In Sun Valley Magazine: Backyard Bounty

I was thrilled to be featured in Sun Valley Magazine to talk about my adventures of home gardening from the midwest (Chicago) to the mountain west (Sun Valley Idaho).

In this post I’ll talk about why gardening is important to your health and wellness, and how you can get started on your own journey. I’ll cover both the WHY and the HOW.

You can read the full article here.

First, a little background about my love of dirt
As the Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit organization focused on nutrition and wellness (Nurture), I have been actively involved in the “farm to table movement” for over ten years.

I’ve been involved in everything from creating community gardens for low-income families, to garden education, to cooking and nutrition classes.  I enjoy working with both adults and kids- getting them into the garden and close to their food.

I see the benefits of gardening in various forms from getting active to eating better to increased mental wellness (don’t believe me? Here’s to an article about gardening as the new Prozac).

Visiting the White House garden was a highlight in my journey.

WHY YOU SHOULD GARDEN
Here are my top three reasons.

1.  Having a garden is good for our planet.  The average meal travels 2,000 miles in trains, boats, and planes. Buying produce from South America, and even Mexico, California, and Florida for that matter, contributes to our addiction to oil. Perhaps you have read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan? I quote, “A one-pound box of pre-washed lettuce contains 80 calories of food energy… growing, chilling, washing, packaging, and transporting that box of organic salad to a plate on the East Coast takes more than 4,600calories of fossil fuel energy, or 57 calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food.”
2. Having a family garden gives us power in the food chain.  We have the ability to affect the food chain, and the answer lies right in our backyards.  When push came to shove during WWII and produce was rationed, “Victory Gardens” were planted coast-to-coast—an estimated 20 million of them.  By the war’s end, Victory Gardens were turning out 40 percent of the nation’s produce output, and big farms were freed up to supply the troops. The statistics describing the success and productivity of Victory Gardens offer a great deal of hope and possibility for us today as our nation struggles with its dependency on oil.  What we feed ourselves comes from the planet, and how we treat the planet affects how we can feed ourselves.  It is one big circle.
3. Having a family garden is good for your health and wellness.  Kids (and adults!) are so much more likely to eat food that they’ve grown themselves. Gardening gets your body moving in the fresh air.  As the article I linked to above states, it can actually improve your mental health (acting as an anti-depressant).Sometimes a good old fashioned “story” helps to paint the picture, so I’m going to share with you a themaster gardener Elizabeth Matlin. Her enthusiasm grips me and makes me want to run outside and start digging and sowing!  So read on below, and be inspired… Thank you Elizabeth!

Note: the images of the bunny shown to the right/above are is from my latest children’s book (Where Does a Rainbow Grow?).  You can learn more about the book at the book’s website.

ONE VEGETABLE GARDENER’S STORY by Elizabeth Matlin

Have you ever plucked a ripe tomato from a vine that you nurtured for three months? Or tugged a plump rosy radish from the earth where you had planted a small seed? If so, you know the rewards of growing your own vegetables. Whenever I step into my vegetable garden, I feel happy—the kind of happiness children experience in simple, everyday things. It is my playground where I am in the present moment. Past and future disappear, and I am both energized and at peace. Vegetable gardening is not one more item on my “to-do” list. I don’t have to do it—there are plenty of sources nearby for fresh organic vegetables. Rather, I choose to grow vegetables for a variety of reasons that I will share with you here, along with some tips and resources for starting your own garden. Perhaps you will be inspired to plant a small garden playground with your family this spring!

The path to my vegetable garden has been a full-circle journey. I am an amateur, self-taught gardener who learned to love digging in the dirt at a young age. In my earliest gardening memory, I am about five years old and planting corn seeds with my mom and three sisters in two small circles of soil in our Skokie backyard. These were no ordinary corn seeds—they were popcorn seeds! I don’t think we ever harvested any popcorn, but planting seeds and watching them grow was magical. Fast forward about seven years. It’s the early 1970’s and Skokie has started a community garden. My mom and aunt each acquire a plot and my sisters and I (now pre-teens) spend many hours that summer hoeing, planting, weeding and watering vegetables. While there was some griping about the work, we gobbled the harvest of fresh-picked lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and green onions. And the shared talking, laughing and physical labor strengthened our family bonds.

