How do you make a recession garden grow?

Turning a backyard into a bumper crop can help make ends meet in tough times, but first-timers often need help

The chives died, and slugs have made some inroads, but the first pearly glimpse of eggplant among the garden’s green folds made Randy Evans as giddy as a schoolgirl. 

Growing a garden for the first time can be fruitful, he’s found, after some trial and error. Evans is among a bumper crop of first-time gardeners who are finding that, in a troubled economy, growing your own food can be a cost-effective alternative to picking your produce from a grocery aisle.

Classes at Urban Harvest, a Houston nonprofit that promotes gardening, have tripled in size since before the recession began. Ray Sher, who teaches several vegetable gardening classes, has seen an influx of people interested in increasing the yield of their yards.

“There are a lot of people who are starting gardens all over the place,” Sher said. “It used to be if three or four people showed up to a community gardening class, that was good. This week we had 20-some people.”

Not only have Urban Harvest staffers fielded a bounty of questions from prospective gardeners — What kind of soil should I use? What can I grow in pots? — they’ve also seen renewed curiosity in preserving produce for later.

A class in dehydrating fruit and vegetables was discontinued years ago for lack of interest. Last Tuesday, a revival of the class drew 60 people.

“That’s just kind of an amazing thing,” said Sher. “We’ve never had anything like that at Urban Harvest.”

Nationally, the number of gardeners has grown nearly 20 percent from last year, according to the National Gardening Association: a total of 43 million gardeners in 2009, up from 36 million in 2008. That’s double the increase of the previous year.

Sher attributes the rise in homegrown produce to the decline in the economy and sees a parallel to the “victory gardens” conceived from the food rationing of World Wars I and II. He calls them “recession gardens.”

But, Sher cautions, the savings aren’t immediate, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

“If you plant lettuce in the summer, you’re going to have a big failure, and you’re going to lose the cost of your seeds and fertilizer,” he said.

Evans, who was the head chef at Brennan’s until it burned during Hurricane Ike, always wanted to try his hand at gardening, but he didn’t have much of a green thumb.

“I preached ‘buy local, eat local,’ and I felt like a hypocrite being such a terrible gardener,” he said. “I’ve always been kind of a Darwinist gardener. It’s survival of the fittest.”

That approach left him with lots of rosemary, but little else. This time, with the help of a gardening instructor, he’s got a 4-by-8-foot soil bed bursting with organic squash, zucchini, eggplant and okra. He hopes to use the lessons learned in his first season of gardening to plant on a larger scale for a new restaurant he plans to open in the fall.

“Organic vegetables are very expensive to buy, so I figured I could supplement my restaurant with high-end organic produce for pennies on the dollar,” he said. “It’s going to save me a ton, food-cost wise.”

Evans’ backyard garden took an initial investment of $325, including the cost of the raised frame, the soil and seeds. Once the garden is going, he’ll only have to invest in seeds; he plans to water with rain collected in cisterns.

“Just think of how many carrots you can get for that, as opposed to $3 for a bunch,” he said. 

But each mistake costs money.

David Ebro, who started gardening around the same time as Evans, lost nearly an entire corn crop to scavenging squirrels. Overwatering killed his potatoes. He thinks of growing more as an expensive hobby than as a way to save on grocery bills.

“I consider Southwest Fertilizer kind of a second mortgage,” he said of the venerable lawn and garden center at 5828 Bissonnet.

Mindy Dunham of Spring has cultivating down to a science. She owns 5 acres, part of which she plans to turn into a community garden for neighbors who want to share the planting and the harvest. They’ll benefit from her expertise and her rich soil.

“The further along you get, the fewer costs you have,” she said. “There’s that old joke: Your first tomato only costs you $100.”