The Edible Plant Project (EPP) is a not-for-profit, volunteer-based group working to promote edible landscaping and local food abundance in North Central Florida. The goal of the EPP is to create positive alternatives to the unsustainable food system in this country.
A special focus of EPP is tree crops: fruit and nut trees. These wonders of nature need to be planted only once, and they yield abundantly for decades, often with little or no care. Anyone who has ever stood under a tree loaded with fruit, gorging themselves on the crop, can appreciate the freely given abundance. Right now, there are mulberry, fig, loquat, pear, pecan, and persimmon trees aroundGainesville that make heavy crops of delicious fruit and nuts every year. We need more of them! For many of these tree crops, it is a simple matter to start new plants, from cuttings or seed. At the EPP, we maintain a nursery for starting and growing new fruit and nut trees for distribution to the community. Prices are set just high enough to cover our expenses.
Another foundation of local abundance is vegetables. We are working on creating a seed bank of locally-adapted, non-hybrid vegetable varieties so that we can save our own seed from year to year, every year improving the crop by selecting seed from the plants which do the best. By sharing and distributing seed, we are largely independent from the seed companies and their nationally-marketed hybrid varieties that often require chemical fertilizers and pesticides for good production.Beyond spreading the germplasm of plant varieties, we also want to spread information. Recipes and processing techniques canmake sure the bounty is well utilized (for example, dehydrated mulberries taste like mulberry-flavored raisins! We maintain a nursery for fruit and nut trees and a keep a seed bank of locally-adapted, non-hybrid vegetable varieties so we can select seed from the plants which do the best. We share our trees, seed, and recipes with the community.
Rather than food produced with massive fossil fuel usage in agriculture and transport, with large scale erosion and fertilizer and pesticide run-off, people could be eating food grown locally in yards and landscapes, with little environmental impact or fossil fuel consumption. Rather than food being a packaged, processed commodity, trucked in and purchased at the store, food would once again be something that connects people with nature, with the seasonal cycles of life.Once people realize how easy it is to grow food, there will be many opportunities for giving and sharing the abundance.
Please help us in our work. Plant fruit trees, and grow and harvest local food to help make Gainesville a more beautiful, sustainable place.
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On the 2nd Wednesday of every month, 4-7 pm, The Edible Plant Project,
a not for profit nursery and collective, has a plant sale at the
Union St. Farmers’ Market in Downtown Gainesville.
(As of May 2011 we changed from the 1st Wednesday of the month to the 2nd Wednesday).
An eclectic selection of edible plants, seeds, and more are available.
Most plants are well suited for Gainesville and easy to care for.
Gainesville Community Plaza, 111 E. University Avenue
http://www.unionstreetfarmersmkt.com/
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