Monday, April 17, 2006
Photo by David Noffsinger
Isaac Dill, Lawrence Senior, weeds an organic garden by hand Saturday morning behind the Pelathe center. KU students in the EARTH program from the community center for outreach are planting and maintaning the garden. Members of the EARTH program will be working on the garden as a group every other Saturday and welcome volunteers.
Spring is here and several varieties of fruits and vegetables are sprouting out of the ground to complement the season. The Pelathe Community Resource Center food pantry will be offering fresh produce for many low-income families around town because of the new produce, all thanks to a group of KU students.
Environment Action to Revitalize The Heartland, a program out of the KU Center for Community Outreach, is sponsoring the upkeep of the organic garden.
“It’s been a learning experience for me,” Chris Proctor, Ottawa junior, said.
Proctor is one of two co-coordinators of the EARTH program, which does environmental community service work and aims to inspire others in the community to become more aware of taking care of the environment.
Proctor is an environmental studies major and loves to be outdoors, so this was a great project for him, he said.
He became involved with the project when he was approached by the director of the KU Center for Community Outreach, who asked him to help. Though he wanted to, he said he didn’t know anything about gardening beyond the mini garden he grew when he was a kid.
He now knows how to mineralize the garden, set it up for proper drainage and more. Now that the sprouts are up, he said he could see the work he’s done and it’s “amazing.”
“There were weeds the size of me,” Proctor said about when they started last fall.
Years ago, the Pelathe center had a garden, but according to Teresa Staskal, director of the center, the garden was not planted last year. When she was approached by EARTH, who wanted to take over the responsibility for the garden, she was thrilled, she said.
“I thought that was a win-win situation,” she said.
The Pelathe center mostly stocks dried, boxed and canned goods in its food pantry, which are given by members of the community, or by a group who has sponsored a food drive, Staskal said.
The garden will add fresh food and variety to the mundane selection they have, she said. Some farmers in the past have donated excess produce, and this year, the center is setting up a booth at the Farmers Market, starting April 29, to collect excess produce, she said.
The Pelathe center’s food pantry serves around 75 families with basic food supplies in quantities based on the number of people in the family. The center also is hoping to eventually use the produce from the garden for cooking classes to be held in the center for the community.
Jamil Akram, the other co-coordinator of EARTH and Kansas City, Mo., senior, said that every other weekend, four to 20 people come help with the garden.
It’s not EARTH’s only project though. It also is involved in the upkeep of the Black Jack Battlefield in Baldwin.
“What we want to do is get people involved in environmental issues,” he said. “We tend to lead by example.”
He said EARTH also was planning activities for Earth Week, which will include a tree planting, a lecture on how and what to recycle and working more on the Pelathe center garden.
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