Your Virtual Farm Tour
E.A.T. South is the City of Montgomery’s urban teaching farm. We are a city park, and you are welcome to wander through the farm whenever the gate is open. The farm is fairly small, but we have so much going on! The following guides you in a circle through different sections of the farm starting at the caboose. Email Farmer Caylor and let us know what you think.
E.A.T. South exists because of volunteer support and contributions from the community. If you would like to see garden-based education programs for all ages thrive in Montgomery, consider a donation to E.A.T. South.
the caboose
The caboose is E.A.T. South’s office, worm farm, and a reminder that the farm site was once a railroad switching yard.
Around the caboose, look for containers growing a Satsuma orange tree, mint, flowers, peppers, greens, and more. All the containers are found or donated and demonstrate that you can grow food in just about anything-you just need to add a few drainage holes to the bottom. We’d like to thank Leadership Montgomery and the City of Montgomery for painting and repairing the caboose this year.
Photo: During the pandemic, the caboose was also an art gallery showing bug art created by our virtual summer youth program. (Image: Red caboose with grey door. Posters of butterflies, lady bugs, grasshoppers, and bees are posted on the front.)
the greenhouse
Our greenhouse is both a classroom and a plant production area. In January, step inside and learn how to grow your own transplants from seeds. In February, if it’s raining, the greenhouse is home to the Seedy Saturday Seed Swap. By March, the greenhouse is packed with plants. We host a plant sale in early April and share plants with school, church, and community gardens.
Right now, the greenhouse is holding the last of our fall transplants and is a staging area for our caboose painting project.
Photo: Seedy Saturday 2023, E.A.T. South’s annual celebration of seeds and gardens was cold and wet, but a hundred people swapped seeds, stories, and shared delicious food.
community compost shed
Community Composting, E.A.T. South’s newest program, recycles household food scraps into compost for the farm. The Community Compost shed is our compost receiving area where Montgomery residents and local businesses drop off food scraps. Step inside the shed to learn more about how composting works.
Check out the beginnings of a banana circle next to the shed. Interested in joining the community composting program? Email compost@eatsouth.org. We’d like to thank Midsouth RC&D Council for helping us start this program.
Photo: Volunteers helped build the community compost shed in two days.
concrete culverts
Concrete culverts are the primary containers in the small garden next to the greenhouse. The culverts were donated by the City of Montgomery and installed with a crane. Look for other culverts along the fence at the front of the farm. We moved those there ourselves!
You’ll find lots of perennial herbs in this garden - rosemary, oregano, thyme, mint, chives, garlic chives, turmeric, stevia, lemongrass, bay, and two kinds of mint. Take a minute and smell the rosemary or any of the other herbs in the garden.
As you walk through the farm, keep an eye out for other things that are being recycled or given a new purpose on the farm.
Photo: Children in E.A.T. South’s after school program harvest herbs to make tea and salad dressing. They also like to eat the sorrel as a snack. E.A.T. South’s after school and summer youth programs exist because of the support of the Big Cedar Education Foundation.
compost piles
The mounds covered in black plastic are West Maui style compost piles. Farmer Amanda learned this method of composting from farmers in Hawaii, and we are grateful they shared this knowledge with us.
Twice a week, food scraps from the Community Compost shed are added to the pile along with layers of hemp waste from a local hemp processing plant. Holes around around the edge of the pile and in the center create a chimney effect that brings oxygen into the piles. The plastic helps the piles retain moisture. With the right mix of water, hemp, and food scraps, our West Maui Style piles heat up to around 160 degrees.
Compost is magic. It turns waste into a resource for improving soil & plant health, keeps food scraps out of landfills (where they turn into the potent greenhouse gas methane), and keeps nutrients out of landfills and in the soil.
Photo: Farmers from around Alabama learn about compost during Alabama A&M University’s Urban Farm Field Day at E.A.T. South. Look for the compost thermometer in the middle of the picture.
outdoor classroom
The Outdoor Classroom provides shade in the summer and will keep you mostly dry on a rainy day. It is the site of free workshops, summer camp crafts, cooking lessons, and other activities and events.
Look in the rafters for paper wasp nests. Wasps are both pollinators and predators. Make room for wasps in your yard, and they will help you control cabbage worms and other pests.
The rain barrel is filled by the gutter above it and provides water to the plants around the classroom. Look for the more accessible table beds that make gardening easier for people with physical challenges. Many of the other beds in this area were built with wood left over from other projects or salvaged from demolition work.
