If you’re gearing up to plant fruits, vegetables or herbs this spring, why not grow some extra to donate to your local soup kitchen or pantry?
The national Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign, launched in 1995, has been encouraging home and community gardeners to do just that every year to help feed neighbors in need of fresh food.
The program was spearheaded in 1995 by Anchorage Daily News garden columnist Jeff Lowenfels, who wrote a column encouraging his readers to plant extra crops and donate their harvests.
After seeing the impact that his column had on local food donations, Lowenfels partnered with GardenComm International, then known as Garden Writers of America, to enlist garden columnists all over the country to promote the cause in their own communities. Since then, more than 20 million pounds of produce, providing more than 80 million meals, have been donated through the campaign by home gardeners.
“All of this has been achieved without government subsidy or bureaucratic red tape — just people helping people,” according to organizers on the campaign's website. And there’s no big advertising campaign, either — just garden columnists and their readers spreading the word.
If everyone reading this column planted one extra row and donated its harvest, together we could have an impact on hunger.
So what do you say?
To participate, plant an extra row or container (or, if you’re short on space or resources, even just one additional plant) and donate its harvest to your local food pantry, soup kitchen, house of worship or informally to a neighbor who could use it.
If you’d like to help even more, consider starting your own Plant a Row campaign with friends, neighbors or co-workers and plant individually or at the office, in a community garden, school garden, prison garden — whatever garden you have at your disposal.
If you need help getting started, GardenComm.org has posted steps for running your own campaign and a listing of existing campaigns to join in your state and town.
But it's not necessary to join a group. To find food drop-off sites near you, visit AmpleHarvest.org and plug in your zip code.
Before dropping off food, call the organization to confirm they accept perishables (soup kitchens are generally more likely to have the refrigeration necessary for storage than pantries or food banks, but there may be exceptions).
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Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
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For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
Jessica Damiano, The Associated Press
