(bright music) - In 1962, a Seattle Space Age World's Fair was launching.

A column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called a man named Rainie Picardo the last of Seattle's own farmers.

In the era of Boeing and Century 21, it was anachronistic to see a city dweller sitting atop a tractor amid post-war residential sprawl.

Half a century ago, city farms were the urban dodo bird.

That is, until Picardo's Farm became the phoenix of a new era in urban agriculture.

(bouncy music) (gentle music) The Picardo family had immigrated from a hill town north of Naples, Italy, in the 1890s, and starting in South Park, had farmed in Seattle for decades.

Their last farm was in North Seattle.

They grew lettuce, cabbage, radishes, celery, turnips, spinach, beans, and other veggies which the Picardo's sold at the Pike Place Market.

During prohibition, they buried their crop of homemade wine and jugs in their field to hide it from the authorities.

By the mid 1960s, the farm wasn't paying anymore.

It was doubly difficult with development nibbling at the edges and taxes rising.

Their once 30 acre plot was whittled down to a few acres.

The best option seemed to be to sell.

In the early 1970s, rescue came in the form of an idea.

(bright music) Could the farm, or at least part of it, be repurposed to grow food for the needy and teach children to garden?

The idea came from one of Picardo's Wedgewood neighbors, Darlyn Del Boca.

The struggles of local farmers were top of mind in 1971.

Voters were being asked to pass a citizen's initiative to save the Pike Place Market from a massive, city approved redevelopment scheme which would likely have destroyed the city's longstanding farm-to-table system.

Seattle was also still feeling the impact of the 1970 Boeing bust.

Many people needed help during what was at the time the worst economic downturn here since the Great Depression.

If ecological consciousness was high, so too were concerns about the wellbeing of fellow Seattleites.

Del Boca had noticed the potential of the Picardo property.

Perhaps the fertile land could be preserved.

She approached Rainie Picardo who let her use some of the land to start a garden with local children.

Her volunteer project taught kids how to grow their own food; good food too, without chemicals or fertilizers.

The crops would be donated to the new local food bank neighbors in need, which was created to help people struggling during the Boeing recession.

The idea intrigued a then city council candidate John Miller, later a US congressman, and he decided to do something about it if he was elected.

As it turned out, he was, and that election was key.

In Jeffrey Craig Sanders history, "Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability - Inventing Ecotopia," the author writes, quote, "A revolution in city politics during the period of the market preservation battle brought a younger and neighborhood-oriented council to power in the seventies."

Miller was part of that cohort.

With a new wave in power at City Hall, Del Boca and her neighbors put together a proposal asking the city council to assist with the experimental gardening program.

The city would lease the Picardo acres for a community truck garden, and the lease payment, less than $700, would cover Rainie Picardo's tax bill.

They envisioned up to 300 plots leased to individuals to raise vegetables, fruit, and flowers.

The co-op would organize the gardeners with help from the parks department and a master gardener.

In March of 1973, the city council approved the plan for a 10 month trial.

The garden was called a P-Patch.

P stood for Picardo.

Demand for plots was strong.

By 1974, there were more than 2,500 people working in 750 plots in 10 patches around the city.

To celebrate Picardo's P-Patches hosted a vegetarian feed for city officials, in hopes of getting good publicity and encouraging renewal of the program.

The mayor and council members dined on corn, zucchini bread, borsch, broccoli, pumpkin pie, and dandelion tea; all made with ingredients from the pioneer P-Patch.

The city eventually bought Picardo's 2.5 acres.

(triumphant music) The P-Patches have since proliferated.

There are now some 90 P-Patches in virtually every quarter of the city, including downtown and in public housing.

If Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, the P-Patches help bind them.

In his book, "Neighborhood Power - Building Community the Seattle Way," the former head of the Department of Neighborhoods, Jim Diers, wrote, "Gardener's organized concerts, barbecues, art shows, plant sales, and other public events in their P-Patch, that also strengthen the sense of community."

"P-Patches," he said, "cultivate communities."

Historian Sanders wrote that the P-Patch was the first of many creative countercultural experiments in liberating land from the market, building smaller, decentralized community context, and educating the public about organic produce and the ideas of ecology.

As a result, these gardens have shaped the city; what we grow and what we eat for the last half-century.

That's a large legacy for a small plot of family farmland in Wedgewood.

(bright music) - [Announcer] For more on this episode, listen to the Mossback podcast.

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