Spike, The Touchdown Tomato is the mascot and logo for the Paul Quinn College urban farm--known as the We Over Me Farm.  Spike is toting a turnip and spiking a football. The tomato is an appropriate logo considering that a vegetable patch occupies what was once a football field for Paul Quinn College--almost a sacrilege here in Texas.  But Spike pays a tribute to the farm's football roots so all's well.  Apparently the Cowboys' fans hold no grudge as many of them who attend Cowboy games also eat salsa made from vegetables produced at the We Over Me Farm.

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This morning, as part of our information gathering for the Garland Community Garden Planning Committee, Charlie and I visited the We Over Me Farm located on what was once the football field for Paul Quinn College. Unfortunately Charlie was not able to tromp around the farm with me because of a recent motocycle accident in which he broke his foot.  He was sidelined at a picnic area near the entrance to the farm but he was surrounded by several We Over Me "farm hands"--most of whom are students at Paul Quinn.  They were engaged in the task of washing and bagging vegetables for market. [Being the expert horticulturist that I am, I was amazed at the size of the "radishes" they were washing--until one of the students informed me the vegetables were turnips.]

According to their record-keeping,  this two-acre former football field farm has produced over 15,000 pounds of 100% organic produce since it began in March 2010.  The farm is also home to four active beehives that are maintained by members of the Texas Honeybee Guild, about 16 hens, at least one peacock, and an aquaponic system that supports approximately 100 tilapia fish.  This is all in addition to tomatoes, kale, turnips, radishes, onions, Swiss Chard,  mustard greens and basil currently growing on the farm.

Hannah Koski, a horticulture graduate from Cornell, has been the manager of this urban farm for the past four months.   She is one of many people who are growing this urban farm into a huge success.

In addition to Hannah, there are of course many of the students who attend Paul Quinn College who are helping to make this urban farm a success--a few of whom will be featured in this article.

Ashley Daly is another dynamo who is bringing the news of the We Over Me Urban Farm to the world. Ashley is in charge of media marketing and public relations for Farming at the Paul Quinn College. From the looks of things today, Ashley is doing a great job.  A team from PBS was at the farm interviewing and filming Hannah in the fields and later interviewing some Paul Quinn College students in the greenhouse where the aquaponic system is located.

Speaking of the greenhouse. . .It is huge and appears to be "nearly new" as there is a lot of unused space. Currently it houses an aquaponic tank filled with approximately 100 tilapia. The waste from the fish is nourishing seedlings that are housed in trays in another tank.  It appears that the tank is large enough to nourish at least twice the plants that are currently being fed by the system.  No doubt that will happen in the future.  Hannah mentioned that the other half of the greenhouse will be reserved for raised beds where tomatoes and other vegetables can be grown year round.  Aquaponic designers from the community are assisting in the design and expansions for the aquaponic systems.

Below is a photo of the tank that houses the tilapia.  It is located near the back of the photo shown above.

Volunteers and Students from Paul Quinn College contribute greatly to its growing success.  Below are featured a few of these people.

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Claudea Locke, a Paul Quinn College student, is featured below with a "mess" of turnip greens.

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Alyssa and Anacleto are two Paul Quinn College students featured in the next photo.  Anacleto is from Dallas, and Alyssa is a freshman who hails from Detroit.  She was convinced to attend Paul Quinn College when President Sorrell came and talked to a group of students in Detroit about the college, its commitment to community and the urban farm.

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Below is another of several students working at the farm this morning.  This young man is planting seeds.

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Chickens, yes the We Over Me Urban farm not only has chickens, they also have a peacock.  I didn't get the scoop on the peacock, but for some reason it does not live within the safety of the enclosure for the laying hens (currently numbering about 14).  I'll have to ask Hannah or Ashley for more information about this critter.

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 Below is a photo of the Claudea washing and bagging the turnips (not radishes).

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Here is photo of another Paul Quinn College student--Timothy Tucker.  Although Timothy grew up in nearby rural areas and knows a lot about farming, and even though the farm is one of the reasons he chose Paul Quinn College, this honors student is interested in marketing and hopes to one day land a job at Sony.  To get some experience in between here and there, Timothy is creating some informational brochures about the farm.

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Cynthia Dade is a volunteer and supporter of the farm.  Cynthia reported that she and members of her family have purchased over 100 pounds of delicious watermelons from the farm.  I know where I'm coming next year for at least a few of my watermelons.  

