Opportunity Gardens End of the Year Update

An update from Trish Woolbright, Opportunity Gardens Coordinator

Opportunity Gardens has had a very successful year with lots more people growing a whole lot more fresh food than there were last year and the year before. We look forward to more next year! We have also been conducting surveys, and have spent our time since the Hootenanny “winterizing” gardens.

What does winterizing mean? Mostly, it’s just pulling out the dead plants, harvesting what’s left (for some it’s quite a lot of sweet potatoes and carrots) , and putting down compost, then straw, maybe planting some garlic, and waiting till spring. It’s this time of year where I feel most like a personal trainer, as no one wants to do these last steps, not even me. But they are vital to a great garden the next year and also streamline our springtime rush. We got about 62 gardens winterized; the rest were either moving, container gardens, or they did it themselves without our help or with just phone or email instructions, (which is the direction we want everyone to go eventually so that’s my favorite.) We added about 7 new clients for next year and plan to add 25 or so more next spring until mid-June.

Also, after the Hoot, R.V. Pride and I went to Detroit for the Black Farmers & Urban Growers conference. We learned a lot of great ideas and tips, and also made valuable connections with other similar organizations all over the country.

This winter, we have begun our search for a mountain of 5-gallon buckets for making free self-watering containers to pass out for our container gardeners, and we are working on creating a way to share how to do this program in other cities. We also want to address whole-year healthy eating, ways to preserve food, and more next year. We dabbled in teaching preservation this year with great success and I look forward to doing that much more next year. With your help, we can make some huge impacts in our community and help people feel great growing food for themselves and sharing it with their family and friends.