City Program’s Gardening Doesn’t Stop For Winter

By Rachana Dixit

Those who work for Charlottes-ville’s Quality Community Council will tell you that there is garlic growing on their farmland right now, despite the turbulent winter temperatures and recent spate of storms.
“This is the traditional season where people drool over seed catalogues,” said Susan Pleiss, programming and outreach coordinator for the QCC Farms! initiative. But, she added, “For maximizing production, you don’t wait until it looks like gardening time.”

The food distribution season has long passed but those who work and run the nonprofit’s urban farms project are busily preparing for the next harvest.
Through the program, the council, which works in the city’s high-poverty neighborhoods, has tried to give organically grown vegetables to those who can often least afford them.
Garlic and strawberries are under composted soil at the Garden of Goodness outside of Friendship Court, a subsidized housing complex near downtown, and onion seeds are sprouting green at the nonprofit’s greenhouse at its office on West Main Street. Volunteers will come out in throngs when the farming season is busiest, but

Karen Waters, QCC’s executive director, said many are surprised to hear that farm work needs to be done when temperatures are frigid.
“Everything is grown from seeds, with the exception of potatoes and strawberries,” she said.The initiative has been growing in popularity since it started three seasons ago. Georgina Sims, a Friendship Court resident who has volunteered on the farm with her two children, said she did not know how much it took to maintain the QCC garden outside her neighborhood until she started working in it.

“It’s a good opportunity for the kids to see first-hand how a garden is done,” Sims said. “We’re so used to going to the grocery store.”
During the 2008 market season, which ran from May though the beginning of November, QCC on average gave produce to 37 families per week. The number increased to roughly 60 families a week last year, said Todd Niemeier, the nonprofit’s urban farm manager.
The most popular crops have tended to be dark, leafy greens, potatoes, tomatoes and strawberries, particularly for the market days’ younger clientele. To figure out what will be planted for the upcoming year, Niemeier keeps pages and pages of spreadsheets containing everything from information on each crop and its varieties to the space required to grow them and seed weights.

“I know where everything is going to go,” Niemeier said, adding that this month he’s on to planting greens, broccoli and cabbage. The nonprofit hopes to add watermelon sugar babies and different lettuces, among other vegetables, to its crop yield this year.
Tony Lagana, who owns the Ploughshare Farm in Louisa County, said growing vegetables for sustenance — which is rarely, if ever, the case for those who live in urban settings — is year-round hard work. But the work ties neighborhoods and communities together, he said.
“There’s real value in it today,” Lagana said.