MARYSVILLE — Orange flowers blossom on vines of acorn squash. Sweet banana peppers and cherry tomatoes hang near a row of football-size zucchinis. Bumpy “Red Warty Thing” pumpkins hide under leaves.
Grown by students, devoured by food-bank users. The garden has produced more than 500 pounds of food since July. Its eggplants, radishes, carrots, corn and cucumbers have delighted food-bank customers who usually get their vegetables from cans, said Joyce Zeigen, director of the Marysville Community Food Bank. She estimates that the students’ produce has fed more than 1,000 people.
The number of people using food banks is jumping as the economy falls — and the donations couldn’t have come at a better time, Zeigen said.
Students enrolled in the International School of Communications at Marysville-Pilchuck High School planted the garden in July on a vacant plot owned by Sunnyside Nursery. They wanted to feed vine-ripened produce to people in need.
Excited by the vision, various companies donated compost, tilling equipment, plant transplants and seeds. Sunnyside Nursery gave the students a tenth of an acre across from its commercial operation and agreed to water the garden.
During their summer vacation, about a dozen students spent weeks in the sun, tilling the ground, burying seeds and pulling weeds. For many, it was their first experience with gardening.
“I’ve never really gardened before and it was cool to see that you can create so much from dirt and seeds — and it can go to a really good cause,” sophomore Chanel Retasket said.
Math teacher Emily Lefstad worked in the garden with her students, teaching them how to sow, plant and, eventually, harvest. Lefstad has gardened for years and said she enjoyed spending her part of her vacation working with students — maintaining relationships that usually lie dormant in the summer.
“They’re getting a better appreciation of where their food comes from and how backbreaking it is to harvest food,” she said. “It makes them appreciate our migrant workers a little more because they realize how difficult their job is and how little they get paid.”
Lefstad’s daughter, Elizabeth, a sophomore, helped organize the project and spent hours in the soil with her mom. During the summer, they spent a few days a week in the garden. Now that school’s started, Saturdays are harvest days.
Some students bring younger siblings along to help pick vegetables and pull weeds, and volunteers from school clubs are starting to join in.
Unlike many school community service projects, the garden is ongoing. The students who have participated from the start have watched seeds become food and learned a lot, Elizabeth Lefstad said.
“We get to see the whole process of what farmers would go through,” she said, sitting in her mom’s classroom during lunch. “All of us kind of learned about how long it takes plants to grow and the work that it takes to weed.”
For Steve Smith, co-owner of Sunnyside Nursery, participating in the project was a no-brainer. The garden had been used for various purposes in the past, and he was delighted to see it cultivated again. Someone he works with came up with the idea last spring and contacted Marysville-Pilchuck High School looking for student gardeners.
“I’ve got land that isn’t being used that can be put into production,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you want to do it? You have an opportunity to give back to your community.”
As word of the project has spread, others have been inspired to grow vegetables for the food bank, Zeigen said. Donations from private gardens are up — a trend she hopes continues.
“The students have had a big impact on their own, but it also created that ripple effect and it’s been wonderful,” she said. “Most of the produce that’s given to the food bank is past its prime. It’s only during the harvest months we get a lot of fresh produce.”
The students can use the hours they spend in the garden toward their community service graduation requirement, but they do not earn class credit. The reward is in the harvest, and in learning a skill they can cultivate for years to come.
Most of the students who have been tending the garden are underclassmen. They plan to keep growing. In a few months, when food bank customers have eaten the last potatoes and squash, the students want to till the soil. Next spring, they expect to be back kneeling in the dirt, dropping seeds in rows, keeping the cycle alive.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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