Skid Row Gardening: June 2010

Welcome to Skid Row Gardening!

Gardening, Civil Rights, and Community Organizing

Skid Row is a fifty square-block area nestled on the eastern flank of downtown Los Angeles, and is home to over 11,000 homeless and extremely low-income people. The population includes single individuals and families with children, chronically homeless people, people with a mental illness and/or a substance abuse problem, veterans, people with other disabilities and chronic health conditions.

Recently, Skid Row has come under increasing attack by politicians, city planners, and criminal justice officials who refuse to acknowledge Skid Row as a “real” community. Much of this has to do with a recent wave of redevelopment and gentrification that makes Skid Row’s land highly valued. This has led to widespread violations of community residents’ civil and human rights on a massive scale. The Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN) is an outspoken opponent of these city efforts (for more detailed information on LACAN campaigns, visit www.cangress.org). Like many of the prominent civil rights organizations coming before them, LACAN sees civil rights as inseparable from food justice and equality.

In the summer of 2010 LACAN launched its own community garden located on a rooftop on Main Street. Stay tuned to this blog and watch the garden grow. We aim for democratic control where residents can work together to produce the healthy food that this neighborhood deserves.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Our first planting

Today, ten of us, along with our master gardener, got our hands dirty and planted our first crops on our rooftop garden. Using 5 gallon pots, we planted the following seedlings:

Mammoth Jalapeno (x2)
Park's Whopper Tomato (x2)
Pole Bean (x3)
Peter Pan Squash (x2)
Serrano Pepper (x2)
Organic Bell Pepper
String Bean
Lilac Pepper
Sweet 100 Tomato

We arranged a lattice for our beans and set up tomato cages.

For aesthetics and to ward certain bugs away, we also planted 8 marigolds to accompany our plants.