Garden tour demonstrates growing local food system

About 60 Howard County residents got a glimpse of northeast Iowa's growing local food system during a recent tour.

The tour was hosted by the Northeast Iowa Food & Fitness Initiative, a project of the W.K. Kellogg Found and Community program. Howard County Food & Fitness leaders are Sue Barnes, Joye Meyer, Elaine Govern and Laura Schmauss.

A garden brimming with vegetables and flowers greeted participants at Regional Health Systems of Howard County in Cresco. Morning glories growing over a cattle panel, pink blossomed Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, poppies and zinnias grow among the vegetables.

Joye Meyer with Community Health Services in Howard County said Crestwood High School students had worked to establish a school garden, but that didn't work out. She asked hospital administrator David Hartburg if they could plant a garden at the hospital, and he offered space to start the project in 2010.

Meyer said that Crestwood teacher Deb Olberman and her daughter Lauren have spent a lot of time working with the garden and organized about 50 Crestwood students to pick produce and share it with younger grades.

"They're introducing younger students to vegetables from seed to harvest," Meyer said.

Pepperfield Project founder and organic gardener David Cavagnaro helped students plant the garden.

Parsley, basil, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, carrots, beets, tomatoes, summer squash, winter squash, potatoes, lettuce, beans and sunflowers are grown. Vining plants grow up teepees providing a fun shelter for students.

"The garden is cared for by volunteers, and we're learning as we go," Meyer said. "It's a work in progress."

Meyer said she hopes that parents will bring young children to the garden and that it will be a vehicle to help people learn about gardening.

Vegetables harvested from the garden are used at the school. During in-between weeks the hospital uses the producer for both employees and patients.

The second tour stop was Winneshiek Medical Center in Decorah where Cavagnaro and his Pepperfield Project crew have transformed a grassy courtyard into an edible landscape. Three years ago the hospital hired Pepperfield to put in a garden. A garden in one corner has expanded to fill the space. Organic gardening methods are used and the sandy soil is being built up using compost.

In 2010 a little over a ton of food was produced in the garden. The fruits, vegetables and herbs are used at the medical center. Pepperfield plants food crops requested by the hospital's food service staff.

Garden flowers are used for table decorations and at the reception desk.

"We call this an edible landscape," Cavagnaro said. "We believe vegetable gardens should be beautiful."

Last summer, Pepperfield workers Adam Ptacek and Heidi Skildum planted, weeded and harvested the garden. This year Skildum went on to a job with Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness, and John Kraus has joined Ptacek in the garden.

Vegetables are mostly open pollinated, heirloom varieties. The seeds originally came from the Seed Savers Exchange collection, and Cavagnaro grows and saves seeds in his home gardens north of Decorah.

"We have peppers that originated in Hungary and tomatoes from around the world," Cavagnaro said.

He and his Pepperfield crew assisted in designing and constructing 13 school gardens throughout northeast Iowa this spring.

Source: Jean Caspers-Simmet, www.agrinews.com, 10/06/2011