The harvest comes home

It is arguably the most famous garden in the world these days, the vegetable garden on the White House lawn started by Michelle Obama with help from a group of schoolchildren – and the most talked about.

During her trip to Europe this month, world leaders – “every single person, from Prince Charles on down” – asked the first lady about the garden more than about anything else, she told the kids.

The Obama garden is only one in a growing trend – one of countless vegetable gardens across the land being planted for the first time by regular folk in their backyards and front yards, in containers on their balconies and in community plots, where demand is up from last year, in some cases by as much as 50 per cent.

Here in Canada and in the United States, sales of vegetable seed sales have soared, with the largest companies posting increases of 20 to 25 per cent and more over last year.

“Everybody is reporting increased interest and increases in sales, especially at the home garden level,” said Wayne Gale of Stokes Seeds Ltd., near St. Catharines, Ont., one of the country’s largest seed sellers. “The greenhouse industry told us that last year they sold out of their vegetable plants for the first time in a long time. The wave was starting last year; this year it has crashed on our shores.”

There are all kinds of reasons for this powerful wave, many interrelated: a growing cultural awareness of the value to the environment of locally grown food, for one, of the importance of fresh vegetables in a healthy diet for children and of the opportunity to teach them where food actually comes from. 

Gardens are great places for kids and their natural curiosity.

The remarkable popularity of cooking shows, with their reliance on fresh ingredients, has also played a role.

“Every time you see Gordon Ramsay using fresh herbs, someone is encouraged to grow his own,” said Rob Lee, president of the venerable Lee Valley Tools company, where gardening sales were up nine per cent last year in Canada over the previous year – the company’s best growth in five years. So far in 2009, sales are ahead of 2008.

The economy, as with so many things, is also a factor. “In recessionary times, people tend to cocoon and rather than take that trip to wherever, they will take that money and put a garden in and improve the appearance of their home,” said John Barrett, director of sales, marketing and development at Veseys Seeds, another of the country’s largest seed companies, based near Charlottetown.

And food scares to which Canadians have been exposed over the past 24 months have taken a toll: tainted tomatoes last summer, E. Coli-contaminated lettuce before that. “More and more people are thinking that ’If I have the opportunity to grow some of what I am eating, I’ll be able to control what I am eating,” Barrett said.

Growing their own also means controlling their spending. Produce prices have been rising steadily over the past year; according to a survey by the National Gardening Association, a Vermont-based not-for-profit organization, a $70 investment in home food gardening can yield, on average, a $600 return. The Obamas’ kitchen garden, which features more than 50 vegetables and herbs, cost only about $200.

Part of the incentive for newbie gardeners is that there’s no need for a big buy-in. “You may want an awful lot of tools, but you don’t need them,” Lee said. “You can get by with a spade or a fork, and a couple of hand tools: a small trowel and something to move earth around. You could do it all with a stick if you want to.”

Yet more incentive: You don’t need a lot of acreage. Even people who don’t have gardens at all can grow vegetables in containers – from lettuce in small window box-style containers to tomatoes in big buckets. “You can buy a tomato plant three feet high and stick it in a big bucket and be the most successful gardener on your block,” said Stuart Robertson, Gazette and CBC gardening columnist and author.

Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet magazine, says she has been container gardening with terrific results in an Earthbox, a high-tech growing system that controls soil conditions. 

(Visit www.earthbox.com for more information.) 

“The boxes can sit anywhere and, although they require less water than conventional gardens, the plants seem to leap from the earth,” Reichl wrote recently in her weekly online post.

Even more incentive: Veteran veggie gardeners are reassuring nervous newbies by telling them that if they can grow flowers, they can grow vegetables. Indeed, they’re saying that vegetables can be used to add foliage and texture to an existing flower garden.

“A vegetable garden doesn’t have to be row upon row of stuff,” Lee said. “If you are an organized gardener, you can integrate vegetables into a regular garden; you can put a tomato plant where you put a bush.”

Plant a row of lettuce instead of some flowery annuals, Robertson suggests. “You don’t have to have a huge and formal rectangle: This is less daunting.”

