Building a garden for charity

The idea came to me while in my garden this summer. With too much time on my hands, since leaving work I have a huge vacuum to fill. Happily I have gardening to fill some of that void. And in my little garden, I wondered if I could build a more ‘commercial’ garden. Use modern varieties for productivity, build irrigation and set the garden in a piece of bottom land on our land. Give all the produce to local food banks for hungry people.

Logistics of getting the produce to hungry people was daunting at first. When a friend, Dennis Payne, said that Other Options will send someone every Friday to pick up the veggies. I was sold immediately!

Now, like any garden project, a nice long ‘to do’ list emerges. Plant lists, seeds, varieties, plant times, yields, row width, trellis material, pest control, soil tilling, compost making. Like a thunderclap my terrible void is filled with a worthy thing. It is a satisfying thing too: a productive garden. I am too eager to harvest the first veggie.

So there it is. A garden for the hungry, down in our bottom, next to a nice old Elm tree.