Volunteer gardener Sam Piro of Highland Park heads up an all-volunteer effort to grow and harvest fresh produce for the Moraine Township Food Pantry in the park district’s Woodridge Park.
Q: What kind of veggies do you grow?
A: We have asparagus, tomatillos, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, Swiss chard, beets, broccoli when we can get it, lettuce, your usual garden vegetables. We have to find vegetables that will grow well under our conditions. We also grow eggplant and cilantro, which you wouldn’t normally get at the food pantry.
Q: Is there any source of produce the rest of the year?
A: The food pantry has been able to get a certain amount of produce from some of the local grocery stores. It is a little bit aged. They sort through it, and the produce that is still good is given to people who use the pantry. We take the stuff that has aged out too much to the garden and turn it into compost. So the garden is organic.
Q: How many volunteers work on the project?
A: It’s very ad hoc. There is myself, Sandy Washburn and Linda Mihel, who are both master gardeners trained at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. We are the three main ones. Then there are a dozen or two dozen people who come when they can. There also are people who schlep the compost to the garden.
Q: When are the earliest vegetables ready to harvest and when do the latest reach their peak?
A: Actually, I’ve already brought a small bag of asparagus to the pantry. It’s a perennial, and when we were preparing the garden, we saw it was ready to harvest. We’ll be out there through September.
Q: How did you happen to take on this role?
A: When my mother was on her deathbed, she was in tears saying ‘I could have done more. I should have done more when I had the chance.’ The neighbors called her St. Theresa. I took that lesson to heart. After getting involved with the Obama campaign in Ohio, we had a cadre of volunteers looking for ways to help. One of the things we took on was this garden, and it was the project that stuck.
