San Francisco Chronicle
06-09-07
Right out back, a practical bounty of crops
Tracy Hobson Lehmann, San Antonio Express-News
Though his family eats plenty of fruits and veggies, Steve Brown breezes through
the produce section of the grocery store. That's because he has a source very
close to home for most of the healthy fare on his family's dinner table: his
backyard kitchen garden.
Just a few steps from the backdoor, he can grab green beans, tomatoes, squash,
figs and onions. It's not the typical vegetable garden with row after row of crops.
"Everything is all nestled together," he says. "It looks natural. Mother Nature, she
doesn't plant 500 acres of corn. She just scatters seeds about."
Kitchen gardens have been around for hundreds of years, notes Bill Adams, a
horticulturist and garden author.
These gardens, though romantic in appearance, are purely practical in that they
offer a way of growing a number of crops -- fruit, vegetables, herbs and even cut
flowers -- in small spaces.
At his small farm in Burton, Texas, Adams created a series of raised beds, where
he grows everything from beets to zucchini. Not deterred by the relatively small
space of the garden, he's got about 15 varieties of tomatoes alone, the majority
of them heirlooms. As in Brown's garden, Adams' plots are peppered with herbs
and a few flowers popping up here and there.
He's even made room for ornaments, such as a cast-iron English post box he
and his wife, Deborah, found at a flea market.
Beauty aside, it's the flavors that appeal to Adams, who shares recipes as
liberally as he shares garden bounty at his local bank, where he goes to the
commercial lane of the drive-through so he can pass beans and squash through
the window.
Brown agrees.
"You're getting the freshest, best-quality produce to add to the food you're
eating," says Brown. "Typically you can supply a third of what you eat, maybe
half or more if you're eating vegetarian."
Eating from the kitchen garden means you don't have broccoli in June or
tomatoes in January, but it also means the produce didn't travel hundreds of
miles to your table.
According to a study done in 2003, the average bite of produce logged 1,500
miles from field to fork in the Midwest, says Rich Pirog, marketing and foodsystems program leader for the Leopold Center at Iowa State University.
"It's interesting how much it costs to move all that stuff from location A on the
globe to location B, when all we have to do is put it in our backyards," says
Brown.
Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine nonprofit organization, aims to shorten
the distance between people and healthy, delicious foods, says founder and
Executive Director Roger Doiron. In what he calls the "delicious revolution,"
Doiron notes increased interest in locally grown produce.
"People are realizing that good food doesn't have to come from California or Italy
or France. It can come, literally, from our own backyards."
He encourages home gardeners to start small.
Brown created two 25-by-15-foot beds, bordering them with limestone blocks to
hold soil on a south-facing slope. To make the most of the spaces, he
incorporates square-foot gardening techniques. This year, he's experimenting
with the "three sisters" planting method practiced by American Indians.
He plants pole beans around hills of corn and squash between the hills. The
beans supply nitrogen for the corn, a plant that requires more of the nutrient.
An organic grower, Brown plants cover crops such as clover to nourish the soil
between crops, and he supplements with compost and other organic material.
"Because I don't use chemicals in my garden, I need to create a balance," he
says.
On the perimeter of the garden, he grows his "good bug blend" to attract
beneficial insects that will manage pests. Some of the harvest, such as the
parsley, is intended for caterpillars that will become black swallowtail butterflies.
Brown tends to his garden daily and devotes a few hours of weekend days to his
crops. For him, it's a pleasant task.
"It's not like a chore. I do it because I enjoy it."
And he enjoys the fresh, flavorful bounty.