flecks shown hiding behind the screen door in the beginning of the above video. She just started laying about a month ago; it takes about five months for a chicken to start laying. By interesting contrast, it only takes two months for a meat breed chicken to be ready for eating!

Here is what our coop looked like before we expanded:

Hope you enjoy the chicken tour!

Urban Biodiversity in Okra

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:17:00 +0000

Recently two amazing Baltimore organizations, Blue Water Baltimore and Power in Dirt posted articles about biodiversity, the urban environment, and our foodsystems.

What does okra have to do with biodiversity? A hint is in the photo above. Can you find the nearly six inch long praying mantis we found this summer on our okra? It's in the middle of the photo. I can't remember the last time I saw one in the city, much less such a big one.

It's commonly know that it's hard to have biodiversity when you need to grow thousands of acres of corn. This article posted by Blue Water Baltimore and written by Robert Krulwich, Cornstalks Everywhere But Nothing Else, Not Even a Bee, describes a project by "David Liittschwager, a portrait photographer, who spent a few years traveling the world, dropping one-cubic-foot metal frames into gardens, streams, parks, forests, oceans, and then photographing whatever, or whoever came through."

By the end of the article we learn that the one cubic foot of a commercial corn field is essentially denuded of any life. Sounds a lot like the empty houses filled with trash, wild cats, and virginia creeper we see around Baltimore.

We see a majority of the same five or ten creatures around most cities: crows, pigeons, sparrows, starling, cats, rats, and maybe a few feral raccoons or bats. Same with plants: grass, virginia creeper, ghetto palm (ailanthus), and that other broad leafed ghetto palm whose name I can't recall.

The article posted by Power in Dirt, The Wild Life of American Cities, confirmed this limited variety of urban life. Baltimore even gets a shoutout, and I found out our city is going to be in a study about this very issue:

"Places like Baltimore, Minneapolis and Phoenix appear to be becoming more like one another ecologically than they are like the wild environments around them. Groffman and Hall are currently part of a huge, four-year project financed by the National Science Foundation to compare urban ecology in six major urban centers — Boston, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Miami, Phoenix and Los Angeles. The purpose of the study is to determine how much cities are homogenizing and to create a portrait of the continentwide implications of individual decisions we make about our backyards."

I love that last part about the individual decisions we make about our backyards. Which brings us back to the okra.

This past summer we noticed a great deal of insect life, particularly on the okra. Before okra becomes the pod that is eaten, it is a large, beautiful flower that looks like hibiscus.

The bees and other pollinating insects absolutely love the open flowers, which bloomed from July until early November.

In addition to the giant praying mantis, we had another really cool find in the okra: a caterpillar covered with parasitic wasp eggs! Wikipedia can explain more about parasitoid wasps.

The white things you see in the photo below are the wasp eggs, which the wasp lays on the back of a caterpillar. When they are born, the wasp larvae eat their host and then emerge to eat nectar as adults before spinning a cocoon and re-starting the cycle.

Parasitic wasps are something that any organic gardener wants to encourage in the garden as part of a natural pest control program. The tomato hornworm will eat your tomato plants and other nightshades, and can only be controlled by laborious hand-picking or spraying with pesticides. This way, the wasp does the pest control for you!

Our third interesting predator find was this giant garden spider! This is not my photo, but hopefully Cheryl can send me a photo soon. It hadn't made a web when we found it, but the spider is a big one, probably two or three inches. The kids who visit us at the garden were definitely excited to find it.

Interesting fact: Cheryl and I were told by a gardener at Herring Run Nursery that we should leave the whole okra stalks in the garden in case predators laid their eggs in the stalks. So don't chip up or remove those okra stalks if you can help it. We did cut the stalks down with a saw to clean the garden for winter, but left them in a pile in case any predators will be hatching in spring.

(Photo borrowed from another source, link unknown.)

And of course, okra aren't only good for biodiversity. Can't wait to crack open these pickles at the Greater Greenmount Community Association holiday party next week!

Order Your Monthly Garden Guide Calendar Today!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Celebrate the joy of homegrown living year round!

All photos and content were created based on my urban farming experience here in Baltimore City. If you or a loved one often wonder about which crops are good to plant each month, how to build soil or winterize your garden, or what you should be doing in your garden or kitchen each month, this calendar is a great place to start. There is even a bonus urban livestock insert and a list of resources for local gardeners.

