Spread the Harvest is a project of our Grow Local program that helps Central Texas residents, school gardens, and community gardens grow and share healthy food by providing them with free food gardening resources. As part of Spread the Harvest, Grow Local held its biannual Resource Giveaway Day on Thursday, September 27, 2018.

During this all-day event, we provided resources to 169 individual and family gardens, 90 school gardens, and 20 large group/community gardens in Central Texas. SFC staff and volunteers distributed nearly 3500 organic vegetable and herb transplants from Gabriel Valley Farms; 140 cubic yards of organic compost from Organics By Gosh; hundreds of packets of Sustainable Seed Company seeds, hand-packed and labeled by SFC staff and volunteers; and almost 100 pounds of dry organic fertilizer (including fish-based, vegan, kelp meal, and alfalfa meal options) from Down to Earth.

Several of our partner organizations were on-hand to provide information on sustainable gardening practices and resources. Travis County Master Gardeners answered gardening questions, TX Sprouts and PEAS shared their expertise on school gardening, the Central Texas Seed Library spread their knowledge about seed saving, and Keep Austin Beautiful provided ideas for beautifying Austin’s public spaces and creeks.

SFC staff from all departments let program participants know about other SFC programs. Through our collaboration with the Multicultural Refugee Coalition (MRC), SFC was excited to be able to offer Arabic, Burmese, and Nepali interpretation for program participants.

A big thank you goes out to Baha’i Faith of Austin for generously providing the venue for this event and to New Day Community Garden for some fall garden inspiration.

We look forward to another successful Resource Giveaway Day in the spring!