Currently you can call We Over Me to place an order of basil, heirloom tomatoes, mustard greens, rosemary, specialty radishes, specialty turnips, swiss shard and organic free-range eggs.  Call to order and pick up by appointment:  (214) 379-5457.  You can also email Hannah at hkoski@pqc.edu to place your order.  Cash and checks are accepted.  Produce from the We Over Me farm is also sold at the White Rock Lake Farmers Market from 8AM to 1PM every Saturday!

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 Our last photo is of another Paul Quinn College student who also works on the farm:  Chakesha Smith.  Like many of the others, Chakesha proudly wears a shirt with Spike, the Touchdown Tomato.

Update on Iflizwerequeen Urban Gardens:

Note: Gardens are located at 216 East Kingsbridge Drive, Garland Texas.  Garden One is in the process of replacing my entire front lawn.  This is the first garden I've ever grown.

Already the middle of October and my gardens are still producing.  Below is a photo of produce that I gathered yesterday from Urban Garden One (in the front yard where my lawn was):  Tomatoes, Siberian Kale, Eggplant and green Bell Peppers.

Okra keeps producing.  Urban Gardens One and Two are filled with okra and blooms that promise even more.  Below is a photo of an okra plant from Garden Two alongside my driveway.

About two months ago in early August I planted two standard sized pomegranate bushes in Urban Garden one and a dward pomegrante bush in Urban Garden Two.  Below are blossoms from one ot the standard sized pomegrante bushes in Urban Garden One.  The dwarf in Urban Garden Two already has formed two pomegranates.

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A Few Lessons Learned So Far from My Gardens

Eggplants grow well in my gardens.

Okra grows well in my gardens.

Kale grows well in my gardens.

Cantaloupe grows will in my gardens

Blueberries, blackberries, almond trees, peach trees, and Pomegranates grow well in my gardens

Swiss Chard grows well in my gardens

Radishes grow well in my gardens

Anything on a vine grows poorly in my garden

As time marches on, my appreciation of my urban gardens deepen as well as my intent to eat local, eat organic, and eat vegetarian.  Just tonight I read that the USDA has approved a process whereby chickens grown and slaughtered in the USA will then be shipped to China for processing.  Absolutely unbelievable!  In the past year China has been caught passing off rat meat as mutton, selling sausages filled with maggots, and having an outbreak of H7N9 bird flue in live poultry.  Now they are going to be processing chicken for millions of Americans.  Certainly this should be a wakeup call for eating locally grown produce.

Labor Day weekend I decided to expand Urban Garden 1 which is located in my front yard.  I dug up a 20 foot by 40 foot area.  In it I've planted two grape vines, radishes (which are begging to be thinned)  french beans, more swiss chard, spinach, carrots, and artichokes.  All seeds have germinated.

The twins are doing fine.  Thus far, this one pot has produced three cantaloupes.  The previous one was delicious (and yes, I saved the seed).

Also on Labor Day weekend I planted some Siberian Kale.  Already I've had several salads using this delicious and nutritious green.  Below the Kale is a photo of some of the Swiss Chard that is also growing in my front yard.  Some of the leaves are now so large they will need to be cooked.  Chard leaves contain 13 different polyphenol antioxidants. One of the primary flavanoids found in Swiss Chard leaves is syringic acid which helps to regulate blood sugar and thus is a good source for blood sugar control.

Food purchased this morning at the Garland Marketplace:  Clockwise from upper left-mesquite beans, red onions, duck eggs, cantaloupe, yellow squash and golden zucchini

The Garland Marketplace, located on the downtown Garland square, is held the third Saturday of the month from July through September.  This is a new venture and, depending upon the participation and support from local citizens, it will either grow into a regular once a week event in 2014 or fizzle out.

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DUCK EGGS!  I bought a half dozen duck eggs this morning.  I'll let you know how they taste.  Zach Ragsdale of Ragsdale Farms assured me they are much higher in protein than chicken eggs and they will make breads and pastry much fluffier.  Have you ever eaten a duck egg? (If you are a vegan, just ignore my question.)

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The plants you see in the photo above in front of Zach are small "Moringa Oleifera” trees.  The Moringa is considered one of the world’s most useful trees.  Every part of the Moringa Oleifera tree–from the roots to the leaves has beneficial properties that can serve humanity.  In many countries Morgina Olefera is used as a micronutrient powder to treat diseases.  

