After happily spending the day in the vegetable garden I could not agree more. There are few things more satisfying to me that connecting with the cycle of life through growing food.

I have lived in many different houses in my time and have always followed the undeniable urge to get out a spade or trowel and start digging up the lawn (or patio) in order to make way for veggies usually along with a couple of fruit trees if they'll fit. When there has been no garden, I have made use of the window sills or yard. It's amazing what you can do when you go for it.

I am not terribly into following the rules of gardening. What seems to work is to connect with the garden and to feel what wants to grow there. Native varieties tend to be more resistant to diseases, insects/animals or erratic weather patterns (pretty essential at the moment!).

Looking at the world today, I feel that digging up our gardens (or getting an allotment/joining a gardening co-operative) should be a priority. If the price of food gets out of hand then it might even save your life!

Whether we have a nice back garden or live in an apartment, there is hope
I saw this article last week:

We can pave our streets green: Wouldn't you give up your extra parking spot for a garden plot?

The asphalt will crack and erupt, and green plants and vines will sprout forth.

No, this isn't my end of the world prophecy, this is about parking. Or gardening. Or both.

The street I live on has several apartment buildings and five houses. In other words, every person who lives on my street has underground parking or their own spot off the back lane. Yet the street is lined -- choked -- with parked cars. What's the problem here? Or rather, what's the solution? I am not usually one to advocate for another law -- in fact, I have considered running for office on a "One Bylaw Repealed Every Day" ticket. But, an easy way to free up space in our cities would simply be to require that if you have a parking spot on your property, you use it. Leave the public space for public use.

Mapping it out

So how much space is there, and what could we do with it? Google Maps shows my block is 850 feet long and a little quality time with a tape measure finds the distance between sidewalks is 41 feet, so in just one block we have 34,850 square feet to play with.

First, let's make it a one-way street, one lane wide, with a couple of pullouts. This maintains access for emergency vehicles, taxis and mini-buses for wheelchairs. We could also throw four spots for visitors into each block. At one end we can put a half-court for basketball, street hockey, skateboarding or rollerblading so once again shouts of "Car!" will mean the players get a short break. For the rest of the block, I propose gardens. We have enough space left for 150 very nice garden plots, each about 3 by 4 meters, plus walkways.

Or, we could continue to enjoy the heat rising off the asphalt, with the rich visual stimulus of dented bumpers and the sound of car alarms.

Volunteers anyone?

Cleveland, Ohio is a hub of Asphalt Gardening, where planter boxes are put right on top of parking lots, separated from the polluted soil and oily road by a layer of wood chips. This would be a great way to try Garden Streets -- do a block or two, then a couple of years later rip up the asphalt and put roots down.

I happen to live in Vancouver, where the city council passed a motion to have 2010 new garden plots by 2010. A handy graph on the linked page shows there is not even a dream of actually achieving it, even though it is a pittance by some standards. (The city-state of Singapore, for example, produces 25 per cent of its own vegetables.)

So call me the answer to Vancouver City Hall's prayers because 2010 new garden plots is only 14 blocks of Garden Streets.

Could we start street gardening without a controversial bylaw to eliminate street parking? Sure. The city could run a newspaper ad explaining the idea and asking blocks to volunteer. Let the citizens do all the legwork of convincing their neighbors. Using bio-intensive gardening methods, my block could provide all the vegetables needed for 22 people, plus all the plant material needed to keep the soil productive -- no need for chemical fertilizers here.

Tasty numbers

Arable Acres found that Vancouver could grow all its own produce by farming the existing front and back yards. Times have changed since the study was done in 1980 -- there are more people living in the city, and development has eaten up space. But other things have changed too. That study suggested those gardens could produce $100 million worth of produce. That is $265,000,000 in today's dollars.

The possibilities make your head spin -- 70 hectares of farm in Burnaby produce 10 per cent of the vegetables grown in the Fraser Valley. Arable Acres estimates Vancouver has about 3,000 hectares in streets and another 3,000 hectares in yards. Putting this into practice, the Edible Estates project is farming front yards in six cities across the United States, from Lakewood, California to Maplewood, New Jersey.

All of these delicious statistics beg the question whether the current trend in zoning experiments -- reduced on-site parking so drivers have to fight for spots on the street -- is entirely a good idea.

The idea has been: remove parking and you will remove cars, thus helping build more great places like the pedestrian-scale streetcar neighborhoods that are being or have been gentrified all over North America. And yes, this appears to be at least a mossy shade of green.

But why should we let private cars be pushed onto the public street in the first place? Why should the taxpayers, including the pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, pay for the real estate and the asphalt underneath other people's cars?

True cost of cars

Land in urban centers is at such a premium that each street parking spot in front of my building is worth $25,000. Add to that the fact that each car actually has three to four parking spots scattered around the city, just waiting for it (otherwise you wouldn't be able to find a spot at the end of your trip and would be forced to drive back home, spinning like a hamster in a wheel). The total subsidy to drivers is at least $100,000. If drivers had to mortgage their street parking, they would be paying $600 per month. And to think I can't find bike racks.

