Becoming a backyard farmer

First lady Michelle Obama isn't the only one trying her hand at growing vegetables.

Shannah Zorn's newest hobby is growing food for her family's dinner table.

Obama's vegetable garden, which was planted in March, is the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's World War II victory garden.

Zorn got the jump on Obama. She planted her first garden last year.

Rising produce costs and the desire to eat healthy, organically grown food prompted Zorn look at alternative ways to stock her cupboards and refrigerator.

"The prices just kept going up. I was already weeding the dirt so I thought I might as well plant something," Zorn said.

Zorn, 42, of Hemet, delved into her new hobby with gusto.

She planted cauliflower, chard, lettuce and other vegetables as well as a variety of berries.

She gets help pulling weeds from her sons, Sam, 11, and Owen, 9.

"It's a time when we can talk about things. Our hands are busy and we tend to chat," Zorn said.

Now, the Zorn family is eating more vegetables than ever before.

Sam and Owen surprised their mother by eating vegetables from the garden that they would not eat from the grocery store, such as asparagus and peas, she said.

"They really love the carrots, snap peas and snow peas," Zorn said. "They'll go down and pick things to eat as a snack."

There is one downside: Zorn has had to revamp the way she cooks to accommodate her abundant harvests, she said.

"I don't want any of it to go to waste," Zorn said. "I'm making pies out of squash. I just put a little bit of ice cream on it."

Longtime gardener Jackie McDonald, 62, plants whatever will grow each season in her yard in Good Hope, a community between Perris and Lake Elsinore.

For the most part, if it can't be grown in her yard, she doesn't eat it.

"We've gone back to the way things were when we were kids," she said. "You wait until summer for watermelon or peaches because that's when they're here."

McDonald has one important tip for new gardeners: check the soil's pH level to see if it's more acidic or alkaline.

She uses a test kit that tells her if she needs to add peat moss or lime to her garden soil.

"Most of the soil here in Riverside County is more on the alkaline side," McDonald said. That means it has a high pH level and can benefit from compost material such as peat moss to bring it to a more neutral level.

Without proper soil pH levels, plants may grow, but the harvest won't be as bountiful, she said.

McDonald's garden is chemical-free. If she gets an infestation of bugs, she uses a natural pesticide made from marigold plants.

And she doesn't worry about growing more than she can eat in a week. Leftover harvest is canned or frozen for use later, she said.

McDonald encourages anyone interested in plants to start growing edibles, even if they don't have much room.

"You can grow carrots. They're beautiful. They look like ferns," she said. "I've even got potatoes growing in a barrel."

Weighing costs

Zorn said that buying seeds and shovels and preparing the ground for its first planting was the hardest and costliest part of gardening.

"Irrigation is critical," she said. "I expected to have a huge increase in my water bill, but I didn't. It's about $35 a month more than when I didn't have a garden."

But not everyone has found gardening as economically satisfying as Zorn and McDonald.

Some gardeners, such as Don Miller, 63, of Hemet, are throwing in the hoe.

Water costs and the labor necessary to care for a vegetable garden were more than the harvest was worth, he said.

Last year, Miller chose to plant only tomatoes.

"Almost everything else takes up so much water and doesn't taste much better home-grown," Miller said.

Heat and squirrels took a toll on the garden, he said.

"My tomatoes were a disaster," Miller said. "I wasted a lot of water and only got a few tomatoes."

Miller didn't plant any vegetables this spring, but said he might try a tomato plant or two later in the growing season to see if a later crop would yield better results.