Urban Gardeners

Urban Gardeners

Urban Gardeners. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Social networking sites have been around on the internet for a number of years now. You can hook up with old friends, school chums, even find love but what about matching up gardens and gardeners? Amy Pennington, a gardener and owner of GoGo Green Garden, an edible gardening business is a new kind of matchmaker.

PENNINGTON: Urban Garden Share matches gardeners to garden space. And it does that by mocking a “pea patch” kind of set up if you will. In Seattle there are community gardens set up and then people sign up for various plots around the city. The wait for those “pea patches” happens to be 1600 people deep and this takes the idea of “pea patch” and privatizes it.

Gardeners itching to feel the dirt between their fingers can go online and sign up, input some details and then see who responds.

PENNINGTON: And if you are a home owner or you have private land somewhere you can list that land and the details of that land on there and then hopefully there will be a little bit of matchmaking, kind of like online dating but for gardeners.

There is no cost for the service and according to Pennington, you can make whatever deal you want to make between the interested parties.

PENNINGTON: It’s open to interpretation so it’s up to the two parties to decide. In a perfect world the homeowner provides the space and the water and the gardener provides the skill, the seeds and starts, and then they share in the crop.

In cities especially learning to tend a garden can be frustrating. Space is limited or you time and knowledge to keep up with a garden can be limited. I love a garden but do not have any talent for it. Fortunately my wife has two green thumbs. Pennington says they are looking at expanding the idea.

PENNINGTON: There has been interest in the suburbs as well which I think is really interesting and I think that is more people at home trying to get help growing food because they don’t have the knowhow but in the city it’s definitely a needed technology to kind of hook those people up and hopefully they’ll get people thinking in that direction as well.

The web site is www.urbangardenshare.org and Pennington says there is a lot of good information and resources on the site.

PENNINGTON: There is some information you should consider before creating a profile and then you can scroll through the listings and see sort of what’s out there and get a feel for what people are offering.

It’s one small way to bring the fresh taste of food into your home.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

 

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