As the years went by, we abandoned the community plot and asked my dad to dig up some of the lawn to make bigger garden beds in our modest-sized backyard. Through my high school and college years, the lawn kept shrinking as we planted more vegetables, herbs and flowers. Every Memorial Day weekend, we headed to our favorite nurseries to buy plants and seeds, and then spent the holiday happily outside in the spring air. The herb garden was my domain. I loved to cook, so snipping my homegrown fresh herbs was a treat. Since then, I’ve always managed to have an herb garden, expanding my repertoire to include lemon verbena, cilantro, borage, chervil and salad burnet.

When my husband and I moved to Wilmette a decade ago, I had no idea the village had a community garden located, ironically, not far from the former site of my great grandparents’ nineteenth century farm at Hibbard and Glenview Roads. When a neighbor told me about the gardens at Centennial Park, I was eager to re-create my childhood experience of growing vegetables at a community plot. My own yard had only one partly sunny spot where I could grow herbs and some greens but not much else. I was assigned a plot in 2003 and shared the 200-square-foot space with two neighbors. The next year, one neighbor bailed out, and by 2005 I was gardening solo.

I had moderate success, even though I was not spending much time at the garden. Unbeknownst to me, however, I was experiencing a gradual internal shift. Observing and interacting with my fellow gardeners was an accidental education. Why were Joseph’s exotic Chinese greens so lush? How did Jenny’s garden stay virtually weed free? (Jenny turns 92 this year and is my heroine.) What variety of peas was Joe growing, and could I also grow peas? Seemingly overnight, I wanted to expand my gardening knowledge and make my mediocre plot more productive and versatile. I started reading books and the gardening section in the newspaper faithfully—and continued to tap into the knowledge of other gardeners. Over the last three years, I’ve learned how to amend the soil; the importance of compost, mulch, raised beds, wide rows and bunny fences; companion planting; crop rotation; organic pest and blight controls; what seeds could be sown directly outdoors; how to water properly. I know I’ve still barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn and grow. I’ve also come to appreciate variables you can’t control, such as weather, insects, and animal pests. They ensure that no two gardening seasons are ever the same—how exciting is that! This year the challenge will be voles—burrowing rodents that appeared last summer and eat plant roots.

It is said that a journey of a thousand miles began with a single step and this philosophy surely applies to creating a successful garden. No two gardeners will have the same journey, for it is a personal and unique experience. And it is a journey best started with a small single step. Here are a few pointers for first-time gardeners:

HOW YOU CAN GARDEN

Start Small: There’s a fair amount of time and muscle that goes into planting, maintaining and harvesting a garden. As with most lifestyle changes, it’s essential to start small and gradually incorporate gardening as a new activity into your schedule. If your garden is too large to easily maintain, it may become a disappointing burden rather than a positive adventure. Expand your garden space gradually each year.

Make a Plan: Keeping a simple record of what you plant from year to year is a useful tool as your garden evolves. In a journal or on a computer, draw a basic outline of your garden space and fill in areas with the names of the vegetables you plant. You might also include:

a) specific varieties (such as atomic red carrots or springer spinach)
b) the planting and harvesting dates
c) notes/comments on likes/dislikes, results, etc.

I now plant a spring and summer garden and create separate plans for each season.  These plans will also help with companion planting and crop rotation.

Share the Experience: Ask the whole family to participate. Let your children select some of the seeds and plants. Young children can help plant seeds, pull weeds, water and harvest small items like cherry tomatoes and strawberries. Older children can each be assigned a small section to plant and maintain, even cooking their harvest for all to enjoy.