INWOOD — Much has been written about a lack of access to fresh food in Upper Manhattan amidst the fried food joints and sugary-snack selling bodegas that dot the area.
But for people living on an Inwood block, all they need to do is walk onto their sidewalk to see a crop of fresh snap peas, fava beans and cherry tomatoes and get a whiff of farm life in the big city.
“It means a lot to be able to come here and see the plants growing and teach our kids what it’s like to be in nature, not just the concrete jungle,” Maria Rosa, an Inwood resident native of the Dominican Republic, said.
“When I was growing up [in the Dominican Republic,] we had sugar cane and pineapple growing in our fields and I never questioned where food came from, it came from us,” she said, fingering a delicate pod of peas covered in mesh wire in one of approximately ten miniature farms along the residential street.
The location of the crop is being kept secret at the request of residents.
Rosa said men who live and work nearby first planted the vegetables in the soil around the sidewalk trees as a lark a few years ago. Although the land is too small for sugar cane and pineapples, the efort became more of a community project once the first harvest of peas and tomatoes was seen to be bountiful.
According to Rosa, about eight people who live on the block now share responsibility for watering and pruning the gardens.
When DNAinfo visited the plots last week, two young boys stood peering into one of the more lush tree pits, eyeing the unripe cherry tomatoes hungrily.
“Can we eat them?” they asked an elderly woman who stood nearby and shooed them away in Spanish. She later pulled apart a snap pea and gave them half each.
The miniature farms are the latest community agriculture venture to be discovered hidden in plain sight in northern Manhattan.
The Parks Department recently razed a farm discovered in Highbridge Park last month, initially voicing concern about the safety of eating such vegetation and later saying they destroyed the farm because farming on private land is illegal.
According to Parks, the department has jurisdiction over trees in this instance, but not tree pits.
“In terms of doing things like planting flowers in a tree pit,” wrote a Parks spokeswoman in an email, “Parks doesn’t object to things like that unless it is threatening the health of the tree.”
For now, the gardens will remain planted along the bustling and decidedly non-rural stretch of Inwood.
Rosa said she has no concerns about eating food that is grown in soil near traffic, garbage and the regular neighborhood dog that might relieve itself nearby.
For her, the only concern is when someone will yank too many tomatoes or beans from the garden without asking.
“I plan to make a gorgeous salad one day soon,” she said. “I’ll have to keep my eye on them.”
