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Grad student garden yields produce for Food Bank
8:30 a.m., Nov. 22, 2006-- Abby Hird, a second-year fellow in the Longwood Graduate Program, was raised eating homegrown produce. Which is not surprising, considering that her family grows vegetable crops on their 1,000-acre Dutch Creek Ranch in Litchfield, Neb. When Hird arrived at UD two years ago and set up housekeeping in a Newark-area apartment, she realized how much she missed fresh-picked corn and right-from-the-vine tomatoes. So this past summer, she and about 15 other grad students in the department of plant and soil sciences got together and created a community garden on UD's Newark farm. But first, the happy ending to this story--the garden proved to be so fertile that during the course of the summer the grad students donated 500 pounds of fresh produce to the Food Bank of Delaware. It was then distributed to community centers, summer camps, soup kitchens and food pantries throughout New Castle County. “It was a great feeling to walk into the Food Bank every week with produce we had grown,” Hird said. “People would get so excited to see us; I guess because they don't get donations of fresh vegetables very often.” The garden got its start thanks to Masayuki Shimizu, a soil chemistry grad student who approached Jerry Hendricks, a plant and soil sciences research manager, about the idea. The next step was to get permission from farm superintendent Scott Hopkins, who moved some research plots around so that the students could have a piece of land convenient to most of their offices. He also made sure it had easy access to water. Hendricks then met with the interested students, whose gardening experience ranged from Hird's expertise to a number of students who had never tended a single backyard tomato plant. “I had to explain that you can't plant in the shade--really basic stuff,” Hendricks said. “But what the students lacked in knowledge, they made up for in enthusiasm.” After the initial meeting, Hendricks stepped back and let the students take over. Hendricks said that Hird quickly became a mentor to the less-knowledgeable students. “It was fun helping the other students out,” Hird said. “The best part was that I got to know so many people from other programs in our department. I might have seen them in the hall before, but previously had no idea who they were.” For Hird, it was fresh corn that she missed the most from Dutch Creek Ranch. So she planted plenty of it, as well as tomatoes, beans, cabbage, some herbs and sunflowers. “It was nice to go out in the evening and work in the garden,” Hird said. “There would usually be six or seven of us out there at any one time. We had a lot of fun together.” She estimates that the garden yielded 2,000-2,500 pounds of produce. Besides the 500 pounds donated to the Food Bank of Delaware, the students gave away countless boxes of fresh veggies to Townsend Hall faculty and staff. The student gardeners said they hope to have a garden again next summer and open it up to all graduate students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Hird still has some late-season radishes, cabbages and herbs in the ground and said she is pleasantly surprised how much longer the Delaware growing season is compared to what she's used to in Nebraska. She said she is enjoying this last chance to have her hands in the soil before winter sets in. Article by Margo McDonough |
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