Redding couple's food garden is grounded in frugality

Annette Faurote and Michael Cobbold are living off the land - sort of.

Their downtown Redding yard keeps them supplied with lettuce, chard, cilantro, squash, tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and more. It's not that they don't buy food. They do. But they don't spend much time in the produce aisle.

Faurote and Cobbold's urban garden is fruitful, fun - and affordable.

"Our philosophy is that you shouldn't have to go out and buy all this stuff," Faurote said of gardening materials.

Rather than trucking in soil or purchasing bags of compost and boxes of fertilizer, they use grass clippings, leaves, coffee grounds and kitchen scraps to improve their dirt.

They are frugal in other ways too. They built a raised bed out of discarded lumber. When they replaced the windows in their home, they saved a pane of the old glass to make a cold frame that protects tender seedlings. They grow from seed, tending to tiny starts in the house, because it's less expensive than buying seedlings. When their garden plants get old and start to fade, they let them go to seed so they can harvest free seeds for the next year's crops.

In only a few years, Faurote and Cobbold have turned a basic yard into a productive plot. And they've had a lot of fun doing it. They encourage others to give food gardening a try too.

"You just have to jump in and do it," Faurote said.

"If you don't have a place to garden, maybe you know someone who has a place to garden. Strike a deal," Cobbold said.

There's a lot that can be done in a relatively small space without spending a lot, they maintain.

The husband-and-wife team started their Redding garden in the summer of 2006 after moving from Denali National Park in Alaska, where their gardening was in greenhouses. Faurote described the original yard at their downtown Redding home as bare-bones - a block of lawn bordered with narrow planting beds that were covered in bark and featured a few "sad ornamentals."

"Under the ornamental bark was bedrock," Cobbold joked.

"Red clay," clarified Faurote.

And so began their garden adventure. They removed part of a gravel driveway in the backyard and used that space for the raised bed planter. They ripped out about half the lawn to expand the garden beds.

And, most importantly, they began to nurture the soil. They created a simple wire compost bin off the back porch that they toss kitchen scraps in. They have a larger composting effort farther away for yard clippings.

Faurote said the clippings that Redding residents put in green waste containers to be hauled away for the city's compost operation could be turned into compost at home. "Those green containers are full of gold."

Cobbold regularly brings home bags of grass clippings from Shasta-Trinity National Forest headquarters in Redding, where he works as a safety officer.

In the fall, Faurote and Cobbold went to a nearby mobile home park to get leaves to use as mulch and in compost. "People are tickled if you say, 'Can I have your leaves?' " Cobbold said.

They've gotten free coffee grounds (they repel slugs when used as mulch) from coffee shops.

They try to mimic nature. The garden does not have neat, tidy rows. The beds are a jumble of plants. Vegetables grow next to flowers and fruit trees are part of the mix. Grapefruit, persimmon, peach, apricot, orange and apple trees are among the 13 trees that Faurote and Cobbold added to the yard.

They garden year-round, planting in spring and then again in late summer or early fall for crops that grow through the winter and into the next spring.

"We've eaten out of our garden all winter long," Faurote said.

She said fall/winter gardens are an overlooked opportunity in Redding area. Lettuces, chard, broccoli and other crops grow well in cool weather and there aren't the worries of watering or insects that go with summer vegetable gardens.

They have rhubarb, arugula and a few other edibles in the front yard. They also do a bit of gardening on a vacant lot next to the house. After getting permission from the property owner, they launched a small garden where neighbors grow vegetables too.

They look for opportunities for plants to do double duty. In the side yard there's an inviting seating area. Sprawling grapevines cover the arbor, providing both shade and tasty grapes.

Faurote said they've expanded their garden gradually. She recommends anyone new to gardening take it on in bite-size pieces to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

Faurote and Cobbold don't have backgrounds in horticulture and don't consider themselves expert gardeners. They learn as they go. Faurote, who has given presentations on vegetable gardening for People of Progress and Healthy Shasta, said there are lots of places to get information, such as Web sites and books borrowed from the library.

"You don't have to go out and buy all these books," she said.

One of the best ways to learn is when things don't work out and you have to figure out why, she said.

"It's such a puzzle every year," Faurote said. "I think we enjoy the challenge of learning how to do better."