As I mentioned in a previous post, more and more urban dwellers are growing their own produce. As fuel prices rise, inflation sets in, and corn becomes scarce, starting and expanding a home garden becomes more than just a fun past-time; it offers an opportunity for food security. Here’s how Pamela Price of Texas describes her garden:
How Our Victory Garden Came to Be
Both my husband and I grew up in the South, where home gardens and farms are a part of everyday life. My grandfather and my husband’s grandmother were both respected for their gardening skills, and we hope to pass along this life-sustaining skill to our child. To that end, thinking that we’d finally turn our attention from ornamentals to vegetables in our large suburban yard near San Antonio, we opted for a raised bed kit purchased online earlier this year. Because the soil in our area is rocky and poor, a raised bed provided us with the opportunity to control soil quality, allowing us to grow a wider variety of produce. Essentially, we have a giant container garden! As you can see from the photo, we trellised our cucumbers to save space and placed squash where they could trail, too. (Alas, a series of mishaps took out several of our squash plants…gardening is an adventure!) To protect our more tender plants from the blazing Texas sun, we experimented a bit and finally decided on using a burlap cover. This is our first veg garden at this particular location, but we anticipate expanding the garden through the addition of another raised bed and capitalizing on mild winters by eventually gardening year ’round.
You can read more about Pamela’s garden and other victory gardens on her blog: www.redwhiteandgrewblog.com.
Photo from the private collection of Pamela Price.
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Sarah Pressman Lovinger
In trying to find the most effective way to help other people reduce their carbon footprints, Sarah turned to one of her favorite activities: writing. She started a green business, chicagogreenlife.com, to help her clients plan newsletters for their eco-friendly businesses. She also started her blog, mygreenerlife.blogspot.com, to provide useful advice to anyone who wants to lead a more environmentally friendly life. She also regularly contributes to www.afreshsqueeze.com, to let other Chicagoans know about eco-friendly stores, restaurants, and events. Sarah, an internal medicine doctor, works part-time in community health centers in the Chicago area. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University, and she lives in Evanston, IL, with her daughter and her husband. Stop by some time for some delicious, sustainable food--Sarah and her husband love to cook and entertain--any extras will end up outback in their composter.
7 Responses to Growing Your Own: Another Victory Garden
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Good points, Robert. We’ve never had to play “sneaky chef” or use “deceptively delicious” recipe tricks…our child is generally interested in what we grow and purchase at the farmer’s market. He may not like all of it (ex. mushrooms), but he’s usually game to try it.
This seems to be true of most people who use primarily whole foods, either homegrown or local and/or organic, to feed their kids from the get-go.
Small victories…
I love eating food from our garden, it’s incredibly fresh and tasty. It’s great that there are lots of folks doing it.
While gardens may also be ornamental, they can help perpetuate important skills for our children, ease the family food budget some, improve overall life quality through the production of good food whose quality is really known, and enhance the appreciation of good taste in children who will find out what really fresh food tastes like. Sometimes to achieve the latter need for parents to get the child to focus on their gustatory experience, not just shovel in another mouthful. Fresh foods do not have added salt, generally helpful for health.
My favorite thing to do in my garden is to use bamboo stakes built like a teepee to grow pole beans on. I get beans and a cool playhouse for the kids in one shot!
Victory Garden voyeur-ism! I love it!! What a great idea…
I’d love to see a series on other people’s back-yard gardens! What they grow, the tips for their local climate, lessons learned, etc.
So cute! I like the edging with the little twigs.