The Salvation Army community garden

Oh my, its been 3 months since I last posted. Life has been so busy. My big project, I sometimes think of it as my summer mission "trip" though I did not have to leave home except to drive, walk, or bicycle the 3 miles from our house to the garden, was my Master Gardener community service project of being team leader for the Salvation Army community charity garden. Two neglected city lots just behind the Salvation Army family services building were turned into a lush vegetable garden. Apparently years ago, the houses standing on those lots had burned down and they were just vacant, full of weeds and bushes and rubble.

Between the volunteers from the Red Horse Squadron, the county extension agent, the "booters" who do community service work for charitable organizations, master gardeners and other community volunteers, the rubble filled lots were turned into our beautiful garden.

Harvesting the Salvation Army community charity garden kept me busy through September and October. We had such a beautiful long fall (other than that snowfall in September when I had to call in my volunteers to harvest 700 pounds of green tomatoes in one day from the garden). We got over 4000 pounds of produce to add to the Salvation Army food boxes through the summer and fall-lettuce, spinach, green beans, beets, sweet corn, kohlrabi, summer squash, winter squash, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, peas, broccoli, cabbage. All the seeds and all the plants were donated as was all the labor and all the food went to help those in need.

The Salvation Army here is amazing. Every day they put together food boxes for families in need. They give away from 5 to 40 or more boxes every week day of the year. They put in what they calculate to get a family through one week. In their warehouse they have canned, dried and frozen foods and we added fresh produce to the boxes from the big garden out back. The boxes are designed for "family of 1-2", "family of 3-4", etc. Some things like winter squash were just put out in carts in the front waiting so people could pick them up if they wanted them.

They also help people with prescriptions, rent, utilities and baby supplies. And that is only at family services. Then they have their well known thrift stores, Christmas distributions, community recreation activities and camps to help keep kids out of trouble. And they are actually a church and have services and Bible studies.

God blessed the garden and it produced abundantly. It made me so happy to be able to participate in it, to use my gardening skills to bless my new community. (And not to have to "put up" all that produce-merely the thought of doing that is exhausting).

A community member who specializes in bokashi composting built us a compost bin and got us started on the bokashi method of composting so we were able to compost all the waste vegetative matter which is important when you are dealing with a city lot, to keep it neat and clean.