There’s nothing quite like growing your own food in the summer. It’s less expensive than buying store-bought fruits and veggies and there’s something about successfully growing your own food that just makes it taste better. If you do have a garden, however, chances are you are producing more food than your family can actually consume.
According to Ample Harvest, 11 billion pounds of garden produce goes to waste annually. That is enough food to feed 28 million people. With 41.2 million Americans being food insecure, meaning they are forced to skip meals or buy inexpensive, less nutritious foods, this waste could make a huge impact on America’s hunger epidemic and certainly in your own community.
If you are a gardener, consider donating a portion of what your garden produces to your local food shelter or soup kitchen. Consider what your family needs and what your garden typically produces. You can do this on a weekly or monthly basis. Make a plan to donate a portion of your home-grown food at the end of each week to your local soup kitchen and help support ending hunger in your community.
You can also improve your gardening by changing up what you grow. Consider growing ‘prolific’ vegetables, meaning vegetables that produce in abundance during one season.
Tomatoes are a widely popular garden item and you can get 30-40 pounds of fruit from one plant. Most varieties of tomatoes will continue producing throughout the season.
Eggplant is a vegetable that will provide many delicious dishes again and again. Eggplant seed perform best in hotter temperatures (so now is the perfect time to plant them!)
Cucumbers are a great vegetable to grow because they can produce very quickly. Once you start finding blooms, keep an eye on the plant – you’ll begin to find cucumbers in a few days. Cucumbers are the perfect summer treat! Great for salads or perfect on their own.
Potatoes are a great vegetable to grow because their care is simple. Other than keeping them watered, they do not need much more attention. They are additionally great because they are easy to store and make for a hardy vegetable you can add to almost any meal.
If your garden contains vegetables other than these, still feel motivated to donate them! Any garden-grown vegetable in Kentucky is a good one. Don’t grow a garden? Consider testing out your green thumb in support of reducing the amount of families that go hungry in your community. Remember that each small act can make a huge impact.
If you have questions about donating food from your garden as well as how you may supportThe House of Blessings, please contact us!We serve the community of Monticello, Kentucky by providing food and resources to families and individuals in need.
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