Oct 4, 2024
Urban Oasis: Patchwork City Farms feeds impoverished Atlantans
An urban farm in an Atlanta lower income area is working to make healthy fruits and vegetables accessible to needy people.
Jamila Norman, founder of Patchwork City Farms, wants to shine a light on people growing the food and regenerating land in disadvantaged communities into productive soil producing fresh and healthy foods for all.
The 1.5-acre Patchwork farm is southwest of downtown Atlanta. Once an affluent part of Atlanta, the Oakland City neighborhood is bounded by freeways.
A diverse farm, Patchwork grows a variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs. Among its large catalog are baby greens, arugula, kale, Swiss chard, beets, carrots, eggplant, okra, peas, peppers, potatoes, radishes, spinach, winter squash, heirloom tomatoes and strawberries, as well as sprouts and flowers.
Fruit includes melons and strawberries, paw paws, pears, persimmons and figs. Norman plans to plant more fruit trees, likely including apples, plums and kiwi fruit.
Certified Natural Growing
Patchwork grows all its produce organically. Though using organic growing methods, Patchwork’s produce isn’t USDA organically certified. Instead, it employs Certified Natural Growing methods to make sure it’s taking care of the land in environmentally friendly methods conducive to healthy communities.
“We (humans) were organic before organic was a thing,” said Norman. “For me, it was about going back to how things were,” said Norman. Industrial agriculture’s herbicides and pesticides are a recent development because in most of the world’s history, people have grown food without chemicals, she said.
Norman and her neighboring growers learn about good growing techniques through community sharing, understanding what works in one farm won’t necessarily work in another. “It’s important to be open to that kind of experimentation and paying attention to your unique site,” said Norman.
To promote soil health, Norman’s operation does a lot of companion planting, crop rotations and composting.
Productive Soil
Patchwork plants onions in the same beds of broccoli, kale and collards. Onions repel insects that like to feed on Brassica crops. For tomatoes, Norman plants lettuce or rashes on either side of tomato rows because those plants aren’t competing for the same nutrients. Tomatoes also consume significantly more nitrogen than radishes, she said.
Because of the smaller non-monocultural cropping scale of her growing operations, Norman’s crops are exposed to many pests. After witnessing aphid infestation, instead of panicking about needing to treat the whole field to avoid losing all of the broccoli, Norman decided to pull those plants.
Using space more efficiently and getting more production out of a smaller area also helps with pest control, she said. “We have a lot more flexibility in being able to get rid of insect pressure without necessarily feeling like my whole farm is about to go under,” said Norman.
Because of crop diversity and healthy soil practices, Patchwork doesn’t experience a lot of pest pressure. Weeds, however, are another story. Norman must engage in hand-pulling. The company transitioned to a woven plastic mulch where the cover helps suppress weeds.
“We uncover the beds if needed to rotate the crop to the next part of the farm,” said Norman. “We implement a bunch of different techniques. I am always observing, figuring out what works best where. We make numerous adjustments within the season and year to year.”
Georgia Red Clay
Crop rotations help break the cycles of soil disease influenced by repeated plantings of the same crop or same crop families. “The focus is making sure our soil is healthy, robust and adding a lot of compost to it,” she said. “When you have healthy soil, you have healthy plants.”
Because of Georgia’s red clay soil is devoid of organic matter, Norman at the end of the season composts the plants’ residue and adds compost to the beds after every crop. Local tree companies supply wood chips for walkways while local mushroom farms and peanut hullers and shellers supply compost material. “It has been good being able to utilize those resources on the farm and help divert a lot of those nutrient-rich materials out of our landfills,” she said.
As urban environments contain many hard surfaces that cause a lot of runoff and chemical infiltration, Norman’s water engineering experience helped her take an empty lot and turn it into a productive farm that captures rainwater.
The farming of the land helps the impoverished communities. “It’s important for us to say we are taking land in those communities and transforming them into healthy and productive useful spaces by producing foods that are healthy, too,” said Norman. “It’s important to implement those sustainable practices in those communities that have suffered over the years from the ill effects of unsustainable operations in a bunch of different ways.”
Food is Life
Of Caribbean legacy, Norman grew up in a part of Atlanta where food options were limited. Her interest in farming began with some friends growing produce for her family.
In 2007, working as a state engineer, Norman farmed one acre on weekends and after work, sold her production in farmers markets. After being downsized, Norman continued part-time. Working with other neighborhood growers, she organized the Southwest Atlanta Growers Cooperative, which she was managed.
After that and a second site’s leases weren’t renewed, Norman purchased undeveloped land and began production in 2018.
The farm produces for working class communities with limited food options outside of corner stores and fast food. Older residents recalled a time of many backyard gardens, with visits to grocery stores only required for meat and staples.
“Food is life and is culture,” said Norman. “It’s what gives us the energy we need to be our best selves and to be healthy and not be in school hungry and malnourished. Communities that have been marginalized do understand the importance of food. They want good, healthy, safe and nutritious food. They have a legacy of that in their history. We just want to make sure it’s available and happens in the communities that need it.”
— Doug Ohlemeier, Assistant Editor