Bob Hannah (left) and Bob McGowen dig potatoes at Bittersweet Farm, a community farm that donates its harvest to help feed the hungry. The farm’s harvest this year has already broke the previous record by 500 pounds, with many crops still remaining.

Something’s growing at Bittersweet Farm in Clarkston.

“We’ve had harvests of 3,700 pounds already this year (exceeding last year’s record breaking year of 3,246 pounds) and there are still carrots, potatoes, eggplant, peppers and a few tomatoes left,” Bob McGowen proudly said of Bittersweet Farm.

McGowen says this area of Oakland County used to be the potato growing capital of Michigan.

All of these vegetables are donated as part of Plant-a-Row for the Hungry (PAR) to Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan, Pontiac.

Harvested produce is picked before noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and delivered immediately to Gleaners. McGowen encourages gardeners with extra produce to drop it off at their farm on these days before noon and he will deliver it to Gleaners.

PAR is a grassroots organization of the Garden Writers Association begun in Anchorage, Alaska. Jeff Lowenfels, in his garden column in the Anchorage Daily News in 1995, asked local gardeners to plant a row of vegetables for Bean’s Café, an Anchorage soup kitchen. This is people helping people with no government involvement and has grown to supply more than 10 million pounds of produce yearly across the nation to feed needy families.

The 20,000 square foot historic Bittersweet Farm is owned by Bob McGowen, retired advertising executive and his wife, Barbara Hamilton, Associate Professor in the Writing and Rhetoric Department of Oakland University. The Clark family owned and used the it as a dairy farm for more than 150 years. The 17-year-old garden was created to feed the hungry.

Many awards have been bestowed on the garden and owner including Scott’s Miracle Grow Good Neighbor of the Year 2007, JCPenny Good Sam Award and McGowen’s Master Gardener of the Year, 2000.

The all-volunteer garden has a welcoming arbor, flowers and a nice view surrounding raised beds overflowing with vegetables and herbs planted in strawberry pots atop toad abodes.

McGowen said Jim Tesnar’s management and use of organic gardening principles, besides McGowen’s master gardener training, has produced the dramatic increase in yields.

Tesnar is an advanced master gardener and has volunteered as farm manager for four years. Working for Bordine Nursery in advertising from 1979-1990, helped Tesnar absorb successful growers practices. He also read everything he could on organic gardening, including Rodale’s philosophy.

The volunteers — McGowen, his family, Jim Tesnar, Oakland County master gardeners including Clay Ottoni, supplying seeds, and Bill Pioch who has supplied starter plants, along with Oakland Schools Technical Campus NW growing starts as part of their plant systems curriculum — make this garden work and thrive for the community.

“Bob’s efforts to feed the hungry are noble and enormous,” said Carol Lenchek, Environmental Programs and master gardener coordinator at MSU Extension-Oakland County. “He claims his PAR garden idea came to him while taking the master gardener volunteers training class. Master gardeners tell me all the time they learn so much about hands-on vegetable gardening when they volunteer at Bittersweet Farm.”

Four techniques that help increase yields each year are double digging, companion planting, 4-foot-wide dense planted rows and burying organic matter, Tesnar said.

Double digging starts with digging a trench 1 foot wide and 1 foot deep, saving the soil. The soil below is dug, and organic matter mixed in. The next row is dug, adding that soil to the first row. The leftover soil from the first row is added to the last row.

Tasnar handles soil quickly, doesn’t chop and never uses a rotary tiller. He says his method holds air, structure and moisture better, so roots grow deeper. Aged horse manure, plants that had been placed in the path and walked on and even weeds are used as green manure in the mix.

“I like to demonstrate the soil will maintain its structure by standing on it,” Tesnar said. It only goes down about a quarter of an inch, instead of packing down. I usually don’t have to water after June, except melons, because the plants are so deep rooted.”

Examples Tesnar gave of companion planting are species marigolds planted with tomatoes and carrots, because their oil enters the soil and deters root knot nematodes. For better cucumber productivity, fern leaf dill is planted between plants and bush beans are planted between corn plants to add nitrogen to the soil, increasing corn production.

Four-foot rows, similar to square-foot gardening, increase the density of planting, provide room for the companion plants and are easy to plant and harvest by volunteers.

McGowen emphasizes the importance of volunteers.

“This couldn’t happen without all the volunteers, especially the master gardeners and Jim Tesnar,” he said. “The flowers lining the entrance and the sunflowers planted for the birds are here for the volunteers to see a beautiful place to come and work.

“Working a booth is easy; we want them to come here. They can also take a bouquet and a few veggies with them if they want.”

Bob Hannah is dedicated, volunteering almost daily to work.

“I was looking for something to do in retirement,” Hannah said as he dug out Kennebec potatoes with barely any perspiration on a hot day. “I took the master gardener course and came out to volunteer early one year. I like to see all the stages of the farm through the year. I learned a lot from Jim Tesnar and I’m in better shape than when I retired.”