Alameda Master Gardeners help develop garden to feed the hungry

Two Alameda County Master Gardeners are working with a local church to transform a vacant lot into a bounty of fresh produce that a neighboring food kitchen serves to the needy, according to an article that ran in the Livermore Patch.

In addition, plans are in place to make the organic planting and composting operation a demonstration garden with a monthly curriculum and teaching cycles for anyone who wants to learn about gardening, the story said.

The pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, Chuck Johnstone, suggested last year that open land behind the church could be used to grow food for the hungry. In August, Alameda County Master Gardeners Bruce Campbell and Mark Brunell and a team of volunteers prepared the soil for planting by digging down 18 inches by hand, screen-sifting the soil to remove the pebbles and rocks, and forming five 80-foot-long raised beds. In December they held a four-hour planting party.

"We're doing all this on a shoestring. We replaced a large cash outlay with a lot of (volunteer) labor," Campbell was quoted in the article.

Reporter Thomas Petty said the Master Gardeners have two simple goals for the garden:

• Use an organic market garden model. Food scraps from the food kitchen are composted and put back into the garden for fertilizer. No artificial fertilizers or pesticides are used and the group is working toward "bio-intensive" beds.
  
  
• Have a closed system in which proper crop rotation increases soil fertility. Nothing goes into the system except sun, water and compost.

The Garden of Grace blog reported that 50 heads lettuce - romaine, green and red salad bowl, red sails lettuce, and some Russian red kale leaves - 12 broccoli heads, 6 Bull's Blood beets, and 6 turnips were harvested from the garden on Easter Sunday.

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