Project gives budding gardeners a chance to grow
By Catherine Edman Daily Herald Staff Writer

We’re talking HUGE, here!

Lynda Riker knew they were too big, and seedy, to be good candidates for a side dish, but she didn’t want to waste them. So she demonstrated that there’s more than one way to participate in Plant a Row for the Hungry: She took zucchini bread to one of the program’s drop-off sites.

"When the zucchini got too big, I got started baking," she said. Riker got the idea to create a Plant a Row for the Hungry garden after reading about the program last year. And the church certainly had plenty of room for it.

The church purchased the former Humbracht farm on Schick Road in Bartlett and plan to build a new building on the property. At this point, the congregation still meets at Bartlett High School.

Riker wanted kids in the church to get a feel for the new property, to learn about nature and gardening, and to get a chance to interact with Gladys Humbracht, who still lives in the family’s house.

She started by recruiting seven families with children who would each choose their own vegetables and care for their sections of the garden over the summer.

Riker and her crew started with one raised planting bed, then kept on going.

"We thought we wanted to plant an extra row, then we just decided to do a garden," she said.

They wound up with a total of five raised garden beds and surrounded the whole area with a picket fence, which the kids also painted.

While the project was in progress, but before the garden started producing, Riker kept participants involved by writing stories in the Veggie Tales format. The children’s videos and books star such tantalizing characters as Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber.

Riker’s tales had the likes of Woodrow the woodchuck and Percy the Pea.

Once the vegetables chosen by the children started growing, the group was knee-deep in zucchini, cucumbers, radishes, peppers, carrots, onions, beans, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and a very long pumpkin vine that looks like it isn’t into bearing fruit this particular year.

They took a steady stream of items over to the Hanover Township food pantry each week, giving reports of the garden’s progress to caseworkers there.

Though it was wonderful to give the produce (and the bread) away to the food pantry, Riker said it was the whole experience with the children that left the biggest impression.

"I wanted them to learn how to take care of nature," she said.

If you have any questions about the program, or drop-off requirements, call our Plant A Row hotline at (847) 806-4277, Northern Illinois Food Bank at (630) 443-6910, or e-mail us at Plantarow@dailyherald.com.

The program collecting surplus vegetables for area food pantries and soup kitchens runs through Sept. 30.