People have tomatoes in mind this winter
Jim Snyder, a Michigan farmer, may have captured an emerging trend of our times in his recent Farmers for the Future blog post, where he wrote: "Seed catalogs have been pouring in and we are busy planning this year’s gardens. Gardening has taken on a more serious nature due to the economy."
Doug Jimerson, gardening editor for our big sister site, Better Homes and Gardens , tells me that this new seriousness about gardening is real.
"Actually we do predict a big uptick in gardening, in particular, food gardening," he says. "We've been also hearing from many seed suppliers that sales of veggie seeds are on a big upswing."
Our company research indicates not only that vegetable gardening is one of the big trends this year, Jimerson says, but also that the number one appliance being sold is freezers.
In early returns from an Agriculture Online poll on the topic, half of respondents say they will be growing a bigger garden this year.
"With this economy, you can bet on more and bigger gardens," one farmer wrote in response to the poll. "We finally tilled up a spot near the house and planted our first garden here last year. Wondered why we didn't do it sooner!"
If it's a little hard to imagine Americans actually relying on their gardens in tough economic times, well, the idea takes me back to the farms and small town of my childhood, where it seemed everyone grew a big backyard garden and many folks canned and froze food. Back then, people were still mindful of war-time shortages and their rural roots.
Another example I’ve seen of hard times sending people to the garden was in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In visiting a number of Russian farms where reliable input suppliers and markets had dried up, I saw cellars full of beautiful home-grown produce, enough to feed the farms through about three long Russian winters it seemed. Nobody was looking to Moscow for help.
This January, people must already be thinking spring. The top-clicked page in Edible Gardening on our big-sister site is Tips for Starting Tomatoes.
I think tomatoes are my favorite garden vegetable. I’m going to grow more of them this year.
3 comments:
For gardening to be a big movement you have to have access to land and the likelihood of a stable residence. That eliminates some.
You also have to have the time, energy and motivation which will cut out others.
Gardening is not free, as it takes tools and the time you could spend on doing something else.
To take the lifestyle decision involved in making gardening a significant part of one's living is a bigger step than many people think of when dreaming through a seed catalog.
There will likely be more gardens this year, but not likely it will become a major movement.
If you are getting into gardening it will have to be at least a 5 year commitment. You have cover the cost of getting set up for the garden and in the house if you are canning. The garden location and the soil type may limit your success. It is like buying that cute puppy who later turns into a burdensome mongrel. So is the garden. Mine never gets weeded a good as it should. I manage to produce quite well inspite of the limited care it gets. Finding a farmers market may be cheaper and less frustrating in the long run versus growing your own.
Five year commitment, I like that. It takes 3-5 years for me to straighten out a new farm with notill and more calcium. Most soils I deal with have way too much magnesium. As far as garden favorites, number one is green beans followed by fresh sweet corn and lettuce. But all of them are good because WE grew them!
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