Cleveland has more than 160 community gardens within the city limits and that number is—pardon the pun—growing, and in the midst of urban redevelopment.

As the market garden coordinator for the OSU extension, Morgan Taggart is working with local gardeners to help them find lots, grow produce and sell it in local markets and restaurants.

GCBL sat down with Taggart to discuss fresh produce, local markets and why it’s hard to harvest watermelons in Cleveland.

Q: Explain a little what your role as market garden coordinator for the OSU extension is?
I teach a 10-week training program for market gardeners, and the first one was this spring. It began the second week of May and the course was Tuesdays at the Urban Community School on the Westside. We had 19 participants from all over the city of Cleveland. These were people who were interested in starting their own market garden and growing their own produce to sell.

Q: What other resources does the program provide for the gardeners?
The course covered small business skills and business plan training as well as urban agriculture. We also have a market garden seed grant program where we offered five grants to the participants. They could request funds up to $2,500 to help their business get started.

Q: How have the gardeners progressed?
At the moment I think we have five different market gardeners who are selling to City Fresh this year which is very exciting. Five different people who started their gardens on vacant land in the city of Cleveland who are selling produce to restaurants and City Fresh. We did it. We started the training program and now they are selling.

I think that in terms of finding land our market gardeners have been very resourceful. Some of them just drove around the city looking for a lot that is fenced in (because security is an issue in an urban environment). They have also forged relationships with businesses and private landowners to use vacant land in the city.

Q: I’m curious about community gardens in urban areas; most people think a city like ours is not conducive to growing.
We do screen every garden that goes into the City Fresh program to make sure the soil is safe to work with. One of the things that we cover in the course is soil contamination because that is our number one concern when gardening in an urban environment. We do conduct soil tests for the market garden sites and we screen for lead, chromium, cadmium, aluminum, and nickel at these sites. We’ve tested, including all the gardens, which is about 160 community gardens in the city, and only about five of them came back with high lead levels.

Q: How else do you help your local gardeners?
The other thing we do is we have a partnership with the city of Cleveland and Cartography Department and we can go back a figure out what was going on with the lot. Was there a business there or a residence?

After they have secured a lot or spot, what we really wanted the gardeners to think about is building the soil. Some of them have done rototilling. A lot of our gardeners have added a composting system or get compost from Great Lakes brew waste and start building up their soil and grow cover crops. Some of the sites are a little sandy or a little rocky and they are focusing on building the soil. And experimenting with different varieties, and what they can grow with the type of sun exposure and drainage.

Q: Is this a growing trend for people to be more aware of what they are eating and where it is coming from?
It is definitely a growing trend. I think that people are attracted to better taste and freshness. I think there has been a push not only to support local food but to support the local economy. Awareness of food economy and the idea of keeping money in the area drives people too.

There has been more education about our food system through things like Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan at NY Times about the current state of our food system and how it works and operates. I think along with scary things like mad cow, people are getting a glimpse into what their food system has become over the last 50 years. Local grown is an alternative to that and has economic as well as environmental impacts.

It will be interesting to see if oil prices keep rising what impact that will have on the food system because most food travels something like 1,300 miles before it gets to our plate. I think people come to purchase local food for many reasons.

Q: Do we eat enough fresh produce in this area?
There are a lot of places in the city of Cleveland that qualify as food deserts where there is not access to fresh foods at grocery markets. In some neighborhoods, people depend  on the corner stores or convenience stores for food or they are surrounded by fast food. It is our hope that community gardens can be that provider for fresh foods.

We find that 95 percent or our gardeners give away food to their neighbors and food pantries. It has a ripple effect in the community. It is a way to insure food security where there isn’t any alternative. The gardeners average about $1,000 a year in food savings.

Q: What size are the lots for these gardens –are they large enough to be profitable for the gardeners?
I’m not sure whether these folks will be able to draw sole income yet. I know it is a supplemental income. We are not sure they can quit their day jobs. It is more of a passion for these folks. We will see where it goes from there, and we will see how their farming empires expand. We don’t have the data yet, but we will have more information after this year with our five grant recipients.

The other thing is to work out for a new gardener is: where to sell the produce once they harvest it? One of the challenges is that these market gardeners do have relatively small lots at this point, so figuring out how much they can supply and who will take that supply is important. They might not be able to supply a farm stand at Shaker Market for the full season. One of the things that we encouraged them to think about is forming a co-op or distributing produce together. Or, work with a restaurant that doesn’t need 20 cases of tomatoes every week or supply the Fresh Stops.

Q: Can we expect more local/garden produce at area restaurants?
We are working on that with particular restaurants. Many of our market gardeners have forged relationships with restaurants in the city, and are trying to work with that particular chef to determine what they need, what is important to be fresh. Some of our market gardeners have met with chefs and brought in the seed catalogs and ask them what varieties they would like to see this year like heirloom tomatoes – which is an item that doesn’t necessarily ship well.

I know that the Cleveland Ecovillage garden in Detroit-Shoreway has been growing a lot of tomatilloes and cilantro because they hope that they will work with some of the Latino restaurants in that area. The Kentucky garden is growing for Great Lakes Brewing Company and they have been working together to figure out what would be good produce to supply to them. We are trying to get out there and talk to the customer and figure out what they want.

Q: What are the most common crops in these community gardens?
In this area people like to grow tomatoes and a lot of greens. There is a lot of discussion about watermelons out there among our gardeners. When they get big and look good they tend to disappear. Our gardeners struggle with getting watermelons ripe enough and they swap stories. But otherwise, I’ve seen our gardeners grow just about everything