Sheds and the Zen of Gardening
Inspirational winter reading
December, 2008

I am not usually attracted to literature from the overtly spiritual side of gardening, but Wendy Johnson’s down-to-earth attitude and beautiful, vigorous writing style completely won me over. Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World is an extraordinary interweaving of philosophy, story-telling and first-hand garden wisdom - a rich, wide-ranging memoir stretching over more than three decades of an admirable life spent working hard and sitting zazen.

Johnson is a lay teacher of Zen meditation. She is also a gardener and activist, a fierce defender of the natural world. “The monastic path is not my way,” she writes, and she followed an unconventional path even within the Zen community in Marin County that became her home and workplace. “From the first moment, Zen practice was a field of action for me, never a safe haven from the world.” Her view of gardening is very much the same.

Johnson’s first and apparently skeptical encounter with meditation occurred in the early 1970s, when she was a young American expatriot living in Israel. The war in Vietnam raged on, and like many people of that age and time she was unhappy, restless and adrift. Meditation offered a lifeline. When she returned to America, she went first to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and later, with the man who was to become her husband, to another branch of the San Francisco Zen Center, Green Gulch Farm, where they helped to establish a productive organic garden.

Throughout the book, Johnson quotes her Zen ‘lead teachers’ and some great, eccentric gardening mentors who helped to shape her. On the practical side, Johnson is her own gardener and a passionate advocate for deep digging, hand watering and persevering with native soil, rather than that “soul-free” stuff you buy. (How right she is!) She is terrific on soil management, composting and pests, and conflicts between Buddhism and the exigencies of gardening are wryly noted. Later chapters tell of other gardens, hunger and harvest, and the importance of real food.

In the East, the dragon represents wisdom and transformation. Another name for Green Gulch Farm is Green Dragon Temple, and the author describes Green Gulch itself as a dragon writhing up out of the sea. The dragon’s gate of the title might be simply a metaphor for the threshold between that garden and the wild world beyond. At the end of the Acknowledgements, however, Johnson brings up global warming. “My fiercest mentors remind me that this is the best and worst time to be alive. Gardening at the dragon’s gate, at the edge of consequential danger and pivotal opportunity, may we acknowledge the truth of our times and work together for the benefit of all beings.”

Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate by Wendy Johnson is published in paperback by Bantam Books, with drawings by Davis Te Selle.

Need a special place to meditate? Another West Coast writer, Debra Prinzing, has published an lovely book entitled Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways. It is a series of studies, in text and photographs, of various interpretations of the garden shed idea. Not all their owners and designers call them sheds, of course: there are pavilions, tea houses, pods and even a chapel. Most are highly functional for their intended job, while a few are pure whimsy.

Some are fancy potting sheds, others are studios for writers and painters, or playhouses, repositories for collections of objects, private meditation zones or spaces for entertaining. All are stylish in one way or another, from cute to futuristic. Some are very grand, way beyond the means of most of us, but presented in all their variety they are an inspiration. Needless to say, the gardens that contain these structures are as different in style as the sheds and their owners, and vignettes of flowers, animals, kids and artifacts increase the pleasure. I challenge you to look at this book without coming up with a few ideas to enhance your outdoor space.

Stylish Sheds by Debra Prinzing is published in hardback by Potter. Lavishly illustrated with excellent photography by William Wright.

Cleaning Up

What a glorious fall we’ve had this year, and I am not just referring to the election. The crap-shoot that is Oregon weather brought not only great wine grapes and an embarrassment of apples and pears to the Willamette Valley but also fall color like we haven’t seen in decades. As November approached and I marveled at the colors in the wider landscape I’ve also appreciated the smaller, subtler effects in my own garden, as perennials, shrubs and grasses prepare for dormancy.

