AURORA | Looking out at his 1,440 square feet of garden beds, Paul Bockman has high hopes for next month’s onion and potato harvest.
“We’ll have a ton,” he said, looking at the Walla Walla sweet onions and Rio Grande russet potatoes. “I’d almost bet you your arm we will have a ton.”
That would 2,000 pounds of produce, all of it for charity. For the fifth straight year, Bockman is donating the crop he grows at his RV storage facility near East Sixth Avenue and Buckley Road to Food Bank of the Rockies.
Last year, Bockman gave the food bank more than 1,600 pounds of onions and officials there say he is the most prolific among the handful of gardeners who donate to the food bank.
“As a private gardener, he is probably the biggest one,” said Janie Gianotsos, director of marketing and community relations for Food Bank of the Rockies.
Gianotsos said the food bank distributes about 50 million pounds of food a year, but gardeners like Bockman are rare.
Bockman, who said he has been gardening all his life, said he wants to change that. If everyone who had just a 10-foot-by-10-foot patch of land gardened it for charity, it would make a serious dent in the hunger problem.
“We could feed all of these people that need the help,” he said.
Plus, Bockman said, while local grocers often donate too, the food they give is often leftovers that customers didn’t buy.
With the food from his garden, Bockman said he is donating the “cream of the crop.”
“I bet this will be better than what they get out of the supermarkets,” he said.
In previous years, Bockman grew only onions in his garden beds. But too many years of just one crop would have been bad for the soil, he said, so this year he added the potatoes. The plan is to plant a third of his raised beds with potatoes each year and rotate them with the onions.
The two crops are ideal for a food bank, Bockman said, because they will keep for several weeks.
Gianotsos said that while the onions and potatoes could keep for a while, the food bank will likely run out faster because the demand is so great.
“Whenever he brings them they will probably be gone within a day or two,” she said.
I just read the article about my Father raising produce for the Food Bank of the Rockies. I couldn’t be more proud of him. He has always been a kind and giving person. So this doesn’t surprise me that he would do this. The idea that if everyone would make just one bed of produce it would help supply food for all of the less fortunate people. Plus they would be getting great food. I live in Elk Creek, Missouri, and I think I am going to try this idea myself next year. Sometimes we forget to give to the people that don’t have as much. I hope everyone will take this idea and run with it. God Bless you Dad for going the extra mile for those in need. Judy Bockman
Paul, I’m very proud of what you’ve accomplished in your life and now seeing you helping others gives me great joy to know you (especially since I know it’s “from your heart”). Wish everyone could read this article and join you in helping—even on a small scale. People just don’t realize how much they could be of help. Thanks for what you’re doing. Hold on to that BIG HEART.
It’s great that this grower is helping others and donated so many onions, however, if he’s cultivating them in Colorado, even if they’re from Walla Walla Sweet Onion seeds, they cannot be designated with that name. WWSOs are trademarked and can only be grown in the Walla Walla Valley to carry the name. The soil in the Walla Walla Valley has everything to do with the sweetness. They don’t come out the same if grown elsewhere. The website https://www.sweetonions.org/ says “The Walla Walla Sweet Onion industry worked with the United States Department of Agriculture, to create Federal Marketing Order No. 956
and was adopted in May of 1995. The order designates Walla Walla Sweet
Onions as a unique variety, and establishes a federally protected
growing area (the Walla Walla Valley of Southeast Washington and
Northeast Oregon). Sweet onions grown outside this production area
cannot be marketed as Walla Walla Sweet Onions or face stiff federal
penalties.”
These are Walla Walla Onions—they are not marketed, if you will note, they were grown and donated. This man was sent a certificate of appreciation from a State Official in Coloration, as well as being visited and commended by the Mayor and City Council Officials (who helped pick these for donation).