For students tired of eating junk food, Hill Farm Community Garden provides a unique, healthy option.Tucked between East Campus Apartments and Lod Cook Hotel, Hill Farm offers students and Baton Rouge residents the opportunity to grow their own organic produce.”We’d like people to see Hill Farm as a place where students can learn about gardening,” said faculty adviser Carl Motsenbocker.For $10 a semester, students are given a 9-by-5-foot plot of land where they can grow any seasonal plant.Students aren’t allowed to grow plants like trees, vines or bushes.Hill Farm Student President Ken Kuchta said the most unusual plants he’s seen are loofah plants, hot peppers and bitter melons.Greens and root vegetables are currently in season, Kuchta said.People renting the plots meet weekly on Mondays at 4:30 p.m. to garden and socialize. The community garden is located on the four-acre Hill Farm. The farm is primarily used as a teaching facility and features greenhouses, classrooms and an orchard for horticulture students and professors.Because the farm is getting progressively smaller, the future of Hill Farm is unknown.Heads of Hill Farm discussed working with landscape architects to make the area a multipurpose site in the past, Motsenbocker said.Moving the farm and requiring students to drive to an off-campus site may become necessary as the campus expands, said Charles Johnson, horticulture professor.University officials have expressed interest in using the current area for parking, Johnson said. Hill Farm stresses using organic gardening techniques. They don’t use herbicides or pesticides.Many common gardening products are made from carcinogenic chemicals left over from World War II, Kuchta said.”You can grow healthy, vibrant gardens without chemicals,” Kuchta said.Gardeners lay newspaper to prevent weeds, use mixes of herbs and spices to deter bugs and use white vinegar to fight mold to follow organic practices.One major tenant of organic gardening is the idea of slow and sustainable food, which promotes locally grown produce, Kuchta said.It’s possible to maintain a garden with a student schedule, Kuchta said.”Keeping a garden is kind of like owning a pet,” Kuchta said. “It’s easy if you do it right.”Once planted, if the proper materials are used, it could only take 15 minutes a week, Kuchta said.Talking to current members or reading books are the best ways for new members to learn about gardening, Kuchta said.Kuchta became interested in the garden when he lived in the East Campus Apartments. His family gardened in his home state of Virginia, and he wanted to continue in college.Student interest in the garden waxes and wanes but has recently increased, Motsenbocker said.The community garden began in 2000 when students from a gardening class expressed interest in continuing to care for a garden, Motsenbocker said.Motsenbocker began offering the gardening class in 1999.Because the class is offered each fall, there is usually more space for students interested in starting a garden in the spring, Motsenbocker said.The Horticulture Club also meets at Hill Farm. The club sells plants at garden shows in the fall and spring each year.Hill Farm began in 1927 as a research farm for horticultural crops. Former department head Julian Miller was given 40 acres to start the project.The farm spread from around the Horseshoe to University Lakes, Kuchta said.As the University’s campus developed, the farm shrunk to accommodate new buildings.In the ’60s, a large section of the farm was used to build the sorority and fraternity houses around University Lake.Hill Farm housed a rose garden until the early ’90s, and The American Rose Society conducted the All American Rose selection at the farm then.Because of space issues, rose selection and other research moved to The Burden Research Facility on Essen Lane, and Hill Farm became a teaching facility.–Contact Grace Montgomery at [email protected]