Like many flower gardeners, I've concluded there is too much to lose from cutting down and removing a whole season’s biomass in an October clean-up. Particularly this year. After a brief period of chilly but (at least here in town) frost-free nights, the weather has turned mild. What isn’t arrayed in yellow or scarlet is still fresh. Some ornamental grasses are still green and vibrant, while anemones, fuchsias, dahlias, cannas and the occasional rose providing mementoes of summer glories.

Late color isn’t the only thing we sacrifice in the name of clean-up. Beetles and spiders over-winter in cozy perennial clumps, and birds enjoy foraging for seed; a layer of coarse organic debris prevents compaction from rain. All the same, most of this detritus must go to the compost heap eventually, and there are both horticultural and esthetic reasons for doing it sooner rather than later.

Fallen leaves left lying on evergreen plants can result in bald spots. Diseased foliage on roses and irises and rotting, rain-soaked blooms increase your garden’s bank of fungal spores. A few plants, notably kniphofias and some irises, are easier to cut back before they rot, while others look just plain ugly beyond a certain stage of decomposition.

A bit of clean-up makes it easier to plant bulbs in perennial and shrub borders. It also makes a more attractive setting for emerging bulbs in early spring, and may help keep you out of sensitive beds in February, when the ground is wet and the emerging snouts of bulbs are especially vulnerable.

If you do go in for clean-up and prefer to do it in stages, what should be your priorities? Starting in the areas you see most often, clean up around small evergreen shrubs so you can actually enjoy them. They will also benefit from more light and improved air circulation. Remove seed heads from things that self sow wildly - it will save work later. Clean up diseased foliage and any frosted plant tops. Mulch exposed soil wherever possible.

Care of ornamental grasses can be confusing because they vary so much in their life cycles. Some change color rapidly in autumn and then collapse. Clean these up any time. Some adopt fall colors gradually and remain standing well into the new year. Cutting them down now won’t hurt them, but as long as you like the way they look, let them stand. Just remember that if you leave the clumps uncut much after January new growth will make the job a lot more difficult. By the way, I belatedly tried that trick of tying the tops of taller grasses in a bundle before cutting. It certainly makes for a neater job.

What about grasses that remain green, bronze or gray all winter? Some of these may be damaged by cutting back in fall. Leave them alone until next spring, when you may find you can remove old blades with a combing action or a sharp tug on a few blades at a time. Sedges can be deciduous or evergreen, and the latter resent being cut down in fall. Cut them to the ground in spring, when they already show signs of new growth. Other things to leave alone in fall and winter include New Zealand flax (phormium) and semi-hardy shrubs like lavender, rosemary and plumbago, and almost anything with silver foliage.

The ever-popular Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) is seriously invasive when it escapes into natural areas. If you grow buddleia, you should dead-head it. Since this brittle and often overbearing shrub is best treated like a giant perennial, it would seem simplest to prune it back to a couple of feet in fall, killing two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, buddleia is another of those things that may sulk and even die if it is cut back hard in fall, so I was interested to learn a while back that it does not release its seed until late winter.

Late winter is the usual time to prune buddleia, and the Forest Service official who told me about this, claimed he can trace the popular routes to yard-waste recycling yards by the copious butterfly bushes that grow along the way! He suggested cutting plants back part way in fall, discarding the seed heads before the seed shakes loose. In early spring, complete the pruning job by cutting back to a low framework of major branches.

November 2008

LATINO VEGGIES

October, 2008

I could hardly have chosen a lovelier season to visit the Churchill Community Garden. Sunflowers, tomatoes and towering corn were everywhere. So were tomatillo vines. I have never seen this Latin American staple on the plant before, and I was fascinated with the light green, busy vines sporting bright yellow flowers, and the green fruits concealed by their papery coverings.

