SUNDERLAND, Md. – We had a dream. We wanted to teach children the fun and importance of growing food, how the taste of fresh vegetables differs from store-bought ones, how to appreciate the goodness of nature and the satisfaction of giving fresh food to others.
Four parishioners, neighbors, friends met. Mary Burke works in land conservation for the Land Trust Alliance and was on the board of the Maryland Environmental Trust. Her grant-writing expertise enhanced our funding. Paul Dickson’s engineering talents led to an underground watering system and repair of drainage issues. Sherrill Munn, retired Army chaplain and Master Gardener, led the agricultural and learning aspects. Mary Ann Munn is the master weeder and photographer. We all worked in the dirt!
The book/movie The Martian, where Matt Damon portrays an astronaut who is stranded on Mars, enhanced our gardening dream. He must devise a way to grow potatoes while he waits for the next Martian expedition to rescue him.
Memories of The Martian, the 1957 Sputnik satellite and potatoes blended to give us our efforts a name: Project Spudnik.
Our first meeting in 2016 brought 16 teens and several adults to All Saints Episcopal Church, Sunderland. We watched The Martian in the church parish hall before learning how to make our own dirt and to lay out our new garden.
With the blessings of then-pastor Ken Phelps and the open space of All Saints Church, we opted to grow potatoes and green beans, since they repel each other’s pests. Each person had a personal grow bag, a lightweight porous bag to grow potatoes. These bags also held our beans. Each person was responsible for his/her own potato bag to tend throughout the season to determine whether they would live or die on Mars. And who would grow the largest potato or the most potatoes by weight?
All spring and summer, we rotated watering duties, watched our potatoes, adding more soil as needed, checking for pests. By the time our vegetables were ready to harvest, we had trivia quizzes about potatoes, learned about good and bag bugs, determined the best principles for organic gardening, what vegetables to plant near or away from each other, and so much more.
Our harvesting was successful! Everyone had potatoes to harvest. No one died on Mars! At our harvest lunch, our home-grown potatoes and those from a local grocery were prepared the same way. In a blind tasting, EVERYONE selected Spudnik potatoes as being tastier. We donated the remaining potatoes and beans to local food banks, sometimes more than 600 pounds a season.
Even better, the teens wanted to expand the garden the following season. So, we grew to a 30×30-foot garden. Over the years, we’ve added more vegetables and some fruits and herbs over more space, a pollinator garden to attract beneficial insects, an underground watering system, birdhouses to help mitigate harmful insects, benches on which to relax or meditate and more.
All students receive credit for their community service hours. Teen leadership helps draw more students into our gardening family.
This year we are adding a hard surface section with raised garden beds next to the parking area, especially for those who are mobility challenged. They can easily walk or wheel to work in the dirt.
Our current Master Gardener guide is Mimi Miller, since Sherrill died and Mary and Paul moved out of the area in 2022.
To join our band of Spudnik volunteers, contact Mrs. Miller at millerfam1976@verizon.net. Our next committee planning meeting will be 5 p.m., February 2, in the Parish Hall. First group meeting 10 am-1 pm, Saturday, February 10. Come help the dream grow!
