Comparison group for pantry gardeners.
Aggregate traits.The volunteers who participated in the Kenosha Field of
Dreams garden did not cultivate vegetables for their own use, but donated their
time and produce to food pantries and soup kitchens. These volunteers came
from all social classes and ethnic backgrounds. We pursued a Kenosha program
where volunteers worked to help the hungry. We selected the Shalom Center
soup kitchen staff as the comparison site, screening out those volunteers
who also participated in gardening programs.
Individual traits. As with the previous program categories, we matched the
intervention and comparison groups on the basis of ethnic backgrounds
(because of the cultural salience of gardening), and age and gender (because of
the age and gender variation in daily exercise and social factors).