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City Farmer: Adventures In Urban Food Growing (2010)

by Lorraine Johnson(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1553655192 (ISBN13: 9781553655190)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Greystone Books

review 1: City Farmer, is a broad survey of the many organizations and locations involved in promoting food production in Urban spaces. The subtitle of the book is Adventures in Urban Food Growing, but the book was trying to cover so many things that there were few adventures presented in a way that really personalized the people involved.It almost felt like Lorraine Johnson was trying to straddle the differences between popular and scholarly non-fiction. However, despite the bibliography and selected websites at the back, and a few embedded references to other books, there was not enough hard data presented with proper source attributions to be a scholarly monograph on the resurgence of urban farming. I felt that the book would have been strengthened by following specific people... more or places, other than just herself, for longer periods of time to truly personalize the story. While I am glad that I took the time to read Urban Farmer, and am planning to add much of the bibliography to Mount Readmore (my name for the untamed wilds of my TBR lists), City Farmer struggled to hold my attention.
review 2: I'm not going to give this a star rating because I haven't read it fully. I checked it out from the library and simply read a couple pieces and skimmed some others. I think the author's voice is very approachable. The book's focus is: local, utilizing space effectively (vertical, roofs, balconies, front yards, etc), guerrilla gardening, community lots, changing how we view food, reconnecting. Though it's certainly nothing "new", I wanted to remind myself of this method as I prep my yard this autumn - sheet mulching for turning lawn into a veggie garden without digging:"- Mow the existing grass using the lowest setting on your lawn mower. No need to rake up the clippings; just leave them where they land.- Cover the area with a layer of cardboard or newspapers (if using newspapers, add a layer of approximately ten sheets thick; if using cardboard, a single layer is fine, though be sure to remove any staples and packaging tape).- Spread a 3 inch layer of soil and / or soil mixed with compost and / or well-rotted manure on top of the cardboard or newspapers.- Top it all off with a 3 inch layer of chopped, dead leaves.- Don't worry if, in spring, all of the cardboard and/or newspapers haven't completely decomposed; just dig planting holes through any cardboard or newspaper that remains." less

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