Coronavirus fears and hopes are creating a new legion of home vegetable gardeners
Until this spring, Christina Berry hadn’t grown as much as a radish. Now, the Spanaway resident is turning a section of her grassy backyard into a vegetable garden to feed her family and her neighbors.
“We’ve always talked about starting a garden, and multiple years we’ve bought seeds but nothing ever happened,” she said. “This year, as the pandemic started and things started to progress, we wanted the freedom to feed our own family.”
Berry is part of a coronavirus-triggered trend in the South Sound that has cleaned out garden supplies in local nurseries and pushed seed companies to the brink. Whether they’re motivated by a need for self sufficiency, a desire to stay out of grocery stores or a loss of confidence in the food-supply chain, first-time gardeners are sprouting across the region.
Berry figures her garden will save money, increase healthy eating and reduce trips to grocery stores.
Her family includes her spouse, Serena, a brother-in-law and two young children. All three adults fall into high-risk categories for COVID-19. If another spike in the disease occurs in fall as some experts predict, Berry hopes their garden will be in full harvest.
“We hope there is so much that comes out of our garden that we’re not going to be able to eat it all and that we’re able to put a table out in front of our property so that our neighbors, if they need food, will be able to eat,” she said.
She turned a 10-foot by 25-foot section of her back lawn into a garden. She’s growing corn, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, blue pumpkins, spaghetti squash and more.
Berry started her seeds in a DIY greenhouse she made from wood pallets
Like many novice gardeners, Berry can’t rely on techniques absorbed as a child in the family garden.
“My father was king of the can food aisle,” she said. “My mom worked three jobs just to be able to get by. I don’t even know how often our grass was mowed as a child.”
Instead, she’s turned to the internet, gardening expert friends and experience. She has new respect for farmers and their expertise.
There have been some surprises.
“I thought that onions grew underground to where you couldn’t see them, like carrots,” she said. “Then I Googled it. “
Onions grow above ground, she learned.
“It’s been super fun,” she said. “And the other fun part has been having my 5-year-old out there with me, taking earthworms to the compost and learning about plants together as he’s been out there digging with me and planting with me.”
Nurseries, seed companies depleted
On a recent spring day, the seed rack inside Tacoma nursery GardenSphere had more empty slots than filled ones.
Co-owner Gabe Valbert has one word for the season, his 16th in the business.
“Crazy,” he said with a sigh. “We’ve had three to five times the amount of seeds and veggie starts we sell in a regular spring.”
The rush coincided with the closure of bars and restaurants in the state on March 17.
Valbert estimated that half of the home gardeners walking through his doors are first timers.
“Everyone’s been very excited about it,” he said. “We have some people who are starting from square one, and we go over the basics. Some people are coming in very educated on it because they’ve had a lot of time at home, and they’ve done a lot of internet research.”
Carrots seems to be number one on new gardeners’ list, Valbert said.
Valbert’s seed racks were cleaned out for almost three weeks, but seed companies are responding. He estimates he’ll have seeds and veggie starts into June.
South Sound seed company Ed Hume Seeds also has been “crazy,” according to Hume’s son and co-owner, Jeff.
“Ed is here, but he’s out in the garden,” Jeff Hume said. “We’re not letting him in the office because of the coronavirus. I literally had to just kick two people out of the garden without masks who were talking to him. We’re trying to keep him safe.”
Online seed sales have tripled, Hume said.
“Our sales through the stores have been to the point that we’re running out of seeds,” he said. “Flower sales have been flat. Vegetable sales are through the roof.”
In a normal year, Hume sells 4 million seed packages in a year. This year, he’s already sold more than 3 million.
Compounding the pressure, Hume Seeds shut down in March for two weeks after two employees developed COVID-19 symptoms, Hume said.
Victory Gardens
Some novice gardeners are referring to their home gardens as victory gardens. The term was used during World War II to describe small vegetable and fruit gardens at homes, parks and other public spaces. The gardens lessened food chain demands and boosted morale.
Vegetables can be grown from seeds or from starts — young but established plants typically sold in 4-inch or gallon-sized pots.
Starts are what Lakewood-based Emergency Food Network has been handing out to eager gardeners, both first timers and veterans. As of Thursday, EFN had distributed 5,790 plants through its Victory Garden program.
The starts come from the more than 120 different crops grown at EFN’s Mother Earth Farm. The farm increased production when CEO Michelle Douglas saw the need developing in March.
“We made the decision that the food system was going to need all the support it was going to get,” Douglas said.
EFN clients have been lining up — while social distancing — to get the starts, Douglas said.
“Some of our most popular veggies have been collard greens, arugula and of course Sugar Snap Peas,” said Liam McNamara, farm manager.
Other popular vegetables include lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, fennel, mizuna and starts from 20-year-old rhubarb crowns.
