They call themselves the Southwest Child Rebel Gardeners. They’re a group of students from George W. Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia, and their stomping ground is the Pepper Pride Garden.
MoreHow to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachersby Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle(Timber Press, 224 pp., $24.95, June 2010)
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Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild Worldby Emma MarrisBloomsbury Publishing (2011), $25
"Rambunctious gardening is proactive and optimistic; it creates more and more nature as it goes, rather than just building walls around the nature we have left,” proclaims author Emma Marris in the first chapter of Rambunctious Garden.
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Fear that cooler temps and shorter days will put an end to your garden-fresh produce? Fear no more, my friends, fear no more. The time is ripe for an office garden.
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When you think of hops, you think of beer. After all, the viney, aromatic plant is what makes beer taste like beer: Without the distinctive bitterness, your favorite brew would taste like alcoholic pancake syrup.
But if you think about where they come from, you probably don’t think of Philadelphia.
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How can you get back to the land when you don’t have any land to get back to? In his new book, The City Homesteader: Self-Sufficiency on Any Square Footage, Scott Meyer shows acre-less urban- and suburbanites how to grow and preserve their own food, raise small livestock and become ever more self-sufficient—from composting to
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One of the upsides to container gardening is that crops are less likely to succumb to soil-borne illnesses. Unlike traditional farmers and gardeners, container gardeners have the option of starting with fresh, sterile soil each year. If last year’s crops lost the battle against blights, wilts or mildews, then it’s smart to ditch the dirt,
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Sigh. It’s that time of the year again—days are on the wane and winter is on its way. As much as I’d like to replace the contents of each container with a promising crop of hearty root vegetables, the Earth’s revolutions (and my neighbor’s bathroom addition) shelter my little blue roofdeck from most of the
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Happy together: Companion planting can increase the yield and the health of your urban gardenby Char Vandermeer
It’s time to dust off those planters, rinse out the watering cans and get some dirt under your nails. If your garden looks anything like mine—a sea of containers atop a South Philly roof—then you’re constantly struggling to maximize
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Nic Esposito and a new generation of urban activists are starting in the garden
Answering a question about his favorite things to grow is a challenge for Nic Esposito. After a few nods to his Italian heritage—eggplants, tomatoes—he settles on a response that speaks volumes about the work he is doing in his West Philadelphia community: “I love
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