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Free garden plots unite community

Businessman offers land to potential gardeners, who put it to work.

The winners of the best garden name award were Vince and Peggy Delli-Carpini of Centerville. They named their garden Green Acres after the TV show of the same name. He's from the city and she's from the country.

Contributed photo The winners of the best garden name award were Vince and Peggy Delli-Carpini of Centerville. They named their garden Green Acres after the TV show of the same name. He's from the city and she's from the country.

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By Katherine Ullmer, Staff Writer 8:02 PM Wednesday, October 26, 2011

BELLBROOK — The half-acre of plowed ground behind Synergistic Health Centers, 1940 N. Lakeman Drive, brought forth lots of healthy activity and good eating this summer.

Dr. John Moore III, whose specialty is age management medicine, which includes hormone evaluation and balancing for men and women, weight management, and other wellness programs, moved his office last year from north Dayton to Bellbrook, where he lives, and learned the half acre behind it had once been a community garden.

He had it tilled early last spring and offered 20-foot by 20-foot free garden plots to anyone who wanted one in the hopes of promoting healthy living and eating. He had 32 takers from Bellbrook, Dayton, Waynesville, Yellow Springs, Centerville, Kettering and Springboro.

Despite monsoon-like spring rains and 90-degree summer heat, the plots produced bumper crops of tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, cucumbers and squash, Moore said. Only the corn did not do well.

The best part was that “kids got involved,” he said. “They would drag their families out to gawk at the vegetable gardens. If these kids are gardeners one day, then we have been successful.”

“Deloris Vance and her son Jim of the Waynesville area came with five children in tow,” he said. “She was from West Virginia. She picked up a hoe and started scratching dirt and they followed after her. She seemed to have a lot of garden know-how.” Her husband, a retired coal miner, sat on the wicker couch on the deck behind the office and enjoyed it all, he said.

Moore said he learned to garden when he lived on a 100-acre farm doing horticultural research on organic fertilizers for Clemson University in South Carolina, where he grew up. President Jimmy Carter was asking Americans to save energy, so Moore planted two acres of sweet potatoes to make gasahol, he said. After that he was hooked on farming.

He supplied the seeds, tools, fertilizer and several cookouts for the backyard gardeners, awarding prizes for such things as the best effort, the best-named garden, etc.

Vince and Peggy Delli-Carpini of Centerville won for best-named garden, Green Acres, after the former TV show of the same name.

“I’m from the Bronx, and my wife’s from Kansas,” Vince Delli-Carpini said. They represent the city and country as in the show, he said. He learned to garden through children’s programs offered by the New York Botanical Gardens, he said.

The Delli-Carpinis grew tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, squash, eggplant, lettuce and sweet potatoes, the latter recently dug up. “Peggy’s making some for dinner tonight,” he said.

They shared gardening duties. He weeded, did the heavy lifting and staked the tomatoes, changing from wooden stakes to rebar to hold the heavy plants. She watered and harvested. “It was great exercise and we ate very healthy,” he said. They plan on repeating the experience next year and getting a second plot if available, to grow herbs, he said.

Another probable returnee is Holly Dunlap of Springboro. “I would love to do it again,” she said. “I met some great people and learned a lot from them.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2341 or kullmer@DaytonDaily News.com.

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