I'm temped to get the garden started after a week like this but alas, it's a trick.
Guess I'll have to be happy with looking at my seedlings (started inside) and the sky. ;-D
Posted on 04/12/2008 10:50:55 AM PDT by Graybeard58
NEW HARTFORD -- Courtney Ieronimo is eager to fight back against the rising price of food by raising vegetables for the first time.
"If you are savvy, you can save the seeds and freeze or can what you don't use right away," said Ieronimo, who has a leg up on other gardening novices as a sales associate at White Flower Farm in Litchfield. She already knows how to grow flowers, so she's hoping vegetables will be an easy next step.
In addition to saving money, Ieronimo also wants to know for sure the food she puts on the table is pesticide free and locally grown, with less of a carbon footprint than potatoes shipped from Maine, or tomatoes from Florida. She's looking forward to the stress relief of digging in the soil.
Ieronimo isn't alone. The popularity of gardening, as a pastime, a money saver and a lifestyle choice, is expected to grow. A particular attraction for newcomers this year is the rising cost of food.
"There is a 20 percent increase in the number of people buying vegetable seeds this year," said Agriventures Agway Manager Colleen Grady in Torrington. "There is a lot more interest in gardening, in knowing where your food is coming from."
Next door at Blue Seal Feeds, Bob Hedus said seed potatoes were flying out the door Friday, a day after they arrived. At the Super Stop & Shop down the road, tomato seed packets were sold out.
At Gresczyk Farms in New Hartford, Bruce Gresczyk removed his glasses and eyeballed soil in thumb-sized plastic cells. He poked gently at a light soil covering tiny seeds planted three days earlier inside one of several greenhouses along Route 202. He's busy planting tender vegetables now -- six to eight weeks before the last frost and the traditional start of the growing season, Memorial Day.
"There is life," Gresczyk said, poking at the sesame-sized seed for Bravo Cabbage that will grow into basketball sized heads perfect for sauerkraut. Each of the thousands of tiny plants will be transplanted into bigger pots, and nurtured until they are ready for sale and transplanting to gardeners who opt against doing it from seed themselves. "We're bumping up production," Gresczyk said. "I have a hunch, based on anecdotal information. A lot of people are looking for someone to rototill their gardens, and you can beat the prices in the store."
No two gardeners or growing seasons are alike, so it's difficult to compare prices. A tomato planted in a recycled milk carton in a sunny window and fed kitchen compost after it is transplanted in a garden can produce 50 pounds of tomatoes inexpensively. Or, you can build and heat a greenhouse, buy potting soil and fertilizer. Gresczyk invests $600 a day on oil to heat several greenhouses, but demand for locally grown produce made the investment profitable even before food prices increased by 10 percent or more.
At the UConn Home and Garden Education Center at Storrs, Carol Quish said the number one topic people call about is still lawns. But that's changing.
"We're getting more calls about how to use a patch of land for vegetables," she said.
White Flower Farm's Propogation Supervisor Allison Brown is busy nurturing more peppers and tomatoes and an expanded offering of vegetable plants than last year. The upscale nursery that specializes in flower and landscape plants last year sold 8,000 tomato plants during an annual tomato festival in June. Many are heirloom varieties which offer flavor abandoned by commercial growers because they don't ship well, and are inspiring newcomers to gardening.
Urban dwellers are not exempt from the trend.
"I am getting calls from a lot of people interested in getting hooked up with a garden for the first time," said Cordali Benoit of New Haven, president of the Connecticut Community Gardening Association, a clearing house for 80 community gardening projects statewide. Two-thirds of the projects are vegetable gardens on private and municipal lots, many now with waiting lists. "There are people who do it for the social aspect, or because they don't know how to do it and want to learn from others how to grow a tomato that tastes like heaven compared to the pale pink ones you get in some salads."
Others are nostalgic about their grandparents' victory gardens, grown during war years, Benoit said. "It's only in the past couple of generations that we have moved away from home-grown produce," she said.
At Moscarillo's Garden Shop in Torrington, Carmen Brochu said a heightened interest in raising vegetables to save money is prompting many to ask questions now. It takes work, she cautions. You can't just plunk a tomato plant in the ground and reap a catalog perfect bumper crop. With a willingness to learn, the reward of a vine-ripened tomato is within reach. Even the best gardener needs good luck in the form of good weather.
"Do the best you can to learn the most you can about the variables you can control," Quish said.
