"Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow."
"Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow."
So proclaims a well-known folk song by songwriter Dave Mallett.
These days, you just might hear it being sung around the Jessamine County Detention Center, where inmates soon will be dining on tasty, fresh vegetables that they have planted and raised themselves.
The jail in Nicholasville recently started its own vegetable garden to help cut food-service costs. On Thursday inmates were busy at the garden, checking over the beans, bell peppers, onions and other staples they hope to be harvesting in a few weeks.
It might not qualify as a victory garden, but it is something of a freedom garden, since inmates can earn time off their sentences by tending the plot. And if the garden, located on some previously unused county land, produces as hoped, the Jessamine detention center could save thousands of dollars on the cost of feeding prisoners, Jailer Jon Sallee says.