String beans are one of the many vegtables that are grown by the "Veggielution" project.

Mark Anthony Medeiros, a junior sociology/environmental studies major, who started the 'Veggielution" project, looks at an ear of corn that will soon be removed from the garden to be replaced with the winter crop.

Neighborhood gardens yield food for campus eateries

By: Chrissy Ramoneda

Posted: 9/27/07

A group of environmentally conscious SJSU students have been growing vegetables on private properties near campus since January.

This October the students plan to sell the vegetables to SJSU, to be used in Dining Commons, the Market Cafe and the Student Union.

"That'd be nice," said Stephanie Choy a junior bio chemistry major. "It'd be a different alternative from Burger King and Sbarros."

Amie Frisch, an SJSU alumna, approached Executive Chef Jay Marshall about the possibility of selling the locally grown food on campus.

"I think it's a great option," Marshall said. "We started offering organic food last semester."

The latest crop should begin harvesting as early as October and "we'll start serving it then," Marshall said.

"We'll just insert the food somewhere where it fits and go from there," Marshall said.

Mark Anthony Medeiros, a junior sociology/environmental studies major started the appropriately named "Veggielution" project by posting a few flyers around neighborhoods just east of SJSU.

Medeiros was simply looking for some available land to grow his own vegetables.

"But after getting 10 or 15 phone calls from homeowners who were interested, I started to think this little project could be bigger," he said. "I started to make contacts with other students who might be interested."

Medeiros sent out a message about the garden project to the environmental club e-mail list in February, and soon after, then-student Amie Frisch contacted him.

The first garden started to produce in February and March. Soon it was flourishing with corn, beans, squash, peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce, Medeiros said.

By April, a second garden was being planted near campus at the home of Lawrence Bryan, a former SJSU mathematics and computer science professor. Bryan saw a flyer, and later received an e-mail about the "Veggielution" project.

"It seemed like a good idea," Bryan said. "We'd had gardens down here before but at some point it became too much to do."

Bryan not only offers his land, which edges alongside coyote creek, he also supplies them with a drip irrigation system and gardening tools.

"I think I actually picked up a shovel once, too," Bryan said.

After following a steep concrete stairway, edged with terraces, you'll not only find the sprouting vegetables but also a beautifully cluttered array of alder, mulberry, sycamore, pomegranate and cherry trees.

"I let them pick my mulberries and gorge on them," Bryan said.

Word of the "Veggielution" project has spread and now around 10 students tend the local crops on a regular basis. Wednesday nights are designated to cookouts, using their own vegetables when possible, and Saturday mornings are their "workdays."

"It's a really healthy outlet," said Nathaniel Browning, a junior sociology major. "I think it gets us connected to community. We get together, we eat together. We're creating a different kind of community than is available."

"We do this instead of watching TV," Frisch said.

Tomatoes from the garden have already been stewed into sauce, canned in masen jars by the growers themselves and given to helpful volunteers and the generous homeowners.

"We want food. And we want to grow our own food," Medeiros said. "It's deceptively simple what we're doing here."

"Veggielution" has spread even farther than SJSU's boundaries. Frisch, now an SJSU alumna in environmental studies, spoke "at the UCSB sustainability conference this past June and inspired a group of Chico students to replicate her efforts," according to the CSU Chico sustainable future Web site.

Frisch has been asked to speak about the garden project at CSU Chico's third annual This Way to Sustainability conference being held Nov. 1 through Nov. 4.