The Moringa is a shrub or tree that can reach 36 feet in height at maturity and can live for up to 20 years. Like bamboo and hemp, Moringa is among the fast-growing trees as it can reach 9 feet in just 10 months. The Moringa has deep roots and can survive drought conditions well.

And, according to the literature, Moringa can rebuild weak bones, enrich anemic blood and enable a malnourish mother to nurse her starving baby.  It’s full of nutrients. A dash of Moringa is staid to make dirty water drinkable.  In West Africa doctors use it to treat diabetes and in India they use it to treat high blood pressure.  It can staunch an infection and makes an efficient fuel, fertilizer and livestock feed.

I purchased one of these plants last month from Zach, and I'm happy to report that it's still alive and has grown about five inches.

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Mesquite Beans - I purchased a pound of mesquite beans this morning.

My father and grandfather--both of whom were wheat and cotton farmers in west Texas would be shocked and amazed to learn that I would pay $5 for a pound of mesquite beans. 

Turns out that people can make some money from mesquite beans.  If you don't believe me, go look on the Internet.  Mesquite flour sells for as much as $13.95 for 8 ounces.

Mesquite flour is said to not only be delicious but rich in soluable fibers, calcium, magnesium and it is gluten-free.  Mesquite pod flour, according to the literature, has a sweet, earthy taste with notes of cinnamon, molasses, and caramel. Mesquite flour is a great for a wide array of cooking and baking, and can be a valuable component of a gluten-free or diabetic diet.

You can use Mesquite beans to make a wide array of edibles--from chocolate chip cookies to wine.

Here is a good source for Mesquite bean recipes.  Lou Quallenberg Studios.

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Golden Zucchini, yellow squash, red onions and cantaloupe were all purchased from the Esperanza Farms booth.

I've never eaten golden zucchini but I'll let you know what I think of it after I do.  The woman from Esperanca Farms assured me that it was sweeter and better than the green variety.

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If you want to participate in the last Garland Farmer's Market for this year, Contact Kirk Lovett and reserve a space for the third Saturday in September.

Kirk P. Lovett
Eventive Marketing Solutions

kirk@eventivemarketingsolutions.com 

A Record of Progress in Urban Garden 1

URBAN GARDEN 1 June 28, 2013 

URBAN GARDEN 1 August 15, 2013   [Notice all the Swiss Chard in front of the perennial flowers.  It has provided many salads already for me and my friends.  The large leafy plant in the first box is an okra plant. If it grows in proportion to its leaves, it will be about 7 feet tall. The silver metal plaque on the first trellis is engraved with the command:  "Grow."  This year my Urban Garden 1 is sharing some of its space with Philistines--the annuals. Next year there will be fewer of them.  By the third year, I hope that all the plants in Urban Garden 1 will be edible perennials--even the flowers. ]

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My Urban Gardens

This blog is  centered around the development of my own urban gardens and reports on my successes and failures:  Urban Garden 1 is located in my front yard where I am in the process of tearing out my lawn and creating an edible woodland forest in its place.  Urban Garden 2 is the strip of land beside my driveway in back. This garden includes mostly annual vegetables. Urban Garden 3 is my back yard which is filled with mature trees. Unfortunately, none of them bear edible fruit.  Eventually this space will evolve into another woodland edible forest with shade tolerent perennials such as miner's lettuce in this garden.

Fritz Haeg's assessment of the front lawn is accurate as I have written in a previous post.  It is a very iconic and loaded space. Removing and replacing it with something else, questions all of the values implicit in the lawn and what it symbolizes. According to Haeg, the easiest first step for the urban citizen who wants to make a visible impact on their city is to replace their front lawn with edible plants. It is the leading wedge into more complex and ambitious civic activity.

To put it more locally, my Urban Garden 1 is a piece of land that will not only help to feed me; it is also a highly visible political statement 24/7 expressing my disapproval of our current unsustainable corporate managed mono-crop food system here in the USA.  Our oil-based/dependent agricultural system would be unsustainable even if oil were priced at a dollar a barrel instead of a hundred dollars a barrel.  

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Many are beginning to note that our current corporate run mono-crop agricultural system is lumbering like a dysfunctional beast toward the trashcan of failure stubbornly ignoring all the basic lessons of nature, such as diversity, as it slouches along leaving a trail of pollution in its wake. 