On Thursday, the EFN is distributing 200,000 pounds of potatoes donated by Washington state farmers at the Tacoma Dome.
Despite the increase in home gardens, it’s still not going to meet the demands during the COVID-19 crisis, Douglas said. Victory gardens are only part of an emergency food system that utilizes food banks like EFN as well as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Douglas said.
“The (need for the) emergency food system is estimated to double to quadruple from the beginning of this through the year,” Douglas said.
Helping Others
April Anne Henson has been vegetable gardening for the past two years at her Lakewood condo. She grows herbs, fruit and vegetables in containers. This year, in response to the pandemic, she’s tripled the size of garden.
“Things were gone from the store for a couple of weeks when this all started,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling secure that the food system was going to be there for us in the near future.”
As she expanded her garden she researched gardening, often utilizing Washington State University master gardeners and other online resources. As her knowledge grew, Henson passed it on.
“I’ve been helping all the neighbors with pots and seeds, seedlings.” Henson said. “I’m giving away everything but the dirt, trying to get everyone else growing around me.”
This year, she’s growing herbs, berries, tomatoes, corn, cantaloupe, peas, peppers, potatoes and more. She plans on building raised beds.
She purchased nearly all her plants and seeds using food stamps. A limited income was one of the original motivators that got Henson gardening in the beginning.
“We needed to make our EBT (food stamps) stretch,” Henson said.
“We’ve already harvested lettuce this season,” Henson said. “We grew it from kitchen scraps.”
She puts the tail end of lettuce heads and celery bunches in water until they grow roots and then plants them in soil.
When her garden reaches its maturity, she’ll have more food she can use and will give the excess to neighbors.
Food is Free
This summer and fall passersby might notice tables piled with produce in Tacoma front yards. They might be part of the grassroots efforts of Food is Free, a Texas-based non-profit that builds small, sharing gardens at private residences and other locations.
David Thompson has been volunteering with the group in Tacoma since 2015. He began building gardens in 2018. This spring it’s become a full time avocation for the retiree.
“Everything is shared and freely given away,” Thompson said of the gardens. When produce is harvested, the gardeners set up a sharing table to offer fresh produce along with donations of fruit and dry goods.
Thompson has built 14 gardens to date in 2020 with plans for 35 more. It’s a huge increase, a result of the pandemic.
The gardens are being funded by grants from the Sustainable Tacoma Commission and a pandemic-inspired grant from EFN. The $3,200 EFN grant will build 10 gardens, he said.
Each garden consists of two 4-foot by 12-foot raised beds that are 16-inches-high. They’re usually built in the parking strips of private residences. The homeowner or resident tends the garden.
“A lot of them are new gardeners,” Thompson said. “So, I come by and make sure everything is fine. I supply a lot of the plant starts. I start growing those things in January.”
The beds are filled with Tagro soil provided by the city. Tagro is delayed this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown. Thompson will concentrate on plants that grow into the fall: broccoli, cabbage, beets.
Do it yourself
Dana Coggon kills plants for a living. In her off hours, she helps others grow them.
Coggon is Kitsap County’s noxious weed control program coordinator. She battles ivy, Scotch broom and other plants that threaten to overtake the region.
But her passion project, as she calls it, is the work she does in her off hours to put food production in the hands of Pierce County residents.
“I took the first weekend that everybody started talking about COVID and started building gardens,” Coggon said. She also started a Facebook group: Gardening for our greater good ...Tacoma growing together.
Gardening, Coggon said, can reestablish the links between people and the food they consume.
“We often don’t know where it comes from,” she said. “We don’t know what it looks like when it’s not in a package or already in a meal.”
Coggon offers tips and advice on the Facebook page, often how to garden on the cheap.
“If you don’t have the money to build a garden bed, how do you turn over your grass and plant on that,” she said.
She urges first time gardeners not to worry too much about technique or timing.
“The reality is, if you put a seed in the ground, 90 percent of the time it’s going to grow,” she said. “Then, it’s just about keeping that plant as healthy as possible.”
Like Henson, Coggon uses celery, lettuce and bok choy stubs to regrow roots and plant in her garden. She made a how-to video for her Facebook page on the subject.
Coggon reminds first time gardeners that while gardens don’t require constant supervision, they still require watering and care if you want to see your seeds and starts make it to the dinner table.
“People forget that once you put in a garden, it is work,” Coggon said. “You’ve got to go out and tend to it at least a little bit and manage it so that it stays productive.”
Coggon also urges first timers to not be intimidated by Martha Stewart-worthy show gardens. An ugly garden can be just as productive and nutritious.
“I’m not going for award-winning tomatoes or award-winning anything,” Coggon said. “I’m just going for the award of putting it on my plate.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
