Quirky, cool and rammed with tips for getting started and keeping going growing your own food, the book contains a quote early on that I think captures something of Vitale’s essential spirit and explains why his social media channels have a combined following of over 3.7 million and rising. Place the cabbage in a large mixing bowl. Blanch the cabbage with boiling water, being careful that the bowl is big enough to fit the water in. You don’t want boiling water spilling all over you. This is a wonderfully laid out book and one that is ideal for those new to gardening or us that have been doing it for years. As new techniques are developed it is always good to have a look at how we can do more for our own garden and also the environment around us. Picture a little boy out foraging and fishing in the land and lakes close to his small-town Italian home with his beloved maternal grandfather, Pietro, whom he remembers as someone who lived his whole life aligned with Nature.

The cardboard acts as light exclusion for weeds on the ground, which will slowly die. The weed will decompose in a few months and the roots of the plants planted over it will just penetrate the cardboard and feed on the nutrient-rich substrate underneath. When you apply the cardboard, if you add two pieces or more, make sure to overlap them so you don’t leave gaps. If you don’t have any weeds and your soil is almost clean, you don’t need cardboard! From techniques to the tools you need, and any other things you might need to build it is all explained. For every item you will need, the diagrams show just how to do things. From your own irrigation system to saving seeds. Alessandro Vitale has taken the time to motivate you into having your own organic urban garden. If you think you don’t have the space, he will help you realize you can still have your own garden. Worried you don’t have a green thumb on you, the guidance provided will get you to see that you do. The first Rebel Gardeners project started at Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia through a partnership between the students, parents, teachers, and staff at the school, staff at the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative, and students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. The focus of the project was working with a nearby community garden that was threatened to be demolished. Young people were trained as ethnographers and documented the old gardeners stories, and in the process learned how to grow food, and why to grow food, themselves.It was so busy and grey and cold compared to Italy, and I realised I really needed to find a way to be in some part of Nature to survive it,” he says. And, of course or I wouldn’t be writing about it here, gardening offers a series of lessons for Rebels at Work. Being a Rebel at Work calls upon your analytic talents. And the more experience you have as a Rebel, the smarter you will be about advocating for change in organizations. But beyond that… Do you live in the city and yearn for the space and time to grow your own food and live more connected with nature and the seasons? Rebel Gardening shows that anyone can grow a garden of delicious organic fruit and vegetables, wildlife-friendly wildflowers and abundant herbsin absolutely any urban space with a bit of know-how. This story matters because Alessandro Vitale – or Spicy Moustache as he is known on social media to his three-million-plus followers – is a content generator whose whole life now revolves around urban gardening with a mission to grow almost all his own food, and an equally strong mission to let nothing go to waste. Organic gardening expert Alessandro Vitale wants you to embrace the living soil and establish your own city eden where creatures and plants can coexist, in harmony with our modern lives. He shares his low-cost and organic approach with all the essential guidance you will need, including his top 50 plants for beginner gardeners, with a plethora of information on how to plant and look after them and how to make the most of all your produce. Learn how to make vegan honey with dandelions, establish a micro-orchard, or brew a natural antibiotic from garlic.

He took me gardening but also foraging for white asparagus and apples. He taught me so much that I carried inside me even though once he passed I had nowhere to go and garden again.” I wish someone had told me sooner that gardening was a learning activity. Only by paying attention to how the plants behave under different conditions can you improve your gardening success rate. If you get into it, gardening is a deeply analytic activity. Over the course of 3 years (Pepper closed in 2013), hundreds of middle school students became Rebel Gardeners- engaged in the project-based learning experience of growing, cooking, serving, selling, and eating good food – all the while writing/editing/filming/drawing/calculating/experimenting and constantly documenting their activities to learn from and teach others. Now schools throughout West Philadelphia are engaged in food education projects inspired by the Rebel Gardeners. Note: If you don’t have less decomposed compost, you can use mature compost. All you have to do is add compost to your raised beds once a year, and that’s all.

This is a beginner’s handbook for organic urban gardening. If you have seen Vitale’s videos on social media, you know how empowering and motivational a gardener he is. Rebel Gardening brings us all the action. Not only is the book put together in the best way, but the instructions or guides to create your garden are also helpful.

Reporting on the link between the distribution of indigenous languages and genetically different grizzly bears Organic gardening expert Alessandro Vitale wants you to embrace the living soiland establish your own city eden where creatures and plants can coexist, in harmony with our modern lives. He shares his low-cost and organic approach with all the essential guidance you will need, including his top 50 plants for beginner gardeners, with a plethora of information on how to plant and look after them and how to make the most of all your produce. Learn how to make vegan honey with dandelions, establish a micro-orchard, or brew a natural antibiotic from garlic. The shady spots are never as shady as you think and the sunny spots are never as sunny. This partly explains why failure is an essential component of gardening. Just a few feet of separation can produce significant changes in light. I once planted two rose bushes within three feet of each other on the southeast exposure of my lawn. One prospered but the other faltered because of the dappled sunlight that reached it through overhanging trees. When I moved the laggard to what I had previously thought of as the too-shady side of my lawn, it doubled in size. Rebels can sometimes make facile assumptions about what parts of the organization would be most receptive to change. The team you think is ideal for your prototype because the leader is so friendly may actually harbor bamboo spikes underneath its surface. Go beyond superficial appearances. Cover the veg with the liquid and carefully close the lid tightly while it is still very hot. This should create a vacuum seal as the contents cool. Transfer the cabbage and spices into a sterilised jam jar and pour over the brine, making sure all the cabbage is covered. You may need to weigh it down to keep it submerged. Put the lid on, but don’t close it too tightly, because you want the CO2 to escape.

Artist list

Vitale, who was by then working as a videographer, agreed to make videos for Dowding, never imagining for one second that just a year on he would be celebrating the publication of his own book, Rebel Gardening: A Beginner’s Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden. Failure is an essential component of gardening and of being a Rebel at Work. It’s only been in the past year that, as a gardener, I’ve become comfortable in ripping out plants that didn’t work out where I put them. I used to think such bad outcomes were an indictment of my underdeveloped gardening skills. Now I understand that only through experimentation can I learn what works and what doesn’t. Now Rebels at Work probably can’t afford too many bad ideas, but if you can master the art of tiny pivots—small experiments that can test some aspect of a proposal, you can learn to leverage “failure.” Before gardeners invest real money in a new flower bed, they should first test just a plant here or there to see what works in the soil and light.

This is the ultimate beginner’s guide to establishing and tending an organic kitchen garden in any urban space, no matter how small, written by the YouTuber and TikToker known as Spicy Moustache. Bring the vinegar or cider to a rolling boil in a large pan and add the cloves, bay leaves, mustard seeds, peppercorns and salt. You might know him as Spicy Moustache, from YouTube or TikTok. Alessandro Vitale has created the perfect beginner’s handbook titled Rebel Gardening. A perfect title, if I say so myself.

Old and contemporary art

Rebel Gardeners are students, teachers, parents, administrators, chefs, farmers, business people, artists, cookbook readers, food blog writers, and eaters. We each have a unique role to play in growing a healthy future for our community.