Let your garden grow

There's only 24 days until the first day of spring (and my wedding!), and even though there's snow in the forecast for the next four days, I imagine many of you are already thinking about your gardens. I'm no garden expert (I won't even pretend to be), so I won't offer any advice on when to start planting or gardening techniques, but I will offer some general insight about gardens, particularly community gardens, that I have gleaned from others more knowledgeable than myself.

Yesterday, Alex and I went to the Food Assistance Program Outreach Coalition Meeting in Dayton. Although community gardening wasn't the focus of this month's meeting (it was actually the focus of last month's meeting), our continued discussion yesterday got me thinking more about the topic in general.

It would be easy to assume that gardens are the answers to low-income hunger problems: we give you the seeds, you grow the food, and then you eat it. Voila! Problem solved. But of course it isn't that simple. People with low-incomes often work multiple part-time (or full-time, let's face it) jobs just to keep up with the bills. They don't have a lot of extra time lying around to cultivate a lush, bountiful garden of their own. Also, people's thumbs are not naturally green. In other words, they may not have the skills to grow their own food. I know people who work long and hard in their gardens but still have a puny pea crop by the end of the season. And even if you manage to grow some decent food, what do you do with it? Many households (low-income or not) don't necessarily have experience cooking with fresh produce or even identifying it. I've heard so many stories of school-age children who have held fresh fruit or vegetables for the first time and not known their names or how they taste. Why? Fresh food is the most expensive in the grocery store; a family can get a lot more calorie bang for their buck by sticking to cheaper shelf-stable food. It makes sense that a family short on time and cash may not have an extensive repertoire of recipes using fresh, healthy (read: costly) ingredients.

That's why community garden initiatives are so great. They don't just throw a bunch of seeds at a family and say, "Here! Good luck!" They actually take the opportunity to teach people how to manage a garden, how to plant and grow, how to harvest and cook the food. They provide tools to manage the land. They teach people about nutrition by showing healthy options for mealtime. They provide a place where people can work together and share the load to accomplish a common goal. Perhaps most importantly, they empower people to take ownership of their food and health.

Here are some additional benefits to a community/neighborhood garden that I picked up from the Butler County OSU Extension's website:

Health Benefits of a Community/Neighborhood Garden:

• Community gardeners consume more fresh vegetables and less sweet food and drinks compared with non-gardeners.
• Children who participate in gardening are more likely to incorporate vegetables in their diet than their peers.
• Gardeners save an estimated $250 per season on food by eating produce from their gardens.

Building Community:

• Gardening gives people from from different cultures and socio-economic groups the opportunity to interact and facilitates improve social networks between neighbors.
• Having a community garden in the neighborhood improves the attitudes of residents towards their community, teaches leadership skills and raised organizational capacity in the communities where they are located.
• Community garden may lead to other maintenance issues in the neighborhood being addressed, a greater sense of responsibility for shared public places and the development of other neighborhood activities such as crime watches, tree plantings, and beautification projects.

Community gardens are becoming more and more popular. Of course, in Wilmington there's the Grow Food, Grow Hope initiative at Wilmington College. The Dayton Metroparks have an extensive community gardening project, and the OSU Extension of Butler County is actively helping community gardeners in Middletown (and soon to be Hamilton) to grow their own gardens.

There are plenty of opportunities to get involved in community gardening, but maybe you already have a garden at home that keeps you busy. That's great! There are still ways to stay involved in your community from home. One way to make a difference is to add an extra row to your garden that you will designate as "community food." When it's time to harvest, you can take food from this row to your local food pantry or food bank for immediate distribution, giving many more low-income families access to fresh, quality produce. Overwhelmed by your thriving zucchini crop? Can't eat another tomato? Don't let that produce go to waste--donate it to a food pantry so that others can enjoy the tastes of your garden.

Happy planting!