Edible New Port Richey - Victory Gardens popping up throughout the area a grassroots movement you can join and learn how to grow your own food!

There is a grass roots movement underway in New Port Richey where the seeds of change are being planted everywhere. Farmers markets are popping up on main street and the city's Library and community gardens are flourishing near Sims park at Peace Hall Learning Garden. Local people are learning how to create their own victory gardens to grow fresh food where they live. Local people recreating the local economy from the ground up.

 Local people are learning about the incredible abundance that surrounds them when they magically layer upon free and recycled materials found naturally in a process called sheet mulching. In gardening events they layer upon layer recycled mulch from the city, sea grasses from local beaches, and worm castings to create rich soil after a few months of decompositon.  Planting seeds and watching them develop gives new inspiration for life in the lives of many new gardeners who are finding a passion for the Earth and soil. Winter gardening in Florida can be productive and entire neighborhoods are taking on the challenge. You can attend a garden gathering at the Peace Garden every other Sunday 9am-noon. The next visit is Feb. 24 this upcoming Sunday.

If you would like to experiance apart of this movement weekly you can drive down Virginia Avenue in Downtown New Port Richey and see the "Market Garden" district where an entire neighborhood has grown vegetable gardens in the front yards and sells them to local people. One of the founding gardeners Jim Kovaleski hosts a weekly Saturday Garden Gathering at his home 5642 Virginia Ave 2pm-4pm. Open source information of how to start growing is the focus of all of this- together we grown our own food and learn from one another. Each one, teach one. 

On Tuesday Feb. 26th at 6pm the Suncoast Co-op will be showing a free film called "Edible City". This film highlights how the town of San Fransico is re-creating its economy to focus on locally grown food in urban environments. Edible City introduces a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system. The movie digs deep into their unique perspectives and transformative work– from edible education to grassroots activism to building local economies— finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems They talk about community owned businesses such as community kitchens and retail locations where people own the store and receive profit if it is sucessful. Perhaps these types of ideas can influence the Hacienda and other local vacant spots throughout New Port Richey to be taken over by the local community. 

One community owned business already exists: The Suncoast Co-op is a cooperative based out of New Port Richey working at the Habitat for Humanity on Saturdays 10am-2pm delivering fresh local food weekly using our online market found at www.suncoastco-op.com . 

If you would like to be apart of this growing local food movement you can come to several free events  hosted on meet-up site: http://www.meetup.com/Suncoast-Co-op/