Growing culturally-significant crops with New Americans in Vermont

Commodities

Practices

Vermont Garden Network (VGN) has been teaching Vermonters how to grow food for over 20 years. Our success has been in our technique; utilizing hands-on demonstration education, working side-by-side with participants in a garden setting throughout an entire growing season. This model is designed to build community through interactive methods and collective conversations. In 2024, we shifted our priority to serving those with the greatest need to bring more increase food availability to our community. As new residents surge in Vermont, we are addressing the need to grow healthy vegetables that people can utilize (prepare and eat),

The program is a series of educational workshops ato teach new farmers how to be self-sufficient growing their own food. We believe in education that results in more than just a meal, rather a lifetime of growing food passed down through generations. The results will be assessed through a series of pre and post surveys asking if the participant will now be able to stretch their food dollars by growing their own nutritionally-dense vegetables and if they are able to share this knowledge with their families and neighbors.

VGN proposes an 18-month project beginning in June of 2025 and ending in November of 2026. Although the first year of growing will be constrained by a mid-season start date we will use the pre-launch months for hiring and resource planning. Effectively, VGN will conduct two seasons of vegetable growing with new Americans in Chittenden County as follows:

1. Offer hands-on education through workshop series on climate resilient gardening
   1. Topics: planting calendars, succession sowing, season extension, protected cultivation, integrated pest management, soil health
   2. Host monthly workshops at community gardens and community centers in Winooski, at no cost to participants
   3. Results: gardeners acquire practical skills and knowledge for improving organic climate resilient agriculture (increase production, prevent pests, improve long term soil health, extend growing season)
2. Develop multilingual educational material
   1. Video tutorials, interpreted into three target languages (Swahili, Nepali, Spanish)
   2. Posters/infographics on planting calendars, pest identification and management
   3. Results: High quality resources, easily shareable for many years
3. Manage collective garden in partnership with the Family Room
   1. Offer family-friendly gardening & nutrition education activities over the summer
   2. Demonstrate best practices in small-scale organic gardening and production of culturally meaningful crops
   3. Results: increase children's exposure to garden-based learning and culturally meaningful foods
4. Support seed saving of culturally meaningful crops
   1. Workshop series focused on seed saving: pollination requirements, isolation distances, selecting for climate resilient traits, storage
   2. Seed saving resources: videos, handbook
   3. Access to greenhouse space for seed starting culturally meaningful crops
   4. Results: Establish a community seed library

Proposal definitions:

Collective Gardening differs from community gardening in that the tasks are shared amongst the cohort participants on a weekly basis. Tasks such as watering, weeding, pest management are divided among each members duties for the week. The advantages are many: Efficiencies of materials - One row cover on 20 broccoli plants vs just 3. Shared coverage if one person can't get transportation to water another person can step in.

Culturally Significant Crops - New Farms for New Americans has no fewer than 10 culturally significant crops growing at the Intervale, including snake gourd, water spinach, roselle, daikon, amaranth, African eggplants and mustard greens.

New infrastructure:

VGN's Greenhouse in Winooski at Landry Park will host a grand opening in March 2025 in concert with a Gardening in a Changing Climate public conference. The greenhouse will be an essential pillar to teach seed-starting and season extension techniques and to share the space with new Americans in our educational workshops.

Proposal Timeline:

June-October 2025: Workshop series, season 1
June-October 2025: Family Room collective garden, season 1
Fall 2025 to summer 2026: develop educational material
Research
Design
Translation & interpretation
Edits

March-June 2026: seed starting culturally meaningful crops in greenhouse
April-October 2026: Workshop series, season 2
April-October 2026: Family Room collective garden, season 2

November 2026 - Program assessment and reporting