Grow your own from Forestville’s Food For Thought garden

One acre of land provides oasis; group holding first plant sale April 24-25

When the Food For Thought food bank moved to a new headquarters in Forestville 22 years ago, leaders had the foresight to make planting a garden one of their first priorities.

Degraded land often can take a long time to regain its fertility. Over more than two decades, the garden has spread to all points of the property. And with each growing season, the once-hard-packed soil became richer and healthier.

“It was like the worst-case scenario for a garden,” Executive Director Ron Karp recalled. “It was a lot of rock and just didn’t even look like soil. It was so infertile.”

This single acre, tightly packed with annual and perennial vegetables and herbs, berries and fruit trees, produces more than half the fresh produce that Food For Thought provides the people it serves.

But it offers more than food for people experiencing serious and life-threatening illnesses. The garden gate is always open, and clients are welcome to come inside to spend time there or pick their own berries or tomatoes.

“It’s just a step beyond the parking lot,” said Sorrel Allen, who oversees the garden started by pioneer organic gardeners Doug Gosling and Rachel Gardner. “And even if they’re just in the parking lot, they’re surrounded by this healing environment and warm feeling. We feel like the first step to healing begins by landing right here.”

The garden over time has evolved and changed. Trees have grown to bear fruit. There are now many more perennial crops like artichokes that keep providing food year after year. And now everything is not only organic, but also primarily grown from seed collected on site.

It’s a garden that many people over the years came to enjoy during the fall harvest Calabash Festival, when the massive gourds hanging over the fences and arbor were decorated by artists and supporters and the public came to enjoy music and fresh food at the height of its lushness.

First-time plant sale

Now for the first time, gardeners also can share in the bounty of the garden on the front end of the season. Food For Thought is holding its first plant sale April 24 and 25 featuring 100 different varieties of organic starts.

A dozen volunteers joined Allen in starting seedlings in their own greenhouses and hoop houses since Food For Thought does not have one of its own. The sale will feature 2,000 starts in all, including annual and perennial summer food crops, berry starts, medicinal herbs, edible flowers and perennial native shrubs for the landscape, particularly good in a drought year.

Allen said shoppers who come by the sale can expect to find some interesting perennials donated by Emerisa Gardens, “showy, fun flowering plants,” she called them.

“They’re growing really healthy starts,” said Allen, a cheerful farmer in railroad engineer striped overalls and a blue T-shirt with tiny stars. “We want to grow really healthy plants. No reason to have three wimpy plants when we can have one sturdy one.”

The pricing will be simple: $4 for 4-inch pots, $3 for 3-inch pots, and $10 for gallon native plants.

“We’ve potted up 40 things directly from our garden because they’re grown with such love and history,” Allen said.

She took over the now-venerable garden after serving in multiple agencies, working on habitat restoration with Save the Bay and the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District to running a teen gardening program for Social Advocates for Youth. When the Food For Thought opening came along it was a perfect fit; as a young woman, she initially intended to enter public health. Overseeing the Food For Thought garden brought together her many concerns and passions, including social inequities and community.

As with many social service organizations, Food For Thought has been through a challenging year. In an average year they provide food to 1,850 people and families, from those living with HIV to people who have recently returned home from the hospital, have congestive heart failure or are homeless. But in 2020 COVID-19 created another pressing need for food in the community. Food For Thought quickly regrouped and brought low-income people impacted by the pandemic into the fold. The number of people for whom they provided food skyrocketed to some 4,000.

Karp said an outpouring of support from old and new donors helped them meet the challenge.

“It was really a nice, uplifting moment to see that people were really keyed into what we are doing and what was happening,” Karp said. “We got some other support from foundations as well. It was just amazing how many individuals starting donating. Some had been giving all the time.”

No-till approach

The garden’s rich fertility is inspiring to any gardener starting out with degraded soil or hardpan. Food For Thought builds its soil with compost and manure and by gently turning old crops back into the soil dirt to break down and return nutrients to the ground.

Allen takes a no-till approach, something more and more small farmers and home gardeners are doing.

“There is such an amazing ecosystem in our soil, and I continue to learn more and more about it,” Allen said on a recent walk through the garden, which is still young for the season with cabbages and tall artichokes and parsley lining the hogwire fence.

“Tilling disturbs that ecosystem and it disturbs the mycorrhizal fungi, the mushroom layer that is helping enhance the nutrient uptake of the plant.”

The plant sale is made possible by an influx of new volunteers who keep the garden going. The number of helping hands grew manyfold during the COVID-19 pandemic, with people of all ages eager to get outside and help. The usual Food For Thought volunteers were not able to help inside the building, Allen said, so many were happy to pick up a trowel in the garden. She also has had a number of students pitch in; they were finding few volunteer opportunities open over the past year.

Allen said working the garden has been healing for her as well.

“I have two kids at home and I feel grateful when I get to come here,” she said. “I feel healed by this place even if I’m stressed. When I get here, it brings down my stress.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.