Mike Cox is one of those people with the gift of making others happy. His smile invites smiles. He loves Jesus and hymn singing. He’s a Florida farm boy, born and bred, and a pretty terrific spinner of tales.
“Before you could leave my Daddy’s farm, you had to convince him that you could do everything a farm required,” he said. “So I was a Future Farmer of America and in 4-H. I had to learn it all, so I could show Daddy I was ready to leave.” He laughs. “And I didn’t want to go back either.”
When he did leave the farm, he took on an equally demanding job as a nurse. He finished his career in home health care, caring for five family members as they became ill. Both backgrounds make him an ideal volunteer in the community garden at Florida Christian Apartments in Murray Hill, which provides low-income housing for seniors. It’s work he enjoys, and he’s got the patience and the knowledge to back it up.
Three years ago, the courtyard in the center of the sprawling, six-story Edgewood Ave. complex was “nothing but weeds and fire ants,” said resident Emily Dale. Rain would wash through the lot, collecting debris, and run off into a storm drain, a problem common in many parts of the city. Missing her home garden and wanting all-natural produce that she learned to grow as a child growing up in Jacksonville, Dale asked the complex’s management for permission to start a garden.
They contacted Jon Jessup and Dennis Decker, two locals with a big ambition to bring sustainable gardens to Jacksonville. Our Fertile Earth Community Garden got a $2500 startup grant from OneSpark, most of which went to create a website. The used donated seeds and volunteer backs for the heavy work of establishing the garden, which became the city’s first public food forest.
Now, the half-acre garden yields a staggering amount of produce, captures the rain run-off, and creates community spirit – all with volunteer efforts and natural practices. And the fire ants are long gone.
“Things that we used to consider waste, we’re now realizing can be used naturally,” said Decker.
The secret is using the gardening methods of Hugelkulture and Permaculture, which redefine efficiency from the row crop model that relies on a large space, commercial fertilizer, pesticides and outside irrigation.
Hugelkulture, from the German, literally means “wood in land” and involves building hills to increase space, capture rain, and create compost. Here’s how it works: To build a hill, either from ground level or a trench of two or three feet deep, start with vertically placed pieces of wood or branches. Use wood that decomposes easily, like pine, but not cypress or cedar. Add grass clippings from non-fertilized yards or fields, leaves, compost, coffee grounds, and top with good dirt. Create a gentle slope and then plant both sides and the top. This effectively doubles the land mass.
Then the magic starts. The wood absorbs rain, releasing it in dry periods by evaporation to plant roots. The first plants are usually ground cover to fix the nitrogen. As the wood and compost decay, the soil becomes a microbial paradise. The microbes kill off pests with a vengeance, while at the same time creating a soil that makes plants healthy and productive.
Permaculture uses the land’s natural topography to take advantage of sun and rain runoff. Planting surface is added by going vertical. The highest points are for nut and fruit producing trees. The under stories are for plants that require filtered sun. This creates a “food forest,” a self-replicating, largely self-sustaining garden that mostly needs no watering. Of course, Florida’s July and August are hot enough that some watering is necessary. But the rest of the year, the garden is pretty much self-sustaining.
It’s that soil moisture that got rid of the fire ants naturally because the ants only like dry soil, said Dale. “We’ve worked very hard to keep this garden natural,” she said making her rounds one morning and checking to see that a worker pressure-washing the sidewalk wasn’t blowing cleaning chemicals into the garden. Dale learned how to garden naturally from her father, a Jacksonville businessman who came home every evening and gardened.
“When I was a child, the only thing we put on our garden was manure, which the local farms delivered for a small fee,” the 90-year-old Dale said. “Today, you have no idea what’s been put on your food.”
Right now Our Fertile Earth garden is exploding with growth: bananas, mulberries, elderberries, avocados, okra, kale, collards, pumpkins, pomegranates, citrus and fig trees, spinach, chard, herbs, potatoes, tomatoes, and lemongrass and hibiscus for teas or stir-fries, and more. Many of the plants drop their seeds and self-propagate. Or when a plant has finished a growing season, it is “chopped and dropped,” becoming compost for the next set of plants.
Once a month the 300 residents get a free meal that includes produce from their garden. Produce is also sold at a greatly discounted price in the store on the property.
Cox speaks of the garden with fondness and gratitude. “You know when most of us gave up our homes [to move into senior housing], we had to give up our lawns and gardens. What makes this place so special is that we have this garden to work in. Since I’ve learned about the benefits of organic gardening and the wealth of health it produces, I have become a vegan, and I’ve dropped 80 pounds.”
To volunteer or attend training sessions, see Our Fertile Earth’s Facebook page.
Diane Till, formerly a creative director in New York advertising agencies, is now a writer living in Jacksonville. Her latest book is a memoir, “Detours to Faith.” Lisa Grubba contributed research and editing to this story.