I hope this calendar will inspire you each month and will be a useful resource for gardening terms and strategies, seed catalogue recommendations, gift ideas, recipes, and more. Only forty calendars are being printed so this is a very limited run!

You can pay with a credit card by clicking this PayPal link, and PayPal should send me your shipping address:

If you prefer to pay with cash or pick up the calendar in person, I will be leaving the calendars at the Farm Alliance of Baltimore stand at the Waverly Farmer's Market (click the link for directions and hours). Or you can email me at baltimorediy@gmail.com and we can work something out. Thanks!

Check out some of the pages included in this sneak peek below:

March

October

Bonus Insert

Rear Cover

Late November at Boone Street

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Since late August many community gardens have been sleepy. But at urban farms, there is still plenty going on!

At Boone Street Farm, we haven't been active as many of our partners in the Farm Alliance, who have been growing lettuces, carrots, turnips, radishes, cabbage, beets, greens and more since late August. Don't forget to stop by the Farm Alliance table at the Waverly Farmer's Market on Saturdays from 7 am to 12 pm. Last weekend I bought the best salad mix I have ever eaten!

If we had the plastic on our hoop house, we would be able to grow through much of the winter. Since we don't have the plastic on for a variety of reasons, here is a peek at a few of the other things going on at the farm.

Media Attention! In the photo above, you can see one of our frequent garden visitors, Malik, giving an interview to a Towson student. We have been contacted by students from Towson and Hopkins at various times to give interviews on the urban farm project. They are interested in all ranges of issues, especially community engagement. The kids love being interviewed, and hearing their opinions is really amazing. Cheryl's friends are making a short film about the farm and we hope to share it with all of you internet readers soon.

Behind Malik you can see the house whose back room was collapsed during a recent storm. You can see directly into the house, which is vacant and is now condemned.

Volunteer Help! Community gardener Jonathan was a huge help last weekend. We got the entire hoop house cleared of plant debris, raked the soil clear and broadcast lots of oats and hairy vetch seeds as cover crop. We may be too late for the cover crop to grow enough to protect the soil and prevent erosion over the winter, but hopefully in spring the seeds will sprout early enough and fight back against the terrible weed invasion.

Straw. Covering the ground with straw helps protect the soil from being compacted and/or eroded by rain, and insulates the ground to keep it at a more even temperature. After we cleared away the tomato and okra stalks, we planted garlic and cover crop and mulched with straw. This photo isn't great, but I hope to have my better camera fixed soon!

We also mulched with straw around the many perennials which Cheryl has been planting.

We planted raspberry canes, mountain mint, a variety of native plants such as blackeyed susan, and more. There are just a few more weeks left to get in your perennials and/or flower bulbs before the ground freezes.

Once the ground freezes in winter, our project goals include construction projects, grant writing, and continuing general garden maintenance such as adding wood chips to all of the walkways.

If you would like to volunteer your help or join our mailing list, send us an email at boone.street.farm@gmail.com. Thanks!

UPDATE:

Photos taken by volunteer Marie of the garden the last weekend in November. We spent the morning clearing away bermuda grass to plant grape vines and other perennials. Check out the new
"lasagna bed" in the lower right of the photo!

Winners of $5000 Neighborhood Cleanup Competition!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:23:00 +0000

Congratulations to the Greater Greenmount Community Association and to the Greater Remington Improvement Association for winning the Clean Community Competition!

Pictured above is Neale (right), a very active member of the GGCA, Brian (middle), our most frequent garden visitor, and his brother Ferb (left).

So proud of everyone in the neighborhood who came out for monthly vacant lot cleanups and storm drain painting.

Details from the official Department of Public Works website:

Since the kickoff of the six-months long competition on April 21, 2012, at the Mayor’s Spring Cleanup, seventy one neighborhood associations went full steam ahead to get and keep their communities clean. Now that the contest is over, four first place communities will win $5,000 and four second place communities will win $1,000 – one from each section of the city.

Participating Communities were judged on cleaning and recycling efforts that included an overall increase in recycling tonnage, community-wide use of trash cans with lids, decreases in alley and street cleaning service requests, among others. Extra points were awarded for adopting vacant lots through the ‘Power In Dirt’ initiative and for cleaning and applying clean-themed storm drain stencils.

