Unstuck: The dirt on starting a garden

Urban farming is spreading like zucchini plant.

Proponents say it’s a way to provide healthful food cheaply.

“As we see oil prices and food costs rise, people are going to have to rely on their local community,” said Kendra Pearce, co-founder of the Urban Farm School in Vancouver. “We’re going to have to go back to the victory garden concept.”

While city-dwellers show plenty of enthusiasm, many have never plunged a spade into the earth or planted a seed. New organizations as well as established ones — even the Clark County health department — are reaching out to help these gardening novices.

Rob Sculley, plant buyer for Shorty’s Nursery in Vancouver, said he’s noticed a change in the customer demographic as sales of vegetable seeds and starts, as well as fruit trees and berry plants, spiked at his nursery this year.

He used to see older customers buying vegetable and fruit seeds and plants. Now a younger, more urban and sometimes less knowledgeable crowd seeks them.

These new customers often come in looking for starts for carrots, radishes and beets. Sculley explains to them that those vegetables are easily and inexpensively grown from seed.

Pearce, a Ridgefield resident who grew up on a Chehalis farm, and business partner Toree Hiebert, both in their 30s, recognize the demand among city-dwellers for gardening education. Their Urban Farm School offers classes on how to grow vegetables, fruit and chickens on small lots.

“Sometimes you need someone to hold your hand,” Hiebert said. “There has been a big generation gap. … My parents didn’t really vegetable garden. I had no concept of growing a garden to feed yourself.”

You’d never be able to tell from the backyard of her home in Vancouver’s Fircrest neighborhood, where she maintains a tidy chicken coop, a three-bin composting system, espaliered fruit trees, trellised raspberry canes and garden patches sprouting with greens. Such herbs as oregano and thyme are interspersed with ornamental landscape plants. During the growing season, she produces most of the fruits and vegetables her family of four eats on their 10,000-square-foot lot.

Families can grow a large share of what they eat with gardens in even smaller spaces.

Clark County’s health department has demonstrated just how to do that.

Tricia Pace, a nutritionist with the county health department, saw gardening’s potential to help low-income people put healthy food on the table. She launched a pilot program last year that supplied each of 10 families 4-foot-by-8-foot raised beds, seeds, starts and a master gardener mentor.

Raised beds are a good way to produce a high yield in a small space. The beds give control over soil quality, because they’re filled with fresh soil and compost. They keep out weeds. Moreover, they allow denser planting because there’s no need to leave foot paths.

“For a long time, we’ve been encouraging people to eat fruits and vegetables, but they’re so expensive,” Pace said. “It’s so important for everybody to have access. A lot of people can’t afford to go to Whole Foods and spend all that money for organics.”

As part of the health department’s program, Alisia Walton grew enough in the yard of her Vancouver duplex to supply about half of the food for her family of three last summer and fall.

“I very rarely buy produce,” she said.

Both the health department’s program and the Urban Farm School share the goal of dispelling the myth that food can only be grown on acreage.

“Anybody can do a little bit. You can get a black plastic pot and grow a tomato,” said Bill Coleman, a master gardener who serves as mentor for participants in the health-department program. He’s an example. Even though Coleman recently moved to a downtown Vancouver condo, he still manages to grow food. He cultivates tomato, basil, rosemary and peppers on his balcony.

WSU Master Gardeners coordinator Carolyn Gordon said the program has been receiving more requests for speakers on container gardening.
Like Coleman, urban dwellers with little more than a porch or balcony can successfully grow just about any vegetable or herb. The trick is selecting the right pot for the right plant, and watering consistently because containers — particularly terra cotta pots — dry out quickly.

Tomatoes and broccoli need deep pots for their deep roots, while lettuces will do fine in shallow pots, according to a WSU Master Gardeners tip sheet. Patio, Oregon Spring, Early Girl, Sweet Million are tomato varieties that fare well in containers.

Raising chickens has taken flight as another way to grow food in a small space. Clark County and Vancouver’s code enforcement office are receiving more inquiries about regulations governing urban chickens. In both jurisdictions, it’s legal to keep chickens, but not roosters, as long as the coops don’t create enough noise or stink to become a nuisance.

Hiebert and Pearce started teaching classes on raising backyard chicken two years ago. Their first class attracted about 30 students. Now — with the price of a dozen free-range organic eggs pushing $5 — the class draws about 60 people. Hiebert said a hen lays an average of an egg a day, and requires only 2-square-feet of space inside a hen house and 4 square feet in an outside pen.

The chickens not only provide eggs, they are instrumental to a healthy garden, she said. They serve as composters. She feeds them scraps, and uses their droppings to fertilize her garden.

“It’s all related,” Hiebert said.

She and Pearce predict the trend toward urban homesteading will grow.

“People are starting to realize they want to know where their food comes from,” Hiebert said. “It gets people connected to the Earth and its cycles and seasons again.”