Skid Row Gardening: October 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.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Home-made earth boxes

Today has been another great day at LACAN. We came together to construct some earth boxes. Earth boxes are essentially pots with multiple chambers and a water reservoir that allow plants to self-regulate their water supply. Translated for those of us just learning our way around a garden, with earth boxes, when our plants get thirsty they will have a reservoir of water at hand to drink.

The last few weeks of strange southern California have shown us how nice this arrangement might be. One week we had soaring temperatures, even breaking the historic record for heat! Then the next week we had rain and cold. Because our garden is located on our rooftop, our plants are especially exposed to the elements, meaning that they take a real beating from sun, wind, and rain. While we have been amazing with our watering schedule -- despite the 101 steps we have to climb each day -- our plants will no doubt benefit from some earth boxes.

We learned a great design and started building. We'll finish our boxes in our next Team Food meeting 11-4-10, so stay tuned.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Seed starting workshop today

Today we gathered residents and LACAN staff and friends to participate in our seed starting workshop. After much anticipation, we gathered and got our hands dirty. Anne brought her expertise and showed us exactly how to plant seeds so that we can eventually pot them and add them to our growing garden.

We don't have a whole lot of land, green spaces, or plots in downtown. After all, that's why we went vertical -- to the roof. But, seedlings don't require much space at all. Just some sun and a little TLC. When we first began the garden, we had a few seedlings that our gardeners took home with them as they went from seeds to seedlings. A nice breezy window sill works fantastic.

This time, however, we were armed with much more expertise. Our wonderful master gardener, Maggie, has been talking for a while about planting seeds in small cups made of newspaper. As the plants start to make their way to the surface, when its time to pot them, there would be no need to transplant, since the newspaper would decompose in the pot! We thought it was a wonderful idea and we were excited to learn this little trick.