I went to the garden to meet Sarah Cantril, executive director of Huerto de la Familia (The Family Garden), an organization that offers low-income Latino families an opportunity to grow their own vegetables and receive some garden-related education. Each family pays half the rental fee for a 600 square foot garden plot and receives donated plants, seeds, and gardening materials. The group rents plots at Churchill Community Garden, Skinner City Farm and the Youth Farm, the majority of them at Churchill. Huerto shares the Churchill site with Food for Lane County, neighborhood gardeners and the school.
Huerto meets twice a month to talk with the families about organic growing, and collaborates with other community based organizations and individuals to offer one-time classes on health related topics such as nutrition, seed saving and canning. There is also a children’s program that includes educational activities and a children’s garden. Huerto accept volunteers, including Master Gardeners. (Huerto gardens are official sites for Master Gardener candidates to put in the qualifying hours that go towards the certificate). Daniel Romero serves as site manager and garden program assistant. Now in his first year with Huerto, he helps families develop their plots and obviously loves his work. He’s a part time employee, but he lives near the Churchill garden and says “I’m always here”! Romero, who is from Puerto Rico, worked with Seeds of Change in New Mexico. He has grown and eaten a great variety of vegetables, and tries to interest the families in trying new things. Most families like to grow corn, peppers, tomatillos and – especially – tomatoes. He told me he would like to provide heirloom varieties next year, so the families can learn about saving seed, but they seem to prefer the familiar red tomatoes! Families may hold their plots from year to year, so he also encourages them to grow more food for year-round consumption.

So far Romero hasn’t found a lot of takers for cold-weather vegetables or winter squash. All the same, a close look at their gardens suggests that many of the families are open to a wide variety of crops. Green beans, onions and melons are popular. They grow epazote, an annual herb that is cooked with beans or eaten raw in tacos (Romero says it “takes away the gas”) and a variety of salad greens. At Skinner City Farm I met Inez, who is from Oaxaca, Mexico. She pointed out tepiche, an unfamiliar and tasty narrow leafed salad herb.The families also eat some familiar weeds: lambs-quarters, purslane and red root pigweed. Inez said that some families have seed sent from their people back home, for instance chilis, jicama and special varieties of corn.
Cantril introduced me to Lorenza, who has been with Huerto for five years and always has the most productive garden. She is a master seeder, and greatly respected by the other families for her skill. Her distinctive plot was divided neatly into small blocks of produce that included strawberries, onions, cucumbers, corn, beans and melons. Lorenza told me she had already put up 120 jars of tomatoes, enough to last most of the year. She reckons she puts in three or four hours a week, coming at 7pm after she finishes work. Lorenza is one of 10 Huerto families who, with other members of the Latino community, are participating in The Small Farmers Project of Lane County, a program of Huerto de la Familia which is partly funded by Heifer International. The families (who come from Mexico, Central America and Peru) are renting 14 acres on two properties off River Road which they will farm organically, raising turkeys for their own use and vegetables, strawberries and black cap raspberries for sale in the community. Carl Berg (of Berg’s Berries) serves as consultant and trainer. Cantril is excited about this enterprise, only the third Heifer project in Oregon and the first outside Portland.
Huerto de la Familia has been in operation since 1999, and received non-profit status in 2004. Huerto accepts donations, of money and in-kind. Volunteers are welcome and can help in a number of ways. For information about ways to donate or volunteer, visit www.huertodelafamilia.org or contact Huerto at: 3575 Donald St. Suite 145 D, Eugene, OR 97405. Phone: 541 255-6120 or 541 687-0819 E-mail: familygarden@efn.org

Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens, a selection of past Eugene Weekly columns. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org

LILIES GALORE
September, 2008

Afternoons may still be warm and pleasant, but lately there’s an undeniable chill in the morning air. It’s time to think about bulbs again, the kind you plant in fall: daffodils, tulips and ornamental onions, for example, as well as crocus and other small spring flowering bulbs. And lilies. True lilies, that is, in the genus Lilium, the aristocrats and glamour girls of the perennial garden.

