Whitehall Township began yard waste collection in March, and my first can went to the street with many of the weeds and grass that grew in my garden over the fall and winter. I hadn’t realized exactly how much grass had encroached until I spent several hours hoeing and pulling out the tufts and vines of very lush, green grass.

I also had a few, small cabbage plants I had not pulled in fall that were loaded with white flies! These were promptly removed to join the grass in the yard waste can.

With the cold weather we had during the week of March 18, I noticed my magnolia blossoms have frozen. However, the cold weather has not stunted the yard. By the time you read this article, I will have cut my grass for the first time this season.

I mentioned in my last article I would be manning the Lehigh Valley Plant-A-Row table at the Lehigh Valley Home and Garden Show. Although my shifts had little foot traffic, I was able to speak with about 25 individuals about Plant-A-Row’s purpose of getting produce from those with abundance to those in need via the pantry network in the Lehigh Valley.

Many of the individuals who stopped by took information cards listing our produce drop off points, and others requested to be contacted to volunteer or to receive more information. Re/Max Unlimited, 1080 Schadt Ave., Whitehall, will be a drop-off point again for 2024.

At our pantry distribution March 14, Hannah White, the new manager of The Seed Farm, stopped by to introduce herself, meet our pantry team and visit our pantry garden. The Seed Farm is the gardening arm of Second Harvest Food Bank.

White is new to the Lehigh Valley and had never visited our garden on the Mickley-Prydun Farm. It was a hot day and the bugs were swarming our heads, but White had a chance to see our current beds and where we want our first new beds to be installed.

The Seed Farm will be installing additional, raised beds for us this year near the fence closest to the Ironton Rail Trail. At this visit, we also discussed our groundhog issues and White offered her team to help us add chicken wire fencing to the bottom of our existing, metal fence. This will allow us to remove individual bed fencing for easier weeding and harvesting access.

She then identified our most prevalent weeds and offered some tools to make clearing the beds easier.

In late February, The Seed Farm gave us an opportunity to place an order for our spring seeds and seedlings. Because all the produce we raise goes to feeding food insecure households, these will be provided to us at no charge.

Based on the order we placed, this year we will grow red and yellow tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant, zucchini and herbs including parsley, basil and cilantro. We will also grow flowers including zinnias and sunflowers.

The Seed Farm also committed to providing us with additional basil plants we can give to pantry guests to take home and grow on their windowsills.

We have not yet set a firm date to start to prepare our pantry garden for the 2024 planting season, but it will be in May, most likely on a Tuesday evening. I will share our gardening schedule in my next article, and I hope you will consider volunteering at our pantry garden at Mickley-Prydun Farm, 3540 S. Ruch St., Whitehall.

Have a great April!

Editor’s note: This column was written by Gwen Herzog, Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative pantry garden chair.