“This is the inaugural year for the Clean Community Competition,” says DPW Director, Alfred H. Foxx. “Baltimore communities have really stepped up and worked hard at keeping their communities clean. We congratulate all of the participants and hope that they will enroll in the 2013 competition. I also want to give a special thanks to the prize sponsor, Wheelabrator Technologies and Waste Management.”

Neale arriving at the garden to show us the amazing giant check:

Roasted Garlic Soup

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:29:00 +0000

Photo is an AP Photo by Kathy Willens as posted to The Post Standard in Syracuse, NY

Friday recipe day! Hope you all enjoy this cold weather seasonal recipe tip.

We are racing to get the last few cloves of garlic planted in the ground here in Baltimore, before the ground freezes within the next few weeks. Of course, we are enjoying eating last year's garlic as much as planting it!

Some of the heads of garlic from last year's crop are small. Hard to sell at the farmer's market, but we can make good use of the little heads. What to do if your cloves are too small to chop?

Roast the whole head and simply squeeze out the yummy garlic paste! An hour at 350 is a good rule of thumb.

Special thanks to FX cuisine for the photo

Cutting the head is important for ease of squeezing out the cloves. The recipe linked to the photo above suggests that you slice the heads in half and roast them face down on a baking sheet. I often slice off the top of the heads and roast them wrapped in foil (without oil), but will try this baking sheet metho.

And don't throw away the leftover roasted garlic skins! After you have squeezed out the garlicky goodness, put the remains of the garlic head in a freezer bag.

Add the roasted garlic remains to soup stocks for a delicious soup base.

Here is a recent recipe I have been experimenting with for an egg drop style garlic soup using our early November produce. The ingredients reminds me of Spanish cooking. We used the leftover garlic head remains, green onions that have been going strong on the back porch since spring, and roma tomatoes that were picked green and are ripening on the counter. And our backyard eggs, of course!

Mmmm, homegrown soup that's nearly free, healthy, local, and delicious. A great pick me up as the weather turns sharp and blustery!

Boone Street November Garlic Soup

5 roasted garlic head remains
2.5 cups water
1 green onion
2 roma tomatoes
1 or 2 eggs, beaten
dash soy sauce or salt to taste
cracked black pepper to taste

Simmer garlic heads in water for 20 minutes. I let the broth cool and sit in the fridge overnight which may have strengthened the flavor.

Strain out garlic heads and any sediment on the bottom. Bring broth to a simmer and dice tomatoes and green onion.

Simmer tomatoes in the broth for 10 minutes. Pour in the beaten egg and simmer 5 minutes, stirring to break up the egg.

Add green onion and simmer 1 or 2 more minutes.

Turn off heat. Add soy sauce or salt to taste (the soy sauce adds a great richness) and cracked black pepper.

Serve as a first course or with crusty homemade bread for a light meal. Serves 1.

Blue Orpington Rooster for Sale!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Re-post from the craigslist ad Chicken Man posted this morning:

"I have a beautiful blue orpington that turned out to be a rooster. He started crowing this morning and has to go TODAY! This guy was hatched in my backyard by one of my hens from a hatchery egg. 100% healthy, 110% handsome! Come by and pick him up (donate whatever you think is fair) today or he will be soup tomorrow!"

Yes, we were wondering why the blue orpington was getting so much bigger than all the other chickens. The longer, darker neck feathers started giving us a hint, and this morning he apparently found his manhood and escaped the chicken run, waking us up with the classic rooster crow.

According to city regulations, we need to get rid of this guy asap! As in, please let me know by 5 p.m. You can email me at baltimorediy@gmail.com.

For the full story on this rooster's origin as a hatched fertilized egg using a broody hen:

Five months ago one of the Araucanas was broody, which means she kept sitting in the nesting box trying to hatch all the eggs. Since we don't have any roosters, those eggs are not fertilized and would never hatch!

Usually broody hens are a pain, since they hog the nesting box and get mean if you try to remove them.

Chicken Man decided to take advantage of the situation though, and use the broody hen as a cheap and easy incubator. Fertilized eggs are easier and cheaper to ship than day old chickens. Just slip the fertilized eggs under the chicken, and she does all the work!

This method even works if you want a chicken to raise ducks! Here's a link to a video of when our White Orpington raised four ducks for us in 2011. And for good measure, a link to later photos of the ducks that I was looking at with fond memories.

