5 Courses with Charlie Radoslovich

Charlie Radoslovich would like to talk to you about your yard. He wants it. For farming. He dreams of making Boston one big victory garden, with everyone doing their part to make front yards more edible than ornamental. Imagine: instead of little green plots of tended grass, we’d be surrounded by a salad green necklace, sprouting harvests of mesclun, radicchio, and Brussels sprouts instead of crab grass. (Wouldn’t Frederick Law Olmstead be proud?) That’s the idea behind Radoslovich’s new venture, Rad Urban Farmers. Radoslovich came to Boston a few years ago to teach third-grade science in Belmont, but he missed the dirt. Now, he’s on his way to becoming the Johnny Appleseed of organic farming.

Where’d the idea for Rad Urban Farmers come from? As a kid growing up in New Mexico with 11 brothers and sisters, I grew up playing in the dirt all the time. We raised chickens and rabbits and grew our green stuff. With a family that big, we were sustainable by necessity. Then I left Albuquerque for college in Portland, Oregon, and found my way to Portland Nursery, starting in landscaping and patios, ending up in edible veggies.

What do you have against lawns? Lawns have always been a status symbol in America. They’re not natural. Huge wastes of water, lots of work. In Portland, you have a green strip next to your driveway, and you plant it with sunflowers. My goal is reconnecting people in Boston with their land, however small the plot. I like the idea of going out to the front yard and picking fresh snow peas for tonight’s salad.

So, how does Rad Urban Farmers work? I take all the up-front costs. First, I find people with front lawns and back yards who want to devote a portion — my minimum plot right now is 200 square feet — to raising vegetables. Then I go in, check out the soil composition to see if it’s safe for farming.... If the test comes back good, I fertilize the dirt and flip over the sod, meaning I cut up the grass and put it back on the soil, grass side down. Then I start preparing the land for planting. I buy heirloom seeds to sow, tend the plants, and when the garden starts to yield, I give each family a CSA [community-supported agriculture]-style mixed-bag share each week, somewhere between 5 and 20 pounds of fresh produce. You know, carrots from this guy’s house, cabbage from the neighbor, salad greens and peppers from the people on the next block.... And whatever’s left, I’ll sell at a table at [a] farmer’s market as my profit.

But this is Boston. We’re not Portland, Oregon. How can you make this work with our short growing season? It’s definitely more challenging in a cold-weather climate. But I use the SPIN method of farming, developed by a gentleman named Wally Satzewich in Canada. SPIN stands for “small plot intensive farming” for residential gardens. As soon as you harvest one crop, you prepare the soil to plant another. So, for example, I can harvest one crop of micro-salad greens, pick the buds carefully, and have a second crop ready in four to 10 days.

So, how’s it going? This is year one. I’m starting with people in Lexington, Arlington, and Cambridge. But as the community of Rad Urban Farmers begins to grow, I’m hoping to recruit yards and would-be farmers to start home-scale gardens all over the area. My goal is to promote sustainable living and change the landscape from ornamental to edible, which is where it all began.