Subscribe to the RSS feed.Community Gardens Produce more than Produce
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CHP | Posted on: July 7th, 2009
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Economic Issues •
Nutrition •
Public Health •
Rural Health •
Urban Issues
By planting and tending to your garden you gain more control over the way your food is grown, as well as what choices you have – like to try some herbs you had at your favorite Thai restaurant or taste test three different types of strawberries? No problem. Packets of seed usually cost less than a few dollars and will provide more than enough plants for the season. This is especially important for people who don’t live within easy access to grocery stores or farmer’s markets, in the so-called “food deserts” usually located in poorer urban or very rural areas, where choices are slim, prices are high, and poor nutrition is a problem for kids and adults alike. In fact, some folks report having to shop for their produce at convenience stores, where the sad, wilting offerings are uninspiring to even hard-core veggie lovers.
One of the other benefits of garden-fresh food is that it tastes better, making it easier to get picky eaters to enjoy what many a mom (and dad) know is best for them. The taste of a snap pea straight from the plant versus the grocery store is hard to describe, but first-timers usually say, yum, I never had one this good! A home garden is also a great, source of gentle outdoor exercise. Being outside in the cool of the morning, raking, weeding, and harvesting are a pleasant way to be active. Of course, not everyone has space to grow a garden. Community gardens offer people the chance to reap the benefits of a garden even if they live in an apartment or don’t have enough yard space. These plots dotted around Portland and other Oregon cities are available for people who have time but no space. But community gardens offer much more than the chance to grow your own food. They are a way to meet your neighbors and increase social capital, that feeling of belonging and support that the best communities provide. Not only that, community gardens have been shown to increase property values and reduce crime. That’s a lot of benefits for a veggie patch.
Still don’t think you have time to plant? One of the easiest ways to get the very freshest produce are Oregon’s many you-pick farms, which are a great way to see foods being grown on the farm and offer the fun of harvesting without putting in the work of growing. Summer weekends on Sauvie Island are full of families picking first strawberries in June, then the wealth of other Oregon berries, followed by tomatoes, peaches, and loads of other tasty treats all the way to October.
Oregon’s agricultural bounty offers communities so many ways to enjoy inexpensive, fresh food and be active outdoors. Do you participate in a community garden project? Do you wish you could, maybe because you live in one of those food deserts? We’d love to hear your stories in our comments section.
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This was a great motivational article; I am a gardener I have been since I was a child, my mother is a gardener as well and has passed it on to me over the years. Not only does the White House have a garden but I know our local City Hall does as well called the ‘Portland Better Together Food Garden’ Mayor Sam Adams has created this garden to give back to the community. “The purpose of this garden is to show that in Portland you can grow food in relatively small spaces.” (http://www.cityfarmer.info/?p=1476) I think it is great that our local government is helping our community especially when unemployment rates are so high, all the food is donated to local food shelters for people in need.
I agree with the article that growing a garden helps a person learn control and I would add patience, for kids, or anyone this is a great skill to learn. I would like to see more children, teenagers and adult start to garden, they would gain so much from it. A great program to create and implement would be to make teenage children who have been in trouble with the law mandate volunteer time back to the community in a garden. They could improve their lifestyle from giving back and learn great skills at the same time. I also know some middle school have gardening as a hour long class time, where they learn the basic of how to take care of a garden, these school are local in Portland and we should think about adding gardens to our public schools next.
The only part of the article that I would contest is the fact made about “great, source of gentle outdoor exercise,” this is very much so dependent on how large your garden is and what type of gardening. The word gentle can easily be taken the wrong way; I believe a good garden taken hard work and heavy lifting. I have a 5 foot by 12 foot garden and I have to till the soil, pull any weeds, move rocks, only to prepare the soil and then planting the plants or seeds. Then if your lucky you get some fruits or vegetables, which is worth all the work, once fall hits time to take everything out and wait to do it again next year! If a person just has a few plants in pots by their door it is quite nice and easy to take care of.