This year I am Planting a Row for the Hungry. Basically, I am dedicating a row of my garden to donate to my local food bank {actually several rows}. Quite a few states have the program {though, I am sure the food bank won’t turn you away if your state doesn’t participate}, and it’s a great way to keep local, healthy food in your community.
Plant a Row is sponsored by the Garden Writers Association. To officially participate, you can do a google search to find out if your area has a Plant a Row partnership and then fill out the form, pledging to donate. {If not, you could get really ambitious and start one in your area.} In Washington, your pledge comes with a packet of free seeds. Woohoo!
According to the Garden Writers Association website:
“Since 1995, over 16 million pounds of produce providing over 60 million meals have been donated by American gardeners. All this has been achieved without government subsidy or bureaucratic red tape — just people helping people.”
Aw, doesn’t that make you feel all warm and happy inside?
They suggest that you grow/donate foods that keep well and still pack a nutritional punch, like cabbage, green beans, beets, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, small winter squash, turnips, cucumbers and tomatoes.
How about YOU, will you be using your garden to feed your community this year?
~Mavis
Is this your first year gardening? Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens
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Andrea says
Providing I am able to garden this year (I’m moving back to the States from Europe and hope to purchase a home) I will certainly plant enough to share.
Michele says
Yes, I always give away excesses….I can’t see letting a good thing go to waste when people are starving and would love fresh produce. They end up coming and asking for more! 🙂 Love it!
Teresa says
Our local food bank doesn’t take fresh donations–they have no ability to store them–but we always share our excess with friends, neighbors, and the co-worker who gives us eggs. My garden’s fairly small, but I should see if one of the neighboring towns might participate in Plant-a-Row.
You Can Call Me Jane says
I love this!!
Pat Giaquinta says
We planted extra crops last year and delivered them to our local Food Pantry. We also helped out a few neighbors and family members who have the need for some fresh veggies. We will gladly do it again this year. If we can all help out a little, everyone benefits.
Samantha M. says
As long as you don’t wash the bloom off the eggs they’ll keep for a surprising amount of time just in the fridge, of course you have a whole continual stream of eggs so you might not want them just sitting around to keep stocks rotated. But as long as you know how to test egg freshness by seeing if they sink of float in water there’s no worries. I’ve kept eggs up to three months in the fridge with no problems other than the whites getting a bit runny.
Lots of little mini quiches are a great way to use up eggs and they freeze wonderfully and handy for quick lunches.
Jo Ann Gleason says
Oh Mavs,
You almost brought tears to my eyes. How thoughtful and generous of you to dedicate a section of garden to your Local Food Bank!
You rock. Keep up the good work.
Jo Ann aka Sonoma Garden Girl
Victoria Brown says
Thank you for this post! I will be trying to grow my first garden this year and I was planning on putting any possible extras out for my coworkers. Planting an extra row and donating it with any of my other extras is a much better idea!!
Erin Kerbs says
My local foodbank won’t except fresh veggies, but I plan to take extras to share at my church.
Wendy Phelps says
Good on you, what a great idea. I’m not sure that program is running in my area, as we are about to head into Autumn I will check it out next spring.
Looby says
to my knowledge we don’t have anything like that here, but then I’ve never had spares before (hence the name of my blog)!!
Birgit says
Same here- foodbanks are reluctant to take fresh veggie donations, not only because of storage and fair distribution problems, but also because there’s a preference for canned etc. foods that “don’t require so much prepping” (e.g. if you work three jobs, there’s no time to cook from scratch) and that “aren’t too uncommon”.
And there’s already mountains of prime overstock produce that would actually end up discarded in the local landfill in order to keep grocery store prices at a fixed level, but luckily, there is an organization that makes it accessible to everyone … at least if you live in Southern AZ (as mentioned before 🙂
Short video clips:
https://www.the3000club.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61&Itemid=59
Here in Southern AZ, a volunteer organization called “The 3000 Club” picks up fresh surplus produce from US growers just across the border in Mexico, which the produce brokers couldn’t sell to the stores that day/week, due to overstock. It would otherwise just be carted back to end up in the border landfill in Nogales, although it is mostly pristine.
The produce crates are then distributed in refrigerated trucks to volunteer distribution sites all across the metropolitan areas in AZ (mostly school- and church parking lots on the weekend). For each $10 donation to the 3000Club, you get to take home one huge box (up to 60 lbs) of fresh produce, usually things like tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, green beans, squash, occasionally fruit like all kinds of melons, citrus or even pre-packaged berries.
There are always very long lines for this “Market on the Move” (MOM), as the distribution sites are called, and there are all kinds of people in the lines, including vacationing retirees and many people with luxury cars who like a good deal. The idea is to take home all those goodies and “share the love” among friends, colleagues, neighbors. I share my box with two neighbors, and use the rest for canning if I have more than I need.
And if you are not in AZ and you have extra, there’s plenty of gleaning organisations, on national as well as local level (national overview: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/gleaning-for-the-hungry.html, also
http://www.ampleharvest.org/)
that will harvest/distribute unwanted or surplus fruit and veggies, or invite people to get it themselves via Google fruit maps, e.g.:
http://neighborhoodfruit.com/,
http://fallenfruit.org/media/maps-2/
PS: I used to live north of Everett, still remember those “Plant a row for the hungry” seed packages 🙂
Wynne says
The website http://www.ampleharvest.org/ has info on where to find local pantries that accept fresh produce. But it’s incomplete; last year a friend found an unlisted pantry where I took my extras, mostly cucumbers. I hope I have more excess this year.
Catherine Foster says
I wonder if FreeCycle would be a way to advertise extra veggies if one’s local food bank didn’t take them?
Melissa says
I see (and post) Freecycle veggie posts quite frequently once the growing season starts!
It’s a great way to get free produce – I’ve even done a few swaps for things that one or the other of us was short on. 🙂
Wynne says
This worked for me, too.
Preppy Pink Crocodile says
I regularly volunteer at the Cap City Rescue Mission to serve meals with the Junior League of Albany (we’re going on Fri- woo hoo) and they’ve mentioned accepting donations from gardens. All this is to say that if folks are planting only for this donation purpose, I suggest not planting summer squash. The men were telling me last summer that because of zucchini donations, which of course they gladly accept as they are free and fresh, they had to eat zucchini at pretty much every meal for months. And even if you are homeless, anything gets old after eating it at every meal.
I know beggers can’t be choosers and of course, if you have a bumper crop, go forth a donate. But I never really thought about this until I had a conversation at the mission. And so I thought it might be a good idea to pass the info along.
KK
Melissa says
What a wonderful idea! A few years back, before I decided to stay home, I championed a Garden Committee at my job (I worked for a pharmaceutical company). Long story short, we had a group of employees willing to dedicate time during their off-work hours to garden. We held “farmer’s markets” on Fridays for the employees and anything we didn’t sell, along will all proceeds from the markets, went to the local food bank.
We donated over 1500lbs of produce along with over $1000!
It was so awesome to hear the stories about the families coming in and seeing all the produce they normally only get in cans. 🙂
I feel very blessed to have worked for such a fantastic company!