Visit PAR online at http://www.gwaa.org.

The Capital City Garden Project is a participant in the Plant a Row for the Hungry program of the Garden Writers Association of America. Just one row in your community (or personal!) garden can help produce food for hungry people in Marion County.

The nationwide PAR Program was started in 1995 to encourage gardeners to grow extra food and donate the produce to soup kitchens and food pantries. Its goal is to grow a million pounds of fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs by the millenium

The CCGP joined the PAR program in 1999 with space at three gardens: the Merrill Street PAR Community Garden, Pot O’Gold and the Gleaners gardens. We produced tomatoes, greens, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, onions, sweet potatoes, and melons. All of the produce was donated to the St. Vincent De Paul Food Pantry on the city’s near eastside.

This year, we will continue to add gardens, encourage more food donations and expand our list of food pantries.

Becoming involved in PAR is easy. Designate an extra row or two of vegetables and/or fruit in your community garden to be donated. Or just take your extra produce to a food pantry of your choice, have it weighed and let us know how much you donated so we can keep a record of it so and turn in our county's total food donations (by the pound) to PAR at the end of the season.

This is a great way to introduce kids to the joy of sharing and helping others. And it’s a great way for those of us who just love to grow things to put our excess produce to good use.

Please join with CCGP to make the PAR goal a reality. For more info and assorted PAR supplies like row markers, donation forms, brochures, etc., email Ginny Roberts or Bill Barkhau or contact the office at 317-275-9305.