Guess I'll have to be happy with looking at my seedlings (started inside) and the sky. ;-D
bump 4 later
Nothing tastes better than what you grow yourself and there is usually plenty to share with friends and neighbors.
I'm saving the planet by making less of a carbon foot print myself.
Metamucil?
Good news indeed. We can solve some problems by ‘growing our own’. :<)
The weather is 75 degrees today!!!! I have arugala from last year, it seeded. What a nice surprise...going to have my first fresh salad of the year.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Victory Gardens! Kill 2 ‘birds’ with one stone....GROW Something!
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=victory+garden
Thanks, Graybeard! Great find!
We are already sold out of potatoes, have been for a couople of weeks. We ordered more than we usually do. Mine are up, about 2”. :)
Plants and seeds are flying out of the greenhouse/store! We try to keep our prices low, and I throw out stuff that looks better than waht Walmart and LOwes sell. Even with fert prices skyrocketing, we’re seeing a lot more business.
“I wonder if modern Democrats grow “defeat gardens”.”
“They’ll attempt to defeat you in court to make you share YOUR garden with THEM.”
LOL!
If you have an especially big garden, Democrats will require you give half of it away to those who haven’t planted gardens.
They’ll give jihadists peas, hoping to appease them and keep them from destroying their gardens. We also must respect weeds and let them continue to grow. They are in no way inferior to vegetables.
Gardeners will be required to plant a variety of colors of produce, so no one color group is left out. Red tomatoes have cornered the market for far too long. (I’m doing my part by planting purple, white, yellow, and pink tomatoes this year.)
No disparaging remarks can be made about any particular vegetable group. Former President George Bush’s remarks on broccoli were uncalled for.
Vegetables from Latin America should be given an opportunity to grow where American vegetables just don’t want to :)
Buy your taters from Wisconsin! Little know fact that we’re SECOND in potato production, right behind Idaho. Lots of sandy soil left behind by the glaciers. :)
Maine grows potatoes? Who knew? When I think Maine, I think Lobster and Blueberries.
Gotta pimp my income:
http://www.jungseed.com (Where I currently work. I’m the Yard Manager. Everything GREEN is my responsibility. Eeek!)
http://www.seedsavers.org (Where I used to work. Seven of the happiest years of my life were spent with that company.)
Buy from either; I don’t care. I won’t make a dime either way, LOL!
DO NOT GIVE THE DEMOCRATS IDEAS LIKE THIS! 
I don't want the idea of collective farms in the USA, given the bad experience of such farms in Communist countries (even the Communists in China threw out that idea a long time ago).
Thanks La Enchiladita for the link and Gabz for the ping. :’)
A late ping.
I’ve had company for TWO weeks and, although I enjoyed them, I am behind on getting some planting done. However, I did get another VERY important mission accomplished, spent several days on the lake fishing.
I do have lettuce and onions up, some asparagus spears and brocholli (sp) now seeding.
And, typical for Tennessee, I have to go out here in a few minutes and cover everything up (including my annual flowers) because a freeze is predicted for tonight, after several weeks of temps in the mid to high 70s.
We had a little snow here this morning in central Illinois.
Two weeks?! Yikes! Love my family, but two weeks is kinda pushing it! You got to go fishing?! I am so jealous! The wind has been blowing here—forever, it seems. Know what you mean about temps. It’s worse than a rollercoaster here, altho we’re hoping this is the last dip. I’m still waiting to put out my warm season stuff—don’t have time to do it twice! Taters are up good—thot they were going to drown or swim away there for awhile!
Have a great day!
Welcome back girlangler. Seems you had some nice temps for fishing these last couple of weeks. Catch anything?
I live in the woods, so I don’t garden. I tried, and tried, but I just don’t get enough sun. Even my open space has tall trees around it, so I give up. That, and the deer (who are just rats with antlers) will even come up to my front porch and eat my hostas. They act like I have planted a salad bar just for them.
I help by encouraging my friends and neighbors with gardens, and taking anything they have that they need to get rid of.
It works along the lines of.....it is better to have a friend with a boat then to own your own.
8-)
Our vegetable gardens are on the way, but the ground is still frozen and it might snow tonight and it is 10 degrees now. If it turns out to be a summer like last year it didn’t warm enough to grow much of anything until July, and that didn’t leave much growing season—maybe a month. This April is colder than last year, although March was warmer.
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