Gardens Build Community, Believe It!

Gardens build community, believe it! Grow a veggie garden in your front yard, spend some time out in it and you will meet neighbors who stop and admire what you are doing. That happens almost every day to me, and it’s the most rewarding aspect of growing your own food, that, and discovering sprouts pushing up out of the ground. These pumpkin sprouts emerged overnight!

Organic Heirloom Rouge VIF D’Etampes Pumpkin Sprout. You can see the transparent coating from the original seed separating from the leaves.

Yesterday, a lovely couple, who live, quite literally, one block away, stopped to admire my garden and spent a good half hour sharing growing experiences with me. We have lived here 19 years and had never met them. As I shared my passion about growing food, their interest in growing MORE (they already have fruit trees, tomatoes and a few other edibles) was sparked. You could see it in their eyes.

*Warning: start growing your own food, and your appetite (pun intended) for growing more and different varieties of foods will be limited only by your space, your sun and your pocketbook. You will be shopping rare heirloom seeds and biological pest controls online rather than following your Facebook feed. (Well, that happened to me, anyway, and I really do love all my Facebook friends!) As they left, Sonya said she would return with some of their mulberries. And indeed she did!

Gift of Homegrown Mulberries with Fresh-cut Lavendar

The exchange of information is so valuable. I didn’t know anything about mulberries and walked over to see her tree (big lavender bushes grow underneath that smell divine) which she said was in her parkway. There looked like thousands of berries on an 8’H x 6’W tree. I want one!

Mature Mulberry Tree with Ripe and Ripening Berries

In case you haven’t tried mulberries, these are modestly, perfectly sweet, not too sweet. I’m eating them now with my goat yogurt. Work hard and share your passion, exchange information, barter food and seeds, and community builds. Even in the big city.

Fresh Mulberries from my Neighbor’s Tree

When one individual or family at a time starts growing food, not lawns, and looking at dirt as a living precious resource to be protected, not polluted or smothered with concrete (read Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan) and using water for the life-giving purpose of sustaining our bodies with healthy food, it’s a win-win all around!

Eating the fruits and veggies of your (or your neighbor’s, with their permission 🙂 ) labor, that’s success! Make your yard a food producing space + build community = make the world a better place.

Thanks for reading! What can you eat raw right out of your garden? – Kaye

Tags: biodiversity, community, curbside gardening, do-it-yourself, farming on small scale, garden community, gardening, green your world, growing your own vegetables, Kaye Kittrell, Kaye Kittrell Late Bloomer, Late Bloomer, lavendar, mulberries, mulberry tree, organic, Plant photography

Category: Community, Urban Gardening