Edmonton plumbers harvest thousands of potatoes for food bank

Edmonton’s Food Bank is getting a massive potato donation thanks to some local plumbers.

Earlier this year, the staff at Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Edmonton decided to put an empty piece of land near the company’s warehouse to good use.

Staff spent weeks planting more than 500 pounds of Russet and Yukon Gold seed potatoes, with the goal of harvesting and donating the spuds to the food bank come fall.

“This year has been tough for many people in our community and we keep hearing about the skyrocketing use of food banks across Canada,” said Geremy Howe, general manager of Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Edmonton.

“We emphasize neighbourliness in our company, so when the idea of growing food for fellow Edmontonians was brought up, we knew it was the right thing to do.”

The idea was the brainchild of service manager Claude Demontarnal. When the company moved into the new space in March, he began thinking of ways they could give back to the community.

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“I’ve got some gardening background. I’ve done it pretty much all of my life, but it was daunting. It was not a garden to begin with, it was a training facility. So this was all grass and we went in and removed the grass and cultivated what dirt was here and prepared it for planting,” Demontarnal said of the land used for the potato garden.

He said they chose to plant potatoes because it’s an easier crop to grow. Potatoes were also on the list of foods wanted by the food bank because of their longer shelf life.

Plumbers, staff and their families took part in the potato harvest on Saturday, loading the starchy root vegetables into a truck. The potatoes will be taken to the food bank on Wednesday.

“We love Edmonton, and we love giving back to the community,” Howe said. “This potato harvest is a first for us, but we know it will become an annual tradition. We love making our community just a little bit better, and we’d love to see other local businesses convert some of their land next spring and join us in donating food to those in need.”

Howe hopes the harvest will yield 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of potatoes.

1:41 Canadian families worried about the cost of living