Planting a Garden: A Step Towards Helping Vulnerable Neighbors, Soup Kitchens, and Food Pantries

Gardening is more than just a hobby; it's a powerful tool for community support and social change. This Edible Gardens Inc. article explores how planting a garden can be transformed into a meaningful endeavor to help vulnerable neighbors, soup kitchens, and food pantries. By harnessing the power of gardening, we can contribute to alleviating food insecurity in our communities.

Starting a Community Garden

A community garden is a fantastic way to begin your journey in helping others through gardening.

• Identify a Suitable Location: Look for unused land in your neighborhood that can be converted into a garden.
• Engage the Community: Involve local residents and groups to foster a sense of community ownership.
• Plan Your Garden: Decide on the types of vegetables and fruits that are most needed in your community.

Partnering with Local Organizations

Building partnerships with local soup...

Planting in July and harvesting before fall is not only possible but surprisingly simple. It’s all about knowing your zone and your season. You can use this site to figure out what your zone is https://plantmaps.com. I know for example that Louisville has until late august before the hot season is over and then till late September before the warm season is over and the cool season begins. This means that by late September I will want to have all my hot and warm season crops harvested. Using this knowledge, I know that I can still grow any plant that has a life span of about 70 or less days which means many medium sized plants and any small plants, that can grow in the warm season, are fair game!

Small Plants

Small plants that can grow in the warm and hot season are plants like radishes, beets, arugula, and warm weather adapted lettuces.

Leafy Greens in Summer

If you want to grow lettuce or leafy greens in the summer than make sure you are using varieties that are adapted to be...

Green Onion seeds are like the friendship bread of gardening, because they are easy to grow harvest, and share! They are the perfect plant to grow from seed because they have a reliable germination and go from seed to harvest in just 50 days. Once they have flowered you can harvest the seeds and a few flowers can produce enough seeds to plant, for next year save, and share with fellow gardeners, or someone just getting into gardening. It’s the perfect gate way crop. 

A few green onion facts you should know before jumping in! They are cool weather crops, that means they will grow in whatever time of year is your cool season, for us here in Kentucky that is the spring and fall. For some that might be the winter months if you live in a very warm climate. Green onions are bi-annual crops meaning they will over winter for one year and then go to flower the next so if you are growing with the intent to harvest the seeds, plan a year ahead.  

When harvesting seeds from...

The Arc of the Seasons in the secret to gardening success and making the most of your home garden. Vegetable and fruit crops are sensitive to temperature and changes in temperature so as a gardener you must be aware of how the seasons change. Unless you live at the equator or the arctic everyone has an arc to their year it starts at the coolest point and then gradually increases in temperature to the warmest point in the year. We don’t like to use months because depending on where you are December could be one of your coldest or warmest months and the seasons like spring, summer, fall, and winter are too general. Instead, we divide the seasons into cold, cool, warm, and hot. You can see on the diagram below how the seasons recur over and over in a repeating arc, hence the name Arc of the Seasons!

You can also see in the above diagram how we divide the seasons using temperature to distinguish between them. It is vital to know the difference between the cold season, cool...

If you have been planting with the seasons than you have been working hard the past weeks to tend your cool weather plants. I want to make sure you do not let all that hard work and your beautiful fresh produce go to waste. Remember if you plant with the seasons, you also harvest with the seasons! In Kentucky, where Edible Gardens Inc. is headquartered, the cool season is coming to a rapid end as a warm front has moved in, and the hot season will soon be upon us! So, as you go into your gardens be checking your lettuce, radishes and herbs for what we call bolting and harvest what you have following the instructions in the video above!