Re: food gardening up or down? - Farmers Market

**Jeff Ball j*@usol.com**

I think Claude has a very important point.  Vegetable gardening has  
always responded to hard economic times. Gasoline costs are going to  
change a bunch of things we do in this country. Will be interesting;  
painful but interesting.

Jeff Ball
jeffball@usol.com
810-724-8581
Check out my daily blog at www.gardeneryardener.blogspot.com
Check out my extensive web site at www.yardener.com

On Apr 20, 2006, at 2:03 PM, Claude Sweet wrote:

Jeff's comments seem to be on target, but there are additional factors
involved in the decision to plant vegetable gardens or home orchards.

The cost of land/housing in California and the increasing cost of
potable water are influencing what people devote to landscape/food
production considering the limited lots sizes of ($550,000) median price
housing in San Diego.

Our annual rainfall is 9 inches and we are below average this year.  The
increasing cost of being at the end of the pipeline makes people
consider arid landscaping to reduce irrigation expenses.  Our total
water bill in the winter months (our rainy season) sets the sewer rates
for the year.

Factor in the cost of transportation (unleaded gas is $3.29 this morning
and going higher) while people still are driving 10 to 15 miles per hour
over the legal speed limit in the SUVs, Hummers, and other 12 mile per
gallon cars.

Will there will be some serious adjustments in eating out and purchasing
prepared meals?  It is hard to believe victory gardens will springing up
as they did in the Second World War and people canning and freezing
their surplus harvests.

This summer may well forecast how people manage their lifestyles.

Our schools don't have the school gardens and classes for kids to become
familiar with planting and harvesting a food garden.   Some 30 years ago
even the LA high schools had large fenced areas to students to plant
gardens and classes preparing them for careers in horticulture.  Those
program do longer exist except in very rural agricultural areas of our
state where there are active 4H programs.

Anyone else have some observations or comments?

Claude Sweet
San Diego, CA

Jeff Ball wrote:

> Pat,
> Your garden sounds absolutely wonderful. Even in my homesteading days
> I didn't have that kind of production or variety.  Of course you
> realize that the kind of gardening you describe is followed by maybe
> 5% of all America's vegetable gardeners, and that figure could be
> high.  Living in central Michigan in an agricultural area, there are
> a fair number of vegetable gardens in the county, but most of them,
> if not all, are managed the same way my grandmother used for her
> garden in 1946.  There is no mulch, ever.  The whole garden is
> rototilled to death every year.  There are no raised beds.  There are
> no season extending devices.  and I'm guessing very few are organic.
> In Michigan about 50% of the population is obese, so vegetables are
> not a priority.
>

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