GARDEN PLOTS AT SCOTTSDALE COMMUNITY GARDEN

In August 2008, our group started a second garden to accommodate Roots & Shoots members residing a long distance from the garden at Superstition Farm. The group’s plots are located within the Scottsdale Community Garden on the campus of Scottsdale Community College. Youth are working toward Junior Master Gardener Certification while planting, maintaining, and harvesting the garden. In the last year and a half, members have successfully grown squash, pumpkins, eggplant, corn, peas, okra, grapes, apple trees, peanuts, sunflowers, Swiss chard, lettuces, arugula, beans, carrots, loofahs, basil and other herbs. Some items were not as successful as others. Like the Supertition Farm garden, we started with a barren patch of dirt, and lovingly cultivated our soil to yield a boutiful harvest. We acquired a scale to measure our harvest and have averaged sixty pounds of produce per month. Surplus harvest is donated to the hungry through Waste Not. We also practice seed saving. Group members interact with, learn from, and assist fellow community gardeners in neighboring plots, many of whom are elderly and have been Scottsdale Community Garden members since the garden’s start in 1976.