Grow It Forward OKC

Busy day yesterday at the OSU-OKC farmers market and then over to the OSU-OKC ARC building for the Grow It Forward OKC meeting. I love being at the OSU farmers market each Saturday. There are some great small farms represented and some really great and unique veggies and other products MIO (made in Oklahoma).

By shopping your local farmers market, you are helping to sustain and support small business owners. With your support, they can continue to plant and harvest good foods for you.  

In the picture, you see a HUGE daikon radish, two kohlrabi and some Purple Haze carrots. This will all go into stir-fry packets that my daughter-in-love will put together for our dinner this week. 

 Exciting things are in the works for urban gardening in OKC. 

There was a great turn-out for this first meeting. We all decided what topics we'd like to discuss and then went to our respective meetings.

One of the topics was how to help neighborhoods come together to garden. 

For example, suppose you wanted to organize a gardening effort in your neighborhood. You might want to diversify. Not everyone would be growing tomatoes. What if each gardener grew something different?  At a few homes gardeners would be growing tomatoes, while down the street, there'd be gardeners growing squash, cucumbers, watermelons, or whatever was decided. Then you'd meet together weekly to have your own neighborhood "farmers market" and share what you had grown that week. 

Turning lawns into gardens was also discussed. How can you use your land efficiently to grow food? The mindset needs to change. A well-manicured lawn is beautiful, but so is a life-sustaining garden. 


Another topic was how to get more gardens into schools.  I LOVE this idea and totally see how Garden Anywhere Box could play a big role in this issue, but we were sharing GAB in another classroom and I didn't get to attend this break-out session.

One thing that I love about GAB's in schools is that you can garden year round. You can start with a fall garden when kids come back to school after the summer. You can grow something inside in winter. You can start your seedlings indoors and transplant to the GABs in the spring. When the weather is warm enough, you can move the boxes outside to continue observing and caring for the plants. 

Then...this is the best part..unlike a raised bed or ground garden, .the teachers or students can "check out the boxes", take them home for the  summer and continue to care for and harvest tomatoes (or whatever) the rest of the summer. When school starts, bring the boxes back to school, plant a fall garden and start the growing process over. 

Here is a slide of the many ways that people in urban areas can have their own little "Green Acres."



I would like to say that I truly believe that gardening in the ground is the way to go. Gardening, composting and using the earth to grow food...BUT...if that can't happen due to poor soil, no soil, no time or energy, then Garden Anywhere Box is another option to be able to garden and grow your own food. 

In our GAB session, we showed how our boxes work. We talked about how our boxes conserve water. Because of the watering system, there is no wasted water. Plants get just the water that they need from the water reservoir, so there is no over-watering or under-watering. No wasted water. This is so important for places that are in drought conditions. Besides, we all should be concerned about water conservation whether our state is in a drought or not.

There was a young lady in our group who is affiliated with the Jim Thorpe Rehabilitation Center. Her passion is helping people garden who might not be able to have a traditional garden due to certain physical limitations. Garden Therapy is invaluable to people to help them "play in the dirt" and connect with nature and gardening. She spoke about wanting to have a handi-capped accessible garden someplace in the city. It would be a place to come and play and garden and grow your own food.

Garden Anywhere Box is perfect for people in wheel-chairs or people who just can't get up and down like they used to. GAB allows a person to sit in a chair and garden. They can be raised even higher if a frame is built to house the boxes. 

I will continue to share and update on Grow it Forward OKC as we have our meetings. I would love to see OKC continue to embrace urban gardening and grow it forward.