Community Agriculture Project

Bonito Street Garden

The City of Flagstaff’s Community Agriculture efforts began in 2009 with the Victory Garden Pilot Project - Bonito Street Community Garden. The garden, located at the corner of Bonito Street and Elm Avenue, provided more than 40 community gardeners an opportunity to grow their own food.  The Bonito Garden has very fertile soil and it has already had a full year of production; therefore, the gardeners reported an extremely productive 2010 season.  Gardeners grew; tomatoes, watermelon, herbs, potatoes, kohlrabi, kale, chard, lettuce, peppers, corn, squash, peas, beans, arugula, carrots, spinach, rhubarb, eggplant, beets, and more.  This year we were fortunate to have amiable weather conditions through October, giving everyone’s tomatoes time to ripen.  Gardeners reported that all crops did well. 

Early in the 2010 season there was a slight flea-beetle infestation, however, gardeners were able to eradicate them with a castile soap and garlic solution before any damage was done.  There was also very minimal loss due to aphids, mainly on cabbage family crops. 

Gardeners reported satisfaction regarding the amount they were producing, which definitely was making up a considerable amount of the fresh produce they were consuming at home.  Many gardeners reported a dramatic decrease in the amount of produce that they were purchasing at the grocery store because of their gardens.  These grocery store purchases they were making were mainly for specialty items, or out-of-season items that they are not able to grow such as mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes (early in the spring and summer before they are ripe here).

During the 2010 growing season, in addition to caring for and expanding the Bonito Street Community Garden, the Community Agriculture Project, coordinated by Flagstaff Foodlink, created a second community garden, located on Izabel Street in the Sunnyside neighborhood. The Community Garden Coordinator with the help of many dedicated volunteers put a great deal of energy towards the Izabel site; amending the soil, planting edible and native trees and shrubs, planting annuals, creating a garden sign, gathering materials and supplies, and building a “living fence.”

The Izabel Garden has great sun exposure and soil with not a lot of drainage, which proved to be great conditions for growing greens.  One gardener reported excellent success with turnip greens, lettuce, arugula, and kale.  Other gardeners reported success with peas, beans and sunflowers.  Tomatoes, herbs, squash, corn, and peppers were all grown as well, however they did not thrive as well as the others.  For getting a late start in 2010 and having such challenging soil, we were all very impressed by the productivity of this garden, however, we did not see the garden being productive enough at this point to be the main source of fresh produce for the gardeners.  With continued soil amending we strongly believe that the Izabel Garden has the same producing potential as the Bonito Garden.