Growing Gardeners Volunteers Help Low-Income Families Build Raised Beds, Nurture Green Thumbs

Eight-year-old Jerrod Garrett wants to grow watermelon.

His mother, Tamara Sorokin, wants to improve her family’s nutrition.

A volunteer group called Spokane Community Gardens is helping them do both.

The group is building raised-bed gardens this spring for about 60 low-income families in Spokane. It recently put in three beds at Sorokin’s home near Grant Park.

“It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” said volunteer Kay Stoltz, secretary of the non-profit organization.

Stoltz and the other volunteers believe they can lessen poverty, teach self-sufficiency and make a difference in the community one raised bed at a time.

Sorokin, who has six children, said she’s going to use the garden to teach the youngsters about plants and raising food.

“This is really a learning experience for the whole family,” she said

When the veggies are picked, they will become an important new source of vitamins and minerals.

“We don’t have fruits and vegetables with every meal,” she said. “This means a more well-balanced diet.”

One of the raised beds will be used for highly nutritious vegetables like broccoli and tomatoes. The second bed will be devoted to melons and squash.

The garden will be fun for the kids, who are getting the third bed to grow kid favorites like carrots, corn and radishes.

“They are going to learn to plant them, and they are going to learn to eat them,” said Sorokin, who sounds as if coaxing might come in handy to get the finicky eaters in her family to dive into a plate of vegetables.

Her children range in age from 2 to 16.

The volunteers said a productive garden could save a family as much as $50 a month on groceries.

Each family is teamed up with an experienced gardener who helps guide the family through planting, fertilizing, thinning and harvesting.

Volunteer Caydl Eggers lives nearby and already has visited with Sorokin and talked with her about how to get the most out of her garden. She told her what types of vegetables to plant and when.

For instance, peas, spinach, lettuce and onions can be planted early in the season. Corn, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, tomatoes and peppers shouldn’t be planted until mid-May at the earliest.

Controlling garden pests like aphids is another trick taught by the volunteers, who stress organic methods such as the use of insecticidal soaps instead of harsh chemicals.

“We help them get started, and then they have to do the rest from there,” Eggers said.

Spokane Community Gardens was formed three years ago through a federal community development grant arranged by the founder and current director, Lori Steiner. She uses the $8,000 grant to buy materials for the gardens and pay overhead costs. So far, the organization has installed more than 50 gardens in Spokane.

Sorokin said she applied when she saw an application form printed in the East Central Community Center newspaper. New applicants can call Steiner at 326-8159.

Before the gardens are installed, the organization gets the approval of the landlord if the home is being rented.

Each family receives at least one 4-by-8-foot raised bed. A large family like Sorokin’s could get three beds.

During the installation at Sorokin’s home, a half-dozen volunteers showed up with a pickup truck. They built the beds in a little more than an hour.

It became a neighborhood event with more than a dozen children helping out.

“I want watermelon,” 8-year-old Jerrod said when asked why he was getting into the effort.

Sorokin said her house is a way station for children of the neighborhood.

“I’m the Kool-Aid mom,” she said.

The raised beds are constructed out of lumber, which is leveled and laid on top the ground. The boxlike beds are filled with topsoil, which the organization buys at reduced prices from Wittkopf Landscape Supplies on the North Side.

The volunteers nailed a wood frame to the end of one bed and then wound string up and down to create a trellis for pea or cucumber vines.

Vegetables in raised beds can be grown closely together since the gardener doesn’t need space to walk between rows. The vegetables are never more than an arm’s length away from the edge.

The boxes are also easier for elderly gardeners who have trouble bending because they sit above ground level. They are often more productive than traditional plots because the soil warms more quickly, allowing vegetables to grow faster.

As part of the installation, Steiner included packets of seeds, many of which are donated to the program from seed companies. Most vegetable seeds, if kept dry, will last several years.

The community gardens, Stoltz said, “are extraordinarily successful. The gardeners really take care of them.”

Nearly all of the gardens built in 1995 and 1996 are still in production this year.

Maybe the best part is the feeling the volunteers get when they help families.

“They are so appreciative,” Stoltz said, “and you make new friends.”

Rock Garden, 1611 S. Geiger Road.

Rosauers Supermarkets Inc. has applied for a license to sell wine and beer by bottle only for on-premises consumption, beer by bottle or package, and wine with less than 14 percent alcohol in bottles and original packages for off-premises consumption at Huckleberry’s Fresh Market, 926 S. Monroe.<

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