Let a thousand vacant lots bloom.

That’s one of the aims of a package of amendments to the city’s zoning code passed by City Council and which took effect on Jan. 1.

The amendments, offered by the nonprofit Food Policy Council of San Antonio, basically ensure the legality of growing and selling food almost anywhere in the city. Now that the amendments have been baked into the city’s zoning code, proponents hope these amendments will sprout more urban farms, encourage more healthy eating and promote a deeper understanding of where our food comes from.

“San Antonio has a long tradition of growing food within the city limits, and this encodes that right,” said Leslie Provence, FPCSA vice president. “We want to encourage the development of urban agriculture for health and economic reasons.”

It’s always been legal to grow food on your own property. And it’s not as if jack-booted food police were regularly squashing nascent gardens under the heels of their, well, jack boots.

But much like farmers market vendors discovered in 2013, changes to city regs can have unexpected effects. Back then, the health department introduced a vendor permit intended to make it easier for farmers to sell their products, but that also prohibited the sale of meals cooked on site. Amid pressure from market vendors, operators and customers, the San Antonio City Council eventually voted to liberalize the rules, but the episode shows how the urban farming community’s concerns are justified.

To see one way this urban farming movement might take shape, Provence and I recently visited John Garland, who might be called the farmer-in-residence at Epworth United Methodist Church on Pecan Valley Drive.

For almost two months now, Garland has been growing organic salad greens — red Russian kale, collards, kohlrabi, a rainbow’s worth of lettuces and more — under a long hoop house that sits in a field adjacent to the church. He’s also planted ground cover nearby to add nutrients to, and help break up, soil in the field that has lain fallow for as long as anyone can remember.

“I could just dump a bunch of fertilizer on it and start planting, but I want to do things organically,” Garland said. Plans call for him to plant — and later rotate — crops such as corn and beans on the land as early as spring.

For now, Garland delivers coolers of newly harvested hoop house-grown micro and baby greens to subscribers who pay $20 per week.

According to his agreement with the church he’ll tithe to them 10 percent of profits from his company, Garland & Daughters Produce.

Not every urban farm is expected to be as large and well-planned as Garland’s — although, to be honest, his is still a minuscule operation compared to even the smallest of family farms.

“We want to set up urban farming operations all over the city so people can create their own businesses, supplement their food budgets and eat more produce,” said Provence.

District 2 Councilman Alan Warrick said he supported the amendments because a survey of part his district bounded by U.S. 281, W.W. White Road, Interstate 35 and U.S. 90 found between 2,200 and 2,300 empty lots that could, in theory, be converted to urban farms.

“With the new zoning regulations, all you need is permission from the property owner to set up a farm on any piece of privately owned land,” he explained.

Interested in becoming an urban farmer? Here are some sources of information:

Food Policy Council of San Antonio: Has members willing to speak to groups such as neighborhood associations to explain the new zoning rules. Contact info@foodpolicysa.org for information.

National Center for Appropriate Technology: The center’s ATTRA project offers plenty of information on growing and marketing crops for the beginning farmer. Visit https://attra.ncat.org/ for more information.

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Bexar County: Does educational outreach, including plant recommendations. For specific questions, contact David Rodriguez at DHRodriguez@ag.tamu.edu, or visit http://bexar-tx.tamu.edu.

Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Runs workshops and an annual conference (this year’s is in Rockwell in February) where would-be urban farmers can learn what it take to be successful. http://www.tofga.org.

rmarini@expressnews.net

Twitter@RichardMarini