(light upbeat music) - [Broadcaster] Alabama Public Television presents Spotlight on Agriculture.

"Spotlight on Agriculture."

- Today's "Spotlight on Agriculture" features a new program entitled, "Grow More, Give More."

It's an exciting program in which you as the homeowner can learn to grow vegetables and fruit crops such that you not only increase your food consumption, but you provide food to people that have food insecurities, that have food needs.

It's a great program, whether you're growing in containers or whether you're growing in raised beds, or whether you're growing in a tillage plot, we want to help you figure out how to be the most productive you can be.

We've got extension agents, we've got home Master Gardeners that will work with you to help you increase your productivity, where you can grow more and give more.

And if you're not sure where to give, our extension agents are available to help you make sure the food gets in the right hands.

This is a great program to help yourself and to help other people who really have food needs.

Thank you.

(bright music) Grow More Give More originated whenever everything kinda shut down in March of 2020.

So as people were spending more time in their homes they were also spending more time uh more time in their yards and as extension agents we were getting we were at home as well just like everybody else but we were getting calls we were getting emails as we were working from home about you know I've never grown a vegetable garden what do I need to do or now I have time to work on these landscape projects.

Can you give me some advice so we answering numerous questions.

As we were going through that process we started thinking about how can we get this material how can we get this information out.

Honestly if a person starts a garden and they don't succeed the odds of them gardening again are pretty slim.

So we wanted to make it as easy as possible.

We even created supply lists where if a person had never gardened before they're not going to plant the back 40.

So how can we help them begin this process and kinda foster a love for gardening.

So we created a supply list for 5 gallon buckets and we told them exactly what they needed.

How much soil fertilizer everything they were going to need we did that also for container gardens.

We created a list for raised beds and even for in-ground plots.

So once again wanted to make that as simple as possible.

So we look at the Grow More part as the educational piece of this program, but then we wanted to look at the philinthropic side and that's where Give More comes in.

So we had a group of master gardeners brainstorming as extension agents and we decided that we were going to take a modern victory garden approach.

As these new gardeners are learning how to garden learning how to plant, learning how to grow vegetables and supplement their food supply at home then we were asking them, Plant an extra row or plant an extra plant or do a little more so that you can give back to those in your community who may not have the economic means to plant a garden or may not have the physical means.

And we want to make sure that folks knew that every donation counted.

It did not have to go to a formal food bank or regional food assistance organization.

That's great but you can donate to your elderly neighbor down the street.

You can take something and donate to your family member across town that maybe is not able to grow.

So it was really important for us to communicate that every donation counted.

And it's kinda exploded from there.

Honestly Grow More Give isn't a new concept as gardeners we've been doing that for years and years.

But we wanted to be able to capture that information.

Capture that poundage.

As of last year, we don't have the data for 2021 but in 2020 there were over 38,000 pounds of produce donated across the state of Alabama and there was more than that that just get captured in our survey and so we're working to get folks engaged in that.

It's an online tool that is available on our website.

So if I'm a gardener I enter that weight in there because that donation counts.

- Well, I especially saw it during COVID and all, now we're seeing it with restrictions in supplies system, you know, but yeah, everybody can do a little more.

Alabama and our tremendous specialty crop industry, but we're trying to grow that.

We know the markets are there.

We've seen tremendous demand for local foods.

And of course we created the whole Sweet Grown Alabama branding program so people can identify.

A lot of times you think you're buying a tomato from Alabama or a watermelon from Alabama, and you turned out the tomato's from Mexico or the watermelon's from California or somewhere else.

And so we've been really encouraging people to try to find local and then we know they want to find local.

There's a huge... selling point to our specialty crops.

And so yeah, people can grow more, there's a tremendous demand, and give more.

Gardening and that's such a healthy, not just physically healthy, mentally healthy to do that, and just a whole being able to help your neighbors.

There's such a demand and we've got so many, what they call "food deserts," where in some of our rural communities where you'd think there'd be more fresh fruit and vegetables, there's actually less, there's less places to sell it.

And so obviously we've grown a farmer's market across state.

We're continuing to try to grow more and more farmer's markets you'll be able to find.

But yeah, people... We could grow two to three times as much specialty crops.

And we know there's about 26 vegetables and fruits in the state of Alabama we'd grow pretty doggone well until they'd trigger some opportunities there to really help some people.

- Basically, part of my job is to help home horticulture and people that have, really want to grow anything in their yard, from a citrus tree to a ornamental shrub to grow in their centipede grass, so we get a lot of calls.

