[MN] & Millions of Other Americans Expected to Raise Bumper Crop of Backyard Vegetables

Twincities.com ^ | March 10, 2009 | Molly Millett

[Diana in Wisconsin]

A couple of weeks ago, local gardening editor Mary Lahr Schier thought she'd start sprouting vegetable seeds indoors to get a jump-start on the Minnesota growing season. But when she went to Menards to buy the grow light she needed, the store was sold out. An employee told her more folks seem to be starting vegetables from seeds.

You bet your butternut squash they are.

"The big trend we've identified this year is the 'GIY' trend — the grow-it-yourself trend, as opposed to the DIY or do-it-yourself trend," said trendspotter Susan McCoy, president and owner of the Garden Media Group. "We've heard reports from seed companies that sales are up as much as 80 percent."

Is it rising grocery prices? The comfort that comes from digging in dirt? The keep-it-local movement? Whatever the reasons, Minnesotans already are gearing up for a backyard bumper crop.

"We offered one Urban Vegetable Gardening class last year, and it filled up completely, plus we had 10 more people waiting at the door," said Paige Pelini, co-owner of Mother Earth Gardens, an organic garden center in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. "So we decided we should do two classes this year. We still have people calling every day, asking us to do another class or wondering if there's some way they could sneak in the door."

(By the way, this week's "Chickens in the City!" class — "Live Poultry Will Be Present!" — is filled, too.)

Classes aren't the only way Minnesotans are seeking help growing their own veggies.

Schier, editor of Northern Gardener, the Minnesota State Horticultural Society's magazine, is noticing an uptick of traffic to the vegetable gardening posts on her My Northern Garden blog.

The magazine's publisher sees the growth from a different angle.

"When I talk to our commercial members and advertisers, they say they have noticed a significant increase in sales of herbs and vegetables," said Tom McKusick, publisher of Northern Gardener. "It's something I've been hearing from garden centers and nurseries since last fall, and I suspect it will only increase this year."

A National Gardening Association survey, conducted in January, backs up that prediction: 43 million U.S. households plan to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs and berries this year, a 19 percent increase from 2008. Perhaps even more telling, 21 percent of those households are planning to start — not continue — a food garden in 2009.

'STRUCTURAL' TREND

Seed companies have noticed.

"I would say vegetable sales are up 20 percent from last year," said Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden, a seed company specializing in gourmet vegetables, kitchen herbs and cottage garden flowers.

"In the past, we've sold more flowers than vegetables, but that has sharply reversed itself. It's the economy, simplifying lives, food safety, a healthy way to spend quality family time together."

George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee & Co., said his company's vegetable seed sales are also up 20 percent as of January. He pins it all on the economy.

"Forget about the perfect storm — this has created the perfect hurricane in terms of sales for our business," Ball said. "Trends like locavores (people who eat food grown or produced locally), that's what I call a fashion. But this recession is a structural trend. When you take away or reduce people's income, or reduce their nest egg by 40 or 50 percent, you have almost a depression mentality. People are quite anxious."

Ball said he noticed the cost of fruits and vegetables at grocery stores remained high even after fuel prices had dropped. So his company did a cost-analysis study, and concluded that people who invest $50 in the vegetable garden on seeds and fertilizer can harvest the equivalent of $1,250 worth of groceries from a store. As a result, the company introduced "Burpee's Money Garden," a $10 seed purchase that Burpee estimates will produce more than $650 worth of vegetables.

"People talk about replacing a light bulb, insulating their window sills or wearing a sweater — these efforts save a few dollars here and there — but for a family of four with a good-sized vegetable garden, we're talking about saving a couple of thousand dollars," Ball said.

It's sometimes called "survival gardening." In this economy, this mind-set has made media sensations out of people like Clara Cannucciari, a 93-year-old great-grandmother from New York who remembers her own Great Depression garden as she cooks meals from the era and whose work can be seen on YouTube. (Check out her Poorman's Meal of potatoes, onions and hot dogs via her Web site, greatdepressioncooking.com.)

A local green thumb sees that hunger for information.

"People increasingly are interested in the idea of being self-sufficient, of being able to grow their own food to increase their ability to really survive on their own," said Carrie Christensen, who teaches the Urban Vegetable Gardening classes at Mother Earth.

RECLAIMING DOMESTIC SKILLS

For Debbie Lang, 32, of Newport, a stay-at-home mom of five hungry boys, self-sufficiency is important, especially as the family struggles to recover financially from when her husband was out of work for 11 weeks. But cost savings is not the only reason the family will attempt to grow as many of their own vegetables as possible for the second year in a row.

"We absolutely love eating fresh vegetables — there's nothing like it," Lang said. "And there's such a reward of being able to reap something from your own effort; if you want a tomato, you can go pick a tomato in your own garden."

Lang fits in with one of the root causes related to the increasing popularity of homegrown food, identified by Garden Media Group.

