Thank you for your interest in volunteering at the TerraMesa garden on the San Diego Mesa College campus!

TerraMesa is the student club for environmental sustainability and conservation. In 2015, TerraMesa students received funds from Associated Students to revive the organic vegetable and herb garden, which consisted of two 10' x 30' plots. Since then, the garden has expanded to two additional plots, students installed a native plant garden, we have built a greenhouse with rainwater harvesting and solar-powered ventilation, and provided volunteers with hundreds of pounds of fresh, organic produce.

The garden is an all-volunteer effort to:
🌱 Build community.
🌱 Share knowledge and skills to increase the stewardship of natural resources.
🌱 Develop knowledge and skills for organic food production and composting.
🌱 Provide students with opportunities to apply what they learn in class to a real-world setting.
🌱 Provide students with an on-campus service learning opportunity.
🌱 Increase students' food security.

We acknowledge that our garden and campus is part of the traditional lands of the Kumeyaay peoples. For millennia, the Kumeyaay have belonged to this land and lived in balance with the part of the world we now call San Diego. These lands are the unceded homelands of the Kumeyaay, and it is important that we recognize the colonial legacy of our history, as well as the enduring presence of the indigenous peoples of San Diego today.

Safety precautions are not only the right thing to do to prevent illness, they are especially important for the all-volunteer garden. We must take all steps to ensure that we are impeccable stewards of the land, which means we must adhere to good agricultural practices (GAPs). The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (2004, 1) explains why gardeners need to undertake good agricultural practices:

Food safety concerns are increasing as once unheard of illness-causing microorganisms become more prevalent and as products previously considered safe cause an increasing number of illnesses each year. Produce, recently thought of as a safe product, has been identified as a cause of major foodborne illness outbreaks in recent years.

Illnesses are primarily caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. These microorganisms, often referred to as pathogens or biological hazards, also are associated with ground beef, poultry, eggs, and seafood. Cooking is a common method of easily killing most pathogens in those foods. However, fresh produce is often consumed raw.

In addition, produce is exposed to naturally occurring, biological hazards in the soil, water, and air. The potential risk for contamination is increased by production practices using manure for fertilizer and human handling of products.

It is likely that you or someone you know has suffered from food poisoning.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 6 people in the United States gets sick from a foodborne disease (also called food poisoning) each year, which results in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths (CDC 2014). Causes of foodborne diseases include bacteria, viruses, parasites, molds, toxins, contaminants, and allergens. For details on each of these causes, read the Food and Drug Administration’s Bad Bug Book: Handbook of Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins (FDA 2012).

The garden doesn’t have an address, but the driveway is located across the street from the house at 3386 Marlesta Drive. The garden is located close to a 41 bus stop. If you're parking on Marlesta, be sure to pay attention to the parking signs (there are reserved spots for the houses).

We'll see you at the garden 🌱