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More downtown Trail planters hit by vandals

The local soup kitchen on Rossland Avenue is the latest location that has been hit by a garden thief.
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Mary Anne Leschiutta

He, she or they are at it again.

The local soup kitchen on Rossland Avenue is the latest location that has been hit by a garden thief.

Sometime late Tuesday evening someone dug into one of the community vegetable planters outside of Kate’s Kitchen, the Salvation Army’s site that serves daily meals to those in need, and disappeared into the night along with a couple of tomato plants.

The Gulch locale, which also houses the organization’s food bank, was hit a few weeks ago when cucumber plants were stolen.

People are welcome to the tomato, said the Salvation Army’s acting supervisor, but please don’t take the plant.

When Mary Anne Leschiutta arrived at Kate’s Kitchen early Wednesday morning with full expectation of chopping vegetables for the day’s soup pot, she didn’t foresee having to pick up broken tomato stakes and sweeping up piles of dirt that were scattered across the entire front of the building.

“It was done after I left work,” she said.

“And we’re trying to keep the planters well watered and cared for in this hot weather so this really is too bad.”

Green peppers, green beans and green tomatoes are just beginning to mature in the site’s planters, but use for the vegetables is already planned for nutritional meals that are served to about 30 people each day.

“We were thinking we would incorporate the vegetables into our lunches when they are ready to picking,” said Leschiutta. “But on the other hand people are very welcome to pick the tomatoes when they are ready but leave the plant.”

The Salvation Army’s planters were donated by volunteers from “explore our incrEDIBLE trail,” which is a community edible landscape project that launched earlier this year.

“We have a sign in the planter that says,’please help yourself,’” she told the Trail Times. “But I don’t know what this is all about but it’s really too bad.”

Edible planters in downtown Trail were targeted last month, when between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on June 9, an unknown person made his or her way through town and plucked numerous plants from about half a dozen storefront planters.



Sheri Regnier

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