Eating Well on the Cheap: Grow Your Own
I have a veggie garden—and I love it, although I’m still experimenting. One year my collards are completely carefree, robust, and producing for months (maybe years). The next, my collards are decimated by cabbage worms or earwigs. I’ve just finished the winter squash we froze from the crop two years ago—we couldn’t give the stuff away fast enough. But last year, planted in the same spot, we got a handful of squash. I learned to love zucchini when we were remodeling our house and an amazingly prolific plant sprung out of our junk pile. Last year, planted in a well amended raised bed. Got maybe 13 zucchini. Sigh.
I’ve got a lot to learn, and am looking for a local garden club that specializes in kitchen gardening to swap seeds and learn more (if you know of one, let me know). But I try to eat something from our yard at least once a day—and in spite of the earwigs, we often pull it off (the 100-yard diet). Growing your own is fun, not too difficult in our gorgeous climate, and provides a hobby, a little exercise, and fresh, organic produce (you will never go back to store bought tomatoes again).
It’s a little late in the year to talk about vegetable gardening (zucchini anyone?), but Fall is a fine time to create a new garden, and Sonoma County has plenty of cool season crops. So here are some resources if you are considering planting a vegetable garden of your own.
What is a home garden worth? Here’s what one family in Maine found (and their season is much shorter than ours.)- The Get Rich Slowly Blog also kept immaculate records to see just what their garden was worth over 2008.
- The Garden Web forums are a great place to get advice on just about any kind of garden problem you may have—as well as canning and preserving tips and recipes.
The Master Gardeners web page at the Sonoma County Coop Extension offers lots of great Sonoma County advice. They also have a help desk at local Farmers Markets and the Fair. Ask for their great handout on vegetable growing in Sonoma County with planting times, etc. In addition, they often give talks at local libraries about various gardening related topics- You can hire Petaluma Bounty to plant your garden (it’s a great cause), and if you plant an extra row for Petaluma Bounty you can get 10% off of food plants at Cottage Garden and EverMay Garden Center.
There is a Yahoo group for Sonoma County gardeners to share the bounty of their gardens: seeds, cuttings, plants, scions, tools, pots, tips, secrets, advice and assistance, soil, mulch, compost, fruit, nuts, veggies, honey, eggs, poetry, or whatever your garden grows.- If you need specialized gardening tools, don’t buy; borrow. Borrow from a neighbor and you may get some great local gardening advice along the way, or borrow from the Santa Rosa Tool Library, free.
One of my favorite veggie gardening books is The Joy of Gardening by Dick Raymond. It’s got a kind of 70′s feel to it, but he’s very down to earth and makes it all seem so easy and enticing. The pages are falling out, I thumb this one so heavily.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. Imagine a blend of Stanford mathematician and a hippie organic farmer. It’s got charts and graphs on how to plant the most calorie efficient crops, plans for growing nearly all your own food, and pages of footnotes—in short it’s far too intimidating for me as a novice gardener, but it’s oddly mesmerizing.
Do you have suggestions for good gardening books or resources for Sonoma County gardeners? I’d love to hear them.
15 comments
I am also “looking for a local garden club that specializes in kitchen gardening to swap seeds and learn more. ” And ditto on the “(if you know of one, let me know).” I do subscribe to the Sonoma County Gardeners Yahoo Group, but I think it would be fun to find/have a club that meets in person.
Wow! How I wish I had a plot of land to grow veggies on. In NYC, the closest I come is joining a CSA (community supported agriculture). Maybe some day.
Lots of great ideas here. I live in New England where June, this year, brought cold, rainy sweater-weather. The veggie garden did not recover, except for the cukes. Awful tomatoes, even on the farm stands. Sometimes I dream of gardening in California ….
Hey, Kathy, maybe we’ll just have to start our own!
Lisa don’t sigh at your zucchini yield–I tried yet again to grow a veggie this garden only to have mint invade and take over. Thankfully, I have friends who’ve taken pity on me and given me extra from their gardens!
Oh, to live in Sonoma – you lucky girl. I just love it out there. You’re brave to take on gardening. I grew up picking fresh veggies from my dad’s garden, but always feel intimidated and too rushed to try it on my own…Wish I had paid attention when he tried to teach me what I then considered too “boring.”
not a practical gardening book — mostly — but a good read — Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle. Also Logan Ward’s See You in a Hundred Years.
Thanks for this resource. My tomatoes failed miserably this year because a big bay tree shaded them. But I’m going to move the garden beds, plant a cover crop to enrich the soil, and try again!
What a great post; it inspires me to really think about gardening — and believe me, I’m not easy to inspire about things like that.
Sigh. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat as Almost Slowfood. I fantasize daily about how sweet it would be to walk out my door and snip some herbs for tonight’s dinner. OTOH, I have such a black thumb that it would be botanical cruelty for me to attempt to grow anything.
Perfect timing for me…my husband is planning to start a garden in our backyard. He grew up with parents that gardened but I’m a newcomer to it all. Thanks for the inspiration!
I’m buried in zucchini, basil, tomatoes, and cantaloupe this year. Cukes and beans didn’t do so well. I’m battling gophers; it’s always something, I think. I look forward to being able to pull out garden “fresh” veggies all winter long! I’ve been curious about the worth of my garden, too, so those links are perfect!
[...] You might also be interested in these Sonoma County vegetable gardening resources. [...]
im looking for some land to farm veggies. i take care of seniors who need something to look forward to if u need help with keeping up on ur farm please let me know.
You might check out iGrow Sonoma at: http://www.igrowsonoma.org/ I know they list community gardens, and they try to connect local gardeners, so someone there may know of a spot for you.