The soothing green of gardens beckons us In this time of uncertainty, with COVID-19 keeping us isolated, with storms threatening, with unrest in the streets.
Community gardens provide peace for volunteers, and vegetables for food pantries. In the Houston area, Urban Harvest has many affiliate gardens (see Map).
One Urban Harvest affiliate garden has grown vegetables and herbs in Tomball for over 10 years. This garden provided over 2,698 pounds of vegetables for Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries (TEAM) in 2020 through September. In the last two weeks of September, the garden provided 200 pounds of Indian luffa squash, Indian cucumbers (Dosakai) and other vegetables, plus 7 pounds of arugula.
The Tomball Community Garden is now turning the seasons, finished with summer tomatoes and squash, and planting seedlings of kale, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, as well as seeds of beans and sugar snap peas. In October, the last of the squash and cucumbers will be harvested.
The cool mornings of fall delight the volunteers who dig out weeds and plant fall vegetables in the 20 raised beds and the perimeter of the garden’s deer fence. Yes, hungry deer in Tomball gobble up any plants they can reach! Last year, this garden greeted 50 new volunteers, although COVID-19 now restricts current volunteers to less than 10 at a time.
Each week, volunteer leaders take the week’s harvest to TEAM for the food pantry, adding fresh produce to their canned and packaged goods.
Supplies for the Tomball garden come from donations, and from a hub garden in Spring. The hub gardens get supplies from downtown Urban Harvest.
Urban Harvest, founded in 1994, provides community gardens, farmers markets, gardening classes, and youth education. They have proven that locally grown, heathy food can grow here. They dig Houston!
By Carol Woronow