Wallingford Greenhouse Seeks New Home

Editor’s note: For several years, generous neighbor Cyrus Appel has hosted the Wallingford Greenhouse in his backyard. You can read more about that here. Cyrus is unable to host the greenhouse this year, but the volunteers who run the greenhouse, the gardeners who grow the starts into food for the hungry, and the organizations that receive the food are all hoping that a new home can be located quickly so that this amazing program can continue. Your personal home, your work, your school – any place that has an underused greenhouse (or the motivation to install a new one!) would be perfect for this venture. The volunteers and gardening supplies will be covered by the program. Homeowners, businesses or school would be contributing the space, the water and the electricity.

(Agnes Cwalina sent this story about a program that benefits the Seattle’s Giving Gardens Network, which grows food for food banks, shelters and meal programs.)

In the last five years, the Wallingford Greenhouse project, A Growing Community, has grown thousands (+7000 in 2013!) of vegetable starts in a resident’s greenhouse in Wallingford. Two years ago, a Ballard resident offered his greenhouse, Ballard Sprouts, to grow starts as well.

Each February, community volunteers refresh their seed-sowing skills and begin planting snow and snap peas, followed by lettuces, kales, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetable varieties that grow well in Seattle. As successions of seeds are sown in the greenhouses, winter blankets of burlap and leaves are removed from Giving Gardens in the city’s P-Patches.

Two major events follow: Seattle’s Giving Garden Network Gathering and Interbay P-Patch’s Giving Garden Kick-off and kale harvest where the first greenhouse vegetable seedlings are distributed. Starts continue to leave the greenhouse through July, and are distributed to waiting Giving Gardens across Seattle. The seedlings help extend the growing season and increase harvests, allowing more produce to be donated to food banks, shelters, and meal programs. Vegetable varieties are tailored to food bank requests and ensure that different cultural communities receive familiar and favorite foods. In 2013, over 29,000 pounds of fresh produce was donated directly by 64 Giving Gardens!

While most gardeners have been hibernating along with their gardens over the last few months, a core group of volunteers have been planning the upcoming season. Improving the seedling distribution channel has been a primary concern, especially with the loss of a vital part of the project – the Harvest Coordinator at Lettuce Link (a program of Solid Ground), who was the communication and distribution link between greenhouses and gardens. In addition, last week the project took another hit: one of the greenhouses announced it would not be operating this season.

Within the next few weeks, the core group must not only order seeds, recruit more greenhouse volunteers, and mobilize giving gardeners – they now have to find another greenhouse. Ideally, a resident of Wallingford or a nearby neighborhood would host the project in a backyard greenhouse. While the owner does not need to be involved in day-to-day tasks, there are a few points to keep in mind: the main costs associated with the project are water and electricity (although there are opportunities to raise money to defray these costs); seeds, soil, and supplies are donated; volunteers work daily from February through July; and starts grown are donated to Giving Gardens and low-income gardeners at P-Patches.

If you would like to participate, or have any leads about an existing, underutilized greenhouse in the neighborhood please contact Agnes at [email protected].