At Red River College, we’re growing more than innovative minds. Throughout the spring, summer and fall, the College’s Grounds department went above and beyond their regular responsibilities to maintain a vegetable garden at our Notre Dame Campus. On this 30’ X 60’ plot of land, we grew a variety of vegetables to donate to Winnipeg Harvest in support of the corporate Grow-A-Row initiative – a program that’s collected more than 4 million pounds of produce since its inception in 1986.

Last week we assembled an enthusiastic crew of students and staff (including our Prez, Paul Vogt) to join the Grounds department in the harvest. Once all the digging, trimming, scrubbing and boxing was complete, we were thrilled to donate a whopping 3,100 lbs of carrots, beets, onions potatoes to Harvest, with a portion going straight to the RRC Students’ Association food bank. Click here to see the full gallery of the 2018 Grow-A-Row Harvest.

Spearheaded by our green-thumb gardener Shivcharan Sandhu, the College first participated in Grow-A-Row in 2013.  Since that time, the initiative has really grown, and so has the amount of produce we’ve donated to Winnipeg Harvest.

In addition to the vegetables donated to Winnipeg Harvest, our garden grows other goodies like pumpkins and herbs, many of which end up in the ACC baking students pies and jams, to the pesto in your sandwich in the Voyageur Cafeteria. You may be wondering why are our pumpkins are so big, and our basil so lush.

Well, another neat fact – the garden is fertilized with nutrient-rich compost from our onsite windrows right on campus. All fruit and veggie scraps from our cafeteria kitchens and coffee grounds from food services locations are broken down and recycled back into our earth, avoiding the landfill, and creating the beautiful bounty of produce to support the greater community and RRC students in need.

Thank you again to all our volunteers, we couldn’t have DUG it without you.