During the pandemic, we started to receive an uptick in hundreds of calls with people stuck at home.

And the only thing they could do was to get outside, and, you know, first time vegetable growers, and they didn't really know where to start.

And so we started getting many, many calls and, you know, we teach vegetable production in a lot of our classes, but we kind of thought, you know, people are struggling during the pandemic, food insecurities, people are losing their jobs.

And so kind of thinking about, you know, "How can we help a neighbor?"

And so we had a agent kind of come up with the idea of Grow More, Give More, and a couple of Master Gardeners to really help those people that were really struggling and to not let that food go to waste.

People have really taken on to growing and really giving away their produce.

We get a lot of people that can bring produce to the office sometimes because they do grow too much and they don't know what to do with it.

Well, now there's kind of a network that people can kind of reach out to.

And the aspect that I love about it is people are getting out in their community and getting to know their neighbor, you know, not just handing them food, but really getting to know the person that lives beside them and really having some communion over the food that they actually were able to grow.

I mean, I tell people, you know, start in your neighborhood, we have a survey with Grow More, Give More that you can fill out.

And if you give away three peppers, let us know, but start with the people that live right beside you, get to know them because you might never know that they're struggling or how much a bag of tomatoes might mean to them and their family.

It's amazing just to see what a bag of produce, a fresh produce, can mean to people.

And even in our office, we can actually talk to them about how to prepare that food and recipes that they can use, so that they'll know how to eat that food and to cook it and how nutritional it can be.

And so it kind of extends through ACES, not just the food, but all the different things that you can do with that food and making sure that it gets used and making sure that they enjoy it and continue to eat fresh produce.

That's a huge thing as well.

Don't give up that first year, you're going to lose a plant to a disease or an insect, I can promise you, but you know, I always tell people to make sure you're taking notes in your garden, make sure you're paying attention to what you're planting.

I tell people all the time, the number one lie that we tell as gardeners is, "I'll remember what I planted" or "I'll remember when I'm supposed to harvest those tomatoes."

And so always take notes in your garden, be mindful of different things that are happening in your garden and just don't give up.

- We were familiarized with the demonstration garden during our Master Gardener training.

And during that training period, 16 weeks, we had some folks visit us from the Mobile community gardens.

And I was intrigued.

Having a small city lot, I needed some room.

So we started talking, started collaborating, and now we're working in about four to five community gardens.

The produce is for the gardeners, for the gleaners and for the food in secure.

The pandemic had a dramatic effect on food insecurity.

When, and you'll talk with Connie later, but they started at the first part of 2020 serving about 150 families.

Now they're serving about 700 families.

It takes an army to prepare for giveaway day on Tuesdays, and Mobile has stepped up.

And when we have extra produce like greens, like green beans, like cherry tomatoes, which do well here in the south part of the state, we can take that and it just kind of enhances what's offered to the people who drive through.

- I am the Director of the Food Pantry at Central.

We have been...

The Food Pantry has actually been open since about 2008.

It started as a small closet for when people came to the door and needed food.

It grew and it grew and it grew.

Before the pandemic, we were servicing about 80 families every week with a shopping method.

We'd let them come through and choose what they would like to have for the week.

It has grown to 800 to 900 families every week now.

We do it as a drive-through method for the safety of COVID.

We stage them at the School of Math and Science and use a computer program to check them in and get everybody's information.

And then they're sent over in lots of 10 or so, so that we can gladly put boxes of food for whatever we can get into their cars for them.

There's been many people that, even before COVID we knew that there were food deserts here, that there were people that needed additional help.

They did get food stamps, but it's not going to last them all month.

It came more to light when people started losing their jobs due to COVID.

There was one lady who had worked at Pizza Hut like 24 years.

She said, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to work."

And whether we realize it or not, a lot of the people that even if they had a job, by the time the job was available to come back to, they may have aged more, there may have been other circumstances that affected their lives.

So what we found is that we were actually just at the tip of the iceberg, that the food that people receive, stretches their food dollars so much.

People that are affected by their job losses, people that have been affected by being ill and not able to go back to work.

It helps with the fresh vegetables.

It is very hard, harder than you would think to obtain fresh vegetables to give to everybody that comes through.

And it seems that everybody wants fruits and vegetables.

So, Grow More, Give More.

For instance, there was a small farmer out in West Mobile who contacted the church and they said, "We've grown more cucumbers and bell peppers than we can use.

