Rob:  It’s estimated the demand for hunger assistance could increase by 70% this year.  Lost jobs or a cut in hours can contribute to a problem the Department of Agriculture estimates will affect 33 million people, right here in the land of plenty.  Such economic uncertainty has more Americans planting their own gardens, and others planting gardens to help feed the hungry.  Joining me now from their studio garden is Kim Rebek, the host of the Oklahoma Gardening show.  So Kim, have you seen a growing interest in gardening this year?
Kim:  Absolutely, nationwide for one thing, seed sales for vegetable plants are way up.  And right here in Oklahoma we’ve been getting a lot of calls at our county extension offices asking for more information on growing fruits and vegetables in the backyard.
Rob:  So what are some of the factors you see spurring this growth?
Kim:  I think there are several.  One of them is certainly economic.  With hard times people want to grow some of their own produce to take off a little bit of that pressure.  Also there have been health concerns, outbreaks of Salmonella, things like that.  And people are more comfortable if they grow their own produce.  They know where it’s been and what’s happened to it.  The same can be said about what types of chemicals are being used, when you grow your own produce.
Rob:  Now I know with all the economic pressures people are feeling I know you, as well as some other gardeners, are all part of a program to help stem the tide.
Kim:  Certainly and one of the main thrusts of our programming this year has been focused on producing your own produce.  And with that programming we’re also encouraging and promoting a program called Plant a Row for the Hungry.  And this is a people-helping-people approach to addressing hunger and malnutrition. Gardeners are notorious for growing extra produce.  I think it’s important to point out that, everybody can make a difference in someone else’s life, either by planting just an extra container or an extra row of vegetables in their garden and then donating that produce.  Everybody here has the potential to help someone who’s hungry.
Rob:  And I know you had an opportunity to visit with the program’s founder.
Kim:  We had the opportunity to meet with Jeff Lowenfels who started this program in Anchorage, Alaska.  And he had a wonderful story about what inspired him to get started with Plant a Row, and it’s grown so large since those first days.  We had the opportunity to tape with him, so why don’t we take a look at that tape.
Kim:  Well, I’m very excited to bring you all today, Jeff Lowenfels, who started the Plant a Row program.  Hi Jeff.  
Jeff Lowenfels:  How are you?
Kim:  Thanks for joining me.
Lowenfels:  My pleasure I have to tell you.
Kim:  Excellent.  Well could you share with us a little bit about Plant a Row, to get started?
Lowenfels:  Surely.  Well Plant a Row for the Hungry is a program started by the Garden Writers, or sponsored by the Garden Writers of America, in order to get every gardener in America to put one row in their garden and dedicate it to someone that needs it, someone who is going to bed hungry at night, whether it’s a food kitchen or a church or a synagogue or something.  We don’t care.  We just want people who are hungry to get food from America gardeners.  The other interesting thing about this program is that we really recognize as gardeners that, well maybe the best way is a joke.  In Wisconsin, and probably in Oklahoma as well, at night you never park your car in the street without locking the doors.  Because if you don’t lock the doors, when you wake up in the morning and get into that car, it’s going to be full of zucchini that someone was trying to get rid of out of their garden.  We’ve got so much waste in our gardens, and gardeners are the kind of people who share.  We just thought this was a natural program.
Kim:  Well it certainly is.  And zucchini is a great example.
Lowenfels:  You betcha.
Kim:  You can’t give it away, half the time.
Lowenfels:  That’s right.
Kim:  Well how did Plant a Row get started?
Lowenfels:  Ah, here is where it gets a little bit of embarrassing for me.  I was in Washington DC.  I’m a lawyer by trade; I’m also a garden columnist; and I have a book out, but I’m a lawyer by trade, and I was in Washington DC doing some work during a period of time when it was as cold in Washington DC as it ever gets.  I was walking home from a very, very nice expense account meal with my hands in my pocket, it was so cold.  It was about 10 degrees.  And a guy came up to me and said, can I have a little bit of money, I’m hungry and I’d like to get something to eat.  My hands were wrapped around change, and I said no, because in Washington they tell you not to give money to the homeless, there are agencies for that.  Well, he said to me, I’m really not kidding, I really need this food, if you’d like, you can come and watch me eat it.  I’m not going to use drugs or do them, or take your money and do something stupid with it.  I’m going to eat.  I still said no.  I went back to my hotel room.  I ate the fruit on my counter that was left there by the staff, and I kept thinking, gee, that was a pretty bad thing I did.  And I felt really bad about it.  And I was flying home, to Anchorage; it’s a long flight, writing a column, and I felt so bad that I decided that I was going to ask all of my readers to plant one row for a program we have in Anchorage called “Beans Café,” plant a row for “Beans.”  Well, it was so successful that when the Garden Writers convention was held in Anchorage, I told them about the program; and the next thing you know, the Garden Writers decided to adopt this and make it a national program.  It’s now in Canada.  We’ve had requests from Australia and England.  It’s been a very successful program, because again, gardeners share.  They share information.  They share their experiences.  And now they have an opportunity to really share their food.
Kim:  And, anybody can do this.  It’s one of the wonderful things about the program.
Lowenfels:  That’s right, that’s right.  In fact the program’s not even just limited to food.  You know, you could give some flowers to a soup kitchen and raise people’s spirits.  But you’re right.  It’s so easy to do.  There’s so much waste.  And the idea, that 35-million people go to bed hungry, in the United States of America, is absolutely disgusting.  And there’s no excuse for it.  And we can solve this problem as gardeners without any money being put into this program from the government.  The nice thing about this program is nothing slips between the lip and the cup.  This is private people doing something on their own.  The gardener takes the food to the soup kitchen, or the drop off point.  It is not a program that requires government funding.  It doesn’t require billions of dollars, and we’ve been so successful.  One pound of food can feed up to four people.  And I think last year alone we collected something like four or five million pounds of food.
Kim:  That is just an incredible amount of food that otherwise would have been lost, maybe even wasted.  It’s a fabulous program. 
Lowenfels:  And the important thing about the program, you know everybody always gives me credit for founding it.  It’s not me.  I had nothing to do with this program.  It’s the individual gardener that makes this program work.  And it takes every single gardener to be able to solve this particular problem.  If you’ve ever seen the marker, the row marker, with a, that’s got a big heart on a seed identification, that’s what it’s all about.  This is what gardening is about.  And it just seemed to fit so well.  And obviously it has, because the program’s been very successful.  And we hope here in Oklahoma that people will really rally behind this program.  There are lots of people going to bed, mostly children, going to bed hungry in Oklahoma, and we can solve that problem.