The "Food for Thought & Action" group, hosted by the Scarborough Food Pantry, Scarborough School Nutrition, and Project GRACE, is ready to reconvene. We are eager to hear how things are going and your ideas for what else we can tackle together to halt hunger in our community.

We'll be convening in a few weeks, and hope you'll attend. Please save the date:

Wednesday, May 16th (2:30-5:00)
St. Maximilian-Kolbe Church 
150 Black Point Road (map)

We'll be at the health and wellness fair at the Scarborough High School on Thursday, March 29th - we'll be highlighting our work to bring fresh, healthy veggies to our neighbors. Doors open at 6pm, and it's free to attend. Hope to see you there!

Scarborough Public Schools and the Scarborough Police Department are co-hosting "Raising Healthy Teens (and people in general)" and Community Health & Wellness Fair.  >>View PDF Flier

More than 1,000 pounds of donated fresh produce was distributed by the Scarborough Food Pantry from May to October 2017. The produce was grown by gardeners from St Nick's, Hillcrest Retirement Community, and Idexx as well as home gardeners.  About 40% of the produce weighed and recorded in the pantry's log book for the 2017 season came from the St. Nick's garden.

380 pounds of fresh, delicious, organic greens, veggies, and herbs were grown by the Community Garden at St. Nick's during the 2017 growing season.  This is about 20% fewer pounds than last season, partly because we did not grow any zucchinis and squashes (those are troublesome crops and they are provided in abundance by other gardeners, so we chose to plant more peppers, eggplants, greens instead. Similarly we cut back on the number of tomato plants. We had a rough Spring, and our June harvest totals were lower compared to last season because we had to replant some crops.)

70% of the produce harvested by St. Nick's gardeners came in during August (110 lbs) and September (145 lbs). But for the 2017 season, the St. Nick's garden was also one of the first gardens bringing early fresh greens and herbs, with the first harvest coming in mid-May. The St. Nick's garden continued producing through the end of October.

The quality of our produce is very high. We use organic methods, pick with care, and deliver our produce within minutes of harvest to the pantry. Pantry patrons frequently comment on how delicious our produce is as well.

Monthly Totals Delivered to the Scarborough Food Pantry:
MAY:  St Nick's 4.5 lbs (total all gardens 4.5 lbs)
JUNE: St Nick's 41.9 lbs (total all gardens 59.9 lbs)
JULY: St Nick's 43.3 lbs (total all gardens 90.38 lbs)
AUGUST: St Nick's 110.38 lbs (total all gardens 535.42 lbs) 
SEPTEMBER: St Nick's 145 lbs (total all gardens 231.20 lbs)
OCTOBER: St Nick's 35.1 lbs (total all gardens 92.32 lbs)

TOTAL MAY-OCT 2017: St Nick's 380 lbs (all gardens 1006 lbs)

Join us for the 3rd Annual Harvest Fest, Saturday, October 14th (10-2), at St. Nicholas, 350 US Route 1, Scarborough. Come see the garden, pick up some handmade crafts, get treats from the bake sale table, and enjoy a bratwurst from the grill or some cider. Take home fall mums and native Maine produce. Raffles, crafts, games, live music, and more! 

WEDNESDAY: 7/19/17
Radishes: 1 lb
Beets: 2 lbs
Garlic Scapes:  1/2 pound (6 oz)

TUESDAY: 7/18/17
Parsley: 2 lbs
Radishes: 3 oz
Peas: 1 lb 2 oz
Beets: 4 1/2 lbs
Sw Chard: 3 3/4 lb
Lettuce: 1 lb
Kale: 3 lbs
Chives: 1 lb

WEEK SEVEN (July 11 & 13)

WEEK SIX (July 4th) - no harvest

WEEK FIVE (June 27 & 29)

WEEK FOUR (June 20 & 21)

WEEK THREE (June 13 & 15)

WEEKS ONE & TWO (May 21 & 29)

Happiness is time spent in the garden, and we're especially happy to welcome volunteers from the Scarborough Garden Club who are helping us harvest every week. Thank you! (Pictured here are Penny & Pat, with 20 pounds of garden bounty!)

And so starts the 2017 planting season! Gardeners from St.Nick's put in the first of our cold crops: green lettuce.  About 100 romaine and green lettuce seedlings were planted, and a dozen or so parsley plants, too. Also lots of marigolds to keep smaller garden pests like mice and voles away and cosmos to attract pollinators. 

Check out these two annual plant sales! They are sponsored by friends of our garden! We get lots of help and good advice from the Scarborough Garden Club and we are a recipient of "Seed Grants" from the Master Gardeners. We hope you'll support them, because they've been supporting us since we planted our first crops.

May 20 at the Barron Center - Cumberland County Master Gardeners

June 3 at the Hunnewell House - Scarborough Garden Club

Our friends at Keller Williams volunteered for the garden as part of their annual "RED Days". We are glad Keller Williams' Cash Wiseman called Project GRACE to ask how they could help their neighbors on May 11th, a day of giving back nationwide for the realty group. To help us get the garden ready for growing season, they moved a mountain of lovely organic compost from Jordan's Farm, and laid the pathways, too. THANK YOU!

Project GRACE has been applying for grants for the garden, and we're very pleased to be awarded a "Seed Grant" from the Cumberland County Master Gardeners. It's one of several that help us put the green into our garden efforts.Thank you!

We hope you'll stop by ACE Hardware at Oak Hill on Wednesday, April 26th (4pm-7pm) for the 5th annual garden party! We're sharing a table with the Scarborough Garden Club and the Cumberland County Master Gardeners. Stop by for soil test kits and some planting advice, too!  Click here for more info, coupons.

The snow's barely melted, but we're planning our 2017 growing season!  First task on the list is to roto-till the leaves and compost added last fall as we put the garden to bed. Then we'll be ready for our first work day to spread compost, lay paths, and plot our planting plan.

Our friends at Keller-Williams will be volunteering for the garden as part of their annual "RED Days". Keller-Williams' Cash Wiseman called Project GRACE to ask how they could help their neighbors on May 11th, a day of giving back nationwide for the realty group, and we were happy to respond with an invitation to have them help us get the garden ready for season!

Maine Harvest for Hunger is a program of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension that encourages gardeners to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to hungry people in Maine. The Scarborough Community Garden weighs our harvests each week and reports the totals to Maine Harvest to Hunger. Did you know, nearly 1 in every 4 Maine children, are food insecure.   To learn more about Harvest for Hunger, click here!

Where is all that food going?

To our neighbors at the Scarborough Food Pantry!

"I haven't had these in such a long time, they are so expensive." (talking about just-picked fresh green beans)

"Wow, that all looks really nice. It's great for someone like me - I'm a vegetarian." 

"Thank you, gardeners, you keep on growing. It's wonderful what you are doing. I'm diabetic, and I'm trying to eat right."

"The kids really love these." (talking about cucumbers)

"Having a recipe is really helpful. I haven't tried that before." (talking about kale)

"This must be really fresh; it still has some dirt on it!" (talking about beets just pulled from the garden)