Gardens Across Iowa!; a humanitarian movement aided by new technology
by Sondra Wilson. Last updated 10/4/24.
Here at Wild Willpower, we believe everyone who is willing to put in the effort deserves a place to legally grow food to help feed themselves and their families. The problem? Even people who have access to soil often don’t know where to start. Even people who want to grow go to the store, look through a wall of seeds to pick out the plants they want to grow, then get home and realize that gardening involves a lot of research. They throw the seeds into a drawer, plan to get to it the following year, and the dust begins to collect.
We’re developing new technology:
Our Gardens Across Iowa! team, consisting of eight dedicated Iowa State University students who firmly believe in this project, are in the process of developing the Gardens Across Iowa! Google Calendar. You may be download the Calendar for free and it will instantly integrate into your Google Calendar. Once it is finished, the Calendar will include:
- Step-by-step instructions for exactly how to grow nearly any type of crop an Iowan might want to grow in their personal garden.
- The ideal date, based on Iowa’s frost date (~April 20), to perform any given activity. For example, some plants should be germinated indoors in early spring, then transplanted outdoors after the frost date. The ideal date to begin germinating hot or bell peppers indoors – based on Iowa’s frost date – is February 9. If you scroll to February 9 in the Calendar, you will see an entry called “Germinate hot and bell peppers indoors”. Click on that entry for step-by-step instructions.
- Special offers from our business sponsors which are available exclusively through Gardens Across Iowa!
Soon our team will:
- Vastly improved (and beautify) each entry currently found in the Calendar, including adding photos.
- Add many more entries for a wide variety of crops you may want to grow.
- Compile the most efficient gardening techniques we’ve found into each entry. For example:
Double-planter technique for potatoes:
Cucumber tipi:
Rain gutter-planter hanging strawberries:
Oh my gourd! – what a cool tunnel!!
New Technology:
The Gardens Across Earth! App:
Once finished, the Calendar will be used to develop the Gardens Across Earth! App. This will include location services that will:
- Highlight sponsors (and special offers) local to your area. All sponsors and their offers will be listed at the bottom of each entry within the App’s calendar, with local sponsors listed at the top.
- Allow the app to be useful to anyone on the planet. For example, if a person uses the app in Colorado, all the dates within the App’s calendar will shift to match Colorado’s frost date. The app will eventually be able to used anywhere on Earth, with only plants which would grow in that area showing up within the app.
Why does Iowa need a gardening movement?
- Grocery prices are high!
- Iowa recorded record high food insecurity in 2023. With some of the most rich, fertile soils in the world, there should be no reason for this.
- In 2022 $802M in crops destroyed due to the derecho and drought which happened in the same year. Iowans are not prepared for major natural disasters, war, or economic collapse. Gardens Across Iowa! is a plan to help all Iowans for disaster preparedness. Beyond that, however, it is a plan to bring our cities to a place of abundance.
Gardens Across Iowa! represents a coordinated tear-up-the-grassroots effort to quickly and efficiently teach valuable gardening skills that connect people with nature, end community hunger, and reduce waste (because “gardens aren’t wrapped in garbage”). Our goal is to inspire people to get involved with private and community gardens in every town and city across Iowa. In addition, our program is set to eventually provide access to soil for Iowans who wants to grow.
The Big Picture:
Once the app is finished being developed, it will help:
- Coordinate a statewide urban gardening and school lunch program that teaches grade school students to manage gardens, with the produce then being used in school lunch programs. This is important due to the fact that state officials recently cut off funding for the school lunch program for low income students!
- Open up community gardens spaces throughout Iowa. Our long-term goal is to ensure access to soil to all Iowans. Revenue from our beloved sponsors helps Wild Willpower PAC purchase land across the state to open up for use as community gardens. The statewide program, similar to FDR’s public works projects, includes a plan to hire horticulture specialists (fist bumps ISU’s horticulture department) to help oversee and manage multiple community garden spaces. This ensures no garden becomes neglected and that Iowans have access not only to the app, but to a trained professional who is happy to help with any issues they might need resolved. Specialists will set up watering hoses with automatic timers to make gardens as maintenance-free as possible.
