Grow Memphis – Memphis Flyer

poppet with a camera/Flickr

This week, prospective gardeners will not only be able to check out books on gardening at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, they can also check out seeds.

The Grow Memphis Seed Library at the Central Library opens at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 11th. Through it, customers may “check out” fruit, vegetable, and flower seeds for free. Once those seeds are planted, tended, and harvested, customers will return some seeds from their produce to the library. Grow Memphis will maintain the seed library.

“Certain areas of Memphis have been referred to as ‘food deserts’ where fresh produce is not readily available, but the Grow Memphis Seed Library is a free and easily accessible resource for customers to get and grow their own produce – perhaps in flower pots or their own backyards,” said Jessie Marshall, business and sciences department manager. “The seed library will also encourage Memphians to grow their own food and eat healthier by giving them access to seeds at no cost.”

Each week, master gardeners will be on-hand at the seed library to answer questions, and they’ll also host a few Explore Memphis 2016 programs. There’s a Grow Your Own workshop for teens on Wednesday, June 22nd and a Seed Saving and Starting 101 workshop on Tuesday, June 28th.

“Our objective each day when we open the doors of Memphis Public Libraries is to help customers connect, learn, and grow. New programs like the Grow Memphis Seed Library encompass all three of these goals, and the impact is immeasurable,” said Director of Libraries Keenon McCloy. “Customers will be equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to become producers, instead of solely consumers. Also, there are no limitations based on socioeconomic status. Whether customers are seeking a new hobby or an essential food source, everyone is welcome, and there is no price tag involved. We are very excited about this project and the opportunity for Memphis Public Libraries to branch out in new and exciting ways.”

Joni Laney admits her chickens “do have a lot of doo-doos,” but that’s really why she got them.

Laney’s coop is a chain-link fence with an elevated wooden box in the middle, all of it about the size of two office cubicles. Last Saturday morning, it was filled with children offering up handfuls of feed to her chickens.

The chickens cackled, clucked, and strutted wide-eyed the way chickens do. But they seemed altogether unafraid of the tiny visitors. Meanwhile, Laney talked up chicken cooping to a group gathered in her backyard.

Children feed Joni Laney’s chickens during Saturday’s Tour De Coop bicycle tour.

If I squinted just right and applied the right dose of imagination, I could imagine I was back home in Middle Tennessee, set in a landscape of my rural upbringing.

Then, the fog of my imagination was broken, Laney’s voice was overpowered, and I was squarely back in Midtown Memphis. A FedEx jet wooshed and whistled overhead on its way to Memphis International Airport.

Laney’s Binghampton home on McAdoo Avenue was one stop of several on Saturday’s Tour de Coop, a bicycle tour of Memphis chicken coops, backyard beehives, and urban gardens. The tour, now in its second year, was a fund-raiser for GrowMemphis, a nonprofit that helps locals grow or raise their own food.

The tour was intended to get people out in the community and get them talking, according to GrowMemphis Executive Director Carol Colter.

“The more we do these kinds of outreach activities and the more we talk about them as a normal activity in our urban environment, it’s more accepting for other people to consider doing it,” Colter said. “A lot of people assume there are a lot of barriers and things they’re not able to do because they live in an urban environment. But when they come into contact with [those who already do it] and shake this person’s hand and talk to them they realize, ‘Oh, this isn’t so hard, and I can do this.'”

Urban gardening, beekeeping, and keeping chickens are not new ideas here. The city’s Unified Development Code made rules allowing and regulating the construction of chicken coops and beehives two years ago.

But it has taken root here, enough for Colter to call it “mainstream.” It’s a description that may be generous depending on who is asked. It is also hard to quantify. But consider that there are 27 urban gardens in the GrowMemphis network alone. Also, consider a closed Facebook group called Midtown Chicken People has 270 members.

Colter thinks that maybe the availability of vacant land makes Binghampton an urban gardening hot spot. Laney says being a diverse neighborhood helps, too, noting one neighbor keeps a rooster and another had peacocks.

She’s had her chickens for two-and-a-half years, she says, and she loves all the fresh eggs (“The yolks are so yellow!”). But the decision to get chickens in the first place was really about their, ahem, by-product. Her husband uses the chickens’ manure in a huge community garden filled with bright red tomatoes, strawberries, and tons of other edibles.

“My job is to take care of the chickens, and he gets the doo-doo and takes it to the garden,” Laney says. “He just wheelbarrows it up the street and right into the garden. It’s really good for the soil.”