At peak harvest season, Philly food pantries get the best organic local produce from city gardeners for free

For the best in hyperlocal organic produce, you could shop at any of Philadelphia’s upscale supermarkets — and expect to pay a high price.

Many food-insecure city residents can get the best in hyperlocal organic produce, too, and it’s free.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society supports 176 community-led gardens, many of which cooperate with City Harvest, a PHS initiative, by pledging to grow and redistribute some of their produce to food pantries, soup kitchens, community fridges, and other nonprofit programs across the city.

“It’s so important that we are not just feeding people but connecting people and building community,” said Adam Hill, director of community gardens and urban agriculture for PHS.

That’s why, on a recent Saturday at Awbury Arboretum, car after car slowly made its way to the greenhouse to collect a box of seedlings from PHS staff and volunteers that included collard greens, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, and broccoli to grow for a nonprofit agency. It was City Harvest’s last of its three annual seedling giveaways that PHS calculates are worth $1,200 to $1,500 per garden.

Unlike commercial gardening centers, PHS gives gardeners seedlings that are seasonally appropriate, said Sally McCabe, associate director of community education. For example, collard greens, she said, are now no longer available at most gardening centers even though, as a fall crop, they will fare well as temperatures go down. She said that gardeners are also getting more variety than a typical garden center can provide.

Jeanette Rainey, who has been a gardener at Glenwood Green Acres in North Philadelphia for four decades, came through to pick up seedlings for a plot created in memory of the garden’s founder, James Taylor, who died in 2009. The produce grown in that plot is dedicated to Grands as Parents, only a mile away. The North Philadelphia organization maintains a food pantry and supports grandparents who are caregivers.

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Rainey said she sees Grands as Parents clients look forward to receiving her garden’s bounty of string beans, squash, collard greens, and tomatoes. “They line up to get it,” she said.

In Philadelphia one in six people depends on emergency food programs for support, yet only about one out of five donated food items is of high nutritional quality. Fresh produce brings added demands, including refrigeration. “There are about 500 pantries in the city. Not all deal with fresh produce,” Hill said.

Henry Lee, director of culinary for Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia, which provides recovery services, transitional housing, and work experiences to men, said he has been getting produce from gardeners, including South Street Community Garden, for the 14 years he has been at the agency. “I am very happy with the quality. It is freshly grown. You can’t get food any fresher,” Lee said.

City Harvest grows 275,000 seedlings a year, representing 140 varieties of vegetables and herbs. Hill said the seedlings were once grown in partnership with the city’s prison system, but that operation didn’t survive COVID. “The pandemic was rough. ... We weren’t meeting goals and had to move on.”

As the city gardeners have become more ethnically diverse, so, too, have their seedling requests. Emma Ford, PHS operations manager for community gardens, said that this year she included petch siam, an eggplant often used in Thai cooking; winter melon, which is a mild-tasting, pumpkin-like vegetable common in the Southeast Asian community; aji dulce peppers for Latin American gardeners; and red okra for African communities — all foods that aren’t readily available at local grocery stores.

“There is so much variety,” Ford said. “Not just one variety.”

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Christe Lee, who picked up the seedlings for Penn & Greene Garden in Germantown, said their donations are directed to the community fridge at 20 W. Armat St., which is run by the Greene Street Friends School. “It’s a lot of work, but I love it,” said Lee, who also maintains a personal plot at the garden. “The harvest is too much for one person, so it makes sense [to donate it].”

Community fridges rose in popularity during the pandemic and continue to exist today. According to Jess Bautista, chief communications officer of Share Food Program, the organization has its own farm and food rescue arm that it uses to stock community fridges.

“Between the rescued, surplus food we source through our Philly Food Rescue initiative, and the fresh produce grown on our Nice Roots Farm, we’ve been able to stock more than a dozen community fridge locations, weekly, with free groceries, like mangoes, cucumbers, romaine, grapes, lettuce, tomatoes, persimmons, figs, and mulberries,” said Bautista.

Suzanna Urminska was one of the last gardeners to arrive at the recent seedling giveaway. She was picking up for the C.W. Henry School, where school parents maintain a garden. Urminska said they often leave some produce on a picnic table in the garden for anyone to take.

“In Mount Airy, people assume it is extremely affluent,” Urminska said, adding that many residents are facing shifting financial situations. “Whoever wants to come, come. There are a lot of different circumstances. You don’t have to qualify. I love that what we do is informal.”