Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

tcrp-news - [tcrp-news] Fw: Banking on Gardening

tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Tompkins County Relocalization Project

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv <sustainabletompkins AT lists.mutualaid.org>, tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [tcrp-news] Fw: Banking on Gardening
  • Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:36:06 -0400

Well, well. Here it comes. And not a moment too soon, I'd say.

Jon

==================================================================

The New York Times
June 11, 2008
Banking on Gardening
By MARIAN BURROS

CASSANDRA FEELEY prefers organic ingredients, especially for her
baby, but she finds it hard to manage on her husband’s salary as
an Army sergeant. So this year she did something she has wanted to
do for a long time: she planted vegetables in her yard to save
money.

"One organic cucumber is $3 and I can produce it for pennies," she
said.

For her first garden, Ms. Feeley has gone whole hog, hand-tilling
a quarter acre in the backyard of her house near the Fort Campbell
Army base in Kentucky. She has put in 15 tomato plants, five rows
of corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra, peas, watermelon,
green beans. An old barn on the property has been converted to a
chicken coop, its residents arriving next month; the goats will be
arriving next year.

"I spent $100 on it and I know I will save at least $75 a month on
food," she said.

She is one of the growing number of Americans who, driven by
higher grocery costs and a stumbling economy, have taken up
vegetable gardening for the first time. Others have increased the
size of their existing gardens.

Seed companies and garden shops say that not since the rampant
inflation of the 1970s has there been such an uptick in interest
in growing food at home. Space in community gardens across the
country has been sold out for several months. In Austin, Tex.,
some of the gardens have a three-year waiting list.

George C. Ball Jr., owner of the W. Atlee Burpee Company, said
sales of vegetable and herb seeds and plants are up by 40 percent
over last year, double the annual growth for the last five
years. "You don’t see this kind of thing but once in a career," he
said. Mr. Ball offers half a dozen reasons for the phenomenon,
some of which have been building for the last few years, like
taste, health and food safety, plus concern, especially among
young people, about global warming.

But, Mr. Ball said, "The big one is the price spike." The striking
rise in the cost of staples like bread and milk has been
accompanied by increases in the price of fruits and vegetables.

"Food prices have spiked because of fuel prices and they redounded
to the benefit of the garden," Mr. Ball said. "People are driving
less, taking fewer vacations, so there is more time to garden."

Each spring for the last five years, the Garden Writers
Association has had TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, a polling
firm, conduct a national consumer telephone survey asking
gardeners what makes up the greatest share of their garden
budgets. "The historic priorities are lawns, annuals, perennials,
then vegetables, followed by trees and shrubs," said Robert
LaGasse, executive director of the association. This year,
vegetables went from fourth place to second, which Mr. LaGasse
called "an enormous attitude shift."

People like Rita Gartin of Ames, Iowa, are part of that
shift. Last year she kept a small garden. This year it has tripled
in size into a five-by-seven-foot plot because, Ms. Gartin said,
"The cost of everything is going up and I was looking to lose a
few pounds, too; so it’s a win-win situation all around."

Ms. Gartin, who fits gardening into her 12-hour workday as an
interior designer and property manager, is not intimidated by the
20 kinds of vegetables she has planted: she was raised on a farm
with a giant garden. A fence has been erected to keep the deer and
people out, and it’s where the pole beans and snap peas are
already climbing.

She is ready to take a stab at canning, but reserves the right to
freeze everything instead, she said.

"I probably spent maybe $50 for everything and that’s less than a
week’s cost of groceries or the price of a gym," she said.

Seed companies and garden centers say they didn’t see the rush
coming. There wasn’t any buildup last year, said Barbara Melera,
the co-owner of the D. Landreth Seed Company in New Freedom, Pa.,
who takes the pulse of gardeners at the 13 garden shows she
attends around the country each year.

"We pack for all the shows and bring 16 different beans, 10
packets for each kind," Ms. Melera said. In earlier years, by the
time the shows end in March, she said, "we are lucky if we have
sold two of the 10 packets."

"This year," she said, "we sold out the first show and literally
sold hundreds. We never sell any corn; this year we sold out of
corn by the end of the season. We saw the same thing in the mail
order business."

She said the greatest demand was for what she calls "survival
vegetables": peas, beans, corn, beets, carrots, broccoli, kale,
spinach and the lettuces. "It was so different from what it has
been in prior years," she added.

Randy Martell, one of the owners of the Garden Factory in
Rochester, says it isn’t just vegetables. "The potted fruit trees
were sold out by the first week of May," he said. "Blueberries,
raspberries and grapes are sold out. I think those sales have
doubled. Overall sales are up about 30 percent."

Dottie Wright, greenhouse manager at one of the Dammann’s Lawn,
Garden and Landscaping Centers in Indianapolis, said she talks to
people every day who are starting their first vegetable
garden. "If they don’t have a yard they try containers for
tomatoes and herbs. We can’t keep the herbs in this year."

Thrilled as gardening experts are about this phenomenon, they know
that many first timers don’t have any idea how much sweat equity
is involved.

"Many people I sold seeds to have never gardened before,"
Ms. Melera said, "and we have to find a way to educate them so the
experience is successful. They have got to be taught."

Mr. Ball of Burpee knows some of the new gardeners won’t stick
with gardening beyond the first year. "Some people can’t get with
the idea of digging a hole; getting buggy, sticky and hot," he
said. "Gardening is an active hobby; it’s a commitment."

Doreen G. Howard, a former garden editor for Woman’s Day and now a
writer for The American Gardener, is one of the committed. She has
had a vegetable garden for most of the last 25 years. This year
she has quadrupled the size of her vegetable plot in Roscoe, Ill.,
because of the economy and because she thinks the quality of
store-bought produce has deteriorated. Once vegetables were just 5
percent of her garden; now they are 20 percent.

"Food prices have gotten to the point where we are seeing the
difference," she said. "It’s pushing our budget and we are a
two-income family. It was never a concern before." Ms. Howard said
her grocery bill for two went from $100 a week to $140 a week this
year.

She has chosen many vegetables that freeze well, investing in a
secondhand freezer to store the bounty. She plans to dry the herbs
that grow on the back porch next to boxes of mesclun, and to make
pickles from the cucumbers and raisins from the grapes -- her
newest addition. And she is looking forward to a cellar full of
Peruvian blue potatoes.

Some of Ms. Howard’s increased harvest will also go to food
pantries through an organization called Plant a Row for the
Hungry, which encourages gardeners to plant extra vegetables to
share with the poor.

"I’m hoping to take $20 a week off my grocery bill," she
said. This is in the low range, according to Mr. Ball, who says a
$100 investment will produce $1,000 to $1,700 worth of vegetables.

Ms. Gartin, now in her second year, says gardening is worth the
effort.

"I got soft calluses from hoeing and digging," she said, adding
cheerfully, "but my fingernails are still pretty -- long and not
chipped. I probably spent 30 hours putting the garden in, and when
I’d come into the house I’d be covered in sweat. But now it’s
pretty easy because of all the rain we’ve had."

And the vegetables, she said, are "awesome." "It’s a totally
different flavor from what you buy in the store. It’s exciting to
go out and pick the fruits of your labor."






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page