"The housewife is back," McCoy said. "Crafting, canning, sewing, gardening — traditional hobbies that used to be 'women's hobbies' — are hot with the younger generation."

Pelini, of Mother Earth Gardens, sees that interest blossoming in her own daughters, a 16-year-old and 14-year-old twins.

"I'm a single mom. For years, I barely had time to take the laundry out of the dryer, much less have a vegetable garden," Pelini said. "But now they can participate. So last year, we did grow a vegetable garden, and it was really great. ... We're foodies, so we enjoy it. ... My daughters knit, too. We've talked about how they're reclaiming domestic skills without the cultural baggage."

And, well, there's just something scrumptious about homemade anything, whether it's the handmade Christmas gifts the Pelinis give or the fresh vegetables they grow in their back yard.

"We derive great satisfaction," Pelini said, "out of standing in our garden and eating a hot, somewhat dirty Sun Gold tomato."

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"The housewife is back," McCoy said. "Crafting, canning, sewing, gardening — traditional hobbies that used to be 'women's hobbies' — are hot with the younger generation."

Wa-Hoo! I'm SO happy to see this. :)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

PING!

[dblshot]

Probably got a surplus of fertilizer after the Franken campaign.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

This is why the “Food Safety Act” is being crafted and proposed by House Democrats. Can’t have people be in charge of their own food supply, now can we?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Just let them try to stop us. :)

[BigFinn]

Got my garden in. If things get worse I may rip out my lawn and make it bigger.
It’s also a stress reliever. :^)

[BigFinn]

Got my garden in. If things get worse I may rip out my lawn and make it bigger.
It’s also a stress reliever. :^)

[diamond6]

I wish I could raise chickens, but I don’t think we’re zoned for it.

[tacticalogic]

Probably got a surplus of fertilizer after the Franken campaign.

Forget the veggies. Plant acorns. Deep.

[musicbymuzak]

maybe they’re just composting old 0bummer lawn signs

[goodwithagun]

I am buying heirloom seeds this year. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I want hardy plants that I can salvage seed from. Planting seeds from hybrids bought at the store will not yield anything.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Too many deer and other critters hereabouts to have a garden here. The local Mennonite community sells the best produce I have ever seen, making it almost pointless to grow your own.

[staytrue]

So people are spending 10 dollars and getting 650 dollars in value.

That is 600 dollars in taxable income by my calculation.

Plus, these people may be violating minimum wage laws, they are not withholding social security and medicare. Furthermore, they may be violating OSHA and enviromental laws.

There is no way in hell this is going to be legal under a democrat congress and president.

All the vegetables grown must be confiscated and put into a common pool where the hungry and poor need to be fed first.

[muawiyah]

Here's one of the reasons why everybody should consider growing a garden ~ even a small indoor one ~ we've got one whopper of a world busting drought coming this year. Makes 1930/35 look mild. It's more on the order of the things many of our ancestors faced in the 1800s!

There's a February 15, 2009 brief on the implications of this drought pattern at: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/countries_by_agricultural_output1.png&imgrefurl=http://www.infiniteunknown.net/tag/kenya/&usg=__QaVour7cLGEU2Z-kewsqWSDJl_U=&h=286&w=550&sz=83&hl=en&start=68&um=1&tbnid=iAvJalXdIiM3nM:&tbnh=69&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddrought%2Bconditions%2Bmexico%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D54%26um%3D1<P>

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2009/Feb/Countries_by_agricultural_output%5B1%5D-747806.gif

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I have been kinda quizzing folks in my area that are putting in gardens to determine their reasons for doing so. In the group aged 65 or older, they've always done it and don't know any other way. In the younger folks, I've been quite surprised that cost is not the driving force, it is the food contamination stories that got them fired-up.

In the above article the mother says it is so nice to want a tomato and go out back and pick one, which of course is true. What lots of folks don't take into account in the further savings of not hopping into the car and driving to the market/store to buy a tomato.

Most of us know how many times we've gone to purchase a tomatoe, potatoes, carrots or that other side dish for supper that night. How many times have we run to the market to put together that salad? Not to mention how many times we will buy something else that we would not have had we not gone to get the lettuce. The savings really add up.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Victory Gardens after an economic Pearl Harbor....

[Gabz]

Garden PING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(now to read :))

[AD from SpringBay]

Imagine if the vegetable gardens were treated like wages and the gardeners had to turn in 35-60% of their crops to the government, free of charge for those who did not grow their own.

[Gabz]

Don’t be giving them anymore bright ideas :)

[KarlInOhio]

News from the future:

This year's rate of farm foreclosures, second only to the Great Depression, was caused by millions of suburbanites growing their own food in their gardens. Obama promises a bailout and Congress outlaws growing more than ten square feet of vegetables without applying for a permit from the Department of Agriculture. "People's gardening affect the interstate commerce of orange baseballs called tomatoes, thus limitations on individual gardens is constitutional."