Posted on 03/11/2009 9:47:53 AM PDT by 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."
Overwhelming all of them are the major North American droughts that occur on a roughly 21/22 year cycle, and each time in roughly a different quadrant of "flyover country" (Great Plains states, Midwest, Panhandle, and Centrla South). When those happen, the local things just get pushed aside and the drought happens even if it's supposed to be a rainy year.
China is known to have a similar cycle.
What we have this time is an "out of turn" situation. Back in the 1990s, the drought cycle skipped a beat and happened 11/12 years after the 1987 drought in the MidAtlantic and Lower Midwest.
Lots of folks got excited about it because it fit into a Global Warming theory they had.
Obviously it didn't mean anything more than the time-line was getting broken up, which always happens anyway ~ this stuff is more art than precise prediction.
What we do have, though, is a population of 5 billion peasants scattered rather evenly all over the world, and they know what they see, taste, touch and feel, and this year, building on their rememrance of $20 a bag rice last year, they KNOW we are in a drought!
LOL.
I had this dream about a week ago — one of those freaky dreams that seem real, where one wakes up still dreaming.
I dreamed I planted the hill below my house with native grasses, and let it grow up unmowed (am convinced this doesn’t need mowing anyway). And it became populated with quail, a few grouse. I dreamed my English setter was in a perpetual pointing position, and I went down there and harvested some of the quail for the table.
I live on top of a huge ridge in Tennessee (high elevation). It is mostly limestone rock and has been logged over many times (although we still have some old trees).
It is not conducive to the native quail and grouse species that inhabited it orginally. And of course, the fescue long overtook any native grasses here.
Summer before last, my neighbor logged his 100 acres, and I was jumping with joy. I figure the successional growth will give me lots of rabbits, quail and other species that thrive in these conditions.
I see a lot of hawks and owls, so I figure there is something on the ground worth eating. It’s a good sign to me, and I really want to plant the native grasses. I have so many deer the grass might not make it past the seedling stage, and I can’t fence it, but I am going to try it. Plus, next year, I’ll help my brother thin out the deer.
I don’t know how you could raise quail in a suburban area. I am just glad I am in the country and nobody is around to tell me what I can/can’t do. I know you can order quail through the mail, and I’d hoard these if I lived in a city.
Order them and eat them, pickle their eggs. I love pickled quail eggs.
Square pegs and round holes separate reality from imagination; bullshit is the lubricant to combine them.
Bunny farm in the basement?
Bear in mind that the climate-control measures being played with by various governments have probably upset weather patterns more than global warming ever has.
In preparation for the 2008 Olympics China seeded clouds with a chemical that would prevent it from raining. They wanted even the weather to look good to the foreign press.
About a month or so ago I read that the drought in one of the regions in China was severe enough that people were dying of starvation, and the Chinese government was preparing to seed the clouds there with chemicals that would force it to rain.
Those couldn’t POSSIBLY be related though, could they?
/s
“I don’t know how you could raise quail in a suburban area.”
The latest issue of Backwoods Home had an article on just that. It doesn’t look like that article is available online, but here’s the link to the issue:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/current_issue.html
Excellent article, I will link to it on the survival thread.
Good news for the children and families.
Our ancestors knew them well ~
Bunny farm in the basement ~ lot of “sh|+” shoveling ~ you gotta’ take care of the pellets. Read up on this first.
TWRA tried a quail reintroduction but things have changed a lot since the days they used to fly free in Tennessee.
The fescue replacing the native grasses are a big factor but also modern “Clean Farming” had a large effect.
Back in the day farming equipment was not as efficient as today. Tractors cut more corners and plowed further away from tree lines and ditches. This left long strips of prime habitat for quail. Today batwing bushhogs and modern disk sets can turn earth right up to a field edge and the use of herbicides prevents the growth of grasses that used to reseed themselves each spring but at a loss of crops.
LIke Girlangler said, you can order eggs and raise quail. www.mcmurrayhatchery.com is one source. I buy my Chickens form them and can vouch for their reliability and service.
