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Have you tried googling “fire escape garden”?! There are a bajillion articles about container gardening on fire escapes.  Who knew?!

Anyhow, most of them absolutely suck (WHY did TLC, eHow, and Emeril have to jump on the urban farming bandwagon?!), so I’ve saved you some disappointment by picking out a few of the highlights.  Unsurprisingly, Manhattan and Brooklyn are leading the way…

• A packed 2′x3′ fire escape garden in NYC, complete with self-watering containers and upcycled soda bottle planters.
• Interesting conjecture about the legality of fire escape gardening, with an interesting tip to keep pigeons and squirrels out of your veggies.
• Not a post, but it’s notable that there is a EFFING STORE IN SAN FRANCISCO CALLED FIRE ESCAPE FARMS!!!  What?!  They sell lots of unecessarily-expensive-but-very-amusing stuff for the urban gardener.
• For some beautiful photos of fire escape gardening (but relatively little text), check out thefireescapegarden.com’s 2009 archive (apparently, in 2010 they moved the burbs…)

(Photo credit: Flickr user Kristine Paulus.)

(This is the first of several forthcoming posts to help get you pumped up about the year ahead.  It’s also the first real content in almost two years!)

Every year, around this time in late January, I start to get fidgety.  It’s usually around this time that we Portlanders get fooled by a little warm spell.  The buds on some of the early blooming trees start to swell, and the crocuses get confused and start to poke up through the soil.  I call it the spring tease, and it’s when we garden nerds start obsessively pouring over our seed collections and catalogs, counting down the days until planting can begin.

In the meantime, it’s nice to remember that winter is a great time for observation, planning, and preparing.  In that vein, here are some things to do to keep you sane until things warm up a bit… Read the rest of this entry »

We didn’t really plan it.  It all started when I asked our neighbors a nonchalant question at their potluck in early February: “Can we garden in your backyard?”  Fast forward to this past Sunday, and we’ve laid the groundwork for a pretty magnificent farm next-door.

Over the season, I’ll be documenting hour for hour, dollar for dollar, and pound for pound our labor and monetary inputs, and food output (respectively) of the garden in its first year of establishment*. (Update 1/27/10 – I never kept any records…oops!)  I want to make a strong case to renters everywhere: you can plant a garden that saves you money, provides you with ultra-local organic food, AND helps you build stronger relationships with your neighbors, even if you can’t dig up your own yard (or don’t even have one to dig up).  Along the way I’ll be posting about my methodology, along with ideas about how you can use the same tips and strategies wherever you are.

Try this at home, kids!

I’m willing to bet that most renters who live in a residential neighborhood and are unable, for whatever reason, to dig up their yard, have someone on their block who is eager to have their lawn turned into a productive food-growing space.  With any luck, they’ll also be happy to swing a shovel and chip in on garden-related expenses (seeds, tools, etc.) as well.  So don’t wait!  Start asking your neighbors about their patches of sod that are just waiting to become a garden.

Happy planting!

(P.S. If you’re currently gardening on borrowed land, or are about to get started, send photos and stories to share@permacultureforrenters.com)

*While this has been done before, I haven’t found readily available documentation for an urban site using low-input methods.