The harvest is just beginning at Urbandale – a few zucchini are ripe, but the tomatoes are not quite there yet.
Urbandale is the first urban garden in Lansing developed by the Lansing Urban Farm Project. The nonprofit organization was co-founded by Laura DeLind, senior academic specialist in the Department of Anthropology and visiting assistant professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. Land for the garden on South Hayford Street came from the Ingham County Land Bank, and they have now donated the house next door to the effort. The urban gardening movement looks at vacant land in urban areas as an opportunity to engage the community in growing its own food on land that might otherwise become an unattractive nuisance.
Plans for this season’s veggies are just taking shape. As the video explains, one promising idea is a veggie cart, where kids would market veggies in the neighborhood.
Trevor Jackson works with Americorps farm manager Sarah Fillius on the pumpkin patch he and other kids from the neighborhood helped plant
Trevor Jackson removes flags from the corn maze that the kids also planted
Eric Schertzing of the Ingham County Land Bank doing his best scarecrow imititation
Fantastic freshly picked tomatoes from my aquaponics garden, delicious. Every survival plan should include a garden and the aquaponics helps put it in less space and vegetables grow so fast.