Grow your own!
Whether it's concern about the growing cost of food, the economy at large, or simply an offshoot of the local food movement, there is a renewed interest in gardening today and more folks are growing their own food. It isn't the first time people have turned hard times into homegrown opportunity. During World Wars I and II, people all over the world planted "victory gardens" so that they could better provide their families with healthy and affordable food when supplies were tight.
Victory gardeners found that the effects of their actions went far beyond sustenance. When people started growing their own food again it boosted moral and gave communities a renewed sense of self-sufficiency. The notion spread like weeds in spring; by the 1940s, victory gardens were everywhere - from rooftops to vacant lots and public parks. In fact, Eleanor Roosevelt eschewed USDA concerns of taking business away from the burgeoning U.S. agribusinesses by bringing a victory garden to the White House lawn during her tenure as First Lady.
In March 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama followed suit and broke ground on an organic presidential Victory Garden. Urged on by a tremendously popular campaign to put gardens in high profile places, called Eat the View, the First Lady will use her 1,100 square foot plot to feed the Obama family and White House staff, and to educate people about the benefits of healthy, homegrown fruits and vegetables. A portion of the produce will be donated to Miriam's Kitchen, which serves homemade meals to homeless men and women in the Washington D.C. area.
Don't have a spare couple of acres in your backyard? No problem! Whether it's a backyard garden, community plot or windowsill planter, everyone can grow something, no matter how small their space.
If you want to take your gardening a step further, read our composting article to learn how to use your food scraps to fertilize your soil.
And once you've harvested your bounty, check out our recipe section for some delicious menu ideas.
Below are some associations and resources to help you grow your own garden. Take pictures and let us know how it goes! We'll post about selected gardens in the coming months.
Backyard Gardener
Since 1996, Backyard Gardener has been providing season-by-season gardening tips and how-to-grow information for almost every type of gardening imaginable. Whether you are interested in flowers, plants, trees, organic gardening, vegetable gardening, garden fountains, or rocks, they have it all, and more.
The Cool Food Campaign's Garden Guide
As spring and warmer weather approaches, it's the perfect time of year to think about starting your own garden. Cool Foods has compiled a resource guide for everyone who wants to commit to taking a bite out of global warming by growing some of their own food. Home grown foods cut down on "food miles," processing, packaging, fertilizers and just about every other source of greenhouse gas emission in our food system. With minimal costs, even small gardens can significantly cut your produce costs. In our tough economic times, renewing America's gardening tradition will offset our greenhouse gas emissions and your grocery bill - leaving more money in your wallet.
Garden Guides
Whether you are new to gardening, or a seasoned gardening pro, Garden Guides has everything you need, with thousands of pages of detailed and extensive information on plants, pests, gardening tips and techniques, gardening recipes, seeds and bulbs, gardening books, nurseries and landscapers, and much more.
Kitchen Gardeners International
Kitchen Gardeners International is a nonprofit organization founded in Maine, with friends from around the world. Their mission is to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems. The group's goal is to connect, serve, and expand the global community of people who grow some of their own food.
National Gardening Association
The National Gardening Association offers an array of gardening content for consumers and educators, ranging from general information and publications to lessons and grants.
Urban Gardening Help
Urban gardening and urban agriculture are ideas that are becoming increasingly important as our world becomes more urbanized and developers transform agriculturally fertile lands and open spaces into sprawling suburbs. This site is dedicated to those environmentally conscious urban dwellers who want to create a green corner devoted to nature in their own home, or who want to support community-based gardening or agriculture projects in their neighborhood.
Find gardens or gardeners near you
American Community Gardening Association
The American Community Gardening Association supports community gardening by facilitating the formation and expansion of state and regional community gardening networks, developing resources in support of community gardening, encouraging research and conducting educational programs.
Freedom Gardens
Freedom Gardens is an online social community of gardening enthusiasts who are fed up with foreign oil, food miles and high food prices. People with all types of gardens are welcome - from the acreage farmer to the apartment windowsill herb cultivator to classroom and community gardens. Not a gardener? Not a problem! Join anyway. This site is also for people interested in sustainable, local, and organic food, and those dreaming and scheming for a garden of their own.
Hyperlocavore - A Yardsharing Community
Hyperlocavore's vision is healthy kids who love the smell of dirt, blocks with foreclosed homes becoming vibrant neighborhoods, plates full of delicious safe food at costs we can all afford, and neighbors who are friends. Don't have your own yard? Live in an apartment? Join hyperlocavore to find someone in your neighborhood who will loan their yard so you can turn it into a farm or garden - it's called a yardshare. CSAs and community gardens fill up fast. Food is expensive! Grow together!