On a recent Saturday morning at Eugene’s Lane County Farmers Market, Lou Westphal wondered why I didn’t write about lilies in summer, when you could go by the Buggy Crazy stall, look over the amazing flowers he brings to the market and pick out your favorite varieties. Well, I just didn’t. Luckily, you can check out pictures at www.buggycrazy.vstore.ca before visiting the market to buy his freshly dug lily bulbs.

With lilies, the fresher the better. Unlike tulips or daffodils, lily bulbs are never truly dormant and have no tough protective coat. The scaly, somewhat fragile bulbs can dry out easily, so it is best to plant them as soon as you can get them, in early to mid-fall. If you cannot plant them right away, pack them in very slightly moist sawdust in a perforated bag or box in a cool, dark place and plant them as soon as you can.

True lilies grow in temperate places all over the world. Several are native to the Pacific Northwest. While these and many other species are beautiful and rewarding, the easiest, most adaptable lilies for gardens are among the numerous man-made hybrids. The bulk of these fall into three groups: Asiatic, Oriental and Trumpet lilies.

Originally bred for the cut-flower trade in the mid-1900s., most Asiatics were scentless and had up-facing flowers on stems up to four feet. Subsequent breeding efforts have resulted in flowers that face out as well as up, and flowers in the reflexed, ‘Turk’s cap’ style which is common among naturally occurring lilies. Asiatics are the available in an almost unlimited color range (there are no blue lilies) and they are tough, easy and relatively inexpensive, a good choice for novice lily growers.

Oriental hybrids and Trumpet lilies are generally large-flowered, four to six feet tall and later blooming than Asiatics, which follow hard on the heels of late tulips. Orientals have exotic-looking, broadly open flowers in white, pink or rose that are often scented. The very popular ‘Stargazer’, though only about three feet tall, is otherwise typical of Oriental hybrids. Sumptuous Trumpet lilies and Orienpets (Trumpet-Oriental hybrids) provide a range of flower forms with subtle coloring and some heady fragrances.

The bulk of the lilies you’ll find at Buggy Crazy are bred by Westphal and his partner Lisa Hunt at their place in Lebanon. They select for “big, stout stems and a high bud count”. Do they really stand up without staking, even the six footers? “Yep,” as long as they have adequate light. Westphal and Hunt also breed to extend blooming times. They have achieved some later Asiatics and earlier Orientals but not, as yet, lilies that bloom later into fall: their last Orientals bloom about the same time as the latest species, Lilium speciosum var. rubrum.

Lilies require at least half a day of sun or strong indirect light. Trumpet and Asiatic lilies will grow in full sun, but the petals of Orientals are susceptible to sunburn and benefit from afternoon shade. Lilies should be planted in well-drained soil. With the exception of a few species, they need consistent moisture throughout the growing season, but wet, heavy soils can cause root rot. Many lilies send out roots from the stem, so plant the bulbs with at least three or four inches of soil above the bulb. Feed with a balanced fertilizer mix as you would perennials, but don’t let any fertilizer (or manure, unless very well rotted) come in contact with the bulbs. A leafy mulch is great.

I lived for many years where the soil was unsuitable for growing lilies, so I felt intimidated by them. But they have proved easy enough to grow in my Eugene garden – until voles devour the bulbs or I let the stems get shaded out by big perennials and shrubs! If this may happen in your garden, I suggest you grow lilies in large containers, where they will multiply contentedly and perform brilliantly for years. In the garden, interplant lilies with low growing, clumping plants that leave plenty of air and light around the leafy lily stems.

Asiatic hybrid bulbs will be available from Buggy Crazy in September, Orientals and Trumpets in October. A small selection of lilies native to the West Coast, including our local Lilium columbianum, should appear towards the end of September. If you can’t catch Buggy Crazy at the Saturday Farmer’s Market in Eugene, find him at the Mushroom Festival at Mt. Pisgah (Sunday, October 26). You can also buy bulbs on the website above and they will be shipped to you. Another great Pacific Northwest source of unique lilies is The Lily Garden in Vancouver, Washington (www.thelilygarden.com).

Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens, a selection of past Eugene Weekly columns. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org

EAT MORE KALE
It’s too good to pass up
August, 2008

No-one needs to be told that dark green leafy vegetables are loaded with nutrients, but not everyone likes kale, and that’s too bad. Kale is one of the hardiest and most nutritious members of the cabbage family and by far the easiest to grow. It can also be harvested almost any time of year. For anyone with a dream of self-sufficiency--or just an urge to supplement the family diet with extra-nourishing greens--kale seems too good to pass up.

Those of us who love it eat kale all year round, but what makes kale especially valuable is its availability in late fall, winter and early spring. Spring-sown kale can be harvested, leaf by leaf, late summer through winter. You start with the lower leaves. Cut, don't pull, each leaf, leaving a nubbin of leaf stalk, to protect the buds in the leaf axils. Buds should sprout in early spring of the following year, and they make delicious eating.

A fresh crop of kale for fall-through-spring harvest should be sown in June or early July, but later sowings are also possible(at least 6 weeks before frost). Nick Routledge is experimenting with different varieties and sowing times for the School Garden Project of Lane County. Plants from late sowings won’t make big plants by fall, he says, but they will winter over and bulk up for harvest in March and April, a time when fresh, local greens are hard to come by.

Nurturing direct-sown seedlings through the hot weeks of July and August (even supposing you have room for them amomg your summer bounty) can be a challenge, so many gardeners raise or purchase starts, planting them out after the weather cools and some garden space becomes available. The little plants will still need abundant water and protection from slugs. Row covers help exclude cabbage loopers, though kale seems less attractive to loopers than other cabbage crops.

Different varieties of kale vary in flavor, heat tolerance and many other qualities. Although most seed catalogs don’t make this clear, it is helpful to know that there are two main groups of kale. Scotch or curly kale, such as the varieties Redbor and Winterbor, grow two to three feet tall, the stems loosely clad with leaves that facilitate leaf by leaf harvest. Although Scotch kales grow sweeter and more tender in cold weather, some people still find them uappealing. More popular (though still in the same group) are laciniata or black kale varieties such as Toscano, with long, dark green puffy-looking leaves. Mature plants look like little palm trees.

The second important kale group, sometimes called napus kales, includes Siberian and Russian varieties. They are more compact, with a short central stem, and tend to be milder tasting and more tender. Young napus kale leaves are preferred for tossing in a salad mix. Winter Red, a popular Russian type from Territorial Seed Company, is purplish gray and frilly, with beautiful red ribs. White Russian is green with deeply cut edges. Both originated here in Oregon, which appears to be a hot-bed of napus kale selection.

Napus kales are readily available as open pollinated, not hybrid, seed. That means you can save seed from your own plants and expect the progeny to be similar in quality to the parents. These kales (Brassica napa, or B. oleracea var. fimbriata) are genetically distinct from Scotch kale (B. oleracea acephala). While Scotch will interbreed with many other members of the cabbage family, napus kales cross only with rutabaga. If you and your neighbors don’t grow rutabagas (or at least don’t let them flower!) selecting and growing kale from your own seed should be a cinch. Territorial Seed sells Wild Garden Kales, a mix of Russian and Siberian types that would make a good starting point.

Kale is generally biennial, flowering in spring of the second year and ripening seed in summer or fall. For useful information on saving kale seed, see Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon. For a thorough account of seed saving and plant breeding in all its aspects, see Carol Deppe’s book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving.

Rachel Foster of Eugene does not currently grow kale but she eats a lot of it. Contact her at rfoster@efn.org for referrals to the people on the cutting edge of kale culture.

PATIO CHAMPS
July, 2008

This year’s unusually cold, slow spring was hard on both gardeners and the plant trade. Now that summer is finally here, it’s a joy to see great banks of color in the stores, tempting procrastinating gardeners and reminding us that it’s never too late to stuff things in containers.

