Sustainability and Urban Farming for the Homeless, March Against Monsanto, and Artisanal LA

Last Friday, I went to see my friend Chick at Step Up on Vine Street. Step Up is an organization that helps the homeless, and my friend works with them, runs groups and trainings, and maintains the tower gardens on the roof. As he was giving me a tour, I was stunned by how evolved the whole premise and the way it is structured to include urban farming and sustainability in its program.

The roof garden at Step Up on Vine street

Step Up on Second and Hollywood Community Housing Corporation, both 501(c)3 organizations, have retrofitted an existing 20,718 sf, three-story hotel into a 34-unit affordable housing project. The facility is intended for the psychosocial rehabilitation and support of the homeless affected by severe and persistent mental illness. 

Located at the corner of Santa Monica and Vine, the ground floor features retail and community spaces including a computer lab, cafe and commercial kitchen to be used by residents. The second and third floors consist of living quarters, a community room and laundry facilities. The roof of the structure features an aquaponic rooftop garden, outdoor seating and lighting that enables the space to be utilized by residents. 

Sustainable features include green screens on the exterior; daylighting strategies including low E windows and eyebrows that will extend past the green screen; low flow plumbing fixtures; use of a grey water/irrigation system; a potential 50 kW solar array on roof deck; thermal hot water system heated by solar; and new efficient electrical and mechanical systems. 

The cafe at Step Up on Vine Street- full commercial kitchen in back

 I got that blurb from the construction company website- because the Step Up website has the best information about the services they provide for the homeless- which are extensive and impressive- like the commercial kitchen and cafe where they train the residents to work. The cafe is open to the public and is manned by the people who have been trained to prepare the food and run the cafe. CLICK HERE to see more about what Step Up does.

Me at Step Up on Vine Street

For the purposes of this blog, I wanted to mention Step Up not only for their contribution to humanity, but for their efforts at sustainability.  I love that they are using solar panels- it was interesting to learn that the power drops on cloudy days. It makes sense, but I didn't know how that worked. I had gone there to help my friend plant the towers, but by the time I got there, he had planted them all- it was a super hot day, and once I got there I could see why he had wanted to hurry up.  They grow a lot of different vegetables and leafy greens which they use in the kitchen and cafeteria.  I love the tower gardens, and I have one myself, but I've had trouble getting the seedlings going this time around- from the weather scorching them, to me over watering them, to my cats eating them- its been a little challenging.  But once that part is done, the towers manage themselves, and do provide a great option for having a garden when you don't have soil to plant in.  (If you look up garden towers here in the STH blogs, you will see a lot more about them).

The March Against Monsanto, May 25, 2013

 Saturday is the March Against Monsanto. Things like this really separate the chaff from the wheat, when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is. Its easy to share a great activist-y meme or Down with Monsanto meme on facebook- its an entirely different thing to commit a chunk of your day to going to march. Originally I had a big group of people who wanted to go to the March- and its dwindled to my one homey, who I affectionately have called my Wife for many years. She and I are gonna go hit the streets on Saturday, and then we will be attending Artisanal LA, which will feature locally grown and artisan foods and products, as well as classes on beekeeping and creating community gardens and canning and fermenting....a bunch of cool stuff! If you are in LA, I would like to suggest you do your best to get to both. As for the March- I am sure you have stuff to do on Saturday. We all do. I am a mother, trust me, I know. But there is strength in numbers, and if people last minute decide they have to tend to other things, the march will be looked at as a sweet little attempt by a few earth loving hippies and not something to be taken seriously. WE NEED YOU! There is a March in almost very city in the US, and all over the world.

MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO!


CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE MARCH AND WHERE TO GO IN YOUR CITY

Xoxo,

Ashley Dane

Shake the Hive!

Urban Gardening

Right about the time I realized I needed to change the way I was looking at, and living, my life, I was lucky enough to have two unused garden towers in my proximity that I could learn to use. At my work, my boss had purchased two of them, but no one had championed the cause. It was perfect synchronicity. How many people living in cities don't have the option of growing their food, due to lack of soil or space? Plenty, I bet. Me included.

I also have the good fortune of having someone show me how to get these things started. There are so many ways to talk oneself out of doing something- "I don't know how", or "Maybe next week," or "I can't afford it," or "It won't work." The universe in all its goodness eliminated all such conversations from my head. If I can learn how to do these things, I can teach others. Its amazing to me that the most radical thing any of us can do is to get back to nature as much as possible- and there is nothing more natural than growing your own food.

So my friend who came to help also takes care of the garden towers at Step Up on Second, which is an organization which helps the homeless in Los Angeles. They have a small café where they serve hotdogs and hamburgers, and the homeless people on the program work the café and learn how to have a job. There are many aspects to this organization, and they are doing amazing work. One aspect is the garden towers on the roof- I think he said there were 25 of them, and they grow food that they can use to help feed the homeless people who come through while they teach them how to be self sustaining.  Here is a picture below- pretty amazing. By the way- you can make monthly payments for a garden tower, and they payments are reasonable.

Garden Towers at Step Up on Vine

My friend and I first started to create the seedlings. I got seed packets of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula. We put rock wool into plastic trays with individual growing bins- you do this so the roots don't grow into each other. Then you put 4 or 5 seeds in each one, and cover with a nutrient rich covering. Its important to mark what you planted- we did it with coffee stirrers with the name of the vegetable and the date on the back. Then you soak the seed beds, but be careful not to disturb the seeds.

The start of an urban garden



If you were not going to use a tower and were going to go guerilla gardening (which I implore you to do) then you would do the same thing but you could use potting soil which is already fortified with nutrients. In guerilla urban gardening, you would plant vegetables or other edibles in public spaces, or in front of your apartment building, on medians, on the courthouse lawn, parks, etc. Nothing at all wrong with doing this!  once your seedlings are good and strong, plant them where they will be able to get water- any public landscaping will have sprinkler systems.

So in about two weeks, we will have little seedlings. Every day I need to lightly water the seedlings and not leave too much water in the bottom tray- or they roots will grow down towards the water, and we'd rather encourage the plants to grow towards the sun.

Once they are seedlings, we transfer them to the garden towers. The towers only need to be filled with water and the nutrient solution and then you basically leave them alone and let them grow. You need to have access to an outlet as they need to plug in for the water to pump up through to each little basket. My first plants I put in my garden tower are growing- some died. White flies got to many of them. If you have white flies, a water and dish soap solution sprayed onto the leaves makes them go away.


Here is my vision- I want to teach people how to create urban gardens and beehives. Bees have a higher rate of survival in cities, and you can have your own source of honey. The gardens can give you certain vegetables and fruit- I am staying away from things like lettuce or herbs right now and focusing on things like tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers- its easy enough to get salad stuff from the farmer's market. I would like to help people understand the importance of buying from their local farmer's markets- its fresh, generally organic, and has not taken a lot of fossil fuels to send on trucks and airplanes from distant countries to your grocery store chain. I know we can't grow everything, and we can't buy everything at the farmer's market- but we can do a lot, and its a great start.

When I go to the farmer's market, I look at the people there and am so happy to be among like minded people. Its revolutionary. Buying local instead of at the supermarkets takes money out of the hands of those who seek to control the world's food sources.  There is much more at the farmer's market than produce- there is bread, meat, fish, eggs- you can get a lot of your shopping done there. the more you buy there, the more you are telling the GMO food corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta to fuck the fuck off.

OCCUPY YOURSELF!!!