By Janet Peterman, Co-Chair of HGNC’s City Harvest Committee
One of the ways Hansberry gardeners reach out to neighbors in Germantown who are struggling is through the City Harvest program. Supported by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS — they run the Flower Show each spring), which provides that big pile of compost and all the City Harvest plants and seeds, City Harvest grows food to donate to a local food pantry. We take ours to the Family Life Center’s Food Pantry at Canaan Baptist Church on School House Lane at Pulaski Avenue.
Even if you are not on the City Harvest team, you may want to participate in one of these ways:
- You may wrap City Harvest yarn around one or more of your plants and we’ll harvest that plant(s), and only that one(s) whenever we regularly harvest for City Harvest. See the picture of the yarn above. You’ll find the yarn with a pair of light-green-handled scissors in the big City Harvest box of plastic containers in the shed.
- You might want some attention to some part of your harvest while you are away. We can harvest particular plants while you are away in roughly a time frame you might want (leaving some for you when you get back). Please give us whatever notice you are able to: Email both Becky Mendel and Janet Peterman in case you catch one of us away [slythering@hotmail.com and janetspeterman@gmail.com] We are glad to turn the hose on your plot in exchange for your donation if your time away coincides with a dry spell.
- You might find yourself overwhelmed with your garden plot some time midseason or later: What?!? Do 5 cucumber plants really produce a bushel basket full of cukes?!? (or whatever…) We’d hope that whatever overwhelms you in your plot, whether the spacing, something about how to grow or prune, you’d feel confident to ask any other gardener who happens to be around when you face the mass of green before you. But if it’s hard to screw up your courage to do that, know that you are welcome to contact one of us. And if it happens that you also have extra produce in that mass of green, we can certainly take it off your hands. 😊
Happy growing!
Janet Peterman for the City Harvest team
p.s. It’s come to my attention that someone used the other ball of yarn like the one pictured (last year’s City Harvest yarn) for other purposes than for City Harvest identification. You probably didn’t know what it was in the shed for … That’s OK. Just let us know your box number and that you DON’T mean to have your plants that are being tied up with the CH yarn to be harvested by the City Harvest team and we’ll leave it as it is.