I love to grow plants in pots but I don’t invest a great deal of time and money in them. I believe the back bone of a pot garden should be dependable, and I expect mine to deliver for three or four months with only basic care. So while I like to try a few new things each year, I mostly rely on favorites I know I can count on.

Plants that easily over-winter, with or without shelter of some kind, save money and time. Two standouts in the bulb category are lilies and agapanthus (Lily of the Nile). My favorite lilies for containers are the Asiatics. They come in a huge range of colors, subtle or gaudy, and produce spectacular results in early summer, long before the many heat-craving plants reach their full glory.

By the time the petals fall from Asiatic lilies, agapanthus plants are full of buds. My pick for pots is the dwarf variety ‘Peter Pan’. I like the tidy foliage and clear mid-blue flowers. Peter Pan will live for several years without division in a 14 inch pot, small enough to move to the garage with relative ease. (Lilies are as winter-hardy as the pot they grow in, but potted agapanthus are best moved to a dry, frost-free location).

Provided they live in frost-resistant containers, hardy shrubs and trees can live outside year-round. Small Japanese maples and hydrangeas live for years without re-potting if you don’t over-fertilize, which makes them a very good investment. Hydrangeas are classic, and a great stand-by for shady patios. I prefer to prune them only lightly (in April) so they have many modestly-sized flower heads rather than a few huge mops on straight, cane-like stems.

Roses are almost as easy, provided you match the variety with an appropriate pot size. Small floribundas, polyanthas and the smallest of the modern shrub or landscape roses are particularly good for pots under 20 inches. My current favorite is ‘Little White Pet’. It has grown in the same 16 inch pot for several years, undisturbed except by spring pruning. I remove spent flower clusters during the summer, and it is almost always in flower.

Once they get going, fuchsias bloom incessantly until frost. Many are winter hardy, but my favorite upright fuchsias for containers are the frost-tender ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt’ and a handful of close relatives, all with tubular flowers. In ‘Gartenmeister’ the flowers are orange-red, and contrast with the dark leaves beautifully. Fuchsias bring hummingbirds to the deck and patio. Most upright types like at least partial sun.

Certain grasses and sedges look striking in pots. Carex flagellifera is fun in the sun, pouring down from a tall container. Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) - green or gold, with or without stripes - is hard to beat for shade. (It is, alas, deciduous.) Like most grasses It looks best on it’s own. Plant three together for a good immediate effect, or use a new one in a mixed pot, then move it up to its own pot next year.

Coleus is an old stand-by that has made a come-back in lots of nice new shades. It is useful in cooler Eugene gardens where many colorful leafy tropicals don’t perform well. But don’t try to plant it before the weather warms!. Coleus enjoys light or partial shade, and chartreuse varieties really light up a shady pot garden. Use it for contrast with grasses and hostas. (It’s a lot easier to keep slugs and snails off your hostas if you grow them in pots.)

A spiky silver thing from New Zealand named astelia was an impulse buy. when I failed to find a place for it in the garden I put it in a pot on the deck. It over-wintered under the eaves next to the front door, where it has remained for more than two years, spurned by deer and proving to be amazingly shade tolerant. It will also grow in sun, but is more silvery and beautiful in shade. Astelia isn’t easy to find, but I saw some recently at Dancing Oaks Nursery near Monmouth, OR (503 838 6058).

Some miscellaneous items: Diascia and Swan River daisy (brachycome) are wonderfully sturdy pot fillers and spillers that won’t poop out the minute you fall behind with the watering. Neither will coral bells (heuchera) with their colorful and beautifully marked leaves. And while most sages demand full sun to bloom well, the annual salvia ‘Lady in Red’ prefers light or partial shade. It is also one of the few annuals I know that deer don’t usually eat. It must be the stinky leaves.

Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens, a selection of past Eugene Weekly columns. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org

GRASS INTO GARDENS
June, 2008

I first met Charlotte Anthony on a vast expanse of bark mulch high above Washington Street, facing west. I arrived with my camera and a notebook (and, luckily, a hat) intending to observe Victory Gardens for All in action. But Charlotte immediately put me to work with the others, clearing away mulch and hauling compost in a bucket brigade, as she directed the transformation of this recently cleared area into a productive vegetable garden. Among the eight or so helpers at work that afternoon were the slightly bemused owners, perhaps wondering just what they were getting into.

Charlotte is the driving force behind Victory Gardens for All (VGA), a small but dedicated group that seeks to turn all available space into vegetable beds. If you have space for a garden but lack the knowledge or time to get started, just let Charlotte know. She’ll soon be over with tools, a work crew, veggie starts and her own abundant energy. If you can afford it, you will be asked to pay $50. If you are able bodied, you (with a couple of friends, if possible) will help put in your garden and – a crucial point – undertake to ‘pay forward’ by participating in the transformation of someone else’s yard.

Once you have a garden you are pretty much on your own, but Charlotte’s methods may improve your chances of success. After excavating narrow paths between beds about 4 feet wide, piling the soil on top of the beds, she adds a small amount of compost (for a new garden, about 5 gallons for a 5 x 4 foot bed) and a source of minerals such as ¼ cup of Azomite. Then she applies mycorrhizal fungi and ‘effective microorganisms’ (EM). “I have never had a problem with fertility after using these,” says Charlotte, who has experience in soil work and bioremediation. “I believe they help bring nitrogen in from the air as well as freeing what is fixed in the soil.” She claims she has turned pure orange clay subsoil to 6 inches of black, friable, topsoil with these two additives.

Growing vegetables is hot right now. On any given day this spring in many neighborhoods you are sure to spot someone tilling up a chunk of the front lawn, and there is now a lottery for community garden plots that once went vacant. All this digging may be spurred by health concerns and rising food costs, and farmers markets have introduced many people to the taste and texture of really fresh food. VGA, like similar organizations around the world, believes organic home gardens can increase local food security and help combat climate change.

Charlotte is a strong and determined woman, but I worry she may wear herself out. Upcoming projects are posted to an e-mail list, with mixed results. A couple of gardens have been postponed for want to labor, and at one of last week’s gardens (loaned for her own use, in a friend’s beautiful back yard) I found her working by herself, the promised help having not materialized. I asked her if participation in the labor force has been a problem. “Once I let go of the ‘you said you’d be here today’ thing it’s been OK, ” she said, with a laugh. The proof, of course, is the number of gardens she’s accomplished.

As of last week, VGA had installed upward of 220 vegetable gardens in the Eugene-Springfield area since November 2007, including one for Carolyn Crockett, who read a story about VGA in the newspaper. Carolyn is physically challenged and needed elevated beds – a first for VGA. She has very little food money and says this is her only chance for fresh green vegetables. The impressive 20 by 4 foot beds were built of reclaimed lumber with volunteer labor and filled with donated soil. Carolyn was all smiles as the soil went in.

Joann Ernst (recently elected to the EWEB board, if the name seems familiar) saw a flyer at the ELAW conference. Joann already had a small garden area on difficult clay soil. VGA ripped out some old raised beds, covered the area with cardboard Joann had collected, and laid new soil in Charlotte’s pleasing design of concentric, curving beds. Then they planted starts of greens and potatoes and sowed some seeds. Joann would have had a garden anyway, but at 20 by 20 feet “this is way bigger,” she says. Now, a month later, she is eating greens and strawberries from her garden. She wants me to stress how great it feels to plant gardens and see them grow.

For information about Victory Gardens for All meetings or to request a garden, phone Jessica at 686-2516, e-mail victorygardensforall@gmail.com, or visit
www.victorygardensforall.org.