It would be easy to turn my block, with all its underground parking, into a Garden Street, but why stop there? Imagine your own block stuffed with flowers and vegetables. Big sprays of lupins, colorful mats of marigolds, nodding rows of poppies. The big white blossoms of pumpkin changing to the shiny orange of jack-o'-lanterns-to-be. Fat, red Early Girl tomatoes alongside the sweet Gold Nugget grape tomatoes.

Speaking of grapes, why not trellis a few up for summer shade and delicious juice? And, instead of the "decorative" street trees, you can have fruit and nut trees -- with no cars for fruit to fall upon there is really no reason not to do it.

If what I've said here makes sense to you, please feel free to practice this rallying cry: A garden plot -- not a parking spot -- for every citizen!

see original article by Ruben Anderson

I agree too let's get digging.
I say plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah started to build the ark

Thanks Turtle - it may not have started raining yet where we are but desperate food shortages are starting to happen across the world as this article below shows in "Agence France-Presse". Unfortunately spiralling demand for energy means that increasing amounts of arable land is being turned over to grow biofuel. Also the fact that most food is currently grown intensively using oil based fertilisers and pesticides is having a big effect - the price of oil is also spiraling. So yes, we do indeed need to contemplate our own "Noah's Arc" - except perhaps this time it'll be more like a sustainable back garden!!!

World Bank to Meet as Rising Food Prices Spark Unrest
Agence France-Presse, Sunday 13 April 2008

"Washington - The World Bank meets here Sunday as rising food prices spark deadly unrest in developing countries, underscoring the urgency of getting food aid to desperate people.

Policymakers of the anti-poverty bank are due to discuss a massive, coordinated international plan to reduce hunger announced less than two weeks ago by the head of the bank, Robert Zoellick.

With soaring food prices threatening political stability in poor countries, Zoellick called for a "new deal" for global food policy, similar in scope to a 1930s program under US president Franklin D. Roosevelt that tackled the problems of the Great Depression.

The World Bank meeting comes against a backdrop of a mounting global financial crisis, a US economy teetering on recession, high energy prices and currency market imbalances.

Escalating inflation is complicating policymakers' efforts to revive stuttering economic growth.

The 185-nation bank's sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, issued a dire warning Saturday about the food crisis at their spring meetings in Washington.

"Food prices, if they go on like they are doing today ... the consequences will be terrible," IMF managing director Dominque Strauss-Kahn said.

"Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving ... (leading) to disruption of the economic environment," Strauss-Kahn told a news conference at the close of the IMF meeting.

Development gains made in the past five or 10 years could be "totally destroyed," he said, warning that social unrest could even lead to war.

"As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war," he said. If the world wanted to avoid "these terrible consequences," then rising prices had to be tackled.

Skyrocketing prices on rice, wheat, corn and other staple foods like milk particularly hurt developing nations, where the bulk of income is spent on the bare necessities for survival.

According to a World Bank policy note released this past week, increases in global wheat prices reached 181 percent over the 36 months leading up to last February, and overall global food prices increased by 83 percent.

Food crop prices are expected to remain high in 2008 and 2009 and then begin to decline, but they are likely to remain well above the 2004 levels through 2015 for most food crops, the document warned.

"The poor are not just facing higher food prices but also higher energy costs, which is a worrying combination," said Danny Leipziger, a World Bank Group vice president.

In recent months, rising food costs have lead to violent protests in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.

Haiti's prime minister was ousted Saturday in a no-confidence vote after more than a week of violent demonstrations over rocketing food and fuel prices.

In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses.

Thirty-seven countries currently face food crises, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Zoellick is urging countries to provide the minimum 500 million dollars immediately sought by the World Food Program in the mounting food crisis.

The World Bank plans to nearly double its lending for agriculture in Africa, to to 800 million dollars."

Zoellick proposed three other measures to soften the impact of a slowing world economy on the most vulnerable countries: investment in Africa by sovereign wealth funds; strengthening a 2002 initiative to improve governance in resource-rich countries; and conclusion of the World Trade Organization's trade liberalization negotiations."

Go to original article

As a synchronistic and heart warming follow-up to this post, I came across this wonderful article in the UK's Independent today about how city folk in the UK are beginning to grow food in their front yards, on balaconies and even roofs. Maybe the green revolution is begun again! If you're a city or town dweller with a small garden, I think you'll find this article inspiring...click here

Chris

That's wonderful news! I did suspect this trend!

I read that "new figures from the Horticultural trades association show a 31% increase in the sales of vegetable seed to householders, and a corresponding 32% decline in the sale of flower seeds. We are also buying nearly twice as many seedlings and young edible plants like tomatoes and marrows, and are growing far more herbs than ever before"...

I am also planting quite a few native wild flowers this year to encourage wildlife and pollinating insects.

Trin
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