Our Mission Statement:  “Grow and Extra Row Giving and Learning Garden will grow, give quality food to help people on a limited budget meet their food needs and teach adults how to raise their own healthy food”. 

Located at the Community Garden at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, you can find volunteers in the gardens on Tuesdays. & Fridays. 9-noon – April through October, weather permitting. The GAER Team is Nancy Muir, and Eve Freeman. To get involved please email  ccmgextrarow@gmail.com

This project was started in 2004 but at that time it was called “Plant an Extra Row”.  It then became Grow an Extra Row and in 2014 the name changed to “Grow and Extra Row Giving and Learning Garden.”   So for 18 years the Master Gardeners have been raising vegetables and donating them to local food pantries.  We continue to rent plots at the CCC Community Garden- 8 of them- and plant thirty 25” rows of vegetables.  We garden from April to mid October.  We work at the garden on Tuesday and Friday mornings and harvest and donate.

2021 – This year we were still dealing with COVID.  We were considered an essential service and got approval from OSU to raise a garden with “COVID” restrictions in place. During the season we donated 2845 pounds of produce.  This year we continued our offer to deliver produce from individual gardeners if they would have their donation at the garden before 11:00 am on our workdays.  The response was amazing and, 2593 pounds was received.  The nice thing is gardeners donate vegetables and fruits that we do not grow.    5438 pounds came from this project’s efforts.  Which meant some donation days we needed two vehicles to transport the donations. During the season 24 volunteers spent 907 hours with the project.  Volunteers spent time at the garden, attended our spring Zoom planning meeting or raised starts for us.  It takes almost 800 starts for the garden.

 Volunteers do not need to sign up to work at the garden – show up when you can and stay as long as you can.  Contact us at ccmgextrarow@gmail.com.

Grow an Extra Row Honored
Grow an Extra Row received the FOX 12 Les Schwab Tire Centers “Be the Change” award in early August 2018 for their work providing produce to local food banks.  Eve Freeman and Nancy Muir accepted the award on behalf of the group, and were featured on the nightly news. Congratulations to the GAER crew on your much deserved recognition!  Read all about the garden and the award here: Gardening for Good –  and take a peek at the video: Be the Change award FOX 12 News  .  Also featured in a recent news article authored by our own Nancy Muir, you can read all about the history of this successful CCMG project via the Clackamas Review: History of the GAER program

Click here to read more about the history of this successful CCMG project: History of Grow an Extra Row

In the garden harvesting fresh produce