It's too bad kids these days don't take on things like this. A little help in the dirt, and bring some fresh food home for mom and pops to cook. When I was 10 I had my own garden, a small plot about the size of a decent backyard swimming pool that my dad helped me prepare, I grew tomatos, broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, bell peppers, lettuce, and carrots. As a little time went on, I learned a little maintenence everyday made for shorter time spent tending to the garden. Might also talk to a few cub and boyscout leaders, those kids are always needing some sort of community project for badges.
You should have no problem finding a local food bank that will take any excess as a donation. You can also save any rotten or going bad veggies and offer that to any cattle/ hog farmers who feed organic. I live in a neighborhood filled with tiny cottage homes. I would grow a garden if even I had the room for boxes. I do container garden which, enables me the opportunity to plant in stages that keeps yields to a low level. I started a small project in the neighborhood where everybody who grows a little something can share or even trade with other neighbors. Creating a master list to distribute so folks know what their neighbors have and when stuff is available. It is more of a social project that helps neighbors get to know each other a little better. If it continues to work, I might do a website everyone can use to match list, etc...
I grew up with gardening parents and I'm a man with many interests, but gardening was never one of them. I ain't sure why, because I love fresh vegetables. Possibly because I have so many gardening friends that bring me sacks of stuff when the crop comes in. Good idea.
My one experience with gardening was somewhat of a disaster. For some reason I thought it would be cool to grow a few of the veggies that I like. I dug up a small area in my backyard using just a shovel and no real gardening power tools. After sweating like a pig and removing all the clumps of grass and forming some rows I planted some seeds and a row if tomato plants. Then I sat back and thought I was done. All I had to do was wait for the seeds to grow and then I could pick what I wanted each day. Well, Old Mother Nature said "Not so fast my friend. Here are some weeds to clog up your garden and here are some bugs to eat your veggies. My tomatoes were full of worms. Same with the okra. Mustard greens never came up at all. The only thing that thrived were the jalapenos and the cayenne peppers and a few banana peppers. I love peppers but how many can I eat or give away? For some reason unknown to me the lettuce plants did well. Only thing wrong with that is that what can I do with all that lettuce? You can't freeze it. I don't eat 10 salads a day. For people who love gardening kudos to you. For me I'll just buy whatever I need the day I need it. I can go to Southside Fruit and Vegetable on Perkins Road and get more than I need for about $5. Gardening is for the birds. Literally. Gardening is for the birds. They eat your plants about as fast as the bugs
I am doing straw bales again this year. Already had about 10 salads from the various lettuce plants. Tomatos are going like crazy as are beans, peppers and squash and zucchini. Based on my wife's insistence (or nagging), we stacked bale on bale this year. IT IS MY FAULT I did not stack them crosswise and we are developing the dreaded bale sag, which may be, at some point, catastrophic. I did rig up a timed sprinkler, 3 times a day, 20 minutes a shot so watering is no issue this year. You prep the bales with urea to get them going. When it came time to plant, one of the 8 top bales was too hot on the inside to plant.
This is NOBEL prize kind of stuff. Good, make it great on you. The food bank garden here in New Bern, where they grow as much as they can, has 8 foot fence topped with razor wire. I hope you will not need that. Again, truly awesome effort. Congratulations for being such a winner.
I wouldn't call it NOBEL, but appreciate the kind words. We are just some guys who like playing in the dirt and are doing what we can to give back to our community a little bit. As to the razor wire, that will never happen. I would hope that people would take what they will eat and maybe take some to needy neighbors. I don't want to send a message to the community that we really don't trust them. I want the message to be "Hey, we're all in this together. Let's make this a great place to live.". BTW, we are planting more tomorrow. I'll try and get some pics up once its done.
