Farming Concrete: Harvest Map

Highlight gardens in , that grew in Update

This is the number of gardens that have been included so far in crop inventory.
Gardens ? 0
This is the total area under food production for the gardens selected. We currently only have area by garden, so we do not provide it when a variety is selected.
Area ? 0
The number of plants in each food-producing raised bed is counted by crop. A map of the garden is drawn to place these beds in the context of the rest of the garden.
Total plants ? 0
The total pounds are estimated using
1. the total plants by variety as found during a crop inventory and
2. the average weight harvested from a single plant of that variety as measured by participating gardeners.
Total pounds ? 0
The dollar value is calculated using the total plants or total weight by variety. Prices are from Whole Foods, current as of September 29, 2010 as these prices best reflect value of community garden produce, which is local and often organic.
Dollar value ? $0

____ community gardens in New York City grew an estimated ____ pounds of food in our tally of ____, which is worth $____ and made many a tasty meal.

Political Borders

This map shows an estimate of how much food is grown in the NYC community gardens included in our study so far. This is not a comprehensive map of all food in all gardens - just some of the food in a sample number of gardens, as recorded in the year listed.

Select a borough, neighborhood, and/or vegetable below.
Click 'Update'
The left sidebar will show you the results we've calculated so far this season, and the map will show you the gardens the results came from , while other gardens we've done inventories of will look like .

Farming Concrete is a three-year grassroots science project measuring food production in NYC community gardens and school gardens. There are over 500 community gardens in NYC, at least 80% of which grow food, and the number of school gardens in the city is growing rapidly.

Using simple record keeping methods, Farming Concrete works with gardeners as they record their yields. These numbers can be used to access resources, advocate for permanency, support the argument for more gardens, and more. By democratizing the data and research processes, Farming Concrete hopes to achieve greater access to and sovereignty over the power of information.

To carry out the project, Farming Concrete trained a team of community gardeners to train new gardens. With methods adapted from a similar study done in Philadelphia, gardens participate in one or both of two parts. The first is called Harvest Count, for which gardeners receive a free scale and harvest log and weigh their harvests by crop. The second, called Crop Count, is an inventory of the number of plants growing, per crop, for an entire garden. This is done one to three times in a garden throughout the growing season to account for succession planting. The average pounds per plant recorded by gardeners is applied to the number of plants recorded in the Crop Count to arrive at the estimated overall garden yield. This yield is then monetized using prices from Whole Foods to account for premiums on local produce.

Many thanks to our partners, GreenThumb (NYC Parks & Recreation), Just Food, and New York Restoration Project, for their time, support, and resources - they have been critical to making this project a success. We also thank our supporters, including NY Community Trust, William & Mary Greve Foundation, and Norcross Wildlife Foundation. The New School has also acted generously in providing us with student help.

We are very grateful for similar studies that took place in the past few years, measuring food production in community gardens in Philadelphia (UPenn 2009), Camden, and Trenton. We owe many aspects of our methodology to them.

We also want to thank Megan Gregory, PhD candidate at Cornell University, for sharing her work with us. She has and continues to offer critical guidance in methodology and implementation.

Why can't I click on the gardens? In keeping gardeners' privacy in mind, we've kept this map anonymous. We are enormously grateful for their help and participation and would not want to show more than what is necessary to make this tool useful. If you are a gardener at one of the participating gardens and would like your garden's name, address, etc. to be visible on the map, please contact eric (at) farmingconcrete (dot) org.
Why are only these gardens on the map? These are the gardens we were able to get to and map so far this season. We're still working hard to include all of the gardens that would like to be included so that we can get a fuller picture of food production in NYC community gardens.
How can I get my garden on the map? If you're a community gardener who would like to be on the map and receive a personalized estimate of food yield for your garden, please contact gardens (at) farmingconcrete (dot) org.
How can I volunteer for this project? To help us conduct crop inventory and make this map more complete, please contact volunteer (at) farmingconcrete (dot) org.
When will this be done/complete? 2012 will be our last official season.

Other information about the data:

Not all gardens participating in 2011 were community gardens, there were also school gardens and a small handful of backyard gardeners.
We couldn’t estimate yields for every crop reported. For example, some gardens recorded cilantro in square feet as opposed to number of plants. We do not have data on the average number of cilantro plants per square foot, and so could not estimate yield using our formula. If there was one plant per square foot, there would be 118 additional cilantro plants, yielding 426 lbs and $4,500 worth of cilantro.
Estimates based on crops weighed by gardeners. Not all crops were weighed, and not all yields were necessarily recorded. As such, this is a very conservative estimate.

The data above is a very limited view of what community gardens in NYC are doing. To get a better idea of the impact community gardens have on their neighborhood and to see a more complete list of the types of plants grown in them, please go to gardenmaps.org.

Looking for a place to start a new garden or open space? 596 Acres has a map of publicly owned vacant land that you might be able to use if you organize with your neighbors.