Anchorage Daily News

TRUNK ROAD -- In drizzling rain, Mat-Su College organic gardening class members and volunteers harvested the rest of what, for some, was their first garden.

"It was so fun," said Kathryn Derendinger, a student at Mat-Su.

Derendinger grew up in Minnesota and lived for years in Anchorage. She and her husband recently moved to Palmer and she's studying to become a substance abuse counselor. She said she volunteered for the class in part to meet people at the college and to learn more about her new community.

She learned a lot more than she expected, she said. Like proper spacing of plants and the importance of watering. She even spent weekends watering the garden -- a three-hour chore. But Derendinger said she enjoyed learning and planted a garden of her own at home for the first time. She liked knowing the produce was going to people who needed it.

Produce grown at the garden was sent to food pantries in Wasilla and Palmer, as well as to the Wasilla and Palmer Senior Centers.

Karen Backlund, career development coordinator at the college, said the garden was paid for in part by a $25,000 grant from Learn and Serve America, an organization that's part of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, the same group behind other national service initiatives like AmeriCorps. The college also contributed $25,000, she said.

Mat-Su College got the grant because the project helps students learn academically while also helping the community. People taking the college's organic gardening course got hands-on training in the field, Backlund said.

The college partnered with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Experimental Farm just up Trunk Road on the project. The college, where one-credit organic gardening courses have been offered for years, made the curriculum more intensive and eligible for up to three credits. It's still an elective course open to community members, Backlund said.

As part of the grant work, volunteers also built raised beds at the Palmer Veterans and Pioneer Home. The beds are high enough to accommodate residents in wheelchairs, Backlund said.

The grant funding wasn't limited to gardens.

Backlund said students in a small-business management course last semester developed business plans for five nonprofit groups in the community. Typically, she said, the students would have developed a textbook business plan for an imaginary for-profit company.

"Being more well-connected to the community is a piece of it," she said of the grant. "It really helps students apply what they're learning in the classroom to the real world."

Friday at the experimental farm, volunteers sampled the different types of potatoes grown in the garden. Backlund counted seven varieties, including a shiny red "Candy Cane" potato that, when cut open, reveals a star burst of red flesh.

Under the tutelage of gardening guru Ellen Vande Visse, students grew kale, beets, cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage and broccoli and other Alaska staples, Backlund said. She estimated about 150 pounds of produce was harvested.

Next year's garden is already being planned.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her at 352-6709.

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