Bucket Build 2018
On Monday The Master Gardeners and The Gleaning Project held the third annual Bucket Build. (Read about last year's Bucket Build here.) We get together with our friends and create small veggie container gardens out of recycled buckets and donated supplies. These buckets are then distributed to our community members struggling with food insecurity.
So what does it take to make this night a success? An army of support!
A donation of 250 beautiful tomato, pepper and carrot transplants, perfect for container gardening, grown with care by the Franklin County Master Gardeners. They also donated hundreds more, which are distributed through the SCCAP Produce Stand afterwards. Amazing!
165 recycled plastic buckets collected by volunteers. A special thank you to volunteer Ken Althoff. He collects dozens of buckets throughout the year, washes them thoroughly and delivers them to our door.
12 bags of potting soil donated by Country Side Gardens. Owned and operated by the always generous founders of The Gleaning Project, Jan and Jerry Althoff.
A truckload of beautiful compost donated by Rotz Turf Renovation. If you need compost, call Harry Rotz. (717-729-5016) He has an excellent product available at reasonable prices.
Tomato stakes and plant food donated by Shaffer Products and Horstdale Farm Supply Store. These extra supplies will help keep the plants happy!
40 volunteers who helped plant. 40! That's a new record. We got 165 buckets done in one hour!
A crew of helpful Master Gardeners to help demonstrate how it is done. If you ever want to know more about gardening, or just want to talk to some nice people, go visit the Franklin County Master Gardeners. They offer classes and workshops to get your thumb a little greener. They happily grew over a thousand little seedlings for this event and when we needed more than one truckload of compost, they came through with their supply! So generous.
That is an impressive community. And we are grateful.
It is only 4 days later and the buckets are in their new homes. We hope they will provide delicious, nutritious food to community members struggling with food insecurity this growing season. Many of these individuals do not have the luxury of a backyard or space to garden and are thrilled to pick up the hobby again. Some are bucket gardening veterans from the past two years. Some folks have no previous experience with gardening at all and just want to give it a try. For this reason, SCCAP has created a gardening Facebook group. It is open to all would like to chat about the joys (and sometimes struggles) of growing their own food. You are welcome to join us!
So we close the lid on Bucket Build 2018. Many thanks to all who helped make it a great success. This is only accomplished with community support, and we certainly have an amazing community here in South Central PA.