The centerpiece of the Sustainability Office efforts over summer revolve around the Campus Garden and we were fortunate to enjoy another successful season of gardening and collaborating with our partners.  We continued to donate the majority of our produce to the Whitewater Community Food Pantry and through August we’ve grown and harvested 803 pounds of produce.  The cooler summer weather we’ve enjoyed this year has been great for our staff and volunteers working in the garden, but hot weather-loving plants have not provided the same yields.  While our production has been down compared to 2016 (1,033 pounds), the impact of our program continues to improve through improving signage labeling the produce donations at the Food Pantry.

We also continued our successful donation program with the vendors of the Whitewater City Market.  Although our current total to date of 1,681 pounds is also behind our 2016 pace of 2,592 pounds by the end of August, we have continued to find inspiration in the generosity of these vendors to share with people in need.  Last year, we saw the combined impact of these programs donate 5,871 pounds of produce.  This amount of food has actually created some issues for the food pantry as they struggle during some weeks to get rid of everything!  We lovingly refer to this as a good problem!

As usual, we started our season with a Service Learning class.  This year, several first year business students joined us to start nearly every single seed that became seedlings for our garden.  This culminated with more work in the garden itself than we’ve ever achieved and allowed these students the opportunity to plant most of our brassicas and alliums, putting in plants like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, leeks, and onions.  This year we chose a “purple and Mexican” theme, meaning the plants were either used in traditional Mexican cuisine or the leaves and/or fruits had some kind of purple color to them.  A few photos of our brassica planting show the beauty of a well-designed and executed garden plot that use color to bring additional interest.

We were very fortunate to have Lorenzo, a senior majoring in Environmental Science, to manage the garden logistics all summer.  Lorenzo started his summer with a travel study trip to Peru, but upon his return immediately got into the swing of his role of gardener.  The students we have in the garden are encouraged to embrace the project as their own and, after receiving some early season guidance, Lorenzo has successfully maintained this space and was able to troubleshoot various issues.  His leadership to guide our volunteers is also very valuable and the Campus Garden is looking great for the start of the academic year!

We also enjoyed having two CHIP interns this summer instead of our customary one.  CHIP stands for Community Health Internship Program and the position with the Sustainability Office focuses on Campus Garden outreach and education and encourages a student majoring in a field related to public health to use the garden as a backdrop to teach the public about nutritional benefits of produce.  The goal is not only to increase the positive impact of this project, but also to help promote the garden as an opportunity to volunteer and learn more about gardening topics.

This year, Courtney came from UW-LaCrosse and focused on working with the Whitewater Food Pantry to improve communication and signage.  She also did best practices research on how other food pantries handle produce donations and communication.   Our partner organization Working for Whitewater’s Wellness (W3) also had a CHIP intern this year to work on their priorities, but Cher also joined us on Tuesdays to assist us with the harvest and collection at the City Market.  They also worked together on our outreach activities and to make suggestions to improve the outcomes of W3.  Courtney and Cher also assisted with Lincoln Elementary School’s school garden and we re-established the UW-Whitewater Children’s Center garden and held weekly garden activities with both groups of children.

Among our more exciting developments at the Campus Garden include the construction of our new shed, which provided a vast improvement in our ability to store necessary tools and materials at the garden and consolidate many of our supplies that we were forced to keep in Upham Greenhouse in the past.  We experimented with more container gardening in five gallon pickle buckets we collected last spring.  We planted two goji berry bushes and enjoyed our first fruit tree harvest from our three peach trees.  We still hope to create another planting bed for exclusive use by the Gardening Club this fall, which will mark our first expansion in cultivated space since we created the main bed in 2014.

We remind you that our success is dependent on our volunteers.  If you want to learn more about upcoming volunteer opportunities, please sign up for the newsletter list on our home page.