I was just reading Gaia’s Garden, the second edition. In this new edition Toby Hemenway includes a chapter on Permaculture Gardening in the City. He talks about how, differing from rural locations, zones 3 and 4 in a city setting become the city itself and all of its resources. He talks about how in cities organic matter (OM) is generally looked at as waste, something to be gotten rid of. And that this is a great thing for the urban permaculturist because, often, we are able to access these resources for free.
I know a place near my house were someone has been dumping woodchips and other OM and I am familiar with Agrecycle here in Pittsburgh. I was wondering if any other Pittsburgh city dwellers have sourced places for chaep/ free materials???
I thought that it would be great if we shared those things here. Has anyone contacted the Pitts Parks Conservancy about this? The city???
Toby also mentioned websites that listed public fruit trees/ other edibles (so that the sity itself becomes our orchard!!). This sounds like a great resource and something that would be great for Pittsburgh. Has anyone started something similar??? I was just curious!! Thanks for sharing!
First thing that comes to my mind is going to the Strip District and getting all the buckets/containers that get thrown out by the grocers, and using those for planters/compost buckets.
I also once ate an apple off a tree on the Eliza Furnace trail!
Troy and I take the neighbors’ lawn clippings and leaves. We even heisted several lawn bags of leaves off the street in the fall.
There are also straw bales available behind CMU’s campus by April after spring buggy (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/buggy/Sweepstakes/Welcome.html).
For a little while Troy was asking cafes and the coop for their coffee grounds with no luck. We are now collecting grounds from our office.
If you have a truck, check Craig’s List. There is usually free horse manure listed if you can pick it up.
Hey, Asa!!! THanks for the great suggestions! Buggy race just finished this weekend, and I got a truck load of straw bales for the food forest site. There’s still more, if anyone is interested! Also, went got some manure from a contact via Craig’s list. She was SUPER friendly too! THanks!
Andy, thanks for the good suggestions, too! I just don’t get to the strip very often. Great resource, though.
More thoughts- A guy in Hazelwood working on the Hazelwood Urban Gardens just talked with a local landscaper who was cutting down trees/ limbs in the area and arranged to have the woodchips dumped right at one of the gardens! Thats pretty great and would probably help out a lot of people.
Also- got a TON of cardboard right from the bins outside of Construction Junction, though I recently learned that cardboard recyclers and even the city newpaper make money from their recycling, so many people dont want to give up their cardboard or end rolls.
Some Starbucks and other coffee shops save their coffee grounds for zealous gardeners! The Starbucks on the corner of Shady Ave. and Forbes is extra great. If you go at the end of the day they usually have a HUGE bag of grounds and don’t even look at you weirdly when you ask for them!