Gemüse Korb
Welcome to an experiment to utilize urban space for food production. The gemüse korb (vegetable basket) is a mobile garden made from recycled grocery carts.
Gemüse korb began from my desire to have a vegetable garden in Berlin. As an apartment dweller and newcomer in town finding a plot of land in my Kiez (neighborhood) was challenging and so I began to think about potential alternative garden spaces.
The idea of having a vegetable garden on an urban street is appealing to me. The mobile and compact size of a shopping cart is perfectly manageable, not invasive, and entirely curious for growing anything, not to mention vegetables.
What relationship do the carts have to the streets they inhabit? Do they struggle to survive and are threatened by the urban environment or live in symbiosis with people and streets? Where do the carts thrive best? How do people related to the carts? What plants adapt well to the cart? How much can one yield in a season?
I decided to start with two carts. In one, I planted three German varieties of potato (see earlier post) and in the other, the famous Telltower Rübchen (a kind of turnip from Brandenburg, see earlier post.)
Throughout the summer I was delighted that many people pitched in to help me with this project. To get started, the carts were donated by the local Kaiser grocery store in my neighborhood along with a small sponsorship, which was used to purchase soil. The very popular Prinzessinengärten in Kreutzberg supplied me with potato ‘seeds’, neighbors watered the carts when I was out of town, and friends joined gemüse korb on facebook as magically as weeds spring up in cracks on the sidewalk.
Gemüse korb became a sort of provocative moving street sculpture which I enjoyed watching evolve over the summer. I observed several things.
Time and time again I have seen urban agriculture fulfill a need for humans in the urban environment to interact with where their food comes from, an instinct in us squelched by our training to seek food in well lit grocery isles. Perhaps it awakens the dormant hunter-gatherer in our dna to touch and smell plants that bear food. I observed people double-taking, stopping, touching, posing and taking photos in front of the grocery carts. And I was proud that something so simple could provide a moment of diversion, wonder, and perhaps pleasure for people on the street.
Of course just as many people walked on by without a glance, but perhaps this is the nature of street culture and the people who inhabit it. Berlin, is at times, just like the busy New York city streets where a man can stand screaming on a corner perhaps heard, but un-responded to. So can the gemüse korb blend in to the city mindscape, even on the most barren streets.
Another interesting occurrence was the bicycle that locked itself to the Rübchen cart. One day the bicycle appeared and after about a week of it not moving I began to suspect that it was abandoned. This proved to be true after a note I left on it went unanswered and was eventually washed away in a rainstorm. From that point on in my mind the cart and the bicycle became permanently mated.
The provocative nature of gemüse korb peaked while I was away for several weeks. I returned to find that both carts had been vandalized. This reminds me of Jane Jacobs observation that city streets are safest when the community is watching. I wonder if it would have happened if I had engaged more people and friends on facebook to look after it.
The first case of the Rubichen’s is a little sad. They were parked and locked in front of a house on a cobblestone street where there has been off and on construction for the last year. I suspect that some of the construction workers were disgruntled at the cart for being in their space. When I returned to the cart, all the dirt and clasps were removed and the cart was filled with trash.
The potato cart was not in much better condition, although it was probably a less spiteful action that was inflicted. The potatoes were actually stolen. I returned to the cart almost fully intact and full of soil, but with all the plants torn up and the potatoes removed, except for a single plant, with four tiny potatoes still clinging to the fragile roots. But despite the loss, I admit a drop of satisfaction that someone out there had an eye on the carts and a motivation to take the potatoes, which after all, were growing in a public space, relatively unmonitored for several weeks. Who’s to say they weren’t for public consumption? I hope they made a tasty meal of it.
So today, the beginning of autumn marks a new cycle for the carts. In the old potato cart, I planted an heirloom variety of yellow radish from Austria called Helios. I believe the radish will grow slowly over winter and will be ready to harvest in the spring. Next week in the other cart I will plant another heirloom, round white radish typical of central Europe.
Now the challenge will be to figure out how to keep them watered and protected all winter long. Where will they live? I don’t know yet. You can stay posted by visiting the face book site for Gemüse Korb. You can also learn how to start your own mobile vegetable garden with the attachment here. Please let me know if you do.
