WOODSTOCK — As food costs remain high, and federal programs expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic are shrinking, the nonprofit Sustainable Woodstock is offering free seeds and starter plants through its “Grow Your Own Garden” program.

The gardening kits are being given out to “local individuals and families who would otherwise not have the means to purchase gardening supplies,” the community and environmental action group said in a media release. Focused on “self-sufficiency,” the kits are a medley of offerings, including tomato seedlings, cucumber vines, squash plants, radish and potato seeds.

The kits have fed an estimated 600 people in the last three years, Sustainable Woodstock Executive Director Michael Caduto said in an interview. “If people don’t have space to plant, we still have spots open at the community garden at Billings Farm (in Woodstock),” he added.

This year, Sustainable Woodstock, which was started in 2009, hopes to distribute around 60 kits to families and individuals in the Upper Valley towns, including Barnard, Bridgewater, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock, served by the Windsor Central Supervisory Union.

Following the onset of the pandemic, school closures and economic disruptions turned 53 million people nationally to food assistance programs in 2021. Around that time, Sustainable Woodstock tried to give some of the growing power back to the people by offering free garden supplies.

The cost of food usually increases about 2% year to year, but prices spiked around 11% from 2021 to 2022, and persistent inflation means costs will likely only marginally decrease through 2023, also according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

“Some of the assistance programs that were introduced or augmented during the pandemic, those things have timed out,” Caduto said. “But the need hasn’t gone away by any means. A lot of families are now left with less.”

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was given an emergency boost, but reduced again in February. Some families that qualified under emergency guidelines now don’t, or have seen their benefits reduced.

In 2022, food prices increased more than they had since the 1980s, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Food costs comprise, on average, about one-third of a low-income household’s income.

“Part of the idea is that a lot of these households haven’t had a garden before,” Caduto said.

The program, funded in part by the Middlebury-based Green Mountain Foundation, offers instruction books, and tending to a plot in the community garden also gives easier access to on-site advice from the garden coordinator.

On the other side of the Connecticut River, the Bradford, N.H.-based Tray it Forward program “is designed to grow more gardeners” by providing free seedling trays to residents of New London, Newbury, Springfield, Sunapee, and other towns in the Kearsarge region.

For those without access to suitable growing land or to a community garden, FEED Kearsarge — a collection of nonprofits that together run the program – recommends gardening in containers.

“Often, this alternative to in-ground or permanent, raised bed gardening offers gardeners a method that is highly adaptive and easily controlled, especially for those folks who live in rental properties or who do not have the means (or space) to establish a permanent in-ground garden,” the group’s “Victory Garden Tool Kit” reads.

Register for Sustainable Woodstock’s “Grow Your Own Program” at this link: https://tinyurl.com/mwtra6v4

Register for the seedling trays from FEED Kearsarge by May 16 at this link: https://tinyurl.com/5ef2r6e7

Seeds are also offered from the Upper Valley Seed Savers, as well as at some local libraries, including the Hartland and Windsor libraries.

SNAP benefits can also be used to purchase seeds and seedlings from any SNAP-participating retailer or farmers market.

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603- 727-3242.

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