Plant a Row

[GnomeGrown]

I'm curious how many tomatovillens either "Plant a Row for the Hungry" or donate their homegrown produce to charities or other orgs.

We've given our extra produce to a local men's halfway house in years past.

[AZGardener]

I give away a lot of produce but have never given to an organization/charity,etc. This is simply because I live far away from many of these places and I have lots of friends, family, and neighbors who generally get the first pickings I intend to donate more this year to a food pantry, hoping for a surplus of produce, so we will see what happens as the garden starts producing Good for you though!! Always good to hear what people do with their excess...

[paulgrow]

I've been donating produce to area food pantries for a number of years.
I started a garden at our church just for donations.
Plant A Row was started by the Garden Writers of America of which I'm a member.
For information on how to start a PAR project in your area go to www.gardenwriters.org

[saltmarsh]

I donate to the local halfway house, women's shelter, and children's village and they are all happy for the fresh vegetables.

The local nursing home's policy forbids any local vegetable donations, all food has to come from a commercial source.

The local food pantry only excepts large donations and only on specific days of the month because of way they distribute the food, so haven't been able to do anything with them.

[Hotwired]

Five years ago I retired, so two friends and I decided that we would put in a few gardens for some low income families. We figured how hard could this be? … We all had gardens and we were retired with time and could afford the project. Well, to quote Bob Seger …. I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. We accomplished our goal but they all bailed on me for year two.

In 2009, I recruited a local garden club and some Cornell Frats to help and we put in 17 new gardens and replanted the 3 from the previous year. Each garden consisted of 2 to 3 raised beds that were 30” wide x 8’ long. We got some newspaper coverage, and my phone was ringing off the hook with people and local businesses wanting to help. A local agency provided us with a list of deserving families that had property big enough for gardens.

The project kept growing so in 2010 we ended up doing 97 gardens. I met a local gardener who worked for a Community Action organization. She was a dynamo of energy and really helped put the project into overdrive. Cornell University asked to get involved, so they grew about 6500 plants in their greenhouses, Lowes donated 500 5-gallon pails for Container gardens http://imageshack.us/a/img191/5162/volunteers.jpg . A local saw mill donated rough cut lumber for about 50 raised beds, and a local landscape company donated 60 cubic yards of Compost and 60 of topsoil. I had piles all over my property. We had fuel donations for delivery pickup trucks, Home Depot donated a Tiller for two weeks, and a Cornell Fraternity donated people to run the tillers, build the raised beds, and load compost and soil. The local 4H volunteers did the actual planting with the families. The project was a logistics nightmare, scheduling 96 households and the volunteers as well as the timing of each task. Besides running myself ragged, I grew 500 tomato plants and 800 pepper plants in my greenhouse http://imageshack.us/a/img695/6125/267eh.jpg and hoop houses http://imageshack.us/a/img857/302/275j.jpg .

This last year I had a lot of support. It was so successful the first few years that the Community Action Group jumped in to officially support it and brought some State funding with them. Cornell University Ag School is supporting the project in a huge way with 5000 square feet of greenhouse space, soil, containers, seeds, and labor. That’s a lot of bench space compared to my measly 185 sq.ft. of benches. I have several seed companies that support the project; www.Whiteharvestseed.com , Seeds of Change, and a few regional organic seed companies. We ended up having a Cornell Frat help again with tilling and building raised beds, a local Landscape company provides topsoil & compost “delivered” to the sites this time. A local trucking Company provides transportation to the locations http://imageshack.us/a/img844/2968/loadingtrucks.jpg . Besides setting up gardens, we offered plants and seed to last years gardens that they can pickup http://imageshack.us/a/img844/5752/008iy.jpg - http://imageshack.us/a/img195/2792/distribution1.jpg . We took over a local parking lot where we staged plants for pickup. We even had Cornell provide a hanging basket for each household http://imageshack.us/a/img848/6619/100gardens4.jpg . One of the things we made sure of was that the plants were large and well established http://imageshack.us/a/img864/849/plants523.jpg since our goal was to provide food for the families. It didn’t make a lot of sense to distribute plants that wouldn’t produce for another 6 weeks. In this case bigger was better http://imageshack.us/a/img155/7816/007sh.jpg .

We also got the Cornell Cooperative Extension involved by assigning Master Gardener Program graduates to support the gardens. They also conduct classes on Canning and Preserving. I sort of organized myself out of a job, but it’s helping a huge number of families. It’s rewarding when I hear stories how an eight year old ate the broccoli that he planted and grew all by himself. This was a kid whose daily vegetable was potato chips.

It doesn’t take a lot to make a difference. I did most of this while dealing with cancer treatments. It takes a lot of people making a small contribution to result in a huge impact on families, whether it’s distributing a few plants or donating to the local food pantry.

Someday I'm going to learn how to summarize my posts.

Hotwired NY 5b
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, ... Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

[livinonfaith]

Small garden here, so I have never had extra produce to donate. If there is any small overflow, I have family and friends that are happy to take it.

But last year I donated my extra plants to a church that was doing a community garden. That worked out great for all of us!

[Deborah]

Thank you, all of you. This is a very happy thread to read !

[Farmette]

I plant an extra row every year and also donate extra produce. I also belong to a garden group that has planted a garden for the last four years. Produce is washed and bagged and then delivered to the local food pantry. Last year we built another garden on the other side of church with 9 more raised beds. Due to succession planting and a practically disease free summer, we had a bumper crop and were able to donate huge amount of 28 different vegetables....in spite of the woodchucks. We had 50 tomato plants and over 100 pepper plants. Our group spans several generations and bring diversity to the garden. Patrons of the good pantry look forward to our donatiions of fresh, organically grown produce. We grow our own plants and in May have a plant sale at church with the proceeds going to supplies for the gardens. This year we were able to purchase a drip irrigation system, which came in very handy during the drought. Thanks to Dutch, a T'ville member who contributed a large amount of tomato and pepper plants we were able to have a great sale and also plant some of his contributions in our two gardens. I think you will find that T'ville member are a very generous group of people.

[kath]

We have two food pantries and a homeless shelter within reasonable driving distance as well as a needy elderly couple at the end of our lane, so between that and our veggie loving family and neighbors, no food goes to waste around here no matter how much I overplant.

[nancyruhl]

Wow, you guys are awesome. I only put a few ebuckets on our roof top garden at church downtown Detroit. Due to a snafu, I contributed 200 tomato plants that never got to the local farmers market to an organization that distributed them to needy folks to grow last season. My original intent was to contribute the proceeds anyway, so I guess I can take some credit for that. Should have more time this summer to develop to roof garden this summer.