Rebel Gardening: A Beginner's Handbook to Organic Urban Gardening

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The compost is organic matter that is always disintegrating, and micro- and macroorganisms are eating it and excreting more nutrients than they would otherwise if you had disturbed and disrupted these creatures’ activities and the natural balance. The first Rebel Gardeners project started at Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia through a partnership between the students, parents, teachers, and staff at the school, staff at the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative, and students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. The focus of the project was working with a nearby community garden that was threatened to be demolished. Young people were trained as ethnographers and documented the old gardeners stories, and in the process learned how to grow food, and why to grow food, themselves. In reality, Vitale, who says he had originally dreamed of becoming a tattoo artist, was a long way from the nearest wild river, mountain or lake, never mind his home. He was renting a house with barely any outdoor space in North London, and so he started growing chillies in a pot on the windowsill.

Exploring questions about human entanglement with the 'more-than-human' Real change comes from within• Sat Nadar Brainstorm Better, Bring Diversity to your Team, and Let Others Change your Idea--Answers to your Rebels at Work Questions This is a wonderfully laid out book and one that is ideal for those new to gardening or us that have been doing it for years. As new techniques are developed it is always good to have a look at how we can do more for our own garden and also the environment around us.Vitale, who was by then working as a videographer, agreed to make videos for Dowding, never imagining for one second that just a year on he would be celebrating the publication of his own book, Rebel Gardening: A Beginner’s Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden. Organic gardening expert Alessandro Vitale wants you to embrace the living soil and establish your own city eden where creatures and plants can coexist, in harmony with our modern lives. He shares his low-cost and organic approach with all the essential guidance you will need, including his top 50 plants for beginner gardeners, with a plethora of information on how to plant and look after them and how to make the most of all your produce. Learn how to make vegan honey with dandelions, establish a micro-orchard, or brew a natural antibiotic from garlic. This is the ultimate beginner’s guide to establishing and tending an organic kitchen garden in any urban space, no matter how small, written by the YouTuber and TikToker known as Spicy Moustache. Quirky, cool and rammed with tips for getting started and keeping going growing your own food, the book contains a quote early on that I think captures something of Vitale’s essential spirit and explains why his social media channels have a combined following of over 3.7 million and rising.

Children cannot enjoy the gifts of nature if adults are saying one thing (get outdoors) and doing another (staying inside) Add the cauliflower, onions, carrots and celery and simmer for 10–15 minutes, until the veg is cooked but still firm. I wish someone had told me sooner that gardening was a learning activity. Only by paying attention to how the plants behave under different conditions can you improve your gardening success rate. If you get into it, gardening is a deeply analytic activity. After school, Vitale worked for a local company making handmade shoes, and it wasn’t until he moved to London in October 2015 that the seeds his grandfather had sown sprouted.Add another layer of well-matured compost, tamping it down by walking over it to make sure it’s firm. While walking on it, you won’t have to worry about compaction because the soil is strong enough to support the construction. Finding new ways to prioritise kinship Regulars Community - News from the Resurgence Community• Susan Clark This story matters because Alessandro Vitale – or Spicy Moustache as he is known on social media to his three-million-plus followers – is a content generator whose whole life now revolves around urban gardening with a mission to grow almost all his own food, and an equally strong mission to let nothing go to waste. Do you live in the city and yearn for the space and time to grow your own food and live more connected with nature and the seasons? Rebel Gardening shows that anyone can grow a garden of delicious organic fruit and vegetables, wildlife-friendly wildflowers and abundant herbs in absolutely any urban space with a bit of know-how.

Place the cabbage in a large mixing bowl. Blanch the cabbage with boiling water, being careful that the bowl is big enough to fit the water in. You don’t want boiling water spilling all over you. Rebel Gardening should be considered the handbook for sustainable gardening. Alessandro teaches readers how to do everything necessary, including the reasons why it should be done that way. He teaches by example and shares his own successes and failures. I find him to be incredibly thorough in his explanations. Bring the vinegar or cider to a rolling boil in a large pan and add the cloves, bay leaves, mustard seeds, peppercorns and salt. I've been following Alessandro, aka Spicy Moustache, on Tiktok since I've been on the app. His deep voice caught my attention first and his urban gardening tips and zero-waste attitude kept my attention. Transfer the cabbage and spices into a sterilised jam jar and pour over the brine, making sure all the cabbage is covered. You may need to weigh it down to keep it submerged. Put the lid on, but don’t close it too tightly, because you want the CO2 to escape.

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Begin by adding a layer of less-decomposed compost (see Note, below), which is less mature and less rich in nutrients, to a raised bed. Alternatively, you could add a mix of mushroom compost, mature horse manure and/or store-bought compost. Organic gardening expert Alessandro Vitale wants you to embrace the living soil and establish your own city eden where creatures and plants can coexist, in harmony with our modern lives. He shares his low-cost and organic approach with all the essential guidance you will need, including his top 50 plants for beginner gardeners, with a plethora of information on how to plant and look after them and how to make the most of all your produce. Learn how to make vegan honey with dandelions, establish a micro-orchard, or brew a natural antibiotic from garlic.

It was so busy and grey and cold compared to Italy, and I realised I really needed to find a way to be in some part of Nature to survive it,” he says. Some things just take time. Plants have to settle into their new environments. Weather varies year to year. My transplanted rose bush only gave one weak flower the first year in its new location. But now it’s a reliable producer, if still not as robust as its sun-blessed twin. And so it is with organizational change. Expecting immediate results should be a rookie mistake, and yet we see it everywhere. I often think the most successful change efforts are the ones that people don’t quite realize are happening. Tiny pivots accumulate and without sturm und drang the organization finds itself in a better place. Rebels who want instant ego gratification normally aren’t willing to take the tortoise approach. And so their garden doesn’t grow. Picture a little boy out foraging and fishing in the land and lakes close to his small-town Italian home with his beloved maternal grandfather, Pietro, whom he remembers as someone who lived his whole life aligned with Nature. Did you know cardboard could kill weeds for you? It’s just one gardening practice that Alessandro Vitale, a Londoner by way of Italy with a lifelong passion for growing things, champions in his new book, Rebel Gardening: A Beginner’s Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden, for both its regenerative benefits and novice friendliness.

In modern society, I feel like growing your own food and trying to be self-sustaining is the ultimate act of rebellion!” Vitale writes—hence the book title. It’s also something that can be taken on by anyone, anywhere, he argues, including in a tiny front yard or on an apartment balcony. Vitale should know: His rental’s 26-by-16-foot garden produces enough fruits and vegetables that he doesn’t have to shop for them anymore, and that’s without the help of chemical fertilizers or tilling the soil. I have been gardening for years, growing up helping on my parent's allotment before then growing my own plants and vegetable. I now have a mix of vegetables, fruit and flowers in my garden and the benefits for me are great. It helps with my mental health as it is a serene place and I can stop and relax my mind as I potter around in the garden or just sit and look. One of my main inspirations and gardening heroes is Charles Dowding, who taught me all I know about a method called No-Dig Gardening, where the principles focus on not disrupting the life within the soil.