2024 Year-End Report
Reducing hunger in New Mexico one garden at a time!
As the 2024 growing season comes to a close, we want to express our sincere appreciation to the donors, property owners, and volunteers whose generous support made this achievement possible. Because of your dedication, hard work, and financial assistance, we were able to harvest over 32,000 pounds of fresh produce to assist families in our community who are experiencing food insecurity.
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2024 Community Impact by the Numbers
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2025 Summary Recommendations
- Continue to focus on more heat/drought tolerant varieties of tomatoes.
- Plan to to purchase select seedlings for the garden plan due to labor intensity of seed starting; 2025 plans include partnering with a local greenhouse.
- Plan to repair and/or build additional tomato cages for the 2025 growing season. We are also using cages for melons and cucumbers so our need is greater in future seasons.
- Recruit additional leadership team members.
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2024 Achievements
1 – Fruit Tree Pruning Education
Fruit tree pruning, the first volunteer activity in February/March, featured a workshop by Joran Viers, Horticultural Consultant and ISA Certified Arborist, for SEMG interns/veterans and frequent S2N volunteers. While winter weather limited in-person attendance it was well received by those who participated. The session was also recorded for future volunteer education and the content can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/@Seed2Need.
2 – Starting Vegetables from Seedlings vs. All Seeds
For 2024, we collaborated with local growers to purchase over 2,000 seedlings of green chile, bell peppers and tomatoes. Although we still grew many vegetables from seed—such as squash, cantaloupe, cucumber, corn, and some tomatoes—this partnership significantly minimized the time and effort needed from the S2N Leadership team and our volunteers.
3 – Experimenting with Sweet Potatoes & Cantaloupe
Every year, we utilize a small section of land to ‘experiment’ with new crops. In 2023 experimental cantaloupe was included in our 2024 garden. They produced 1,100 pounds! This year our sweet potato experiment also proved to be a success producing 100 pounds. Given the positive results, both varieties will be incorporated into our regular garden plan for 2025.
4 – Exploring New Volunteer Collaboration
In 2024, a youth organization from New Mexico contacted us to discuss potential partnership opportunities for 2025 and beyond. We are looking into the possibility of collaborating with a group of 5 to 8 young individuals (ages 17-25) in either 2025 or 2026 which would offer S2N a dependable group of volunteers we can count on.
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2024 Challenges
1 – Invasive Broomrape Update
In 2023 a native species of Riparian Broomrape (Aphyllon riparium) attacked 700 tomato plants in a Seed2Need garden by draining nutrients from their roots and killing them. Since Broomrape seeds remain viable for years, in 2024 we grew tomatoes exclusively in another garden, adding five more rows to increase production. To assess the re-infestation risk we decided to plant a few test tomatoes this year and found that tomatoes were affected in the northern end of the garden but not the southern end.
2 – Corn, Beans & Broccoli
Because of the devastating Broomrape impact on tomatoes, we substituted several non-host vegetables (corn and green beans) and planted them in the spring on the northeast side of the infested garden. The beans yielded around 87 pounds, but they were quite labor-intensive for that amount. Corn was also sown, but it demanded significant water and pest management, resulting in a mere 93 pounds at harvest. Our late-season broccoli planting started off well, but unfortunately, there weren’t enough cool days for the broccoli heads to develop, resulting in no harvest before the first freeze.
3 – Excessive Heat
Extensive summer heat continues to be a challenge as the temperatures rise in mid-late summer and is likely the ‘new normal’. Due to high temperatures our tomatoes and chile were slow to grow and set fruit and chile was prone to ripening earlier. We are planning for more heat tolerant varieties of tomatoes in the future.
4 – Late Freeze / Water Availability Impacting Fruit Harvest
Our fruit harvest faced a considerable setback due to yet another late freeze in our region. Additionally, water availability to orchard growers in the area was a problem and will be in the foreseeable future. Although our orchards yielded just over 6,500 pounds of fruit, due to the late freeze and lack of water availability, we were unable to collect fruit from several neighbor orchards that typically allow us to glean thousands of pounds.
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We sincerely thank you once more for assisting Seed2Need in delivering fresh fruits and vegetables to families in our community facing food insecurity. Your involvement and ongoing support mean a great deal to us.
Respectfully,
Seed2Need
Board of Directors and Leadership Team
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