photo credit: woodleywonderworks
For gardeners, Acting Local is as easy as planting a row of veggies or an apple tree. If you plant extra for sharing with the community, take double credit. Instead of traveling several thousand miles to your table – talking ‘bout you, Chilean strawberries – your food only has to go a few steps. The world at large benefits from shrinking carbon footprints and energy costs, and you benefit from the Yummy Factor.
The sooner food is eaten after harvesting, the more sugar it retains and the better it tastes. That’s why Chilean strawberries bought in March in Seattle taste like play dough sprinkled with seeds. July berries at the Phinney Ridge Farmers Market are exponentially more flavorful; berries popped into your mouth from your garden will be a revelation.
Space, Schmace –Grow Anywhere!
photo credit: Hair Squared
No need for an orchard or even a corner lot. Monks in the dark ages espaliered Quince on their mountaintop garden walls – without even a nearby Home Depot. You too can grow some delectable food – no matter your growing situation.
Are you:
- Stranded on a patio? One pot can grow a succession of leafy greens now and in the fall, and strawberries, peas, or herbs in summer. A strawberry pot or a tiered planter crams in even more.
- Renting? Double-check with your landperson first – portable interlocking planting beds from Coast Cabins make easy, temporary insta-gardens. Or consider pots as above.
- Challenged by zero growing space? Sign up to garden in a P-Patch or register to garden in someone else’s yard with Urban Garden Share.
Upcoming Edible Events:
If you do have a garden space, several local groups are offering events to help you get growing.
- Spring into Bed
- Workshop: The Edible Hedge
Sunday, March 21, 10 – 3
OmCulture Studio in Wallingford
Jenny Pell & Marisha Auerbach
Pre-registration required; Cost: $50
jennypell@gmail.com or (206) 949-0496
Why settle for a yew hedge (with toxic berries) when you could have currants, gooseberries, thornless loganberries, goji berries, aronia, goumi, blueberries, raspberries, and hardy kiwis? Oh the tarts! The jams! The p-i-e-s……Edible hedges can be used as delicious privacy screens, windbreaks, bee forage, and they are beautiful besides.
According to the speakers:
Planted permaculture-style in well-mulched beds with perennial flowering shrubs, self-seeding flowers, and mycorrhizal fungi, these hedges require minimal maintenance, provide bigger yields season after season, and are easy to propagate. Come and learn hedge design, propagation techniques, sheet-mulching, ecosystem enhancement, and plant an entire easy-to-replicate edible hedge!
- Seattle Tilth Early Spring Edible Plant Sale
March 20, 9 a.m.–2 p.m.
Warren G. Magnuson Park, Hangar 30;
6310 NE 74th Street (off of Sandpoint Way NE), Seattle, WA 98115
Learn Even More:
- Sustainable Green Lake fosters many local projects, including school and public gardens.
- Seattle Tilth – classes, plant sales, worms, and the amazing booklet the Maritime Northwest Garden Guide, without which yours truly would still be planting as if she lived in New York.
- Edible Neighborhoods – Seattle site offering tips, resources, and coupons
- The Garden Writers Association of America tells you how you can start your own food donation program through its Plant A Row for The Hungry initiative.
- Read more about gardening in Green Lake on My Green Lake.
