We’re going to try something new.
Starting today, we’re working with a local master gardener and others to bring practical information you need to grow a vegetable garden.
We’ll run occasional stories previewing free vegetable gardening classes held at the Morris Garden previewed in our main story today.
Expect fewer stories in the winter and more in the spring and summer. The stories will include information on what you need to do in your garden as well as resources to learn more. They also give a preview of what’s happening in the next class.
Saturday’s class will focus on the concepts of no-till gardening, companion gardening and year-round gardening. After a brief lecture, participants will plant vegetable transplants, class organizer Monica Novini said.
Come in work clothes and bring a pair of gardening gloves and a hand spade.
Novini’s class couldn’t have come at a better time. Interest in growing a home vegetable garden has grown like an out-of-sight zucchini.
I spoke with Laura Niemi, a garden program manager at Seattle Tilth, a nonprofit organization that provides education on organic gardening. When Niemi started teaching six years ago, Tilth offered one container vegetable gardening class. Today she has no trouble filling 10 classes.
Niemi noted that in the last generation or two, our society has lost touch with the basics of growing food. A vegetable garden used to be a common site in the back yard. Today it’s more unusual. And she’s continually astounded by the basic information people don’t know.
Some of the people filling her classes are novices. Others know a little more but need a refresher course.
“There’s a lot of awareness about local food and the impact of the food system on the environment,” she said.
Some are concerned about the amount of fuel needed to transport food and many are parents who want to grow nutritious food without the chemicals. Others are just looking for a way to get around the rising cost of produce at the grocery store.
Growing vegetables take some education, but it’s not rocket science, she said. Tilth offers a class in the spring that covers the basics.
Gardening in an urban or suburban setting is challenging, she acknowledged. She only has about 100 square feet of usable ground at her Seattle home, and it’s in the front yard. Homeowners can think about mixing vegetables and blueberry plants in with the flower beds and they can consider strategies that some might consider radical — even ditching some of the grass and adding a vegetable garden in the front yard.
I’m coming at this project with a strong conviction that there is worth in having a connection with nature, even if that connection is limited to growing oregano and thyme in your apartment window.
Some neighbors stopped by my yard the other day, eyeballed the jungle that is my garden and wondered how in the world I had time for anything else.
I won’t tell you that garden takes no time or effort; anyone who tells you that is selling something. I will assure you that if I can find time with a demanding job, two children, housework and bookworm behavior, so can you.
Don’t know where to start? Spend the fall and winter preparing for next season. Do some reading. Attend a class. Order some seed catalogs. Figure out where you might put a raised bed or some large containers. I’ve listed some of my favorite resources below and at my blog online at www.heraldnet.com/mudraker. You can send me your thoughts, ideas and favorite resources by e-mail. I’ll share the best here.
My favorite resources
- Seattle Tilth Association: offers garden classes and sells worms, worm bins and books. Its publication, “Maritime Northwest Garden Guide,” ($14.95) is an outstanding month-by-month gardening guide tailored to Western Washington’s climate.
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. No. 1
Seattle, WA 98103
206-633-0451
- Snohomish County Extension: Not only are master gardeners available during office hours to answer questions, you also can pick up publications on vegetable gardening. You can access tons of information at the organization’s Web site and download an organic vegetable garden publication for free here: snohomish.wsu.edu/mg/garden/garmgpub.htm
WSU Extension Office
600 128th St. SE
Everett, WA 98208
425-357-6010
- Territorial Seed Co.: There are other good seed companies but this one, based in Oregon, has a fall and winter gardening catalog that comes with a planting and harvesting chart and information on how to grow what they sell. Just reading the catalog is an education.
Territorial Seed Co.
P.O. Box 158
Cottage Grove, OR 97424
800-626-0866
- “The Garden Primer: The Second Edition” by Barbara Damrosch. An easy to read, easy-to-understand book for novices and intermediate vegetable gardeners. Packed with everything you need to get started. Get the 2008 edition.
- If you want to grow all your own food, read “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: Steve Solomon’s Complete Guide to Natural Gardening.” The quality of the information is first-rate, but Solomon dives deep into the science. His work seems geared toward folks who have a little more land. He also wrote “Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times.”
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