Punk Rock and all that Grows

Written by Hilda Gabriela Thursday, 14 January 2010 09:55

Can the entire human race live off of cactus alone? According to garden anarchist, Adriana Martinez, you bet your green thumb it can.

On any given day you are just as likely to find Adriana tending to her bed of home-grown fruits and vegetables as you are of finding her in the first row of a punk show. Through her blog, “Anarchy in the Garden”, and her managerial role at a community garden, the Long Beach resident takes her horticultural passion and mixes it up with her “don’t tell me what to do” punk rock attitude in order to spread the word on community interaction and smart eating. We caught up with the young urban farmer just as she embarked on her new mission to “veganize” pozole and here’s what she had to say about the importance of coming together as a community and how a basic cactus plant can feed the entire world.

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I combine punk rock with being DIY. I consider myself to be an against-the-norm urban farmer. I like to call myself “a lexicon rebel”. For example, when we go to a major market chain, they’re pretty much telling me what to buy. But by growing my own food, I’m saying “Don’t tell me what to do” and I’m taking a direct action into what I consume. This is what I do with my blog “Anarchy in the Garden”. I teach people how to be more sustainable, less dependent on corporate businesses, and how to eat healthier by growing their own foods.

I have a garden of my own in my backyard so I didn’t have the need to start a second one. But when and I moved into the LB area with my husband and realized that we didn’t have a community garden, a couple of us got together and we made it happen. We found an empty lot in a heavily trafficked area and got in contact with the owner of the lot. With help from local entities and volunteers we opened the community garden and now anyone can go there to grow and learn.

Feeding the world one cactus at a time
One day an older gentleman who was planting nopales at the community garden looked at me and said, “This plant alone could feed the world.” And it’s true. Cactus is a prolific plant that doesn’t need a lot of water and that can be cooked in different ways. The type of knowledge that is exchanged through horticulture is incredible. Diabetes and obesity are too prominent among us and we need to change that by educating ourselves about the food that we eat and by changing our shopping and eating habits.

I’m on a mission to veganize pozole myself. Instead of whatever meat product people use for it, I plan on using tofu instead. I don’t eat meat and I get my protein from tofu so replacing meat with tofu will give me the protein that I need. There are ways to give your body the essentials that it needs as well as make any dish healthier by simply experimenting and trying different ingredients.

Homegrown vs. Store bought
There are some things that can be bought organically and some things that can be purchased conventionally. You can buy fruits that have skin like lemon, oranges and avocados at a store which means they are not organic. Kale, potatoes, celery and carrots, on the other hand, can be purchased organically.

Another important thing to remember is that we can also eat seasonally. In January we shouldn’t be eating tomatoes. If you purchase tomatoes at a grocery store in the winter, more than likely they were grown in a hot or green house and that isn’t healthy for anyone. You should also think twice before purchasing apples, which are heavily sprayed with pesticides, and strawberries, which are the most heavily sprayed crop out there. Another thing to remember is to shop the outside aisle of the grocery store. The inside aisles are what contain all of the processed foods full of preservatives, and that’s the stuff we want to stay away from.

An old man’s tale
There’s a huge misconception that growing vegetables is for old, white people. But that’s not the case. I have people of all ages and people from Mexico, Jamaica, and locals from all ethnicities growing fruits and vegetables in the community garden. Farming should be thought of as something that can bring the community together and not held for only one demographic. Healthy eating is for everyone. It’s a movement.

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To follow Adriana’s crop-growing tips and to find out how you can start growing our own tasty greens, check out “Anarchy in the Garden” right here.

Hilda Gabriela
		About the author:
		recently discovered mustard and onion terrified of midgets hootchie mama for Obama! loves to dance with rich old men orphan writer and video producer for AB