Chicago’s Urban Bees

...hives on a former Sears and Roebucks site. The Co-op provides job training to under-employed folks and sells a variety of products. I didn’t get a chance to visit it on my trip to Chicago, but hope to the next time I’m there. In other Chicago bee news, the Green Roof Growers just got a hive. Urban rooftops and abandoned industrial sites make a lot of sense for beekeeping, as many agricultural areas are contaminated with pesticides. Keeping bees i...

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Is Lead Poisoning a Risk in Urban Gardens?

...issue. But if the results of a University of Washington study on lead and urban agriculture are to be believed, we might not need to be as concerned. The researchers note that most vegetables don’t take up lead and that improving soil with compost greatly reduces the bioavailability of lead. You can read a summary of the results of this research paper here. Thanks to Joanne Poyourow of Environmental Change Makers for tipping me off to this resear...

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The New Urban Forager

...On a hot, humid day along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, in the shadow of four abandoned concrete silos, a maggot infested corpse of a pit bull lies splayed across a sheet of black plastic. Nearby, a pile of asphalt roofing material blocks the path I’m taking down to one of the most polluted waterways in Texas. Not a promising beginning to an urban food foraging expedition. (Read the rest of our foraging essay via Reality Sandwich)...

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Security

...But while we ain’t the gun-toting survivalist types here at the Homegrown Evolution homestead, we do have a security system. It’s a security system developed in the 19th century by tax collector and dog pound proprietor Louis Dobermann – the notorious Doberman Pincher. Last popular with coke dealing pimps and players in the late 1970s, Dobermans are powerful, fast, hyperactive, and combine occasional bad-assness with extreme sensitivity. Our Dobe...

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