We’re excited to welcome another year of community garden, the Pharm’s 26th. Save the date for the following meeting dates.
Sunday, April 21 at 12 pm (Earth Day potluck BBQ)
Sunday, May 19 at 12 pm
Saturday, June 22 at 12 pm
Wednesday, July 17 at 6 pm (potluck)
Wednesday, August 14 at 6 pm (virtual)
Sunday, September 15 at 12 pm
Saturday, October 19 at 12 pm
Saturday, November 9 at 12 pm
Interested in joining the garden? Find out more information here.
With a new garden season right around the corner, we’re pleased to see our composting efforts — and our longstanding partnership with the Park Slope Food Coop — showcased in the Linewaiters’ Gazette, a publication by the coop.
As written by Liora Fishman:
The Prospect Heights Community Farm (PHCF), on St. Marks Avenue between Vanderbilt and Underhill Avenues, stands as a testament to the power of collective environmental stewardship. The farm provides the opportunity to grow fresh produce, to share it with the local community via efforts like Victory Garden and a communal herb garden, and to teach neighbors about urban agriculture, plants and vegetables alike.
One of PHCF’s lesser-known green initiatives is a dynamic composting partnership with the Park Slope Food Coop, fostering a closed-loop system that transforms organic waste into nutrient-rich compost. In an interview with Compost Coordinator Brian Thompson, he explained how PHCF partners with the Coop to further the mission of sustainable urban living.
We’re proud of all the hard work from our composting teams who turn food scraps into fertilizer that enriches our soil. Check out the full article!
This garden season, Prospect Heights Community Farm celebrated 25 years. Here’s just a brief overview of some of the accomplishments this year!
This garden season, the Victory Garden crew harvested 133 pounds of produce like herbs, fruit, beans and greens (including 41 pounds of outside donations) and served 100 community members. We couldn’t have done it without our garden members’ generous harvest shares and the members of VG!
Victory Garden’s October harvest
Victory Garden’s July harvest
Thank you to all our members and volunteers and neighbors for a strong showing at this year’s Pumpkin Smash, celebrating 25 years! It was a beautiful November afternoon of grilling, community and of course, smashing — and diverting waste from our landfills.
A huge thanks to Foodtown, who donated 50 pounds of potatoes, both red and sweet. And finally, another big thank you to Casey, who snapped photos throughout the day. Visit our Instagram for more!
The garden’s Compost Team is gearing up for this year’s leaf drop, and we need your help! We’ll be collecting bags of leaves on Sundays starting this week and into December. Our goal is to collect 120 bags to keep us in good shape through next fall.
We’ll be accepting leaves bagged in clear plastic or brown paper bags. Please no twigs, trash or compost!
Join us to celebrate 25 years of community gardening and our end-of-season party at the annual Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash.
Come on out Saturday, November 4, from 12-4 pm (rain date: Sunday, November 5) to smash your jack-o-lantern and enjoy a hot potato.
Please see the flyer for more information, and continue below to learn about the history of this event, written years ago by Redelia N., one of our founding members, as dictated to her daughter and another founding member, Traci N.
In fall 1997, we cleared the garden of car doors and other parts — sofas, broken dishes, mugwort and of course, the dreaded knotweed and other debris. The following spring, with the assistance of Dan N. cutting the boards, we built new boxes during Memorial Day weekend, filled the boxes with wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil, and after that, the planting was on!
At a meeting during the early fall of 1998, one of our former members (John S.) suggested we have an end-of-season party to reward ourselves for all the hard work. Someone suggested after Halloween and invite the community too so they could recycle their tired jack-o-lanterns. Someone else suggested we smash them against the wall before adding them to our compost pile; yet another suggested we should have baked potatoes and other snacks.
We thought on what to name our event since we were throwing pumpkins, so someone came up with pumpkin smash, and since we were serving potatoes, it was a potato bake too. The name “Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash” was suggested, and everyone agreed.
We served baked potatoes — both white and sweet — and cold and mulled cider. Each member brought food stuffs for the event, even marshmallows for the kids and the kids at heart. Music was provided compliments of the Pantones (and in subsequent years as well) and with Stan B. and his gang when they were available. A simple flyer was made. It was posted around the neighborhood primarily by Joseph J.; other members posted the flyers in their building lobbies and under doorways.
Thus the Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash was born! It was not the idea of one sole person but a communal, group effort of the truly dedicated garden members. It has become one of our garden’s signature events.
Later on, in order to save our garden from destruction, a full contingency of garden members went to our local community board to elicit their support in the preservation of us as a community garden. We spoke of the various programs that we planned as a service to the community, such as youth gardening, movie nights, voter registration drives, pumpkin composting and other events.
In early October, our crabapple tree, which stood tall as one of the first things you see when entering the garden, was removed. It had been suffering from a fungal disease.
The crabapple tree has been around for longer than the garden! As Catherine shared in a previous meeting, we often take our trees for granted, but with an accumulation of stressors, they eventually succumb, so we must pay attention to our trees.
Thank you to Arborpolitan for their great care in removing the tree, the Pharmers who spearheaded this effort and came out that day and Traci for sharing photos of the before and after.
Please join us at the garden for Open Garden Day from 10-4 on Saturday.
We’ll be hosting a work day in the morning followed by a mini-BBQ/potluck. You’re welcome to bring snacks, side dish, dessert or drinks to share, and we’ll provide the grilled goodies.
All are welcome!
See you at the Pharm
You’re invited to PHCF’s Annual Plant Sale, where we’ll be offering PHCF homegrown tomatoes, herbs, vegetables, annuals and perennials, plus houseplants. We prefer PayPal or cash payments.
Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ll have available over the next two weeks:
You can view the full list of this year’s offerings here. Prospect Heights Community Farm is celebrating 25 years!