Working together, they have pickled the vegetables to make the traditional kimchi and prepared more than 400 jars of the Korean condiment, which they will save through the winter and donate to less-advantaged church members.

Indeed, many members of these community gardens are cultivating more than just vegetables there - they're cultivating a piece of their cultural legacy.

On a given day, wandering the 11 acres off Route 1 in Parkwood, one might encounter gardeners from the Philippines, Korea, Italy, Lebanon, Germany, India and Pakistan - a stark contrast to the stereotype of the urban community gardener harvesting gentrification along with heirloom tomatoes.

"This is the United Nations, man," says Karl Dollmann, a member since 1991, who tends 12 plots there along with his son, Karl Jr.

A tour of the gardens reveals a host of foods unavailable in most American markets: bright magenta bunches of amaranth (also known as callaloo), the ridged green leaves of wild sesame plants, slender stalks of Korean watercress, tight clusters of edamame pods, and Ecuadorian frying corn.

There are long curved gourds hung with stones to encourage straight growing, bright, bumpy bitter melons woven into rustic cabanas, and squat rows of peanut plants. In the Asian gardens, even familiar sweet potatoes are raised for their less-easily-obtained leafy tops, which are blanched and tossed in salads.

Sometimes there is discussion in the garden rows about new ways to cook a vegetable, and the gardeners might exchange the secrets of their kitchens.

Retirees Jeanette and Robert Dobek have been coming to Rush for the last 27 years, indulging a love of gardening inherited from their families - hers Lebanese, his Polish. She stuffs her squash with a Middle Eastern meat and rice filling, tinged with allspice and cinnamon. Her husband makes a relish from his peppers with hot spices.

"It's a lot of work, but we can grow everything we need here," she says.

Garden treasurer Beth Bowman mashes broiled eggplant with egg and fries it into vegetarian patties called tortang talong. Sabu Kenju, who hails from Kerala, India, makes a coconut curry with his okra.

Dollmann pickles most of his vegetables and gives whatever is left to his German father, who turns the bounty into borscht and stuffed cabbage. On occasion, there are potluck events where members bring their homegrown creations.

Bowman, a nurse, grew up on a farm in the Philippines and now maintains five organic lots at Benjamin Rush, bringing her compost from home and employing gardening methods she learned on her family farm. (Included in her lots are two earmarked for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's City Harvest program. Philadelphia prison inmates grow the seedlings, tended here for donation to SHARE, a local food distribution network.)

"This is part of my heritage and part of my personal way of eating," Bowman says. "It's important for me to know the source of my food."

That Benjamin Rush is considered by some the largest community garden in the world is a point of collective pride with members - printers, cops, firemen, warehouse managers, postal workers, ministers, teachers, nurses and rock musicians - who pay $25 annually to tend their 30-by-30-foot lots.

But, taken individually, members' motivations for joining are as varied and diverse as their plantings. They might garden here to eat thriftily, to cook healthfully, or to partake in the physically and mentally therapeutic effects of working the soil. Some people come here because there is little if any room to garden at home.

Diana Denega, a 23-year-old language teacher who gardens here with her father, Drew, grows plants for their therapeutic benefits as well as their vivid flavors. She makes teas from her anise hyssop and lemon balm, gingered curries from her green beans and okra, and sautes with her lemon squash.

"I'm a vegetarian so I can't even say out loud how much I would spend on vegetables at Whole Foods if we didn't have this garden," she says.

A 30-by-30 lot, it turns out, can produce so much food that many members say they make it through the winter without ever having to buy produce. "Basically this is a supermarket without the pineapples and coconuts," Dollmann says.

And the gardens often yield far more than their owners' households can eat. Gardener Bill Taylor, a retiree from Bensalem, gives most of his output to neighbors and family.