Can we bring them to you?"

It was a handful, a bag of each, but it went so far.

When you think about putting one bell pepper, one cucumber, that's more than they would get if somebody did not grow more and give more to us.

Strickland Youth Center brought us tons of leftover great stuff.

And I know that there are Satsuma trees out there that bear more fruit than a person could use.

Big trees, just all sorts of things that with Grow More, Give More, would help us to expand what we can give to families.

- Grow More, Give More is about learn more.

And so as the campaign, the initiative continues, we can engage more people, so they know where their food is coming from.

And we are expanding this to the youth.

And when they know where their food comes from, when they taste it so fresh, it doesn't get any fresher than pick it and eat it.

Then they value their food more.

And so we're hoping that we carry that on.

Additionally, one of our points is not just finished produce, it's producing transplants for people to take home so they can do their own gardening.

- I started this program because I volunteered for a church down the road here, and I have 20 acres of plants right now.

And I had to have the knowledge in order to take care of that.

I could have never done it without the Master Gardener program.

I've learned just so much and you never stop learning, you always, because things change and the extension service research shows that we have to do things differently.

And so, I am still learning.

I learned... We put in the vegetable garden this Saturday, and I learned from the people that came to learn from me, I learned stuff from them.

We brought 44 pounds of potatoes to Haven of Hope, not last year, but the year before, I thought the lady was going to cry.

When we walked in with all those potatoes, it just meant so much to them.

And they, every time we see them, they let us know how much they appreciate us bringing, that our produce is used by them.

And so we, it really is an appreciative thing.

- Well, it's a fresh boost for Wings of Life, which is a recovery center program downtown, to just boost them.

When we took in 20 pounds of green beans, they weren't canned green beans, they were fresh.

And they were able to go into a different way of thinking about how their food was coming.

People were popping cherry tomatoes like candy.

And, if we can make somebody happy in their mouth for one moment, that's great.

- I work for Full Life Ahead foundation and Full Life Ahead comes in when students graduate from high school and they go home and mom and dad say, "What are we going to do?

What, how can we live life with this wonderful person with different abilities?"

So Full Life Ahead steps in there.

And one of our initiatives is gardening, done with my friend, Carol Dorsey, who's a Master Gardener.

And with the plants, we have such fun, primarily, but also it's a great learning experience and a healthy experience.

And as Carol has told us, serotonin is released when you work in the dirt.

And so we love that, makes people happy, gives us good exercise.

We take a soft skill, like attention to detail or intentionality or teamwork.

We take a soft skill and use that thing with each of our gardening opportunities.

And so we've worked together.

We learned from Carol about the plants and then how to work together to do that.

One person may dig, another would be waiting in order to plant and to help this garden here at the Mobile Medical Museum, cause we've taken some good care of it.

We weeded it and we moved things around and planted little plants too.

The people that we're working with, they are learning about the plants, they enjoy coming.

No one misses a time, everybody's anxious to come, can't wait to come.

And they developed friendships among themselves as well as, as having a good productive day to come here and garden.

My son, John, had a near drowning when he was a little boy, he's now 42.

And of course he doesn't walk or talk, but it's just as good for him to get outside and to see the plants and the gardening as anybody else, this gardening is for all people, everyone.

- When I finally got to retire, I immediately came out here and took this Master Garden program.

And I have just been playing in the dirt and having fun ever since.

I was in the 2011 class.

And I started, I volunteered out here as part of our program and I liked it so much that I just kept coming.

And...

The next year I started, Marsha asked me to take over recording the produce and delivering it out to the Haven of Hope, so that's what I started doing.

So since then I have taken care of that and I got to see their faces when I would take the food out there.

And it was just so, so wonderful.

It just really gets you right here.

(laughs) We have donated 500 to 600 pounds every year out there, except for one year when it was over a thousand pounds.

So we've really, it's just something special, something special.

- We have so many children that don't have just one significant person in their life, somebody there to nurture and guide them.

And they're growing up really in this world almost alone.

It's really heartbreaking when you have to deal, on a day-to-day basis, with so many children that are wanting for somebody good in their life.

And that was sort of the initial reason why we wanted to start this gardening program, because we wanted to find as many ways as possible to interject mentoring into the lives.

And I'll tell you, there's nothing, there's nobody, I think strong as people that are involved in the gardening process.

For some reason, they've just got a heart, you know, for reaching out and sharing their craft.

