Harvest Community Garden (HCG) is a nonprofit organization that enables people from the community to come together to grow organic produce and donate half of it to a local food bank.
The garden is a member of Community Gardens of Carrollton (501c3) and is open to anyone. It is located on the south side of Redeemer Covenant Church’s property. There are now 24 raised beds (20’ x 4’), and members of the community can adopt a whole or a half plot for a year. The garden also has an asparagus bed, blackberries, and a xeriscape garden which volunteers can help care for.
Donations: Harvest Community Garden donates half of the produce we grow to the food pantry at Christian Community Action in Lewisville. This year we donated 831 lbs. We gave organically grown tomatoes, pepper of many varieties, a wide variety of leafy greens, many herbs, broccoli, onions, carrots, potatoes, melons, radishes, beans, and many other things.
Gardeners & Volunteers: We had many gardeners and volunteers working in the garden in 2019. Over 12 individuals adopted plots. Several groups volunteered in the garden, including Boy Scouts and UTD Health Sciences Honor Group.
The Harvest Community Garden’s Board: The Board is made up of Chairman Stan Basnett, two Redeemer members, two community members, and a member of Board of the Community Gardens of Carrollton. Redeemer’s Missions Chair is also an ex officio board member of the Harvest Garden Board.
Meetings: The Board meets several times a year on an “as needed” basis to plan, organize, solve problems, etc. There are three important meetings for all the gardeners:
Beginning of the Year Meeting— go over garden rules, commitments, and responsibilities. Sign plot agreements.
Spring Garden Meeting— learn about organic gardening, what to plant for spring/summer, and other information.
Fall Garden Meeting— learn about fall/winter gardening. This year we were fortunate to have a guest speaker: master gardener, Larry Thompson.
2019 Overview of Activities/Accomplishments:
In February we began building Phase 2 of the garden (adding 12 beds to double the size of the garden), but several workdays were called off due to weather (too wet to trench for irrigation, too cold and wet to do other work). Though one day we were able to work on the Xeriscape Garden, Blackberries, and walkways.
March – put in irrigation system, ordered wood for the bed frames, put mulch in walkways, started compost bins, weeded the plots that aren’t adopted, put purple potatoes in plot 9, cared for asparagus bed.
April – Put the 12 plot frames together
May – Too much rain…Dirt only partially delivered due to muddy conditions, plots put in place, loader got stuck in the mud and was extricated via winch.
June – Mulch delivered. Truck got stuck in the mud. People started filling beds via wheelbarrow. Rat traps were used to catch several rats.
July – More beds were filled via wheelbarrow. Holes and ruts in grass were filled and low spot filled. More dirt was delivered. We had an infestation of Squash Bugs.
August —We broke an irrigation pipe when we drove over the lawn trying to move dirt to Phase 2.
September – A Scout group helped move mulch. We had several workdays to spread mulch and weed. Our final load of soil was delivered and we finished filling the new plots with soil. We also had a table at the Carrollton Health Fair on the 28th. The new soil was tested: no nitrogen, phosphorus was good, potassium was very high.
Colin Blackmon of North Texas Food Bank stopped his work coordinating community gardens.
October 19 & 26 – UTD Health Sciences Honor Group volunteered – cleaned up Plot 2, spread mulch, moved compost to expansion beds.
In 2020 we hope to get more gardeners involved and have all 24 plots adopted. A Scout is working on his Eagle Scout project to build a rabbit fence around the garden. We want to level the shed and put down flagstones to create a sitting area.
