Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Minnesotans and millions of other Americans are expected to raise of bumper
crop of backyard vegetables this year.
By Molly Millett mollymillett@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 03/25/2009 04:04:54 PM CDT

A couple of weeks ago, local gardening editor Mary Lahr Schier thought
she'd start sprouting vegetable seeds indoors to get a jump-start on the
Minnesota growing season. But when she went to Menards to buy the grow
light she needed, the store was sold out. An employee told her more folks
seem to be starting vegetables from seeds.

You bet your butternut squash they are.

"The big trend we've identified this year is the 'GIY' trend — the
grow-it-yourself trend, as opposed to the DIY or do-it-yourself trend,"
said trendspotter Susan McCoy, president and owner of the Garden Media
Group. "We've heard reports from seed companies that sales are up as much
as 80 percent."

Is it rising grocery prices? The comfort that comes from digging in dirt?
The keep-it-local movement? Whatever the reasons, Minnesotans already are
gearing up for a backyard bumper crop.

"We offered one Urban Vegetable Gardening class last year, and it filled up
completely, plus we had 10 more people waiting at the door," said Paige
Pelini, co-owner of Mother Earth Gardens, an organic garden center in the
Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. "So we decided we should do two
classes this year. We still have people calling every day, asking us to do
another class or wondering if there's some way they could sneak in the
door."

(By the way, this week's "Chickens in the City!" class — "Live Poultry
Will Be Present!" — is filled, too.)

Classes aren't the only way Minnesotans
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are seeking help growing their own veggies.

Schier, editor of Northern Gardener, the Minnesota State Horticultural
Society's magazine, is noticing an uptick of traffic to the vegetable
gardening posts on her My Northern Garden blog.

The magazine's publisher sees the growth from a different angle.

"When I talk to our commercial members and advertisers, they say they have
noticed a significant increase in sales of herbs and vegetables," said Tom
McKusick, publisher of Northern Gardener. "It's something I've been hearing
from garden centers and nurseries since last fall, and I suspect it will
only increase this year."

A National Gardening Association survey, conducted in January, backs up
that prediction: 43 million U.S. households plan to grow their own fruits,
vegetables, herbs and berries this year, a 19 percent increase from 2008.
Perhaps even more telling, 21 percent of those households are planning to
start — not continue — a food garden in 2009.

'STRUCTURAL' TREND

Seed companies have noticed.

"I would say vegetable sales are up 20 percent from last year," said Renee
Shepherd of Renee's Garden, a seed company specializing in gourmet
vegetables, kitchen herbs and cottage garden flowers.

"In the past, we've sold more flowers than vegetables, but that has sharply
reversed itself. It's the economy, simplifying lives, food safety, a
healthy way to spend quality family time together."

George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee & Co., said his company's
vegetable seed sales are also up 20 percent as of January. He pins it all
on the economy.

"Forget about the perfect storm — this has created the perfect hurricane
in terms of sales for our business," Ball said. "Trends like locavores
(people who eat food grown or produced locally), that's what I call a
fashion. But this recession is a structural trend. When you take away or
reduce people's income, or reduce their nest egg by 40 or 50 percent, you
have almost a depression mentality. People are quite anxious."

Ball said he noticed the cost of fruits and vegetables at grocery stores
remained high even after fuel prices had dropped. So his company did a
cost-analysis study, and concluded that people who invest $50 in the
vegetable garden on seeds and fertilizer can harvest the equivalent of
$1,250 worth of groceries from a store. As a result, the company introduced
"Burpee's Money Garden," a $10 seed purchase that Burpee estimates will
produce more than $650 worth of vegetables.

"People talk about replacing a light bulb, insulating their window sills or
wearing a sweater — these efforts save a few dollars here and there —
but for a family of four with a good-sized vegetable garden, we're talking
about saving a couple of thousand dollars," Ball said.

It's sometimes called "survival gardening." In this economy, this mind-set
has made media sensations out of people like Clara Cannucciari, a
93-year-old great-grandmother from New York who remembers her own Great
Depression garden as she cooks meals from the era and whose work can be
seen on YouTube. (Check out her Poorman's Meal of potatoes, onions and hot
dogs via her Web site, greatdepressioncooking.com.)

A local green thumb sees that hunger for information.

"People increasingly are interested in the idea of being self-sufficient,
of being able to grow their own food to increase their ability to really
survive on their own," said Carrie Christensen, who teaches the Urban
Vegetable Gardening classes at Mother Earth.

RECLAIMING DOMESTIC SKILLS

For Debbie Lang, 32, of Newport, a stay-at-home mom of five hungry boys,
self-sufficiency is important, especially as the family struggles to
recover financially from when her husband was out of work for 11 weeks. But
cost savings is not the only reason the family will attempt to grow as many
of their own vegetables as possible for the second year in a row.

"We absolutely love eating fresh vegetables — there's nothing like it,"
Lang said. "And there's such a reward of being able to reap something from
your own effort; if you want a tomato, you can go pick a tomato in your own
garden."

Lang fits in with one of the root causes related to the increasing
popularity of homegrown food, identified by Garden Media Group.

"The housewife is back," McCoy said. "Crafting, canning, sewing, gardening
— traditional hobbies that used to be 'women's hobbies' — are hot with
the younger generation."

Pelini, of Mother Earth Gardens, sees that interest blossoming in her own
daughters, a 16-year-old and 14-year-old twins.

"I'm a single mom. For years, I barely had time to take the laundry out of
the dryer, much less have a vegetable garden," Pelini said. "But now they
can participate. So last year, we did grow a vegetable garden, and it was
really great. ... We're foodies, so we enjoy it. ... My daughters knit,
too. We've talked about how they're reclaiming domestic skills without the
cultural baggage."

And, well, there's just something scrumptious about homemade anything,
whether it's the handmade Christmas gifts the Pelinis give or the fresh
vegetables they grow in their back yard.

"We derive great satisfaction," Pelini said, "out of standing in our garden
and eating a hot, somewhat dirty Sun Gold tomato."
Molly Millett can be reached at 651-228-5505.