One thing can go wrong with the broody hen method: the hen can accidentally smash all of the eggs. I don't know if we tried to fit too many eggs under the hen or what, but only two eggs out of twelve hatched for us. That's a pretty big financial loss when you are buying rare breed eggs. We have found that the Orpingtons are much better mothers than the broody Araucanas.

We were hoping this blue Orpington would be a hen but alas! We have to get rid of him.

Hello to the woman I met at the fruit workshop on Sunday, thanks so much for reading the blog and I hope you enjoy these urban livestock photos as well!

Join our Facebook page for event postings & more!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:37:00 +0000

If the BaltimoreDIY blog has been too quiet for you lately, make sure to friend us on Facebook!

It is a lot easier for us to link to event announcements shared by other groups, quickly post photos, engage with readers and more. It's also easier for you as a reader to connect with other Baltimore local food and urban agriculture organizations on Facebook.

Just check out some of these great events happening this weekend that we shared earlier today!

THIS FRIDAY, Nov. 2nd
November Baltimore Food Swap
Sign up on Eventbrite page here
Baltimore Food Swap Facebook Page
6:30-8:30 pm
Memorial Episcopal Church (Upper Parish Hall)
1407 Bolton St.
Baltimore, MD 21217

THIS SUNDAY, Nov. 4th
Fruit Tree Workshop
Hosted by the Baltimore Orchard Project & the Univ of MD Extension Service
For a full event posting, visit the UMD Extension page here.
12:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Baltimore Center for Maryland Agriculture
1114 Shawan Rd
Cockeysville, MD 21030
This hands-on workshop will equip you with the knowledge to successfully grow low-maintenance fruit species in your own backyard.

Cheryl Carmona: 2012 Baltimore Community Fellow

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Congrats to Cheryl, my co gardener at Boone Street Garden, for being nominated as a Baltimore Community Fellow for 2012!

Here is the link with full details: http://www.audaciousideas.org/author/cherylcarmona/

Excerpts from the announcement:

Boone Street farm began in 2010 as an initiative to grow healthy food in East Baltimore. It has now evolved into something which encompasses a much broader scope. Cheryl Carmona spent the past couple years working with an East Baltimore community to convert two vacant lots into a productive garden and urban farm.

...

Greater Greenmount includes East Baltimore Midway and Barclay. Both neighborhoods have high rates of vacant houses and vacant lots and deal with problems around illegal dumping and improper household waste disposal. Carmona envisions a future where urban farms and community gardens will draw resources from urban waste streams rather than be set back by them.

This grant award is quite an honor, and I am extremely proud to be a part of this project with Cheryl. You can see from the photos below the many ways that Cheryl has been involved with urban agriculture, environmental stewardship, and community engagement at Boone Street Farm.

Laying down burlap with neighbors to transform a vacant lot into planting area for our second crop row at Boone Street in 2010.

Teaching a worm composting workshop

Designing and building our hoop house

Speaking about urban soils

Giving tours to community groups

Growing and harvesting produce of course! Also weighing produce to collect data on urban farming.

Making fresh, local food available at markets around town

Working with Baltimore City youth

We are proud of you Cheryl, and look forward to working with you as Boone Street Farm continues to grow!

Communal Work Space

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:16:00 +0000

Are you a freelance green/sustainability professional working independently?

A friend of mine is surveying interest in a collective incubator, work space, and educational facility for social enterprise and green/sustainability professionals in Baltimore City. If you would be interested in this type of space, please fill out the survey below:

Survey for Social Enterprise and Green/Sustainability Professionals in Baltimore City

We are exploring the possibility of a permanent incubator, workspace, and educational facility for social enterprise and green/sustainability professionals in Baltimore City. Green Spaces in New York and Colorado (http://www.greenspaceshome.com/), Panzanzee in Chicago (http://panzanzee.com/), and Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation (http://socialinnovation.ca/) demonstrate the potential for such a space in Baltimore.

Let us know your story to help us make the case for our own space. For more information, see Rodney Foxworth's blog post, "Incubating Social Enterprise in Baltimore City" (http://bit.ly/Jo1RcS) or contact Pres Adams at presadams@gmail.com or Geoff Stack at geoff@stackstrategy.com.

Thanks!

Mid-Fall at Boone Street Farm

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:40:00 +0000

It's mid-October. Many community gardeners have long ago left their garden beds, and many farmer's market seasons are coming to a close. What's going on at the Boone Street Farm at this point in the year?

