Yes, that's a good idea. But when you offer "free" food, you have to be prepared for someone to take it all. Also, people have trouble with boundaries. If you tell them they're free to pick in one plot, some people will start picking in other plots, too, if they think they didn't get enough, or if they see more to pick.
Recently, a fellow gardener offered some tomatoes to her neighbor at the community gardener, saying "take what you need," and the person took the whole flat! She said she was making a dinner for teachers. The gardener who told me this story said she expected her neighbor to take a few or maybe up to half, and that if she'd known where the produce was going, she would have offered only a few. She felt she was being neighborly and got taken advantage of. (Teachers around here can earn 6-figure salaries.) I've had plots at 3 community gardens, and what typically happens is that someone comes through and picks bags full of produce. This is not hunger; it's greed. It even happened at the garden where most of the produce is grown to donate to food closets! The manager at that garden speculated that it was going to be sold somewhere. At another garden, a friend saw a couple of people randomly going from plot to plot, picking and watering. She talked to them and they gave different stories: first, they had permission from x (which my friend knew was not true, because she knew whose garden it was); then, they had a plot over there; no, it was that way. Most gardeners will give away produce, especially at the height of the season, if someone stops to chat. I don't think people who are hungry will walk around filling big bags, or lie that way. We also have a garden share every month, where you bring what you have and take what you need. Most people are respectful, but every so often someone comes by and says, "it's all free?" and then takes a huge amount. It's not held at the garden, so people from all over the community come. I love Robyn's idea of engaging the community. Anyone who gardens knows how much work it takes to grow food, and it's eye-opening for nongardeners to participate in at least some of the work. On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Linda Casto <[email protected]>wrote: > An alternative would be to devote 1 or 2 of your garden plots to the > public just for occasions such as these. All of your gardeners can share > in planting/maintaining these plots as part of community service. Put up > brightly colored signs that direct the public to those particular plots as > vegetables available to the public. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20130909/3707c5a5/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
