Articles in the Data and Results Category
Data and Results »
2011 Participating Gardens
Farming Concrete’s citywide Harvest Report is now available for download! See how much food participating gardens grew in 2011.
For 35 inventoried gardens growing on .94 acres, the estimated yield for crops we have data for was 13,000 pounds, worth $47,000.
We think that’s a lot of food to grow on less than one acre. We’re particularly impressed with the immense variety of crops that gardeners grew this year – over 100 different crops!
There are a few differences between 2011 and 2010. In 2011, we included herbs and fruit trees in the Crop Count, both of which had been previously excluded. This led to a lower average of plants per square foot, as fruit trees take up a lot more space than most vegetable crops. Furthermore, as many of these herbs and fruit trees were not weighed, their contribution to food production is not represented in our overall weight and monetary estimates.
We also included school gardens in the project, not just community gardens. School gardeners were particularly excited about CropCount 2011, as it provided exciting activities to do in math and science class, as well as the opportunity to participate in something larger than just their own garden. Measuring the yields of school gardens can achieve a number of goals, including giving school gardeners a realistic expectation of the capacity of a small agricultural endeavor worked by small, often inexperienced hands. Knowing this information can also help school garden advocates ask for resources to build new school gardens or to increase programming.
As the project enters its third year, we aim to maximize participation and pursue robust data for the 2012 growing season. A third growing season will give us grounding to begin to estimate food production on a citywide level. Are you excited to know how much food NYC is growing in community and school gardens? Get your garden on the map and sign up for free materials here to help us find out!
For more background information on Farming Concrete, see our 2010 Harvest Report.
Data and Results »
As part of the Festival of Ideas for the New City on Saturday, we designed a poster to display with Green My Bodega and Foodshed Market at a booth called Mapping Present and Imagined Food Systems. It was a fun opportunity to reflect on the 2010 season and to try to summarize the project for an uninitiated audience, but we thought you might enjoy it, too.
In the poster we compare the amount of land taken up by both (1) all of New York City’s community gardens and (2) the amount of food-producing land that we mapped last year with Central Park. The rectangular, well-known park is a useful reference and it helps make clear how little land these food-producing beds take up. In an excerpt from the poster below we imagine these 1.7 acres of beds as the tiny brown box in the southeast corner of the park:
From there, we try to depict those 1200 beds of varying sizes and shapes squeezed together into a dense, square 1.7-acre farm (below), and we highlight the variety and quantity of plants found in a few of these beds. This small chunk of land is where the plants were grown that produced the results that we published in April: at least 88,000 pounds worth of food worth well over $200,000 came from 67 community gardens in the summer and fall of 2010.
Considering that individual gardeners often have one raised bed, these 1200 beds were likely tended by around 1000 gardeners. Imagining 1000 people farming such a small space is amusing to us (well, at least it’s not as crowded the 6 in the morning), but more than that we think it highlights the power of decentralization in the city and the amazing work community gardeners have been doing for decades.
Download the full poster in pdf or png and let us know what you think!
Community gardeners: help us make the collective farm bigger in 2011 by signing up to do Crop Count or Harvest Count!
Data and Results »
By Mara Gittleman
Two new resources for community garden info in NYC!!
Last month, GrowNYC and GreenThumb (NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation) released a comprehensive report about community gardens in New York City today. The report comes from a survey issued in 2009 and the first half of 2010, sent to 500 community gardens, with a nearly 50% response rate.
The 2009/2010 NYC community garden report attempts to answer a number of questions, including:
- How many community gardens are there today?
- How many grow food, and which crops?
- How does one join a garden in my neighborhood?
- What kinds of partnerships with schools and community groups do gardens have?
- What types of events take place?
…and a lot more. (full disclosure, I am an author on the report)
To make this massive amount of information a bit more manageable, digestable, and fun, Eric Brelsford and I created GardenMaps.org and mapped it all. This map lets users look at each surveyed item spatially and compare two items at once – for example, gardens that compost AND partner with schools, or gardens that grow food in the Bronx. It also lets users add a few political borders.
Thanks to the Food+Tech Hackathon, we had incredible input from designer Hao Lin, coding help from Megan MacMurray, and general help and advice from Wendy Brewer of Green Maps.
The report and interactive webmap are for exploring the depth and magnitude each community garden has, no matter what size. With their unique histories of greening where there was no green, squatting on vacant land, and neighborhood revitalization, community gardens maintain an important position in our city’s landscape – physically, socially, and economically.
Visit gardens often between the months of March and October to experience the diverse, community-generated flora, fauna, events, activities, and opportunities that community gardens offer. Join one if you live nearby. The more we join, use, and visit community gardens, the deeper their roots grow, the better chance they have of longer land tenure. The GrowNYC/GreenThumb report has a great concise history section that puts today’s community garden land issues and politics into context. Many gardens have winter hours and activities, for example the Prospect Heights Community Farm has winter composting hours, and several gardens around town are host sites for this year’s MulchFest. Dig in!
Big thank you to everyone who contributed to and helped with the survey, report, and map. Feedback is welcome!