Garlic is crop #1.

The only thing good to plant this late in the season is garlic. If you want to plant your own, all you have to do is find some organic garlic and break up the head. Mother Earth News has how-to instructions for growing garlic posted here. In early spring it is wonderful to already have food growing in your garden! Your garlic will be ready to harvest in July.

Special thanks to http://veganyumyum.com/2009/08/fried-green-tomatoes/ for the photo.

Green tomatoes are crop #2.

Our tomatoes and okra are pumping out the last of their fruit. We are picking the tomatoes half ripe and letting them ripen off the vine. This week or next we will go through and pick all of the green tomatoes for a green tomato chili sauce. Or maybe this green tomato ketchup recipe? And of course, there are always fried green tomatoes!

Black eyed peas and other cowpeas are crop #3.

We are also picking black eyed peas and other cowpeas. We planted beans because they are easy to grow, are calorie dense, and are good for smothering areas where the bermuda grass and invasive thistle are trying to take over. This article by Sweet Bay Farm describes the benefits of planting cowpeas and other cover crops, such as improving soil structure, fixing nitrogen in the soil, and smothering weeds. Of course, as I am picking and shelling all of these beans, I am realizing that they are definitely not the most profitable crop to grow. Way too much labor for a very low price. After the beans are picked, we are going to leave the vines and leaves as a green mulch to decompose and smother any weeds.

Root vegetables are crop #4.

These daikon radishes pictured above are another great winter crop that will help aerate the soil. We did plant some fall crops, but it is now a bit too late to plant any more. The ideal time to plant carrots, beets, turnips, and radishes was about four to six weeks ago. We could have put the plastic on our hoop house to extend the growing season, but I am feeling like I need a break. Maybe in our third growing season we can have a stronger fall harvest.We do have a few patches of produce that will be enough for us to eat in late fall, but not enough for market.

Dried herbs are crop #5.

The oregano is still green, fall cilantro is putting out seeds, and the cayenne peppers are drying. Looking forward to making flatbreads drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and dried herbs! Will be a great way to have some flavorful homegrown produce in winter.

Getting ready for winter.

We've still got a lot of work to do getting the garlic in the ground and mulching the dead plants so that the neighbors don't have to look at a raggedy garden all winter. To replenish all of the nutrients in the soil, we will be adding layers of cardboard, straw, rabbit manure, decomposing leaves, and other materials onto our garden beds. To make things look even prettier and hold back weeds we will be re-building our walkways with woodchips. All this work will definitely take us through November into early December!

Rabbit Thieves

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:40:00 +0000

Rabbit thieves have struck.

Late last night, we got a phone call from some neighbors who luckily noticed some of our rabbits hopping around in the alley behind our house. When we got to the back yard, we found every cage door open. Certainly an unsettling sight.

We chased down two of the loose rabbits first, recovering the male Rex rabbit and a grey young rabbit. With one rabbit (Henry Rollins- seen as a punk rock baby bunny below) still in the cage, we had three total out of eight.

I had left some pet carriers on the back porch after bringing animals to the petting zoo at our block party, and the pet carriers were out in the alley as well.When I went to collect the pet carriers, I happily noticed two rabbits were still inside. They were so big and heavy, the handle to the carrier broke and the thief couldn't carry it anymore. Thanks for being such a chubby bunny, Mr. Frank! Rabbit count back up to five out of eight.

I usually don't post this pic because Frank looks terrified and weird because I'm covering his ears, and I'm looking a little disheveled myself. But it certainly shows how giant Frank is. Of course, I'm tiny so he looks even bigger!

The thieves made off with the Mama Rex rabbit (see bottom photo), one grey young rabbit, and the spotted young rabbit seen here at our block party. I am very thankful that the chickens were not touched.

It's a scary situation to have the privacy of your personal space breached. The neighbor's gate does not have a lock and was open, so that was likely the point of entry. We are going to have to fortify our fences, and hopefully get a security light.

In a sometime more light-hearted turn of events, when I put the two grey baby bunnies back in the cage together (the two that I thought were males) they started humping the bejeezus out of each other. So hopefully we will be able to replenish our rabbit stock soon? We will find out in a month.

It sucks that this happened. I keep telling myself that we were struck by human foxes - in the country we could easily have had a predator attack happen, although the cages would probably have prevented that from happening.

