Posted by admin | Posted in Gardening News | Posted on 13-01-2009
Gardening has become a hot topic lately at my workplace. More and more people are discussing what they are planting and how they are going to do it. With rising food costs and scares about tainted food, we are seeing a growing interest in gardening.
:B
Victory Gardens Sprout Up Again
People are borrowing an old wartime concept to lessen the need for mass-produced food, reduce pollution, form communities and save on grocery bills.
January 9, 2009
By Mary MacVean
Los Angeles Times
Victory Garden
These days, digging some holes and planting a little lettuce or a few beets is a political act. Just ask Julie Stern, who shares a backyard organic garden with her neighbor in Topanga Canyon. Stern worked at the polls on election day. “There’s a feeling you had,” she said. “You saw your neighbors, and you felt good about what you did.” Growing food, she added, “I sort of do feel the same way.”
Or ask Sandra Young, who put two raised beds in the neatly kept front yard of her Westside house.
“For me, it’s much more a political question than a gardening question,” Young said, adding that when her family moved to the house 10 years ago, she asked: “What are we doing with all this grass?” Though she claimed she had too little time to be a top-notch gardener, last month beets, carrots, lettuces, basil and parsley were growing steps from her front door. Gardening, she said, is one thing she can do, “a step in the right direction.”
Decades ago, the victory gardens planted at the behest of the federal government helped the United States cope with food shortages during World War II. (In World War I, they were liberty gardens.) By 1943, Americans planted more than 20 million victory gardens — at homes and schools and in parks — that were reported to produce 8 million tons of food that one old film called “America’s hidden weapon.”
Now, in community gardens and backyards, and of course on the Internet, a new victory garden movement has captured the attention of people who want to lessen their reliance on mass-produced or imported food, reduce their carbon footprint, foster a sense of community or save on their grocery bills in a fractured economic climate.
When the National Gardening Assn. compiles its annual data later this month, market research director Bruce Butterfield expects to see a 10% rise in food gardening for 2008. Based on anecdotal evidence and trends in past recessions, he expects even stronger growth this year.
“People want to have more connection with their own world,” said Yvonne Savio, manager of the Common Ground Garden Program for the Los Angeles County UC Cooperative Extension, which includes a master gardener program that aims to help poor people grow food. Applications, she said, have doubled in recent years.
Jimmy Williams, who runs Hayground Organic Gardening from his Los Angeles house, has 6,000 to 10,000 seedlings on the roof of his small garage alone. His business — selling seedlings and designing gardens — has quadrupled in the last year, he said. Why?
People see how much better food that they grow tastes, he said. Plus, there’s the economy. “They’re worried,” Williams said. “They don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The desire to grow food, however, crosses economic lines. Some people are struggling financially, but others simply prefer lettuce over lawns. Do-it-yourself types are eager for delicious, healthy food close at hand.
“Even super-rich people who can afford to send people to any store anywhere — they even want gardens,” Williams said.
Raised Beds in Backyard
Christy Wilhelmi, who teaches gardening at Santa Monica College and in her Mar Vista backyard, notes that growing your own makes the shortest path possible from field to table, eliminating the need to transport crops, sometimes thousands of miles. Behind her house, she gardens in eight raised beds, growing heirloom varieties of asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes and more to do her part to increase biodiversity. She would like to add chickens. They would eat kitchen scraps and some garden pests, and they would provide eggs.
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/home/la-hm-victory10-2009jan10,0,3830017.story