There are over 20,000 species of edible plants known in the world; yet fewer than 20 species now provide 90% of our food. Limiting our food sources increases our vulnerability to famines. When entire crops fail because of unfavorable conditions relevant to that one plant species (or when commodity traders manipulate the markets and price people out of food in order to wring profits out of the market for the few), millions of human beings starve to death.  Thus I regard our current agricultural system not only as dangerously risky and inefficient, but also as immoral.

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Compare our current agricultural system nature's agricultural system.

A cultivated crop such as wheat has all its roots at the same depth across the same horizontal band of soil of the entire field.  Thus, there is intense competition among the plants for the same nutrients.  If you could see a cross section of the soil beneath a row of wheat, you would see the roots all reaching at approximately the same level in the soil competing for all the nutrients at that level and also using up all the nutrients at that level of the soil resulting in compacted earth.  

If you could see a cross section of the soil in an edible woodland forest, you would see roots at varying depths–some near the surface and others reaching even several yards down into the soil for their nutrients.  Thus a wide range of plants can grow side by side occupying its own space.  When leaves fall they provide nutrients and substance to the soil--not man-made chemical fertilizers.

Unlike the woodland edible garden which consists of perennials, the plants in our current corporate industrialized system are annuals that must be planted each year.  Annuals require cultivation of the ground every year, sowing the seeds, controlling the weeds, adding fertilizers and attempting to controls pests and diseases.

Continued intensive cultivation destroys the organic matter in soil and increases the risk of erosion from wind and rain.  With our current industrialized system, we are trapped in a method of growing with lower yields for far more input and expense.  The absurdity of our system is reflected in the fact that we expend more energy in producing our food than the yields of energy available from the food itself once it is harvested.

Our current industrialized agricultural system is another version of the old folk tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes."  We can't afford to wait for the people running to show to realize how their methods of tailoring our agricultural system are exposing us to disaster.  If we wait for them to act, it will be too late.  We will go down with them. This is why I encourage all citizens to become urban farmers and start planting edible plants now.  Together we can replace our current agricultural system with one that is locally based and does supply the needed and affordable nutrition that we need.

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Compare the effort, expense and resulting output per acreage of the Woodland Edible Forest to the large corporate-run farm

Wheat and nuts are somewhat nutritionally similar.  Consider the yields and the efforts to obtain these yields from two acres of land:  one planted with nut trees such as various species of pecan trees and almond trees and the other acre planted in wheat.  

The life span for a pecan tree is 40 years.  The almond tree has a life span of 20-25 years.  The life span of wheat is one growing season.  It must be replanted year after year.  And, the more the acre is planted with wheat, the more the organic quality of the soil is destroyed and the more dependent it becomes on artificial life support from pesticides and chemical fertilizers.  

Furthermore, as a mono-crop, the wheat field is far more susceptible to a wipeout than the diversified pecan and almond grove.  Also in terms of yield, the nut tree grove is far more productive than the acre of wheat.  If other woodland perennials such as miner’s lettuce, are planted in the grove, food yields can even be added to that of the primary crop of nuts.

Our current industrialized methods of agriculture make absolutely no sense–except to the owners and investors in the wheat and corn markets, the pesticide business and the chemical fertilizer business. These people are not feeding the hungry as they claim.  Instead, they are destroying our planet’s natural abilities to provide us with food for the sake of their own personal profit.

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RECOMMENDED BOOKS

If  you want to learn more about creating a woodland garden, I recommend the following books:

WOODLAND GARDENING – a book I highly recommend on woodland garden design published by Plants for a Future (An English charity)   ISBN 9781484069165

Another gardening book I highly recommend is Rosalind Creasy's "Edible Landscaping".  In fact, if I could only have one gardening book (and I have many), I would choose this beautiful 400 page book.  Every page is packed with beautiul photographs along with lots of helpful information.  Over half of the book is an encyclopedia of edibles.  It's not one of those small books.  The 400 pages are each 81/2 x 11 inches in size.  Her typical entries for the edibles which are listed alphabetically, include the title of the plant; an effort scale of a 1 to 5 ranking for difficulty to grow; zone numbers to match a zone map; a thumbnail sketch that includes how to use in the kitchen and in the landscape; how to grow it (climate, exposure, soil, planting, fertilizing, watering, pruning, pests and diseases; how to harvest it; how to purchase it; pollinizers; choosing rootstocks; and selecting the right variety. ISBN 978-157805-154-0