Healthy Gardening

We have begun the process of creating a community garden on church property. The legal advice we received suggested that we name it a park. We have discussed making raised-bed gardens that are accessible for wheel chair bound residents of the local long-term care unit. People are volunteering everything from equipment and landscape timbers to vegetable seeds. One of the greatest prospects of this project is the possibility of providing more locally-grown produce for families in this rural community in southwest Kansas. Though we are surrounded by agricultural land, most of our produce comes from great distances. More people place value on producing some of our food near home. The following recommendations reflect this value:

Ways to Encourage Local Food Production

1. Promote the idea of Victory Gardens (both private and community-based) and food co-ops.
   
2. Provide training courses in gardening and permaculture through local community colleges and agricultural extension offices.
3. Remove unnecessary restrictions on people growing their own food (maintaining needed restrictions only to promote health & safety and prevent animal cruelty).
4. Remove unnecessary restrictions on local farmers selling their crops to local markets (often put in place due to lobbying by big agri-business).
5. Encourage the formation of farmers markets.
6. Local relief organizations could provide vouchers or special debit cards for use at local farmers markets as part of their assistance programs.
7. Tree-planting programs and local Arbor Day celebrations could include fruit and nut trees.
8. Support programs to capture organic waste (food scraps, animal & human manure, leaves & other yard waste, agricultural waste) for composting to improve soils.
9. Another great post for churches considering placing a garden on church grounds can be found at http://flourishonline.org/2010/02/extending-the-front-porch-is-your-church-ready-for-a-garden-2/.