High Plains Food Bank Garden (Amarillo - Friday)

For the second half of Friday, we worked in the High Plains Food Bank Garden. The garden is an interesting project that is currently in its second year of operation. It is located in what use to be a vacant lot behind the Food Bank.



Last year, the garden produced 1,500 pounds of fresh food for the Kids Café Programs with only 1,000 square feet of land. With their new and spacious garden, they are hoping to eventually grow 20,000 pounds of fresh food.

The garden has one full time employee named Mark and two summer interns – Allison, a sophomore environmental engineer from Atlanta and the mysterious Kevin who never actually spoke to any of us.

We split up into two groups for the afternoon. MacAdam and Alex went with Mark to make more soil (compost, cow manure and sand) while Willen and I went with Allison to dig holes and plant herbs. (Kevin did other gardeny stuff around us and Jenny was off to do more logistics.)


The mysterious Kevin and Willen.

I quizzed Allison as I dug holes and learned quite a bit. The High Plains Food Bank Garden is all organic and the main goal is to provide children with fresh vegetables and encourage them to eat the veggies at an early age. Most of the plants are donated and the garden receives quite a bit of volunteers. For example, the herbs that we were planting were all donated by a local farm. We were placing them in between different vegetable plants because the plants have a naturally beneficial relationship when placed next to each other will help each other grow. Cool, I know. As I dig, I dig through a layer of bark chips, wet newspaper, dead grass and finally soil. Apparently this is layered gardening and it helps to prevent weeds.


Once a vacant lot, now a garden!

Gardening is hard work but it was nice to be working outside and with my hands in the dirt after being inside for a while. I like the concept of community gardens producing food to feed the hungry. I wonder if we will see more of them on our journey.