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Urban Guerilla Gardening on an Entire City Block in South LA

John from http://www.growingyourgreens.com/ shares with you an entire city block in South Los Angeles that is now growing food. In this episode John shares with you the results of a guerrilla gardening project that was installed in South LA in August 2013 by over 100 guerrilla gardeners. You will discover how this project looks about 1/2 year later and if residents of the area are continuing to use the raised beds to grow food.


Do you think its a good idea to install raised bed gardens for people so they can grow their own food if they choose? Do you feel most people value fresh food from the garden?

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Some years ago the MO Well Fed Neighbor Alliance

would come to your house, if you had a yard or some space you weren't using and they would plant it, tend it, raise food and give you a share of it. The rest was distributed around in this cooperative network.

What made them kinda special is they had evaluated all of the land in the community and they would evaluate your land to determine what crops would do best there. Therefore they had efficient production of each type of crop and with the share/swapping, everybody involved would get a wide variation of produce.

I was prepared to showcase them in our community and get more folks involved but....

....but somebody told them we are the evil conservatives. This was a leftist thing. So that door closed with a bang. Even hit me on the ass on the way out. See, apparently some conservo-clown had victimized them and called them "stupid socialist libtards" which utterly alienated them to libertarians.

Another example of neoclown hate destroying a perfect relationship.


Slaughts31's picture

Thank you for sharing

I really enjoyed this episode, and this guy's enthusiasm for growing. We do have favorable growing conditions in SoCal that make it so we can grow year round.

We are only in our second season of growing, and learning pretty much never stops. We have had some great/abundant/delicious harvests in the side-yard but also a few tragedies. There's always more that can be done!

Let the farmers handle it.

I think many people believe that food production has become something they are unsatisfied with. Some believe too many pesticides are used, others that the food comes from too far away, GMOs, etc. But to receive the type and quality of food that you desire doesn't require you to dedicate yourself to producing your own food.

Farmers can handle all of your demands, but the government has to get out of the way. If you demand it, we can supply it. But unfortunately with government interference, it is difficult to know exactly what people want. Because we determine demand by price, government interference affect price in more ways most can imagine.

Take corn in the USA as an example. 2011 we had 84 million acres, with 50% being dedicated to ethanol use. That is 42 million acres of wasted land. Put that into other more useful crops and the price of food will plummet.

Hey Brigger, this is off topic

But I tried to get ahold of you with a private message a while back. Can you try sending me one? Or should I try another one? I'm down in Chile at the moment and will probably be in your area soon, so I wanted to touch base.

John has a great youtube gardening channel

He shares tons of tips on "raw eating," "growing and eating greens," and John is also an avid "juicer," and he does tons of "juicer reviews" and even has a site where he sells or helps sell juicers. He is a fantastic guy. Gotta check out his channel.

LittleWing's picture

I like the idea of community gardens!

Have you seen The Incredible Edible Town?

Incredible Edible Todmorden from haymedia on Vimeo.

Website: http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/


Fish Poop!

Get how to aquaponics info and training from our site. Learn sustainability to support yourself and while feeding hungry kids around the world.This year we got another surprise at the Aquaponics and Earth Sustainable Living Farm. Due to heavy traveling schedules, we put our crops in one month late but according to local gardeners our crops are at least a month and half early.

What happened? -- We developed what we call, "super fish mulch." Everything we put into the mulch grew like crazy! We have been eating tomatoes for over two months and most of the plants produced fruit within a couple weeks of planting, another breakthrough using fish waste at the A.E.S.L. micro farm!


BMWJIM's picture

Just started doing this behind

the motorcycle shop. 2 months in and the system is settling down and everything is looking very good. Created a 2x5x1 grow bed and a 50 gal aquarium. Have 7 bream in the aquarium and have been eating lettuce at about 2 head per week. Tomato plants are looking good and cucumbers are just starting to produce. Have the first butternut squash as of this morning. Watermelon not doing so well but the first couple of months was very difficult getting everything at the right levels.

As an experiment this is quite fun. Still does not satisfy the way my greenhouse and large garden does although I may try it on a slightly larger scale at my home.



great idea...

Will be killed by corporate dollars though.

If the people don't depend on the corporations for survival then the whole game falls apart... and we can't have independent & self-sufficient people running around like they're not slaves. It sends the wrong message.

At their inceptions, the #Liberty, #OccupyWallStreet and #TeaParty movements all had the same basic goal... What happened?

Will not be killed by corporate dollars.

We out number them.


Sometimes I wonder who you consider to be "we" and "them"


I would be concerned about pollution

from the street, the passing vehicles, dogs, trash, and strangers like John touching my kale.

I use this:

Environne Fruit & Vegetable Wash

Purified water, natural cleansing agents (derived from plant oils(berries and coconuts)), polysorbate-20 (derived from sorbitol/berries and plums), grapefruit seed extract, lemon and orange extract.

Freedom is not: doing everything you want to.
~ Joyce Meyer

This is an awesome idea.

This is an awesome idea. Gardens are most likely the single most important aspect of being free, even above firearm ownership. If you can make your own food it becomes much harder for the government to control you or make you desperate enough to be on their assistance.


That was interesting

seems like the project should have been a volunteer project people do themselves rather than the government being involved. Those who wanted the boxes would be more likely to have cared for the boxes, those not interested wouldn't have the boxes gathering trash.

Hope they can figure out how to make it work because it is a good idea.


I think it's a great idea. Thanks for the post.

I think it would be great in any area (urban or suburban), not just a city's downtown area - although there, too!

It was unclear who owned and was responsible to maintain the area between the sidewalk and road. Anyway, I don't think you should have to have a raised bed on your property if you didn't want it. But if you did, maybe it could work something like Habitat for Humanity.

From a group of volunteer gardeners & carpenters (or anyone handy enough), small teams could be matched up with people wanting a raised bed in their yard. Maybe the people would even have the means (and could donate money) but just not know where to begin. Or maybe they would only be able to contribute their time and labor. At the least, they'd end up with one garden bed (maybe 2 x 4 like in the video) planted with seeds or small plants and given instructions for care; at the most, they'd have learned how to make a garden bed and would add beds (or simply plant more on their own) and maybe become part of the volunteer team helping others.

~ John Muir

There You Have It

Responsibility for the parkways belong to the homeowner (and many nearby are owned by landlords), but the city won't let you do anything to block access from a parked car to the sidewalk, and they won't let you put in trees or remove "their" trees, if any. They hassle property owners to the point where many give up the idea of trying to maintain the parkway as part of their landscaping.

Personal responsibility coupled with zero rights is a recipe for failure. The best-looking parkways usually belong to homeowners who haven't found out, yet, that they are violating the law or who have chosen to ignore it.

Incidentally, many of the streets of Los Angeles are lined with carob trees ("Jacob's Bread"), because activists in the war on poverty thought growing them would help supplement residents' diets. They drop pods on the sidewalk that can become a hazard to walkers, bikers, and skateboarders, and have roots that can crack the pavement. But you can't cut them down!

One of the WORST government-run errors is that they plant tall trees under power lines, which on some streets run above the parkways, and then butcher them when the trees get too tall.

What do you think? http://consequeries.com/

reedr3v's picture