For three months, John O’Grady has experienced life as an organic farmer, planting crops, watching them grow into mature vegetables, and then savoring the taste of his own harvest. Every Monday through Friday, he wakes up early, slips into his uniform, and joins a crew of eight other men for the morning tilling. The workday begins at six o’clock and ends 4 1/2 hours later. Though not a high-paying job, it is one that the 43-year-old has found to be rewarding.

While the workers enjoy the organic produce incorporated into their salad, most of the vegetables are donated to organizations that feed the hungry, such as City Harvest.

As with most Wednesdays, the farmers ended their shift this past Wednesday by packing 50 crates with brightly colored and exceptionally large tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, and eggplants. Together the crates weighed close to 3,000 pounds. A City Harvest truck pulled up, and the workers started putting the crates, assembly line style, into the back of the vehicle.

Other than the uniform, orange jumpsuits with the Department of Corrections initials stenciled on the back, these men looked like real farmers – that is, until Emergency Service Unit officers raced in and frisked the workers for contraband.

“You wouldn’t believe there’s a farm in jail,” O’Grady said. He is serving time for what he called a “non-violent burglary of a liquor store” in his Bronx neighborhood, during a relapse of crack-cocaine use after five years of being drug-free.

“I like to work out in the field,” O’Grady said. He has been on Rikers Island for three months. “I feel better when I come outside.”

Then there’s the tangible result of his work.

“Once you see something coming up you know you did something,” he said, referring to the emergence of the vegetables.

In the “real” world, O’Grady was a gravedigger for 20 years, working with his father – who recently retired – and 19-year-old son.

The tilling of the land at a wage of $15 a week is a component of the Rikers Island Farm Project, one of several job options for sentenced inmates who are required to work while imprisoned. Unlike some of the other jobs, such as custodial maintenance, interior painting, and work as an assistant to civilian bakers, the farm program allows inmates to be continuously in the outdoors, where they plant, water, weed, and learn about the evolution of planting. Only those deemed not to pose a flight risk are accepted for the program.

This year, inmates planted and continue to tend to more than 500 plants in two lots amounting to a little under an acre. Of all the produce, which also includes cantaloupe and peppers, only the peppers did not flourish this season, Carolle Banfield, the director of the farm and horticulture programs, said. Ms. Banfield has been working on Rikers Island for 14 years and in 2002 revived the farming program, which had long been defunct.

Later this month the crew will prepare the earth for the fall planting of broccoli, red and green cabbage, and collard greens, Ms. Banfield said. These vegetables should be ripe for picking come Thanksgiving. In the wintertime, the farming inmates take a break from actual gardening and instead shovel snow and participate in discussion groups about gardening.

Another Farm Project member, whose name happens to be David Gardenhire, said he has enjoyed being a part of the Farm Project for the past several months. He is a particular fan of watering, which resulted in his nickname, Waterboy.

“It’s helping people. It’s helping the homeless – giving back to the people,” Gardenhire, 39, who declined to divulge the nature of the crime he committed, said. “It shows how good God is.”

When the zucchini plants bore their dark green summer squash, Gardenhire asked his mother in a telephone call how to cook such a vegetable. Armed with the recipe – Gardenhire said the secret ingredient is sugar – he prepared a zucchini dish for his crew.

“I think I like the zucchinis because they are the biggest,” he said.

Gardening and cooking are far removed from Gardenhire’s frame of reference. Before serving his sentence, he was working as a car mechanic, but now he has aspirations of returning to school so he can become a truck repairman. He also dreams of moving to Orlando, Fla.

The gardening areas make up a fraction of the island’s 415 acres. Rikers Island, the largest municipal jail in the country, is home to 13,250 inmates, spread out in nine jails (its 10th jail is shuttered), according to the deputy commissioner of public information for the New York City Department of Correction, Thomas Antenen. Of all the inmates, only about 2,000 have been convicted and sentenced, to terms of less than one year. The rest are detainees awaiting adjudication.

Rikers Island is one of the Department of Correction’s three major operational facilities. The others are the Vernon C. Bain Center, a prison barge in the Bronx, and the Bernard B. Kerik Complex, commonly referred to as “the Tombs,” in Lower Manhattan. Those house about 800 inmates each.

Rikers Island is a short-term facility in the East River. About 65% of the inmates on the island remain for three to five days, a warden, Frank Squillante, said. He supervises the Eric M. Taylor Center, which houses sentenced adolescent and adult males on the island.

As for the farm program participants, Mr. Squillante said: “Those guys are into it.” He described the Farm Project as “a very tranquil program” that offers a unique opportunity to the inmates.

One inmate, Charles Wooten, 31, is an agriculturist by trade. When he arrived at Rikers about four months ago it was only natural that he sign up for the Farm Project. It seemed “a good skill to take up,” Wooten, who was convicted of selling marijuana, said. At home he worked on a flower farm in Rochester.

Typically, when new inmates join the farm group, Ms. Banfield, who oversees the program, said, they cannot differentiate between a plant and a weed. With the assistance of two correction officers, Ms. Banfield teaches them about the germination process, the differences between plants and good and bad weeds, and the reasons ladybugs are good for the plants – to keep mites away, she said.

The Farm Project is a small program, but it yields enough produce to create sizable charitable donations, in addition to making a contribution to the ecosystem of Rikers Island. Food waste, combined with wood chips, is the fodder for compost processed by the Department of Sanitation in a composting station on the island, according to a department official, Kirk Tomlinson. Mr. Tomlinson is deputy director of the Sanitation Department’s Compost Unit, a part of the Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse & Recycling. The compost station generates 2,400 tons of compost each year, which is then used for planting by the Farm Project, Mr. Tomlinson said. The composting system was developed to “get the Corrections food waste out of the food stream,” Mr. Tomlinson said, “and do something good with it.”