And I thought this would be a great opportunity to marry those two.

Those that are in the community, they're really trying to make our community more beautiful with plants and trees, and with our kids there's so much need, somebody strong and nurturing and good in their life.

And so that's how this thing got started.

And it's been really successful beyond our wildest dreams.

With a little love, a little guidance, a little care, a little encouragement, we see just amazing things and what we have seen in the children as they see that, and they experience this, and they get their hands dirty and they work.

And with a little bit of patience, which so many of our kids don't really have that patience right now.

So, just a little bit of patience with it, just to see it grow and to be able to not only eat what comes out of this, and they do have that opportunity, and to really have something very nutritious, they're not used to eating nutritious foods.

But they are also able to share it, and that's what I like even more about this program.

It's almost a restorative justice type program where they know that what they're doing is going to go to help those in need in this community and a way for them to give back.

So many times I tell them, and I love to be able to tell them this, "Nothing that you have done cannot be undone."

You know, we can take what you've done, we'll forget about what's happened in the past.

Let's move forward.

And this is a great opportunity of undoing some of the harm that they caused the community, to go back now through their efforts and through their hard work and make it better and be able to make someone else's life better.

- We've been able to give back to the community while the kids are here, which they like.

We've done a lot of community service through this garden.

It's considered like a behavior management.

It's an incentive to come to the garden.

So if you behave well, you move on to a hall where you're able to access things like those.

When you are locked up and you're kind of thrown away and shuffled around, it's nice to be able to come somewhere where you're productive and respected and you understand like, "Hey, we're just here to give back."

That's kind of the purpose of everything.

Well, we've been able to give away produce to Central Presbyterian's Central Food Pantry.

I know in years past, we've given to other organizations through Desaavre Paige who works with us and other organizations that are attached to Strickland have been able to benefit.

Most of the kids that we have here either are benefited by these social programs or know someone or related to someone who benefits directly from these social programs.

So that's been a cool part to kind of hear people talking about how like, "Hey, I know people who've used this."

The more access they have to things, the better they get.

So giving them access to a garden and giving them access to community service instead of locking them away and punishing them on the constant.

Like, if they've done something wrong, they've done something wrong, but they're still useful.

And so that's what we've been able to really show here, is like, "Hey, not only are they useful, but they enjoy this and they feel honor being a part of it too."

So basically they get access to things that they usually don't have access to or would think to purchase.

A lot of these people live, I mean, I live in Alabama, so I mean, health wise isn't really like the forefront of all of our education, but here it is, and circling of all places, healthy eating, how to get something out of the ground, eat it.

We have kids that come out here and eat while they work because I mean it's produce, it's fresh.

What's better than that?

I feel like this should be common sense to schools, to other industries.

I mean, we have a lot of news about people who are, building new prisons in our state.

Okay.

Well, what do those have?

What are they producing?

What benefit to the community are these people still given the honor to have?

- I really think it's an incredible thing and our children know that, and they're happy about that.

And we're giving them a chance to really start a mind, a mind thought, a thought that, "I've got to give back and there are ways for me to give back.

I'm not what people have labeled me.

I'm better than that and I can be better than that."

And when they can create something that they can be proud of and that they know has made a difference in someone else's life, wow.

Then you get that momentum and maybe you don't stop.

What I love most about this is to give our children an opportunity right now.

People don't realize just how special they are.

You hear all these horrible things, but when you're in court or when you're working side by side and you really know what they've been through and how they survive, what they've been through, which is horrible, I mean utterly horrible.

I can go to sleep at night and I worry about these cases every day, because it's horrible.

I couldn't spend five minutes in the home that our children have to live in many times.

But it instills in me a really true belief that they are strong and they are powerful and they can be successful and they can change our world for the better.

We just need to make sure that we put the good elements in their life.

We need to nurture them as a seed and we need to grow them into something beautiful because they have the capacity.

I admire them so much for their resilience and their strength and being able to overcome it, get up and do it every day, every day, day in, day out.

So we really owe it to them, to give them a chance to pull themselves out of this darkness and bring a light and beauty into their lives and to all of our lives.

So that's what I think.

- The Grow More, Give More program was initiated by Bethany O'Rear, an extension agent down in Birmingham.

So we picked up that program and decided to put it into the demonstration vegetable garden here at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens.

And we grow the produce, and then we donate the produce.

Us Master Gardeners, we really like to share our information.

And here at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens, we share it with people all over the world.

