Urban Agriculture BLOG POSTS
Growing Mushrooms
The Community That Plants Together…
Food is a catalyst for bridging difference and bringing people together to create healthy and resilient communities. That’s why urban agriculture is such an important activity at the Old Oak Dojo. But we’ve faced two big challenges: contaminated soil and limited sunshine.
With the help of our permaculture friends at Restoring Roots gardening, we’ve constructed four large raised beds from cinder blocks and filled them with soil, compost and mulch from local sources. Now we’re ready to plant our second year of shade-tolerant crops.
Friends and neighbors from Jamaica Plain and beyond joined us on Sunday, May 25th to plant tons of vegetables, flowers and herbs. Better still, we met new friends, had great conversations, enjoyed the gorgeous weather and ate yummy snacks together. Thanks for joining us!
Fruiting Up the Place
Ever tasted a juneberry? How about a serviceberry? Ever seen a pie berry tree? Do you know this difference between currants, gooseberries and jostaberries?
We planted our paw-paws last fall. This time we’re creating a fruiting food forest with the guidance of Restoring Roots gardeners Noah, Cheryl and Karen. They’re teaching us about soil amendment, positioning and planting fruiting trees and shrubs.We’ll put in low- and high-bush blueberry, a dwarf plum tree, currants and more. Then we’ll wait…
Who wants to help us make jam about a year from now?
The Taste of Trees
This past weekend, our friend Sage Radachowsky posted on Facebook that he was tapping trees, but bemoaned the fact that he had access only to Norway maples rather than Sugar maples. Generally speaking, the taste is equal — it’s just that it takes 60 litres of Norway maple sap to get 1 litre of syrup, whereas with Sugar maples, it takes on 40 litres.
Meantime, I’d been thinking: “Who can we find to tap our Sugar Maple, since I’m away right now?” And thus a match was made.
We now have a bucketful of sap, which Aaron has been dipping into from time to time to sample its raw flavor. He says it tastes woody and sweet, and goes down with an electrolyte buzz like coconut water. Delish.
New England’s Tropical Fruit
Betcha didn’t know that we New Englanders have our very own tropical fruit. (Well, perhaps tropical-like would be more accurate.) Read More »