One city block in Reading is about to become home to an urban garden much different from the typical backyard vegetable patch.
A nonprofit called PermaCultivate, which already grows plants and produce in a greenhouse inside a Reading park, secured a nearly two-acre plot that's been vacant for about four decades. This weekend it will host volunteers to break ground on the Reading Roots Urban Farm.
The farm won't be your typical community garden. For one thing, its fence will be comprised of 600 Osage orange trees. “It's going to prevent erosion. It's going to sequester carbon,” says PermaCultivate's managing director, Eron Lloyd. The trees can eventually be converted into biochar, a type of charcoal that nourishes soil.
“Our goal is to maximize food production,” Lloyd explains. Plans call for produce at the garden to be sold at a retail operation at the farm. PermaCultivate hopes to make fruits and vegetables more accessible to low-income neighbors by setting up a sort of work sharing program. Another idea is to set up a community supported agriculture network that can be paid for on a month-to-month basis.
Within a year PermaCultivate plans to take residents' food and yard waste – even by door-to-door collection. Along with organic waste from the farm, those collections will be composted for the farm and home gardeners who want to buy it for themselves.
“More so than growing food, we see our goal as training the next generation of urban farmers,” Lloyd says.
Source: Eron Lloyd, PermaCultivate
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen