SPRING / SUMMER 1995

Welcome to Chicagoland Gardening Magazine! This Preview issue will be followed by a Special Edition this fall and our Premiere edition in January, 1996.

We live in a unique gardening area Ôø‡ our soils and weather are like no other place, giving us the opportunity to present solutions not found in national publications. We will use a broad brush to cover everything from those nitty-gritty, hands-on problems up to the fanciest professionally done landscapes. We also want to be a resource to the entire gardening community. Look for us at gardening events and meet our editors.

Participation is a two-way street. We have two ways you can get involved this summer. Further along in this issue, you'll find our garden contest that we invite you to enter. Some nice prizes await the winners.

Secondly, would you like to partake in a Chicagoland project that deserves all of our attention? When you stake out that vegetable garden, put in an extra row Ôø‡ not for you or your non-gardening neighbor but for hungry people. And when your abundant harvest arrives, call one of the food banks in the Chicagoland area and tell them you want to help supply their needs.

The program is called Plant a Row for the Hungry and it is sponsored by the Garden Writers Association of America, a national organization of 1,300 communicators including several of us here. It has received such an enthusiastic beginning that the national coordinating organization, Second Harvest, has been swamped with calls.

My biggest concern was perishability of garden produce. How can an area the size of ours deal with each home gardener's contribution? Not a problem, reports Tamara Nelson, associate executive director of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where they receive 10,000 pounds of excess produce a day through a program with merchants at the South Water Market. The depository serves 300 agencies in Cook County.

"Integrating a little more won't be a big deal," she said. "Although it would help if it's boxed a little and sorted to what extent you can. Also, it's easiest if a pantry is giving everybody the same thing and not having to sort out and give different things to different families."

Fresh fruits and vegetables "are often missing in the diets of people we serve and they're so important," she said. "More than 40 percent of food bank recipients are children and 12 percent are seniors, so the health benefits are particularly important for those groups."

The health message was reinforced by Barb Sayers, director of resource development at Bethlehem Center Food Bank, the coordinator for 220 agencies in the 12 counties of northeastern Illinois outside of Cook. "We're delighted to hear about the program," she said. "We would encourage people to participate and take their vegetables to local organizations that feed the hungry."

Would you like to help? If you don't know the number of a local pantry call the Greater Chicago Food Depository at 312-247-3663 or the Bethlehem Center Food Bank at 708-462-7669. Tell them you planted a row for the hungry.

Speaking of harvesting, we'd love to hear your comments on our first edition. If you like what you see, join us with your subscription, won't you? We're also online, so if you want to e-mail us, send it to me at growit@aol.com, to Carolyn Ulrich's mailbox, cultivated@aol.com, to Kate Jerome, Kjerome185@aol.com, and to PamWolfe, 74731.624@compuserve.com.

See you this fall.