The Edible Plant Project
The Edible Plant Project is a not-for-profit, volunteer-based group working to promote edible landscaping and local food abundance in North Central Florida.
The goal of the EPP is to bring about this vision, to create positive alternatives to the unsustainable food system in this country.
Description:
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For more information, or if you’d like to participate in the Edible Plant Project, please contact us at our website, facebook or myspace.
myspace.com/edibleplantproject
Imagine a Gainesville in which every month of the year is marked by different trees ripening fruit, each in its season, in yards, street corners, and parks. Imagine a local abundance of vegetables in yards and farmers markets, vegetables which yield abundantly without intensive chemical fertilizer or pesticides because they are locally adapted varieties, ideally suited to our conditions, grown from seed carefully saved from year to year and shared from neighbor to neighbor.
A special focus of EPP is tree crops: fruit and nut trees. These wonders of nature need to be planted only once, and they yield abundantly for decades, often with little or no care. Anyone who has every stood under a tree loaded with fruit, gorging themselves on the crop, can appreciate the freely given abundance. Right now, there are mulberry, fig, loquat, pear, pecan, and persimmon trees around Gainesville that make heavy crops of delicious fruit and nuts every year. We need more of them!
Another foundation of local abundance is vegetables. We are working on creating a seed bank of locally-adapted, non-hybrid vegetable varieties so that we can save our own seed from year to year, every year improving the crop by selecting seed from the plants which do the best. By sharing and distributing seed, this will make us largely independent from the seed companies and their nationally-marketed hybrid varieties that often require chemical fertilizers and pesticides for good production.
Beyond spreading the germplasm of plant varieties, we also want to spread information. Recipes and processing techniques can make sure the bounty is well utilized (for example, dehydrated mulberries taste like mulberry-flavored raisins!)
Instead of consuming highly processed, un-nutritious food that contributes to rampant health problems, people could be eating fresh, wholesome fruits, nuts, and vegetables, harvested at the peak of ripeness. Rather than food produced with massive fossil fuel usage in agriculture and transport, with large scale erosion and fertilizer and pesticide run-off, people could be eating food grown locally in yards and landscapes, with little environmental impact or fossil fuel consumption.
Rather than food being a packaged, processed commodity, trucked in and purchased at the store, food would once again be something that connects people with nature, with the seasonal cycles of life. Once people realize how easy it is to grow food, there will be many opportunities for giving and sharing the abundance.
Please join us & help us in our work. Plant fruit trees, and grow and harvest local food to help make Gainesville a more beautiful, sustainable place.
History:
A true grassroots organization, we have been in operation at the Gainesville Organic (Blueberry) Farm since 2001. We have been official with the state of FL since 2005, a 501c3 with the IRS since 2006. Some of our partnering roots lie with NNN (Neighborhood Nutrition Network) and the Gainesville Permaculture Collective. We are run strictly by volunteers, donations, & plant sales. We recently secured a small grant to help rebuild the greenhouse at the Gainesville Organic (Blueberry) Farm.
For many of these tree crops, it is a simple matter to start new plants, from cuttings or seed. At the EPP, we maintain a nursery for starting and growing new fruit and nut trees for distribution to the community. Prices are set just high enough to cover our expenses.
We have regular work parties at the nursery, at which we start new plants, and weed and otherwise tend the existing ones. People can volunteer with us: helping out at the nursery, in the process both producing lots of fruit trees for distribution, and also learning about how to start and grow fruit and nut trees.
Contact people:
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Brian S, Director, Community Outreach, (phone), (email)
Michael A, Program Manager, (phone), (email)
Dan C, Volunteer Coordinator, (phone), (email) |
Address:
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1621 SE 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32641
(See a map) |
Web Site: http://www.edibleplantproject.org
Directions:
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For latest directions see http://edibleplantproject.org/contact-us/ or follow this route -------------------------
Go East on University until the road splits to the right for Hawthorne Road. -----
Turn right onto Hawthorne Road (State Road 20). ----
Take the next right onto SE 15th Street.. . . (more)
Nearest Bus Stop: 2, 1 minute walk |
| Last updated on January 11, 2010 |
