Ron Finley’s Baked Kale Chips Recipe

Ron Finley comes from a place where much of what grows must force itself through cracks in the concrete. The “Gangsta Gardener,” as he’s known, hails from South Central Los Angeles, a neighborhood so often portrayed in film and on television as a harsh landscape of poverty, gangs, and endless drive-thru fast-food joints. Thanks to Ron, South Central is now also becoming known for its communally-managed organic fruit and vegetable gardens.

In 2010, Ron got fed up with having to drive 45 minutes to find a tomato that hadn’t been doused in agrochemicals. So he cleared the trash from a narrow strip of soil that ran between the sidewalk and the street in front of his house and planted tomatoes, melons, broccoli, kale, and other fruit and vegetable varieties. Soon he had such a bumper crop on his hands that he was feeding not just himself but his neighbors. Ron’s garden became a conversation piece, a catalyst for new friendships, the midwife for a new kind of street vibe—sprouting new possibilities.

“For the last 10 years, I’ve worked to turn this food desert into a food forest,” Ron says. “I wanted to show people the possibilities of what could happen with this land that was just being used for people’s dog shit. People leave dressers and toilets and whatever. They just discard all their trash on their parkway. I wanted to beautify this. I wanted to show people they could do the same thing.”