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/category/quail_eggs.html
Now they will find a way to tax it.
I’m a BYC member :)
There’s a lot of good info there. I have a dozen eggs in my “Darth Bator” now. They are due on the 30th.
A person can quietly keep hens in a residential district without annoying the neighbors if they don’t try to house roosters. Hens are quiet and easy to maintain.
Also, for meat purposes, Rabbits have the most efficient feed conversion ratio of just about any animal and they multiply like crazy. Dollar for Dollar, rabbits are a great “Surviving socialism” solution and healthy meat source.
I have read up on it. For several years. A well-designed hutch should be easy to clean. Have a removable tray at the bottom lined with newspapers. To clean, pull out try, roll up old paper, lay out fresh paper, replace tray, repeat.
The poopy paper can be burned or composted.
Thanks, Granny! :)
Wish I liked rabbit. I have a zillion of them around here to hunt; the dogs scared up two on our walk this evening, and I just saw two more fat ones under the bird feeder. I could shoot ‘em out the window if I could acquire a taste for them.
Guess I haven’t been hungry enough, yet. :)
I have thought about keeping Angora Rabbits for the fur; they’d be more like pets, though they’d be penned in the pole barn. My young Yellow Lab would have a hard time understanding that she can chase the free rabbits, but not the ones Mom keeps caged up for her, LOL!
I also want a milk cow. If things keep on going my way, I’ll have one. Husband is dragging his feet. He says I can have goats, but I hate goats. (Childhood of raising goats; smelly, evil creatures!)
I vouch for McMurray Hatchery, too. I’ve raised up close to 300 hens in the past 10 years, and they have always given me healthy, sturdy, disease-free chicks. And they’re so CUTE! :)
Not adding any new ones this year; of the 50 I did last year, I only lost ONE this winter, and she was a really old hen.
Got three ‘accidental roosters’ that are finding their way into my stew pot in a few weeks, though. ;)
Nothing like her spaghetti that had wild mushrooms incorporated in the sauce.
I am so sorry I didn't listen to her, how to can, how to preserve, how to dry meat.
I leaned how to butcher animals(a good thing for survival)but disregarded the rest as "womans work". As you have probably figured out by now I am a male.
One of my biggest regrets of my life is that I did not pay attention to this woman who was a fountain of knowledge of how to survive without modern machines or government intervention!
However I am trying to relearn the things her and my aunts knew how to do without thinking about it!
Raised chickens when I was a child, raised beef also, along with goats(great tasting meat regardless of what you may have heard). Mainly though the goats were for milk, the hens were for eggs but we did raise a certain amount for food. The beef was always for food.
I was blessed with two wonderful Grandma’s. One was a Farm Gal and taught me all about growing food, butchering, baking bread, sewing, canning, making jelly & pies, etc. I spent a lot of time with her when I was growing up because Mom worked while Dad was in college and working his apprenticeships. I am from 100% Blue Collar stock. :)
My City Grandma taught me all about the arts; we’d go to movies and the theater, fancy restaurants, art exhibits, etc. I had a very well-rounded childhood. She also grew prize-winning flowers for the State Fair, so I learned that, too. My Gladiolus are without compare. :)
It’s never too late to learn new skills! Take a look at these books for starters:
Storey’s Basic Country Skills
The Encyclopedia of Country Living
The Foxfire books (if you can find them; they’re getting rare)
The other day, for $2, I found a Reader’s Digest book, ‘Back to Basics’ from the 1980’s. I don’t THINK I’ll do any blacksmithing or cobble any shoes in the near future, but it’s nice to know I can learn if I have to, LOL!
Learn to sew on a button and replace a zipper, while you’re at it. And why not try your hand at knitting? Lots of men knit. You can make your own socks, mittens, scarves and hats at the very least. And it’s relaxing. :) (I crochet; want to learn to knit.)
*SIGH* I love my job (I manage a Garden Center), but I miss being home and having the time to do all of that stuff. Not much longer before Husband makes his first million and I can work at home again for good! :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.