Michele Duncan is used to getting free seeds.
She and her fellow master gardener volunteers typically throw seed-sorting parties to distribute garbage bags full of packets from companies donating their previous season’s stock.
This year, however, despite calls to more than 20 seed companies last summer, Duncan has only been able to gather a couple hundred packets left over from the 2008 planting season.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Duncan, who was seeking seeds for the master gardeners’ demonstration gardens at Jennings Memorial Park in Marysville.
Increases in requests for charity seeds, combined with a banner year for orders for seed companies, have resulted in fewer packets for donations to groups such as the master gardeners.
It’s a sign of tough economic times, said Jeff Hume, president of Ed Hume Seeds in Puyallup, which sold about 300,000 more packets than usual in 2008.
“We are in a business that does pretty well during bad times or when there’s worry in the community at large,” Hume said.
He said the company’s Plant a Row for the Hungry program also saw increased demand in 2008.
“People say, ‘I’d love to plant a row for the hungry, but I am the hungry.’ “
Demand for gardening information also is on the rise in Snohomish County, where a grass-roots group of volunteers is kicking off a series of educational gardening events on Saturday.
Today’s tight economy, along with a growing desire for local, organic, sustainably raised, safe produce, may make 2009 an extraordinary year for homegrown food.
Oregon-based Territorial Seed Co. experienced a double-digit increase in 2008 sales, with most of that growth in vegetables; 2009 promises to be an equally impressive year, said product development director Josh Kirschenbaum.
“We took five of our flower pages out of the catalog and replaced them with five pages of more vegetables,” he said. “People are looking for ways to be thriftier and more self-sufficient and growing your own food is a great way to do that.”
Burpee, the largest seed seller in the United States, recently announced a cost-analysis study that showed gardeners can harvest $1,250 in vegetables for every $50 they spend on seeds, water and fertilizer.
Burpee’s latest seed packet, The Money Garden, has six types of vegetable seeds, capable of producing groceries worth $500 in the supermarket.
“Vegetables are going to take off this year,” said Burpee Chief Executive George Ball. “Flowers are down and vegetables are up. The recession, whether it’s real or perceived, has really gripped people.”
Gardening culture
It’s not just the economics of tomatoes and other crops drawing people to gardening, said Monica Novini, a master gardener helping organize gardening events in Snohomish County.
“There’s a contact with nature that’s gone that needs to be back in people’s lives,” Novini said. “There’s a huge movement in gardening right now.”
Novini started offering vegetable gardening classes at the Julia V. Morris Centennial Garden in Monroe last September, not exactly prime time for gardening. Her sessions, however, were packed.
Ball, whose company also experienced double-digit vegetable seed and plant sales growth in 2008, attributes the change to the economy, but also a cultural shift: Baby boomers are hitting their prime gardening years. High fuel prices have kept people home to tend summer gardens.
Foodies want to grown their own gourmet, flavor-packed specialty produce.
Green advocates want local food that doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles from farm to table.
Nutritionists are urging people to eat more fruits and vegetables for better health.
Food safety scares, including contaminated beef, spinach, tomatoes, peppers and even pet food in recent years, have motivated people.
“It’s a huge trend,” Ball said, adding that 30-somethings are part of the movement. “We’ve got a new president. We’ve got a new banking system. We have a new way of looking at life.
“Young people, they’re looking at gardening and they’re saying, ‘It’s cool. Let’s do that.’ “
Kitchen Gardeners International, meanwhile, is pushing the vegetable-gardening agenda on a national scale.
It’s urging President-elect Barack Obama and his family to plant a large organic victory garden on the White House lawn to supply the White House kitchen and food banks.
Classes to come
Locally, vegetable gardening’s momentum is growing across Snohomish County, said Sharon Collman, an educator with the Washington State University Snohomish County Extension.
Groups such as Green Everett and newly formed Everett Tilth, as well as many of the extension’s 350 master gardener volunteers, are backing the movement.
“People are calling up saying, ‘I have to grow food. The more I can learn, the more food I can grow, and then my money will go to other things, like rent,’ ” Collman said.
Wendy McClure with the city of Everett’s Office of Neighborhoods has been experiencing the same thing.
“I’ve had more calls on that issue than I have had on any other issue in six years,” she said.
She said new community gardens are in the planning stages at 23rd Street and Lombard Avenue and in the Lowell neighborhood in Everett.
With that urgency in mind, Collman, McClure, numerous master gardeners and others have organized an educational campaign to help people start vegetable gardening in time for spring planting.
Events will include a free Growing Groceries Expo on Jan. 31. Workshops will cover vegetable gardening basics, composting, starting seeds and starting community gardens. An information fair will feature home gardening resources.
People who don’t have time or even a small sun-filled balcony for veggie gardening will find information on CSAs, also known as community supported agriculture programs, which connect local farmers and consumers with weekly deliveries of fresh local produce.
Organizers are also offering Growing Groceries Volunteer Mentor Training, a series of vegetable garden classes beginning Saturday. Fees will cover speaker expenses. People willing to volunteer their time to teach others how to grow vegetables, however, can attend all but the first class for free.
“The idea is to build a knowledge base in these communities,” Collman said.
She acknowledges the effort is ambitious.
“There is a tendency to get into the complexities,” Collman said. “But you can still get some peas to come up and eat them.”
Knowing how to grow food can also boost the county’s food security and independence.
“A community that cannot feed itself is vulnerable,” Collman said.
Rethinking gardens
In addition to the Growing Groceries efforts, local master gardeners will work all year, especially during the growing season, to demonstrate vegetable-garden skills, including tips for beginners and for people gardening in small, urban spaces.
More than 30 master gardeners are heading projects at the demonstration garden at Jennings Memorial Park, and many of them will feature vegetables.
Though the garden already includes a large kitchen garden, which contributes to food banks, other areas will be dedicated to vegetables this year, too, including live-plant exhibits showing how to garden vertically to save space.
Some of the ornamental landscapes will have edible elements integrated into their designs to show that gardeners don’t necessarily need dedicated vegetable plots.
“There’s a lot of different things that people can do,” Duncan said. “You don’t have to have acreage.”
Existing gardeners, prompted by books such as “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and “Food Not Lawns,” are responding to the local-food movement, Duncan said.
“I’m hearing people are digging up their lawns and planting vegetable gardens,” Duncan said. “They’re taking a different look at gardening.”
Reporter Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037 or sjackson@heraldnet.com.
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