Winfield Community Garden continues to thrive

WINFIELD — Under the direction and supervision of Winfield-Mt. Union Community School’s Agriculture Education Instructor and FFA Advisor Amanda Brown, the Winfield Community Garden continues to thrive more than 10 years later.

Starting with borrowed land and straight in the ground gardens, Brown has seen considerable growth in the community garden over the last decade.

According to Brown, when WMU students and FFA members first started the garden, the school did not even own the land.

“It used to be just a big open lot, at the time,” Brown said.

Brown said that former WMU superintendent Patrick Coen reached out to the landowner and made an agreement for the school to use the land for their garden.

As of the summer of 2021, the school now owns the land that Brown cultivates with FFA members and agriculture students.

Shortly after the garden began, Brown said that a community member took notice.

“They brought in an old mold boar plow and did a deep rip to help turn it all and really help us get it mixed up,” she said.

As they tilled the ground, the individual, who came from a farming family, informed Brown and her students that something smelled different.

After some active learning and discovery, the students realized they needed to add nutrients to their soil.

So, now, many years later, it is common practice for the group to till the plant materials at the end of each year and the soil’s nutrients have increased.

“We’ve added raised beds now so we can have earlier and alter planting and harvesting,” Brown shared.

According to Brown, sometimes her students can even plan well enough to get multiple harvests out of a crop in their garden.

This year, Brown planned to team up with the family consumer science teacher during Spring Term to start preparing the gardens for the growing season, but weather prevented that.

According to Brown, they just need wait for the weather to cooperate and the 2023 gardening season will commence.

“Some standards that we typically try to put in include tomatoes, cucumbers, some sweet bell peppers, we do put some herbs in there as well,” she said.

Brown also teaches the students to plant various flowers like Marigolds throughout the garden to encourage pollinators to visit and keep pests away.

“They don't like the smell of those marigolds,” she said.

Other common plants for the garden include various types of squash and jalapenos.

Throughout the last decade, Brown says students have attempted to grow a variety of other less common items, as well.

Some of these include okra, lettuce, cantaloupes, watermelon, and even sweet corn.

The garden creates many opportunities for learning.

Brown ensures these opportunities by allowing the students to try different ideas, even if she doesn’t think they’re good ideas.

“One year, the students decided that they were going to put all the peppers in one bed,” Brown shared. “And I said, ‘Are you really sure you want to do that?’ ‘Yes, we want all the peppers in one space.’ ‘Are you thinking this through?’”

“Come time to harvest. They realized why you don't put hot peppers next to sweet peppers, because your sweet peppers aren't quite as sweet,” she said.

According to Brown, when the pepper plants grow next to each other, they cross pollinate and, “they don't taste quite the same.”

“Now if we put hot peppers in, we spread them farther apart,” she said. “We have always clearly identified and put signs out, making sure that people know that they're hot peppers so that somebody's not getting something mean by surprise.”

After this learning opportunity, and a mishap while they grew cotton, the gardening team gratefully accepted assistance from the Healthy Henry County Communities group to place bigger and betters signage around the garden.

“In one of our early years, we had some seed donated from Monsanto,” Brown said. “They had given us cotton seeds and we spread it across a couple of years as we tried it.”

According to Brown, however, Iowa weather is not the best environment for growing cotton, and two of the three years they attempted to grow the crop, they failed.

“The third year we got lucky, and it was just the perfect storm of conditions,” she said. “We got it planted at the time it got warm early and it stayed warm and we had decent rain but not like torrential downpours.”

As Brown and her students excitedly witnessed the cotton begin to actually flower and form bowls, most of the gardening team went on vacation.

“I had gone to state fair with other students and when we all came back I'm assuming a community member had thought that it was weeds and had mowed them all off,” Brown said. “We never actually got to see it finished out and that was the last of the seed.”

Despite the disappointment, Brown says discussions of trying again come up from time to time.

“If we can get our hands on some seed again …” she said. “We’d give it a shot just for the learning factor of it, because it was actually really cool to see.”

Even though the mishap included the community, Brown says the group still happily welcomes their involvement and heavily encourages community members to take produce from the garden.

“Anybody in the community can come and take from the garden,” Brown said. “They can also come and help if they are looking for something to do. If they like gardening but don't have a space at home, they are welcome them to come and use space at the community garden.”

Considering the large quantity of produce grown in the community garden, the students have found other ways to keep the food from going to waste.

“We cannot use all of this fast enough,” Brown said. “We would love for anybody that wants stuff to go and pick because it makes our life so much easier and then we know people are getting it and are using it.”

According to Brown, the FFA Chapter sometimes donates extra produce to the summer school lunch program and local nursing homes.

“We've even set some out, like up at the city office,” she said. “They have a little table and chairs outside the city office.”

“It is a community service project that the chapter does and we are not necessarily looking for anything back out of it other than to provide some fresh produce to our community, especially those who maybe can't get to the store or who can't afford it or want fresh stuff grown locally but can't do it in their backyard,” Brown said. “This gives them the opportunity that they can go and have that type of experience without having to provide the space themselves.”

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com