One Million Gardens
The One Million Gardens campaign is designed to identify, encourage, and document the creation of 1,000,000 food gardens throughout the United States by the end of 2009. It is their hope that their Gardening Resources will help lead America to increased local food production. They believe that growing food close to home reduces our dependence on fossil fuels and lowers our national carbon footprint.
Learn about organic and biodynamic gardening
Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association
Biodynamic agriculture, a non-chemical method, was inaugurated in 1924 by Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner. The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association was formed in the U.S. in 1938 to foster knowledge of the practices and principles of the biodynamic method of agriculture, horticulture, and forestry in the North American continent and to advance the applications of this method through educational activities, supporting consultation and extension services to farmers, gardeners, and foresters.
Organic Gardening Guru
Everything you need to know to get started as an organic gardener.
Organic Gardening Magazine
Whether you are starting your first garden or want to be more successful than you were last season, get the tips and tricks experts learn after years of experience.
Books: Read up on grow your own!
From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden by Amy Stewart
From Library Journal - "How-to gardening books abound; how-not-to gardening memoirs are rarer. When Stewart and her husband bought their first home in California, she was eager to grow the bountiful, colorful garden she had so long envisioned. With much enthusiasm and little knowledge, she began her weekly trek to the local nursery to stock up on all varieties of seedlings. Why, she wondered, did they not flourish after being planted in the bare backyard? Only after many mistakes, much expense, and worrisome encounters with weeds and bugs was she able to transform her little plot into "a garden with soul," jumbled and luxuriant. Along with a witty description of her mistakes, the author shares her solutions. She gives other beginning gardeners tips on making earthworm manure, improving the soil by sheet composting, encouraging beneficial insects, and sharing excess produce with neighbors."
Joy of Gardening (Garden Way Book) by Dick Raymond
From the publisher - The best of Dick Raymond's vegetable gardening wisdom is illustrated with full-color photos and at-a-glance charts that make his methods accessible to any gardener. Most gardeners are grateful that internationally known garden expert Dick Raymond has compiled the vast knowledge shared in his popular Garden Way television program, Joy of Gardening, into book form.
Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! by Patricia Lanza
From Publishers Weekly -"This intriguingly titled book, which has nothing to do with pasta and everything to do with layering, serves up a time-saving approach to gardening that will come as welcome news to the overworked and the horticulturally challenged. Lanza exhorts readers to build soil up, "instead of digging down," by simply layering organic materials onto a prospective garden site and close-planting directly into it."
Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Resource for Every Gardener (Paperback) by Fern Marshall Bradley (Editor), Barbara W. Ellis (Editor)
From Library Journal "As the subtitle suggests, this book (an updated version of Rodale's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, 1959) is a basic reference not only for organic gardeners but for all gardeners. Composting, xeriscaping, permaculture, environment--all these and 400 or so more terms have complete entries. Entries are cross-referenced and include further reading lists, related organizations, and key words."
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children by Sharon Lovejoy
From School Library Journal "Grade 1-4 - A compact treasury of gardening lore, tips and ideas for adults to share with children. What sets it apart from other how-to books on the subject is Lovejoy's artistic, whimsical, holistic approach. She gives guidelines and instructions for a backyard moon garden that attracts night creatures, thematic suggestions for a pizza garden and a pumpkin patch, and includes the smallest of gardens in a discarded glove or boot. The author's list of top 20 plants for kids will get youngsters and their parents raring to dig."
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
Amazon.com review "Contrived by a former engineer, "square foot gardening" is a continual-harvest alternative to growing in rows - a practice more appropriate, Bartholomew suggests, to commercial agriculture. His square-foot plot method tends to cut down on weeds, grows more food in less space, and solves the August/September problem of too many squash and tomatoes. The gardener plants, say, four lettuce seeds in a plot, plants a few more lettuce seeds in another square several weeks later, and so on, harvesting them in small batches through the season."
The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch
From Publishers Weekly "...This comprehensive compendium of gardening facts, helpful hints and earthy advice is an unusually readable, user-friendly gardening encyclopedia. The book's first section covers the basics of what a gardener needs to get started: principles of landscape design, what plants need, gardening gear and how to buy plants. With sections on annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs, fruits, bulbs, lawns, trees and even houseplants, and with specifics for individual plants in each section, this book will be a useful addition to the collections of seasoned gardeners as well as novices."