Kitchen Gardeners International: Like local foods? Plant a garden!

By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, January 17, 2007 in The Washington Post

You could say 2007 was the year of the "locavore," a word coined by California food activist Jessica Prentice to describe people who eat food that is locally grown. While the New Oxford American Dictionary was declaring "locavore" the Word of the Year, shoppers were scurrying about in search of onions grown in nearby fields, beef grazed on local pastures, chickens who had come home to roost.

This kind of foraging can take a bit more effort and time. Farm stands, farmers markets and subscription farms make the job easier but are not always close at hand and may not be open for business at the instant you need a pound of fingerling potatoes or a ripe melon. Many of the passionately locavoracious who have followed this trend find that it leads inevitably to their back yards. What could be more local than your own vegetable garden, berry patch or orchard? Once these are established, the time spent tending them is often no more than that spent scouring the county for arugula or probing a produce manager about where she gets her mache.

For others, planting a garden is too daunting a step. "I would love to have one," a would-be yardavore will lament, "but I have a full-time job." Or kids. Or arthritis. So here's a solution: Hire somebody to install one for you and return weekly to tend it. If you're a busy person, you may already employ a cleaning service, lawn service or a landscaper. Why not a foodscaper? It's another expense, but one that pays for itself at least in part by putting food on the table, and the freshest possible food at that.

Landscapers are often asked to put in food gardens for customers. I used to do this once upon a time, and I found that instant veggie plots and apple trees brought their owners more pleasure than they got from yew hedges and junipers. In fact, if I were to nominate the job opportunity of 2008, it would be a specialty in implementing home food gardens. Call it foodscaping if you like, but I guarantee that if the practice takes hold, the apt word will emerge.

I've noticed that even a kitchen garden created by others soon invites more intimate contact. The owners get a kick out of picking beans and peppers. So do their kids, who now eat more vegetables than before. ("These are our carrots!") Weary commuters might even unwind for an hour after work by pulling some weeds, thinning the spinach or learning how to prune a tomato vine. The fact that professional backup is available makes the project less of a burden and provides a comforting safety net against neglect. Then again, the garden might draw you in completely until you have made it your own. But that's skipping ahead to 2009.

Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.

Posted by KGI on January 18, 2008 1:13 PM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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