On March the 21st, the Kansas City community gardens had their first day for bedding plants on sale. I spent five dollars for a variety of lettuce, chard, and other early season plants. I had already paid my membership fee of 2 dollars. In their greenhouses, a staff of 18 had cultivated 162,000 vegetable and herb seedlings and prepared 51,800 seed packets. For those who are learning to garden, they also delivered 57 free educational workshops.
A few years back I took a university course so that I could teach fifth graders in the Kansas City school district how to grow a garden in a raised bed. The KC Community Gardens now supports 230 school gardens and 62 school orchards, reaching more than 20,000 students. In 2023, more than 45,000 households harvested directly from a garden or orchard site and thousands more received garden-grown food from local pantries.
In addition to the items for sale, with each enrollment based on income, (mine was 2 dollars), they give you a sack of pelletized composted chicken manure for free. In addition, they have straw bales and organic soil for sale. They have fruit trees for sale and potatoes and strawberry plants.
KCCG invested a budget of $1.4 million in its programming. In return, gardeners harvested an estimated $2.1 million of veggies and $1.8 million of organic fruit. That’s a nearly 3-fold return on dollars alone – and doesn’t even begin to count the value of improved health and community cohesion.
I know there are similar programs in other cities, but if you live in a city or even a small town that has or wants to have a program that can compare, go to https://kccg.org for more information.
“How the Food Industry is Killing Us” available on Amazon and book stores every where.