- Solve resource issues around the world. The Gardens Across Iowa! app will enable us to develop the Gardens Across Earth! app, which will help solve global resource issues. Due to location services within the app, only crops which grow local to an area will appear within the app. With Gardens Across Iowa!, we here in the heartland have an amazing opportunity to drive and model this historic movement to help end food insecurity.
Ways that Gardens Across Iowa! benefits society:
An en mass gardening movement recognizes the inherent flaws in a political system which bases political decisions solely upon economic factors. While the science of economics studies how people make decisions under conditions of scarcity, [1) a community garden movement seeks to alleviate scarcity through creating abundance. When people live more abundantly, they are able to spend their money on things they are passionate about instead of mere survival, thus breeding innovation and entrepreneurship. A community gardening movement recognizes that coercing people to live in scarcity is unnecessary and cruel. Our movement seeks to help people thrive instead of merely survive.
Although the Gardens Across Iowa! calendar is still only partially developed, a small group of dedicated students working together can and will help Iowa communities recover from the severe and unnecessary scarce conditions so many are currently living in.
Iowa businesses help drive the movement:
Premium advertising slots and sponsorship advertising slots will be available throughout the calendar and app. Here’s how this works:
- One sophisticated ad will be available per data entry. For example, your business could sponsor “tomatoes”, and everywhere throughout the calendar/app which mentions tomatoes, your business will be advertised however you would like in a manner which fits with our standards. If a user moves far enough away in proximity from your business, a different Iowa business will appear in that advertising slot. This ensures businesses all across Iowa can get involved, and people can check the app while in your town in order to find your business.
- Premium advertisers should be prepared to provide a special offer only available through our calendar and app. Your customers may come in once/month and thank your customer service representative (or cashier) for helping to sponsor Gardens Across Iowa! in order to receive the offer. This alerts your business that
- Your business will be provided with a professional, aesthetically pleasing certificate to hang in your store:
- Customers should also see our business card somewhere in your store near to the certificate in order to drive people back to the calendar and app.
- A list of sponsors will be located at the bottom of each data entry (e.g. vegetable entry), just below the premium advertising slot. There are only so many premium slots to go around, so we will prioritize gardening supply/hardware stores for these slots. All sponsors will receive a beautiful certificate to hang in their store.
- Sponsorship funds received by Wild Willpower, through this advertising campaign, will go toward helping to open up land for community gardens across the state! To learn more, see the Gardens Across Iowa! statewide gardening program.
- We are open to ideas! If you would like to help in some other way (including donations), please email [email protected] with “Gardens Across Iowa!” written in the subject line.
Notice: Terms and prices may change in the future to meet program needs, but we will provide notice and will request and value feedback from our sponsors prior to making any major decisions.
If interested in becoming a sponsor, please email [email protected] with “Gardens Across Iowa!” written in the subject line. Feel free to choose your own price based upon what your company can afford and feels comfortable with. Minimum $25/month.
Gardens About Iowa! is a joint venture paid for by Wild Willpower PAC and Sondra Wilson for Iowa Governor.
Coming Soon:
Wild Willpower PAC will have Homesteading Starter Kits for sale. Instead of buying separate seed packets, then researching how to grow each plant, each of our kits each contain seeds and instructions for at least three different companion plants together.
- “Cold Frame kit” – broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and other cruciferous greens
- “Full Sunlight, Low Water” kit – eggplant, sunflower, okra+
- “Ideal for Raised Bed” kit – asparagus, carrots+
- “Summer Greens & Spices” Kits – lettuce, oregano, basil+
- “The 3 Sisters” Kits – corn, beans, squash, Rocky Mountain bee plant, Huit La Coche
Benefits of an
En Masse Homesteading Movement:
- improve local food supplies.
- stop landfills from growing because “gardens aren’t wrapped in garbage”.
- provide families the opportunity to live self-sufficient, healthy lives.
- reduce dependence on welfare programs (and thus, to reduce taxes).
Why the term homestead? – The term “homestead” is actually a very important common law legal term which prevents a person who is working to live sustainably from having their home foreclosed on.
Thank you to Saboteur365 for this great commemorative graphic we’re using in accordance with Fair Use.
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