Urban growing

Lost City Farm is now in the middle of its second growing season at the roughly one-acre urban farm, and it’s going better than anticipated.

“It’s going really good,” Lost City farmer Lyndsey Langsdale said. “The weather is a little bit better than it was last year, so the plants have had a chance to get used to it here and haven’t been as stressed as they were last year. There’s a lot more weeds this year, though, but that’s kind of good because that’s telling us that the soil is fertile and growing stuff.”

The Lost City Farm operation is still comprised of just Langsdale and Toni Ortega, but they’ve had a lot more volunteer activity recently, which has helped get everything ready to go for the farmstand opening next Wednesday, July 16. Having more volunteers has helped take some of the work off the hands of the two farmers, and they’re always looking for more to lend a hand. For those who’d like to add themselves to the list of volunteers, email volunteer.lostcityfarm@gmail.com.

After experimenting with cut flowers last year, they discovered that there was an opportunity in the local market for them.

“Eventually, we’ll have about 12 different varieties of cut flowers to do bouquets, but we don’t have all those yet,” Langsdale said. “We have sunflowers and cosmos. Those will be the first two available at the farmstand, so people who want cut flowers for their table can come here, and we’ll have them for sale.”

They’ve also added some new veggies to the farm, including eggplants, which will be available a little later in the season. When the stand opens next week, they’ll have plenty available for customers.

“We will start by offering kale, chard, herbs, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, savory, tarragon, chives,” Lansdale said. “And we’ll have radishes, turnips, collard greens, carrots probably, beets. Those will be the first things offered, and as the season goes on, we’ll have tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplants, leeks, basil and a bunch of other things.”

The farmstand will be open every Wednesday—starting July 16—from 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. probably through to sometime in October. They changed their hours this season to collaborate with the neighboring Discovery Museum’s late Wednesday closing time—8 p.m.

“There should be a lot going on on this block on Wednesdays,” Langsdale said.

Langsdale and Ortega are currently working with the Nevada Department of Agriculture and Nevada Grown to get an electronic benefit transfer machine for their farmstand, so their produce is available to those with food stamps as well.

They’re also trying to get a small solar panel for the farm so that they can grow later in the year by insulating the water in the winter and maybe power a light, radio and saw. Some of their residential neighbors have let them use their homes’ power when they needed a saw for projects, but they’d like to have their own power in the future in addition to some other improvements.

“We’d also like to start a composting program sometime,” Langsdale said. “We’ve got little ones right now, but we’d like to have it where neighbors could bring food scraps, we could turn it into compost, and they could take it home for their gardens. Someday, but that’s a little bit down the road.”