Garden of Grace Feeds Livermore's Hungry

Last month, in , I wrote about Open Heart Kitchen and how it provides nearly a quarter million hot meals to the area's hungry each year.

I caught up with Bruce Campbell and Mark Brunell, both Alameda County Master Gardeners who, along with many volunteers, have started an organic garden at Asbury United Methodist Church to provide healthy crops to Open Heart Kitchen.

A seedling of an idea

Last year, Pastor Chuck Johnstone suggested that the acreage behind the church, occasionally used to graze cows (to keep the weeds down), could be used to grow crops to feed the hungry. 

In August, Campbell and Brunell rounded up some volunteers to prepare the
soil for planting. They dug down to 18 inches by hand, screen-sifted the soil to remove the pebbles and rocks, and created five 80-foot long raised beds.
"Double-digging" the soil and sifting out the rocks provides better
aeration and penetration for root vegetables such as carrots and beets.

"It was a lot of work," Brunell said. "But the carrots just come out beautifully. Without the sifting pre-work, root vegetables would grow crookedly around the rocks and split into forks."

In December, the group had a "four-hour planting party" and expanded the planted area to 2,700 square feet of crops in 4,000 square feet. Most of the plants are grown from seed to produce their own seedlings. This has saved a lot of money because the seeds cost only a few dollars.

"The most we've spent was $42 on potato seeds, but we'll probably get 400 pounds of potatoes out them," Brunell said.

Campbell added, "We're doing all this on a shoestring. We replaced a large cash outlay with a lot of labor."

This seedling of an idea has turned into a project that produces, on average, 20 to 30 pounds of fresh crops each week, all of which is used by Open Heart Kitchen. The  garden area will expand again soon, roughly doubling the planted space.

Right now, there are lots of leafy greens such as mustard, chard, kale, spinach and lettuce (nearly 700 heads!), and root vegetables: turnips, onions, radishes, carrots, beets, garlic and shallots. Soon, summer crops will go in — eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes and beans.

Two simple goals

Campbell explained that in addition to using the produce to provide nutritious crops for Open Heart Kitchen to feed the hungry, the group wants the garden to be a teaching garden so others can learn from it. There are a couple of simple goals:

The first is to use an organic market garden model. All food scraps from Open Heart 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. Everything is organically grown, but the group isn't trying to certify them to "organic standards."

The second goal is to have a closed system in which proper crop rotation increases soil fertility at the same time crops are being removed. So essentially nothing goes into the system except sun and water, and the compost that is being produced comes from harvests.

This is a "trial garden" that works with the Alameda County Master Gardeners to record data about crop output, water usage, and so on, so others can use the data to grow crops.

Biggest challenge?

Last year, when the group was just getting started, wild turkeys kept eating the young plants. Gardeners had to build a netting system to keep the ravenous birds out. They've also seen their share of slugs, earwigs, cutworms and other pests — even the occasional rabbit.

Brunell said, "It was depressing when we put in new plants and cutworms took half of them out."

Resorting to hand picking the bugs, and using only organic-approved spinosad and B.T. "caterpillar killer" natural insecticides, the gardeners got things back under control.

As a side note, it occurs to me that The Taylor Family Foundation camp has an organic garden. It is fully enclosed, with chickens housed inside. The chickens keep the produce free of insects, and even provide fertilizer of their own.

What's next for the Garden of Grace?

The group uses thermophyllic composting techniques, keeping the compost warmer than 131 degrees and killing weed seeds and other pathogens. A small, very low power fan circulates air to keep the active bacteria working to create rich composting material. The group also will do worm composting at some point.

Campbell and Brunell want people to learn from the garden. They're hoping to use it as a demonstration garden that will have a small monthly curriculum with teaching cycles for anyone who wants to learn (and volunteer).

Campbell is heading to Haiti in May to teach people there how to build sustainable gardens to support the population.

There is a working blog at AsburyGardenofGrace.blogspot.com, and a website is planned for the near future. Anyone interested in volunteering or learning more about the garden can contact Bruce Campbell at 925-371-5615.