OUR PROGRAMS
Growing food access, one community at a time.
Nine Square Feet works where the need is — in food pantries, library shelves, and backyard gardens across Des Moines and beyond. These are the programs that put seeds, fresh produce, and the knowledge to grow your own food directly into the hands of the people who need them most.
FOOD ACCESS PROGRAM
Growing Your Pantry
One in eight people in Polk County faces food insecurity. For many of them, a food pantry is a lifeline — a place to find the basics when the budget runs short. But what if the pantry could offer something more? Not just food for today, but the tools to grow food for the rest of the season?
That's the idea behind Growing Your Pantry.
Launched in April 2026, Growing Your Pantry is Nine Square Feet's newest program — and one of our most personal. Executive Director Connie Johnson drew on her own experience navigating food insecurity when she envisioned a program that meets people where they already are, inside the pantry locations they already trust, with something as simple and powerful as a seed packet.
The program places free seed displays directly inside food pantry locations across the Des Moines metro. Each display is stocked with easy-to-grow vegetable varieties that can be planted straight in the ground or in a container — no grow lights, no special equipment, no gardening experience required. Every display includes a bilingual planting guide in English and Spanish, and an open invitation to Nine Square Feet's free workshops and plant giveaways.
Pantry clients can take up to five seed packets per visit — and come back for more at every visit. Volunteers restock displays as needed, coordinating directly with pantry staff to keep seeds available throughout the growing season.
The early response has been exactly what we hoped for. Pantry workers report that seeds have been genuinely popular — clients excited to try something new, coming back on multiple trips to add to their gardens. The harvests are still coming. But the enthusiasm is already there.
Growing Your Pantry currently operates at 15 food pantry locations across the Des Moines metro. The program was funded through Nine Square Feet's operating budget at launch — and in a meaningful full-circle moment, donor matching gifts received later in the year covered that initial investment entirely, proof that community generosity has a way of meeting community need.
This is what food sovereignty looks like at the neighborhood level. Not a grand gesture, but a seed display in a familiar place, tended by volunteers, waiting for someone ready to grow.
FOOD ACCESS PROGRAM
Harvest the Metro
Most food pantries run on canned goods and shelf-stable donations. Fresh vegetables are harder to come by — and for families navigating food insecurity, access to fresh produce can make a real difference.
Harvest the Metro is Nine Square Feet's answer to that gap.
From April through November, volunteers harvest fresh produce from our Learning Garden in Des Moines and deliver it directly to food pantries across the metro. What doesn't go to the table goes to seed saving — so next year's garden can feed even more families.
But the Learning Garden is only part of the story. Harvest the Metro runs on the generosity of backyard gardeners across the community — neighbors who plant a little extra and bring their surplus to us. It's the original Nine Square Feet idea made real: plant an extra nine square feet, and share what you grow.
Our biggest drive of the season happens each fall at the Gardener's Celebration of Fall, where community members are invited to bring fresh produce donations alongside the seed saving, music, and gathering. In 2025, the program collected over 400 pounds of fresh produce for Des Moines area food pantries.
One day, we hope Harvest the Metro grows into something more — a neighborhood food hub rooted in the same community gardens that feed it. For now, it's neighbors feeding neighbors, one harvest at a time.
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FOOD ACCESS PROGRAM
Seeds Across Iowa
A library card is free. A library is open to everyone. And in nearly every community across Iowa — rural or urban, large or small — there's a library that knows its neighbors by name.
That's why Nine Square Feet brings seeds to libraries.
Seeds Across Iowa is one of Nine Square Feet's longest-running programs, and one of its most far-reaching. Each year, we reach out to public libraries across the state with a simple offer: free seeds for your community. Libraries that say yes receive boxes of seed packets — sized to match the community they serve — packed and labeled by Nine Square Feet volunteers and shipped directly to their doors.
The seeds themselves are purchased in bulk by Nine Square Feet and repackaged by hand. Volunteers gather to sort, label, and fill individual packets with easy-to-grow varieties suited for Iowa gardeners. Those packets then travel to library shelves across the state, where anyone can pick them up — no membership required, no questions asked, no barriers to entry.
In 2026, 55 Iowa libraries participated in the program. Together they distributed more than 13,000 seed packets to nearly 2,000 people across the state.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. Libraries were chosen deliberately — not just for their reach, but for their values. Libraries are permanent fixtures in their communities. They build trust over time. And they know their patrons in ways that outside organizations simply can't. When a library tells us their community needs more cold-hardy varieties, or that their patrons are mostly container gardeners, we listen. The program grows because the relationships do.
Many libraries also operate food pantries of their own — small but vital resources serving neighbors who may not have access to a traditional food bank. For those communities, a box of seeds arriving alongside a food pantry shelf isn't a coincidence. It's a natural pairing. Growing Your Pantry and Seeds Across Iowa share the same belief: that food access and the knowledge to grow your own food belong in the same space, available to the same people, without barriers.
For Nine Square Feet, libraries aren't just a distribution channel. They're partners in the same mission — lowering barriers, building knowledge, and trusting that communities thrive when everyone has access to the same resources.
A seed on a library shelf is an invitation. To try something new. To grow something of your own. To feed your family from your own backyard.
We think that's worth shipping a box for.
MAKE AN IMPACT
Three programs. One mission.
Fresh produce for families who need it. Seeds at the food pantry. Free packets on library shelves across Iowa. Everything Nine Square Feet does comes back to the same belief — that access to fresh, healthy food shouldn't depend on your zip code, your income, or whether you've ever held a trowel before.
Your support makes all of it possible.