Seasonal progress, greening thumbs

The LBC garden is growing nicely.  The beans are shooting right up; hopefully we'll have better luck with them this year than last.  We put in some raspberries and rhubarb, both of which are doing well.  There are flowers on the cantaloupe, too!  Oh, and I mustn't forget the tiny okra seedlings, which I hope will produce as well in the LBC garden as the ones in my own garden did last Summer.  

Elsewhere -yes, we do have an elsewhere this year!- things are progressing nicely as well.  Up in Mason, Ohio, at the home of my good buddy Chris, we're trying out the "fire and forget" concept, whereby I drop off a grow-box (of, in this case, zucchini and cucumbers) and the single instruction to not let the water reservoir run dry.  So far, it looks like I've been able to make a gardener out of my friend:

LBC Garden Starts again!

I spent a little bit of time a few nights ago working on the garden at Latonia Baptist Church. The weeds had begun to assert themselves, and the clayey "soil" had hardened despite all the rain we've had of late. some well-rotted straw strewn about and worked into the soil and I think we're off to a good start. Here's what it looks like right now:

And here's a slightly better look at the tomatoes I planted (in the bottom right of the picture above): 

Vacation help

Summer is the time when things are ripening in the garden as well as the time when folks go on vacation; what's a gardener to do, just let things fall off the vine, let the squash get huge and inedible, let the skunks and possums and raccoons have their way with the corn and cantaloupe and whatever else? No, of course not. Harvest Stewards will be happy to come by during a gardener's absence to pick whatever would otherwise go bad or to waste. And, it should go without saying, whatever is harvested will be donated to a local food charity.

How and why to grow your own

I just came across a great blog all about growing your own food. It's run by the Maryland Master Gardeners and the UM College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. Grow It Eat It has a wealth of practical and noteworthy information on how you can grow your own food -or food for those less fortunate (that's what we're all about here after all). In addition to the many reasons to grow your own food, add this latest nugget of doom: agricultural pesticides may have a negative effect on kids' IQ (hat tip: Garden Rant). Before I go an inch further with this, I want to make clear the provisional nature of this (and any other) scientific discovery. I'm not for clanging the alarm bells prematurely. The bottom line is that this bears some consideration. And speaking of reasons to grow your own food, I should like to recommend a book I recently came across, called Grow the Good Life by Michelle Owens.

Thank You!

A big thank you to the kind folks at The Next Chapter Church in Newport, KY for their generous donation to Harvest Stewards!

What we're doing, and how you can help.

It never hurts to clarify or remind folks (or myself!) of Harvest Stewards' mission.  It's simple: grow food and give it to hungry folks.  That's it.  There's no "market-specific value-added components of synergistic this-that-or-the-other".  Just grow and give.  This year we want to donate a ton -yes, literally: 2,000 pounds- of produce to hungry folks.  Last year I was able to grow and distribute over 150 pounds of produce mostly on my own, with more than enough garden goodies left over  for my own family.  My personal goal this year is 200 pounds, and with some careful planning, I think this will be attainable.  That puts us at 1,800 pounds to go...

And here is where I tell you what you can do to help.

1. If you have a garden, just commit to donating a portion of the produce you grow to a local foodbank or other food aid ministry.  And when I say "local", I mean it: it doesn't matter where you live, there is probably a foodbank somewhere not too far from you.  You live in the Cincinnati area?  Cool: I know of places that will accept your food donations.  You live in...  Nashville or Seattle or Albuquerque or Boise (or wherever)?  Cool: I can help you find a place that will accept your food donations.  It's a good idea to have a place in mind from the start, but don't let not knowing where to drop off your produce stand in the way of making the commitment. 
2. If you don't have a garden, you can still grow and give.  You might be amazed at the amount of stuff that can be grown in a container on your porch or balcony.  I made and used an "earth-tainer" last year and I was impressed with its results.  They're easy to build, easy to set up and they don't take up too much space.  If you live in the Cincinnati area, I can even help you make one or maybe even have you use one of mine from last year.  In short, it's a Rubbermaid container made into a largish pot with some airholes and a water reservoir.  Last summer mine produced some 70 pounds of cucumbers.  
3. If you don't have a garden and don't have space for container gardening, you can still help; if you're interested in helping in some other way, please get in touch with me.  Your help may be as simple as pitching the idea to a friend of yours who does have a garden, or who is forever telling you in August that s/he doesn't know what on earth s/he is going to do with all the zucchini s/he's getting out of the garden.  Harvest Stewards is not a 501(c)3 organization, but there are ways of making charitable contributions to us that you will be able to deduct from your income for tax purposes.  Get in touch with me to discuss this if you want to make a charitable donation. 

Ok, so that covers the "how" and the "what". I should also mention the "why" of all this too. the idea started a year or so ago, but I've recently been reading a book called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt that crystallizes the impetus behind Harvest Stewards nicely. The idea is that those of us who call ourselves "Christians" (among whom I count myself) ought to do a lot more of the kind of stuff that Christ actually called us to do and a lot less of the stuff that he enjoined his followers from doing (or, at any rate, never specifically endorsed, and very likely wouldn't have done). For example: a lot more feeding the hungry and a lot less navel-gazing about how and why those folks came to find themselves in their present conditions. So yeah, this is an overtly religious mission. Of course, I'd be happy if you agreed with all of this, but you needn't do so in order to help.

So: give it some thought; grow a little and give a lot.

Advantage: alfalfa.

Even though it's getting to be winter, there's still planting to be done. I'm talking about cover crops. I threw down several handfuls of alfalfa seed just the other day in my own garden as well as the LBC garden. I'm afraid it might be getting too cold for them in the near future. If these fail, I should go with Austrian winter peas. I tried those last year in my own garden and they did quite well, surviving and even thriving in the bitter winter. I guess they don't call'em “winter peas” for no reason. Anyway: cover cropping is an easy way to be a good steward of the land without fouling the runoff with too much artificial fertilizer. Just a note of clarification here- I said “too much” fertilizer; I have no issue with a modicum of the stuff. I'm not one of those people... In fact, I've used it before (*gasp!*) when I tried hay-bale gardening. Thing is, it's comparatively expensive and you have to sign forms and present photo ID if you want the really good stuff. Buying some bulk alfalfa seed at Whole Foods is waaaay cheaper and it probably won't land me on a terrorist watch list. Probably. Apart from cost, the only other difference I see between artificial fertilizers and cover cropping is that you really have to do the cover crop a lot earlier than fertilizer application (I could be wrong about this, though). The upshot of that? Hmmm, it means that I get to garden even in the winter. Advantage: alfalfa.