Integrating vegetables into your regular gardening beds could mean that, instead of edging with impatiens, you edge with lettuce. Instead of a climbing vine, put in climbing cherry tomatoes: The practice is called blended gardening, explained Susan McCoy, a longtime gardening industry trendspotter and president of the Pennsylvania- based Garden Media Group. “It is practical. Now you are getting a multi-tasking garden.”

Just as there are always people who dive headlong into whatever hobby they take up, of course, there are those who buy all kinds of tools when they take up gardening and invest in raised beds and the timber around them: They’ll spend a lot of money.

But it’s also possible to get a good return with little investment, said Gale of Stokes Seeds.

“With six square feet, you can grow a couple of tomato and pepper plants, some peas against the wall ... the biggest effort is getting down on your hands and weeding – and watering.”

Most vegetables are not all that drought-tolerant. And more than one expert has noted that gardening is weeding. Christine Todoruk has been gardening since she was a kid. There are times, usually when she is is sweaty, covered with bugs and exhausted from a day of weeding, when she asks herself why she bothers. But the answer is never far.

It is there in the taste of everything the fortysomething LaSalle resident, her sister Frances, and their mother plant, mostly from seed, and grow together: the four varieties of tomato and three kinds of zucchini they plant at their farm in upstate New York; all the different kinds of lettuce, squash, onion, garlic, potato and then some.

“There is something about eating your own food – food you have grown yourself,” said Todoruk, a computer consultant when she’s not weeding.

And there’s something about the ease of obtaining ingredients for your dinner just outside the kitchen door, she said, and something about knowing what went into producing the food.

With Victoria Day, the official kickoff to gardening season, only a month away, prospective gardeners have got their work cut out for them.

It’s a good time for beginners to look at books (see sidebar), suggests Lee of Lee Valley, to think about how to prepare your yard space and how you want to use it, about what needs to go in when and about planting sequentially.

Most vegetables need at least six to eight hours of direct sun – and moist, well-drained soil rich in organic matter, such as compost or peat moss. Because much of Montreal’s soil tends to be heavy, adding compost, sand and peat moss or black earth helps to give it lightness and texture – with maybe a bit of lime to counteract the acidity of the peat moss, said Stephen Homer of Ferme du Zephyr in Senneville.

Start small, Todoruk cautions new gardeners. Try a couple of different vegetables and see what works.

“Your neighbours can grow fantastic zucchini and yours will get eaten by some bug,” she said. Maybe buy one or two plants – or borrow from a gardening neighbour: “They love to share their extras.”

People starting out tend to want to grow the basics: tomatoes, peas, beans – that sort of thing, said Caryl Overing, manager of Pointe Claire Nursery. But why not focus on growing what you know you like to eat?

“You can give yourself a lot of pleasure by just having a salad,” Homer said. He says a plot no larger than four by four feet is sufficient, and suggests starting with vegetables that are easy to grow: kale, Swiss chard; red and green leaf lettuce, which regrows when it’s cut, unlike head lettuce; and radishes, which grow very quickly.

“Buy an organic tomato plant for $4; with the right location, you can get several pounds of tomatoes from it,” Homer suggested. “And put in a cherry tomato plant; they’re really fun to pick and eat.”

Some seed companies sell seeds already affixed to special tape that goes directly into the ground: it’s about as close to idiotproof as one can get.

Homer says he wouldn’t start gardening with carrots or other root crops or with peppers. “They can be a little demanding,” he said.

And make time to go out and watch the garden. “Things tend to happen quickly,” he said.

Like weeds, for instance. With warm days, warm nights and a bit of rain, weed growth will often outpace that of vegetables. Vegetables, too, can grow quickly. 

“Once your plant starts to produce zucchini or cucumbers, it’s good to go out and check every couple of days,” Homer said. Cukes and zucchini that grow too big tend to be spongy and woody. Lettuce and arugula need to be checked frequently as well. “A lettuce can bolt and go to seed very quickly.”

So keep watch. Get out there and pick the outer leaves every couple of nights: you’ll have a lovely little salad. And how nice is that?