How to start a community garden at your church (& eat what you grow!)

This post brought to you by Gro-ables. All opinions are 100% mine.

Did you know that 33% of Americans have a garden or use a community garden?  That is 42 million households!   It is up 63% since 2008 and the new gardeners are finding ideas (like the one that I will share today) to make it even easier.    This means that community gardening alone is up over 200% in the past five years!  What a huge jump! 

There are a lot of different places that you can find a community garden.  Just in our area, we have a garden at our church, a garden in the center of our town and a garden at a local school.   My family was one of the families to start our previous church (before we moved).

We community garden at our old church:

First, we raised awareness about the garden.  We asked different families to join in.  We shared the word on Facebook and in our church itself (word of mouth).   We had a lot of families that wanted to participate, so we just picked a Saturday when the majority of the people participating were free and we met at our church.

You can find a sponsor to financially support the garden, or you can do it yourself, as we did.   We each brought tools, from home, and soil.  We used rope to section off the garden into rectangles for each family.   We left extra for other families that would join in the future.    It was really easy.   BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR KIDS in this process- our kids loved helping! 

We used a large peice of the land out back, added soil (each family brought two bags) and we added rope and stakes.

Each family made a little wooden sign (however they wanted it to look) with their names on it to designate which space was going to be the space that they would use.  We let our kids decorate our sign and we made mini-signs for our vegetables (just to let the kids know what was growing there).

Each family then brought seeds for their own mini-garden.  We brought Gro-ables, because it is a really great new product from Miracle-Gro.  It is a pre-packaged seed pod that makes it incredibly easy to grow your own herbs and veggies from seed.  It was actually made for people who are new to gardening but have always wanted to try growing their own food. The seed pods are designed to simplify the growing process so it’s not overwhelming or confusing.   We used them to grow herbs and veggies.   The seed pods were only $1.29 – $1.49 (& were guarenteed) so it was cheaper for us to grow our own food.

(Our kids helped to plant these).

Throughout the season, we went to our garden every other day.   As far as watering goes, one of the parishioners that lived close by volunteered to stop by every morning.

The best part is that whatever you don’t use, you can pass on to those that need it.  

It was really fun to pick our own food and to create something from it!  We use our veggies that we grew to make Zucchini Pie and to make our favorite Salsa recipe:

14 Roma Tomatoes (remove the seeds to keep it from becoming too watery)

2 green peppers (large)

2 bell peppers (orange, red… whatever you want)

1 red onion

1 large Vidalia onion

2 jalapenos (remove the seeds!)

1 large cucumber (remove the seeds)

3 cloves of fresh garlic (minced)

2 limes- just squeeze the juice over the top

a bunch (group) of cilantro – (they come in “bunches”, use about 1/3 of this- only the leaves, cut up)

Salt- a little less than a Tablespoon  (start with 1/2 T and work your way up, to taste)

Pepper- about 1/2 T to a full Tablespoon (to taste)

Cumin- sprinkle a little on top

HOW TO PREPARE THE SALSA:

Remove the seeds from ALL vegetables.

Dice the vegetables as small as you can or want.

Add everything (vegetables) to a large bowl or pot

Squeeze lime juice on top

Add garlic, cilantro and seasonings.

Here are more ideas for growing a SALSA GARDEN (from Sprout) 

If you need more inspiration, check out this Video & get gardening!