Changing Perspectives on Local Food at Flatbush Community Garden

Above, okra seeds tumble into Christina Da Costa’s hands as Phil Rosenbloom cracks open a giant okra pod from one of the stalks on their plot.

Flatbush Community Garden members keep approaching Phil Rosenbloom and his wife Christina Da Costa to congratulate them on their okra pods. They are enormous, three or four inches long and about two in diameter. In fact, they are so huge that at this point, they cannot be eaten, or they would taste like wood. Instead, Phil and Christina are saving them for seeds.

So far this year, they have planted and harvested multiple varieties of cucumbers, hot and bell peppers, tomatoes both yellow and red, and lettuce.

“For the high months of the summer,” says Phil, “oftentimes we can get half our produce from the garden.”

For Phil, having the garden has taught him about more than just plants. He has learned about caring for the soil, and “there’s a lot about growing stuff here that’s specific to this particular ecosystem,” he adds.

How he looks at and uses food has also been transformed. At the supermarket, he points out, consumers prefer produce that looks perfect. Working in the garden and growing his own food, however, has completely changed his views on what counts as “usable food.” And at home, “we’ve started doing more canning and making jam to preserve food,” he says. “Pickles and stuff like that.”

Below, the okra seeds in Christina’s hands.

This is the final part in a series on the garden that ran throughout this week.

Elizabeth Whitman is a freelance journalist living in Brooklyn. She has written about issues ranging from participatory budgeting in New York City to the uprising in Syria and has also reported for Inter Press Service out of the agency’s United Nations bureau in New York.