Pickled porcini mushrooms and peppers with carrots, canned tomatoes and cucumbers, homemade ketchups and adjika – this year Ukrainians have significantly increased the cultivation of home-grown vegetables. Whilst much of the harvest has been preserved, canned, salted or frozen, to help families get through the winter some of the produce made it the New Year’s table.
“This year, I made the most of porcini mushrooms – about 20 liters. I put mushrooms on the festive table along with pickled pepper salad with carrots. Also, we always decorate every table with canned cherry tomatoes. ,” says Maria Demchuk from the village of Staroselia, Volyn region.
All this was the result of several large-scale programs this year, in which Ukrainians were motivated to grow vegetables in their gardens. One of them is the “Sow seeds with MHP” campaign. Since February 2022, tens of thousands of families in 11 regions have received sets of seeds for growing vegetables including beets, sorrel, radish, cucumber, zucchini, carrots and matiola. In total the «MHP-Gromadi» Charitable Foundation has distributed 114,800 packets of seeds.
“War is frequently accompanied by a food crisis and the conflict in Ukraine is no exception with broken logistics, the occupation of farmland in the south and east of the country, the destruction of agricultural vehicles and equipment, the looting of grain and other produce alongside mined fields have all resulted in a disrupted harvest. To alleviate this MHP extended its existing project “Sow seeds with MHP” to help feed families across Ukraine. As a result, according to preliminary estimates, our seeds have been sown over more than 310 hectares from Volyn to the Dnipropetrovsk regions,” comments Tetiana Volochay, director of the charitable foundation.
More than 11 tons of harvest have been successfully collected from this area and MHP has also stepped in to help Ukrainians preserve and store the collected products donating high-quality lids and jars to store them. According to an internal survey of the campaign participants cucumbers were the most popular stored items, followed by tomatoes and zucchini. Others used the jars for canned juices and homemade sauces.
The campaign will continue into 2023 and we are planning on supporting an additional 40,000 households, on top of the 155,330 who benefited this year. Ukrainians will be able to get seeds of the following garden crops: beets, radishes, parsley, zucchini, carrots, cucumber, as well as a mixture of patriotic blue and yellow asters to keep their spirts up.