Photo: Montgomery city planner Jocelyn Zanzot talks about the Riverwalk Trail in the outdoor classroom before a morning walk organized by AARP Alabama.
chicken (and duck) coop
Our chickens are entertaining, and, occasionally, they lay eggs, too. Chickens can be part of your backyard farm, but avoid roosters if you want to keep your flock. Yes, we do have a rooster or two (the big guy’s name is Malu), but our neighbors are freight trains which make more noise than the birds.
Farmer Caylor is more fond of the ducks who are great at patrolling the farm for slugs, don’t destroy the garden, and also lay eggs when they feel like it. You might see Henry the American Blue rabbit in the coop. Outside of the coop, you might meet Lola the cat, our Chief Pest Control Officer.
Photo: Volunteers from Maxwell Air Force Base help attach shade cloth to the top of the chicken coop. Note that the cottonwood trees in this picture are now gone. Cottonwood borer killed most of them by 2022.
bee yard
Beyond the chicken coop are several bee hives. If you’d like a closer look, stay on the grass outside of the yard (the yard is gravel with a rock boundary). Try observing them from the side of the yard, not the front. The front is the door of the hive, and thousands of bees are flying in and out all day. As long as you are not invading their home, honey bees are fairly docile, but it’s just good sense to not be in the middle of a thousand bees’ flight pattern!
Honey bees help pollinate the garden and create delicious honey. The farm is also home to many native bees, hover flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, and other pollinators. Look for insects as you travel around the farm.
Please ignore the farm junk shed across from the bees. This is temporary storage until a new shed is built at the end of 2023.
Photo: Beekeepers unload new hive boxes in the spring.
container garden
The Container Garden holds up to 700 ten gallon fabric grow bags (we also grow in 5, 8, and 15 gallon bags) which translates into 700 pepper, eggplant, kale, squash, and other plants. The fabric grow bags were an inexpensive way to double our growing space at the beginning of the pandemic to support the Community Harvest program. (If you live in an apartment or rent, fabric bags can help you create a temporary garden space.)
In addition to being relatively inexpensive (about $3 a bag for 10 gal bags when bought in bulk), fabric grow bags help air prune plants. When the roots hit the edge of the bag, they stop growing rather than becoming root bound. The downside is that the bags dry out quickly and require lots of water in the summer.
Compost can help the sandy soil in the grow bag hold water, and good quality compost is hard to find here. Our need for compost was how the Community Compost program was born.
You can grow year round in grow bags, but this winter, we’re removing part of this garden (another advantage of the bags - they’re easy to move) to build a tool shed. The containers will return in the spring.
Whole Cities Foundation supported the creation of this garden.
Photo: Fabric grow bags planted in peppers and eggplants in April.
dye garden
Between the Container Garden and Raised Bed Garden, the Dye Garden is home to plants historically used to dye fabric or make paint and ink. In the spring and summer you’ll find cosmos, marigolds, dyer’s camomile, black knight scabiosa, madder, safflower, amaranth, and more.
The dye garden is also a great spot to find butterflies, bees, wasps, and other beneficial insects. This garden is grown in the farm soil because these are not food plants.
The Support the Arts License Tag Grant Program helped us create the dye garden and new art classes for all ages on the farm.
Photo: Planting the dye garden spring 2023.
raised bed garden
The Raised Bed Garden was the first garden built on the farm. The farm site is contaminated with arsenic, and a plastic mat separates the 24 raised beds from the soil underneath. Look around the farm and notice that anything growing food is in some kind of container. The dye garden is the only part of the farm where plants grow in the site’s soil.
These mostly 24 foot raised beds can grow a lot of food! We grow vegetables year round and try to keep some of the beds in cover crop to create healthier soil.
In the fall, look for kale, collards, lettuce, and mustard. In the summer, you’ll find sweet potatoes, okra, and cucumbers.
Capital City Master Gardeners maintain three beds in this area including the Square Foot Garden demonstration bed.
Photo: Families weed sweet potato beds in the raised bed garden during a Volunteer Saturday.
looking ahead
With a new compost program and multiple gardens, we need volunteers! With the support of the Junior League of Montgomery, we are building a tool shed that will serve as a volunteer gathering spot and make tools and garden supplies easier for volunteers to find. We look forward to building a larger, more active volunteer program in 2024, and we invite you to join us. Contact Farmer Caylor to find out more.
Look for more native plants blooming on the hillside on the south side of the farm in 2024, too.
Thank you for visiting E.A.T. South. If you are in the area, stop by in different seasons to see what’s growing or join us for a class or volunteer project.
Photo: A wasp enjoys the flowers of a native goldenrod.