The Modern Victory Garden

Blog

« Back to Blog « Older Entry | Newer Entry »

Modern Victory Gardens - Going Mainstream

Posted on March 26, 2010 at 9:18 PM

In early January I received an email from Sheila De La Rosa editor of Oregon Home magazine asking if I would be willing to be interviewed by Margaret Foley for a segment in their regular Trade Secrets series – this particular article to be focused on growing victory gardens.   I am always interested in providing encouragement to others to grow more of their own food, so of course I was pleased to participate as requested.   A few weeks ago I received several copies of the April-May 2010 issue in the mail, which has the final article as completed in it.

 

 

You can read the complete article HERE.                                    

                 

I am constantly amazed at the amount of daily traffic and interest this blog and website gets and it just keeps growing over time.   The interest level in food production gardening has definitely spiked up with the enduring recession and heightened awareness of how our daily "living" choices impact the environment and our personal economics.                        

         

A working kitchen garden has been a part of our household's routine since before we were even married - which is saying something because we will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on May 18, 2010!   While food production gardening has been part of our lives for a long time, the focus with the garden has changed over the past six years, in that I now actively work to provide 100% of our annual vegetable needs from the garden.   Before that time I did not put nearly as much planning into it and had less lofty ambitions (at least as far as meeting our family's food supply needs are concerned).   I think a greater amount of people are now ready to explore that same shift in focus or are ready to up their "garden game" to a new level for the sake of sustainable and frugal good living.   While the drivers of that increased attention are unfortunate and dire for those that are facing job loss or reduced incomes, it certainly has been positive in that people are discovering (or rediscovering) the real satisfaction that comes from having a greater involvement with working to provide one of the essential elements of daily living - food.                                                

          

I fervently hope that this surge of interest is long-lived and not just a passing fad.   How does your food production garden fit into your life and what are your personal goals related to it?

Categories: Garden Thoughts, Garden Economics, Just For Fun

Post a Comment

Oops!

Oops, you forgot something.

Oops!

The words you entered did not match the given text. Please try again.

Already a member? Sign In

15 Comments

Reply Sandy
12:14 AM on March 27, 2010 
What a great article. Your expertise absolutely deserves to be showcased in such a way so others can benefit from all you know. :-)
Reply Daphne
08:42 AM on March 27, 2010 
You've been gardening longer than I have. Last year we celebrated our25th, but we lived in a condo for the first two years. It wasn't until after I moved to our first house that I put my garden in.
Reply hsheather
09:06 AM on March 27, 2010 
You have been such an inspiration to me. I've been reading what you had to say since you were on HT. The article is wonderful. I hope more people discover how wonderful vegetable gardening can be and what a great resource you are.
Reply GrafixMuse
09:17 AM on March 27, 2010 
Congratulations! This truly is a great accomplishment. Your blog is so full of inspiration and information and I know your new visitors are going to be thrilled to discover your website. I have learned a lot from you over the past year. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with others.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
08:58 PM on March 27, 2010 
Everyone - thanks for the encouragement and kind words.
Reply Dan
12:20 AM on March 28, 2010 
This is great news! Congratulations Laura!
Reply Annie's Granny
02:38 AM on March 28, 2010 
Wonderful article! Ya done good ;-)
Reply Richard
07:12 PM on March 28, 2010 
Congrats on the article!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
09:43 PM on March 28, 2010 
Dan, AG, and Richard - Thanks!
Reply stefaneener
12:42 PM on March 30, 2010 
It's good to be at the forefront of change. Nice article, and good for you. I'm hoping year by year to buy less.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
10:21 PM on March 30, 2010 
stefaneener - That's one of my goals too. In fact, I am slowing getting myself prepared to add some backyard chickens to my mix as well. Not rushing into anything because I am all about having things prepared ahead of time. It's been absolutely ages since I had chickens in my care so I need to do some brushing up on the subject.
Reply Brett
05:41 AM on April 17, 2010 
I'm 38 and I live alone on 3 acres up in the hills in famous Attica, NY. I Drove truck 15 years and finally was able to get out of it and buy a home. Never married, no kids. I grew up in a small town and I started gardening a couple years ago and became instantly addicted! Cherish every moment of it. And I mean cherish.

I was looking for an excuse to expand my garden and contacted a good friend who is a chef locally. I asked him about supplying him with veggies and he was incredibly excited! He's been slowly working on trying to get a co-op started with local growers and so the process has begun! I'll be supplying him with all the veggies I can manage. We discuss strategy almost daily.

So I was looking to improve my homestead and I have 8 chickens now - only 3 weeks old. Love em! Very excited - my own eggs! I'm also looking to get two beef calves to raise - meat for myself, sell the rest to friends and neighbors.

So about 1500 sq ft of garden, 8 chicks, and two calves on the way. That will be it for this year. Working on going 100% organic asap.

So I hope to supply almost all of my own food in the coming years and maybe even make a tiny profit from it all - maybe and tiny being the key words. But I'm part of the new wave of organic homesteaders and co-op'ers that realize we're poisoning ourselves and our world, and things must change immediately - starting with me.

Your website is absolutely fantastic and I've learned a lot of new ideas - thank you so much! I wonder if you've considered joining a co-op with your local restaurants or ever tracked the financial aspects of supplying your family with food? I take a "bootstrap" approach to problem solving myself - more labor, learn smarter methods, less money spent.

Keep up the great work - it's helping a lot!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
11:01 PM on April 17, 2010 
Brett - Well done! It's amazing how much our lives change when we take back some control over our food supply. I find that the space I have is just enough to really feed our family for a year and so I have not tried to sell any of my crops. I do keep track of the financial benefits - you can see last year's (2009 garden) economic results by going to the 2009 Garden Season Info menu from the menu bar in the upper right side bar area of the site - then go to the Garden Economics tab.
Reply TinyFarmBrett
02:37 AM on April 18, 2010 
Ah, I didn't see the economic part at first - excellent job of tracking everything. I'm amazed at your organization with everything you do with your growing - I need to get much better at this - flyin by the seat of my pants a bit more than I'd like to - but I still have a lot of learning and experimenting to do at this stage - a lot!

Your expenses look quite acceptable - the expansion being quite expensive. I'm now planting in 3 or 4 foot wide rows, but I don't have the raised beds in the timber frame - just digging into the ground about a foot and raising the beds about 6" above the walkway. This walkway provides good drainage in between beds after heavy rains. I pack the edges on a 45 degree slope and water it good and it holds its shape. Yours looks much nicer than mine I must admit, and mine isn't quite as deep I'm sure :-)

But with two calves coming, the chickens growing fast, and a 5 gallon bucket of veggie scraps supplied by my friend's restaurant each week I'll have tons of compost!!! Then I'll be rockin it 100% organic. I have clay/loam soil - very rich, drains reasonably well. With the addition of lots of organic matter it will soften up further - I'm shooting for about 2000 sq ft of garden and no tilling. We'll see! :-)
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
11:09 AM on April 18, 2010 
TinyFarmBrett - It sounds like you have a good plan and are really working it. As my daughter is heading off to college this coming summer, I am starting to incorporate more subsistence crops into our planting in the hopes that we kick up the self sufficiency aspect one more notch. Vegetable production is (and continues to be) my top priority, but I am hoping to add more dried bean production as well to go with our potatoes for greater amounts of home produced calorie dense and protein sourced crops. There is a limit on how much we can do because of property constraints but going from feeding three people to two gives me an opportunity to incorporate more items.