Theft is definitely an issue to be considered when urban farming.

We will have to take care more care to protect our animals and property against human predators, just as we would against animal predators.

Block Party!

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:56:00 +0000

Community gardener Jonathan showing off his zinnias. Check out another gardener's Hopi blue corn in the background!

Boone Street Block Party 2012!

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to the Boone Street block party, and especially to all of the volunteers who helped cook, serve food, set up and break down, and otherwise help us coordinate! It was so amazing to see family members and loved ones chatting with Boone Street neighbors, Farm Alliance friends, and more. The event was a dream come true and a great way to celebrate our second year at the garden.

Check out our Facebook page or Picasa album for a full look at all of the photos!

We had tons of barbeque with all the regular hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, and sausage, plus some healthier foods such as Cheryl's homemade potato salad and swiss chard greens, and a very large veggie chili pie I made using Boone Street tomatoes, peppers, and black eyed peas. Yum!

Lots of kid's activities too, including face painting! Check out this amazing handiwork.

Baltimore Showstoppers Marchign Band was a great hit! Photos don't do it justice, I hope to have a video posted soon! The band really brought the crowds.

Frequent visitor to the garden, Kirby, poses for the camera!

My man Lee brought a rabbit and two chickens for a petting zoo! The chickens are behind the wire in the shed, but we let the rabbit hop around in a little hay bale corral.

At the end of the night we had popcorn and played a short video made by Cheryl's friends about the garden, and another stop motion animation film about being outdoors. The video was another great look back at the past year, and we can't wait to show it to you all. Stay tuned for the release in about a month!

We had so much fun at the party! Thanks again everyone.

Soil Workshop THIS SATURDAY 9/29

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:04:00 +0000


Check out our cowpeas summer cover crop behind the sign!

Interested in learning more about reclaiming urban soils, building fertility in fall for easy spring planting, and fighting invasive weeds without plastic or pesticides?

Cheryl Carmona will be hosting an Urban Soil 101 workshop at Boone Street Farm this Saturday, September 29th. The workshop will be hands-on with lots of demonstrations of methods we have tried around the farm. See photos below for details about workshop topics.

As you can see on our handy chalkboard sign above, the workshop is from 10 am to 12 noon. There is no fee for the workshop, but we welcome any donations, all of which will go to support our work at the farm. We are located at 2130 Boone Street, just one block east of Greenmount, between 21st and 22nd Street.

After the workshop we will have a volunteer day from noon until 4 pm, during which we will be putting the plastic on our hoop house and helping our community gardeners mulch and cover crop their garden for winter.

Saturday, September 29th is National Public Lands Day so you will be joining thousands of volunteers around the country when you volunteer with us to work on stewardship of our land, water, air, and food resources.

Here are some photos to demonstrate a few of the topics that will be covered at the workshop.

Cover cropping to suppress invasive weeds and build fertility:

Red Clover Cover Crop

Many great uses for cardboard:

Building a lasagna bed (layered compost) with rabbit manure, cardboard, and other ingredients for building rich soil in the fall for easy spring planting!

Also, don't forget: BLOCK PARTY on October 6th! You are all invited, even if it is your first time at the farm.

Are you a hula hooper, musician, artist, photographer, or someone who wants to host an activity for neighborhood kids at the block party? Please email us at boone.street.farm@gmail.com. The kids would be thrilled to have you!

WYPR Radio Story on Urban Livestock

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:52:00 +0000

Tom Pelton published a radio story today about people who raise urban livestock in Baltimore City, and the city's increasing efforts to make it easier for people to raise animals for pleasure, fresh food, and valuable animal products.

Here is the link: The Underworld of Urban Goat and Chicken Farms

"Amid the rowhouses, graffiti and vacant lots of Baltimore, 10 farms have opened in recent years, growing vegetables and breeding　chickens, rabbits and goats. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration is relaxing the city's livestock regulations to try to encourage more urban farms, which provide fresh food and an enhanced quality of life to the city." - WYPR

Enjoy!

2nd Annual Urban Farm and Food Fair

noreply@blogger.com (AlizaEss) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:27:00 +0000

Thanks to Louie Krauss and Fern Shen for reporting on Saturday's Urban Farm and Food Fair!

You can read the full article here on Baltimore Brew, our city's best and most informative online journal, imho.