A fledgling urban garden downtown has high hopes of helping to provide affordable food to locals.
North Street Urban Garden - the brainchild of Colby Gray, a landscape architect from Ball State University and Jason Donati, the director for the Department of Stormwater Management - is working to provide a sustainable source of vegetables by offering their abandoned house lot for cultivation. The garden has already planted more than two dozen vegetable types, as well as a handful of herbs and flowers.
Donati, who has had several years of experience with urban gardening for AmeriCorps, said that the purpose of the projects is to demonstrate how easy it is to grow your own food cheaply.
"It's to show people that you can grow stuff without all the fancy tools and gadgets," Donati said.
Such fancy tools and gadgets include fertilizers and pesticides, which for the most part the gardeners has sworn off.
"Miracle Grow?" Donati said incredulously, when asked if he used it. "That's cheating."
Instead, Donati uses other techniques, such as composting to help fertilize, using straw to keep weeds down and intermingling marigolds and certain herbs with the vegetables to keep pests away.
There are certain obstacles that come with trying to grow a plant in an old house lot, such as the condition of the soil.
"The biggest barrier with urban gardening is the non-eco-friendly demolition of houses," Donati said. "As in, they mostly just leave the foundation of the house."
Because of poor demolition, pieces of broken glass, concrete, bricks and other debris have to be removed by hand before a plot is ready to be planted.
"The overall goal right now is to build a thick layer of organic matter on top of the soil," Donati said.
The garden, which is located at 358 E. North Street in downtown, is a quick bike or bus ride from Ball State's campus. Students interested in donating time or resources to the project can contact Jason Donati at debo_donati@yahoo.com.
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