08/29/14 1:00pm

VACANT-LOT VEGETABLE GARDENS FOR HOUSTON GARDENS A little more than halfway through its 2-month-long Indiegogo fundraiser, a Houston company’s plan to grow vegetables on vacant urban lots has chalked up a little more than half of the $35,000 it’s hoping to raise to begin the project. Edible Earth Resources, the landscape-gardening firm that created the gardens at restaurants Coltivare, Haven, the Brooklyn Athletic Club, and Pax Americana (among other spaces), says it will soon have official approval from the city’s Land Assemblage Redevelopment Authority to plant production gardens on tax-delinquent lots leased from the citywide program. With $35,000 in startup capital, the company says on its fundraising page, Planted:Houston would begin its urban farming efforts on an acre of land available in Houston Gardens, a “rurban” neighborhood northeast of the intersection of the 610 Loop and the Eastex Fwy. — including a spot at 7414 Sandra St. The for-profit enterprise would sell its produce to various restaurants in the city and to individuals through a subscription program that includes a donation component; 10 percent of crops would remain in the neighborhoods where the gardens are planted, either through donations or discounted sales to local stores. [Indiegogo; more info] Video: Planted:Houston