Herbs added

One of our goals from the beginning of this garden project has been to provide as much produce from our garden to community meals as possible. We've been holding workshops in the Skid Row community for quite some time teaching residents about the benefits of natural, organic, and non-processed seasonings. Our goal is to reduce the amount of sodium and artificial flavorings and preservatives that the community consumes.

So...it's time for us to begin growing herbs. We have some new plants that are flourishing in our garden. These include Italian Basil and Rosemary.

New harvests for our community meal

Two fridays per month, we hold a resident meeting at our office at 530 S. Main Street in downtown LA. This means that Thursdays are becoming a big harvesting day for us, and it allows us to see the various plants that are really coming along.

This week, our tomatoes have been consistently bigger, and we have a substantial number of peppers.

Good eats!

Veggies galore!

At this week's Team Food meeting, we were greeted on the roof by tomatoes, various peppers, and a squash that were ready to pick.

The plants are coming along better than even we had anticipated, so we're very excited. This means that our garden really works, and can only get better from here.

With this trial period over, we're ready to plant even more veggies to really increase the yield of the garden. We've been looking at new methods, such as "earth boxes" (see http://www.earthbox.com/).

Our first harvest.

We harvested our first vegetable today. We picked the biggest Serrano today.

When we first set out to establish the garden, our stated goal was to bring quality, local, organic food into the Skid Row community. We're taking one step closer to that goal tonight. On the first and third Friday of every month, we hold a Resident Organizing Committee (ROC) Meeting at our office at 530 S. Main St. The meeting, open to the public, brings residents together to discuss the issues that impact our community the most, where we democratically design solutions. We always end each meeting with a family0style meal. We have decided to integrate our health and nutrition component to the ROC meal, and have begun serving healthy meals freshly prepared by residents themselves. Before the meal, we describe the ingredients, our decisions to include those items, and detail any healthy substitutions we've made (natural sea salt instead of more processed sodium substitutes, for example).

Our vision is to begin integrating produce from our garden into these meals, and tonight we are making salsa with our Serrano Chile as the prized ingredient. It will accompany turkey chili and brown rice.

Shade tree added!

Our plants have been taking a beating from the downtown sun, so we have begun experimenting with different methods to keep them cool. The natural shadows from the different ledges on the roof help to cool some of the plants in the morning while shading others when the sun heads west getting closer to sunset.

Today we added a Dwarf Lemon Tree (Eureka Lemon) to help in this effort.

New plants!

We planted additional plants today, thanks to a donation from a friend of the organization.

We now are home to two more tomato plants and strawberries. Strawberries are already growing!

We've got veggies.

Our first vegetables have begun to grow this week! One of our Serrano plants is sprouting peppers on a daily basis. The one here is almost ready to pick. It will be our first vegetable among many to come.

Our Lilac Pepper has also begun to mature, along with a handful of tomato plants and beans. We hope to harvest some of these soon.

Who would have thought that in only a matter of weeks, the Skid Row garden would come to life? Stay tuned.