And many of these are first time gardeners, are first-time gardeners to our area.

So we direct them to the ACES website or the Master Gardeners or North Alabama's website, and then we give them information here.

One thing you want to think about is, are the seasons.

So you want to know whether you want to purchase seeds or plants, or even bulbs such as onions.

And you want to know your seasons here in Alabama, we have winter, spring, summer, and fall.

We garden all year round here at the DVG, and you can do that in your own yard.

It may be something simple like lettuce or to something in the spring time.

Or then you may want something with such as radishes, different types of crops, leafs, roots, legumes such as peas or roots such as sweet potatoes.

Here at the DVG, we take our produce of course, to the CASA gardens, community gardens up the road here.

And then they distribute the produce and people, they do except contributions from even the homeowner.

So we always have too many zucchinis, you know, so they will take them at the CASA gardens, or you can even give it to some of our Master Gardener members and they can make sure that it gets to an organization that will distribute the produce.

So consider adding an extra row to your own vegetable garden for the Grow More, Give More program.

It may be an extra row of the same vegetable or add some additional vegetables.

Then you can take that extra produce and give it to a garden or your neighbors or organizations that really need the food.

- Well, to me, really, what makes it fun is the association you have with other people, have a common interest and also the knowledge sharing.

Oh, you might think you know a lot about them, but you're always going to find somebody who's got a little bit of information they can pass on to you.

And just being able to be outside, outdoors, in nature, is just really a good environment.

And it just really makes you feel good to be outside in the nature.

- Well, I was raised on a farm, so I was use to working in gardens and it's from childhood.

Of course, when you get your own garden and that, it's a whole new experience and I just couldn't wait to become a Master Gardener.

I waited.

I've been a Master Gardener since 1995.

And I thought, I can't get my kids in school quick enough so I can maybe qualify to become one.

And it has, although I wasn't totally active all those years, it has just really been a wealth of information, taking the classes and then meeting different people.

And you think you know so much about gardening, but you learn gardening every day.

I mean, there's so much about the insects and everything that affects gardening in general, that you just, constantly learning process.

And it's just enjoying nature, and appreciating it, how things grow.

- Here at the demonstration vegetable garden, all our produce that comes out of here, we give to primarily the Rose of Sharon's Soup Kitchen.

And this helps a lot of the needy people and citizens of our community who are less fortunate and don't have access to fresh produce.

So we feel that we're helping fill that void.

- Well, they should... First of all, I asked my neighbors like that, well, we'll take a basket around and say, "Would you like some cucumbers, tomatoes, whatever?"

We've taken them to church before, to our parish family, you can take them to a food bank.

The food banks will accept produce from individuals like that because they make baskets up for people all the time like that.

They have people in need and it's not hard to get rid of excess produce if you have it, although we try to strive at getting not too much excess just enough that we... You kind of play with things from year to year like that.

Some years are better than others like that.

- Senior citizens do possibly have not quite the access they have to fresh produce.

And here again, we try to find these organizations.

CASA is an example; we have given to CASA in the past.

And of course the Soup Kitchen, they reach out to all levels of people, regardless of what their status is, and that includes senior citizens.

They try to get them fresh produce.

If you're considering Grow More, Give More, well you can always put out an extra row, maybe an extra container and that extra produce, you can always share with a neighbor.

I mean, we've always found our neighbors very receptive and appreciative for the produce that's come out of our garden that we've given to them.

- Grow More, Give More has been a wonderful program, really coming out of the pandemic, trying to educate people in gardening to start with because we had people running out, when you're confined to your yard, you want to make your space beautiful.

So they ran out to the garden centers.

And so many people were first-time gardeners who had never grown a transplant or a seed for the first time.

And so our phones were ringing off the hook.

Our helpline was going crazy with gardening questions.

And so we helped put together educational tutorials on our website that are available, but also started encouraging people to grow more or what to do with the extra because people don't realize how much maybe they were growing, how much more they were going to have, and then what to do with it.

If your family can't eat all of the radishes or all of the sweet potatoes that you're growing, either how to store from to be able to eat later, or where is a place locally that you could provide for people who are needy, to have fresh produce, better nutrients in their diet, but then also just your neighbor, you know, getting to know the people around you.

We saw lots of people who live in neighborhoods that were all socially distanced in a cul de sac with their kids playing that they never even met their neighbor before.

So it really brought community together.

But then also people with neighbors, sharing the bounty of their harvest and even the elderly who were shut in during that time.