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MILPA GARDENS

As if Ryan and Jennifer Speer do not have enough chaos Food Bank project in Oklahoma. Beginning in 2017, Green
in their life, they are adding chaos to their garden! These Cover Seed donated Milpa garden seed to several regenera-
Sedgwick, KS farmers are prime examples of big-hearted tive farmers throughout Oklahoma who partnered with the
folks who are donating a small portion of their farm to Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma. Each participant plant-
producing something for others in the form of a chaos or ed several acres of diverse Milpa gardens. The simplistic
Milpa garden! beauty of the system is that all the seeds were mixed to-

The Milpa system is a traditional multi-species cropping gether and drilled with a regular grain drill, turning a small
system originally designed by the Mayans and still used field into a large garden with very low labor inputs. Green
throughout Mesoamerica. Traditional Milpa gardens use the Cover Seed provided the seed mixes which included fresh
“three sisters” concept with maize (corn), squash, and beans, greens (turnips, collards, mustard), root vegetables (radish,
but with the addition of many other species for diversity in turnips), legumes (cowpeas, mung beans, black beans), and
the system. This practice continues to this day with some vine crops (squash, melons, cucumbers, pumpkins). The
fields planted to a Milpa continuously for 4,000 years and is gleaning efforts were a true community effort with mem-
still fruitful. bers from various community groups all pitching in to help
feed their community.

In 2017, about 6,800 pounds (about 5,440 meals) of fresh,
healthy fruits and vegetables were donated from these gar-
dens to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma. The Milpa
gardens not only provided fresh and healthy food to these
local communities, but helped build community relation-
ships as well. These gardens also served as a diverse cover
crop mix to help improve soil health, water quality, and
habitat for pollinators and wildlife on these farms.

At Green Cover Seed, we believe that with healthy soils we
can grow healthy plants, which will produce healthy food,
which will build healthy people, families, and communi-
ties. With that in mind, we will donate an acre of highly
diverse Milpa garden seed to anyone who is working with
their local food bank or resource center to help feed and
Photos by Ryan Speer build their local community! So for the benefit of your
community, consider adding a little bit of Milpa to your
already chaotic life!

“A typical garden is fairly high maintenance but the Milpa
garden is plant it and forget it,” notes Ryan. Jennifer, who is
also a member of their local Food and Farm Safety Coun-
cil, stresses that they were “looking for a way to get fresh
fruits and vegetables to people in our county who did not
have access to them.” Since there are no neat, straight rows,
harvesting is hard work. “It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt.
The yellow squash and pumpkins show up really nice but the
green cucumbers are really hard to see in there. When the
Milpa really starts to produce, we’ll start getting 2-5 laundry
baskets of vegetables every other day. So we have to come out
here for 2-3 hours every other night and load them up and
deliver to the food bank,” comments Ryan.

The Speers learned about the Milpa concept by watching
the partnership between Green Cover Seed and the Farm to

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