An urban garden -- precisely what we need more of. Photo courtesy of Tony Fischer Photography @ flickr.

It began with our tomatoes. As I’ve written before, my wife and I are avid gardeners and have grown tomatoes many times before but these – these tomatoes were proving difficult to grow. This was not due to the plants, but due to me and to the setting in which we were growing them: the rooftop of our apartment building in the city of Somerville, MA.

My wife and I had decided to grow tomatoes in containers on our roof for the same reasons many do: we wanted to continue our hobby after moving to the city, and we wanted fresh vegetables we had grown our selves. Much like catching a trout on a fly you yourself have tied, there is something immensely gratifying about this sort of self-reliance. The tomatoes just taste better.

But they did prove difficult. Growing tomatoes in plastic buckets on a black roof under the summer sun requires mastering the art of properly irrigating your plants. First we watered them too much. Then we watered them too little. I remember at one point standing over my plants, wondering at what I had done wrong, and looking enviously at the elaborate, automatic watering system my engineering neighbor had constructed and perfected for her tomatoes. Finally, we got it right.

Adapting to growing a garden on an urban roof, not a field in Vermont, proved to be a challenge. And I learned some lessons that help me to understand some of CLF’s work better.

We need to grow food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. As I hear more about urban agriculture growing in our cities, the more I am convinced that our cities are fertile ground for growing food. Cities are not only sites of consumption, but also of production, and are essential to a strong regional food system. Just as we support traditional New England farms, so too should we support community gardens, rooftop gardens, porch and patios plantings, and other urban horticulture. To eat in the city, we need to grow in the city.

As I look around, I see plenty of evidence that we’re on the way to making this happen.

Many of the staff at CLF are growing their own food: a few have plots in community gardens, one works for a CSA in Concord, MA, many have gardens, one raises goats, another a slew of barn animals, while plenty others have small porch or window plantings at their apartments and homes.

I know we’re not alone, either. Young people are turning to farming not just as avocation but as vocation. They’re tilling rural soil, certainly, but also planting new beds amongst our city streets. It’s a new generation, in more ways than one.

I also see more CSAs now than I ever noticed before. My wife and I have been members of several CSAs for a number of years, in Burlington, VT, and Boston, MA. Now, I see more access, in more areas, to the kinds of food provided by these CSAs than ever before.

We participate in food systems whether we choose to or not, by virtue of the fact that we all eat. And, as the old saying goes, you are what you eat. Phrased slightly differently, food is at the heart of many of our problems: our thirst for fossil fuels, our polluting farm infrastructure, economic inequity and the obesity epidemic. If we fix our food problem, we make it easier to fix some of these other problems as well.

In the current issue of Conservation Matters, there is an article about how CLF and CLF Ventures are working to improve our regional food system. As I said in my president’s letter, “sustainable agriculture, when applied to cities, makes them more resilient, economically vibrant and livable.”

Standing on my rooftop, viewing my tomatoes, this struck me as true: we need to grow more food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. We will be more vibrant as a region, stronger as communities, and healthier as individuals.

Photo courtesy of Putneypics @ flickr. Creative Commons.

A couple of weeks ago I met a young farmer near Rutland, VT who was stunned to be out plowing his fields in the month of March. At that time the fields are usually knee-deep muddy, if not still covered in snow, ice or the slow-melting crust of the long winter. He was stunned:  if he plows and plants now, what’s going to happen next? How will his crops respond? Should he wait, for something more like a “normal” planting season to return?

These are questions that thousands of us gardeners across New England have been struggling with lately, in the wake of an unseasonably warm spell, and a winter that broke records first for early snowfall, and then low overall snowfall and high temperatures. Looking out our windows when the weather warms, we are drawn to one place: the soil – we long to get our hands in the dirt, and smell the wonderful scents of spring. For the farmer I mentioned above, the decision wasn’t just recreational or therapeutic; the crops for the CSA he recently founded with his partner were at risk. He had to plan carefully, not knowing what lies ahead.

In Vermont, where my wife and I have tended our garden for years, you start your seeds on Town Meeting Day and plant on Memorial Day. But this year, that timeline is way off.

Recently, for the first time in 22 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map charts average winter minimum temperatures, or cold intensity. What this map confirmed in VT is what we have observed anecdotally across New England and the United States: that our world is warming, as this map by the Arbor Day Foundation shows vividly. For the first time in VT, for instance, zone 5b has crept into the southern edges of our state. And the south coast of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts includes zone 7a, which is also found in Northern Alabama. The commentary on the new map carefully avoids concluding the shifts are the results of climate change; most gardeners will draw their own conclusions.

For me, the question of whether or not to plant returned me to a question about my greenhouse. Previous owners of our house built a small, traditional greenhouse that helped with the slow and wet transition from winter to spring, with consistency and in the same place for 15 years. It succumbed to the elements recently, and we decided to try smaller, portable hoop houses over our raised beds. They’re more suitable to highly variable temperatures. Where once a rigid structure suited our weather and our needs, that’s no longer the case. We need to be more flexible. More adaptable.

This winter ranks as the 4th warmest nationally since the late 1880s, when climatologists began keeping records. People still consider Memorial Day as a safe time to plant, but the average last frost day is 10 days prior, as Vern Grubinger, University of Vermont Extension vegetable and berry specialist, said in this Brattelboro Reformer article.

What happens when you plan according to tradition, but the seasonal calendar is out of kilter? What happens when convention no longer suits our contemporary reality? These are questions of adaptation, and they apply to backyard gardens – and also flood zone mapping, transportation, and almost everything we do in the natural world. We have to start building differently, for a different world.

And so I wanted to ask you – CLF members, and members of the public alike – how are you adapting? What have you done with your garden this spring?  Are you anticipating odd weather in the months ahead? How will you respond? Please share your comments here and share your photos with us on our Facebook page.

I look forward to hearing from you. And happy planting.