Growing Power

A friend told me about an organization in Milwaukee that is doing some great work on local food and sustainable agriculture. Its name is Growing Power.

There website is a bit funky, but my friend saw someone from Growing Power give a talk, and it sounds like they've developed a model other organizations should follow. The city of Milwaukee gave them a greenhouse that had gone out of business. With it, the organization grows vegetables all winter long without heating the greenhouse.

How do they do it? By using the power of compost. They shovel two feet of wood chips into the floor of the greenhouse. Then on top of that, a couple of feet of compost. Then they plant cool-season crops like lettuce, spinach, carrots, cabbage, radishes, kale, and broccoli into the compost. Each row of crops is covered with a mini hoop greenhouse.

Woodchips compost hot, and so as they release heat, they warm the "soil" above them enough for the vegetables to grow, especially when combined with the greenhouse effect of the miniature hoop. They cover the mini-hoops at night and uncover them during the day.

The organization is all about teaching others to do urban agriculture, as well as growing their own food and working with youth in the community. This is very much in keeping with the small-scale and local agricultural models that Bill McKibben discusses in Deep Economy, such as Intervale Community Farm in Burlington, Vermont.

I love learning about groups like Growing Power. They're a great example of people taking action to make our culture more sustainable.