Community Garden experimenters

Community Gardeners are in the forefront of all kinds of urban agricultural techniques. I've talked about Rainwater Harvesting and composting in previous posts.

Many gardens are keeping chickens. It sound a little odd but hens have been allowed in NYC for many years. A NYC based group Just Food leads a Chicken group and has supported community gardeners efforts to raise chickens. through the City Chickens Project They publish a booklet the City Chicken Guide and host a City Chicken Meetup .

Some gardens are also raising honeybees. In fact community gardeners were instrumental in getting a new law passed to legalize bees in NYC. The New York City Beekeepers Association is a support group that holds classes and generally promotes and supports beekeeping in NYC.

Some groups are beginning to grow mushrooms. Mushrooms will often grow on their own in shady spots, decaying logs or woodchips but hardwood logs can be inoculated with shiitake, portobello or oyster mushroom spores. A number of businesses are providing spores and kits for the home mushroom grower including one called Fungi Perfecti .

I wrote a short post on Vertical Gardening and here again there are many opportunities for community gardeners here. I have some pictures to share of my verticle gardening experiment. They don't look like much but they are great before pictures. A group called Green Technologies has a metal shelf system.

All of these methods and techniques show just a few ways that community gardeners are leading the way in sustainability in the city.