You Can Be a Gardener!

After this awesome weekend in West Michigan, spring is definitely in the air. If your thoughts aren’t turning to love, they may be turning to gardening. For most of us that live in apartments or houses on small lots, gardening might mean a few flowers growing in pots or a small garden bed out front. However, with just a little creativity and work you can turn a small piece of soil into a productive vegetable garden and enjoy fresh, tasty, locally-grown food. Even if your thumb is the opposite of green, here are a few ways you can grown your own food.

Backyard (or Front Yard!) Gardening

If you have any space at all, even a windowsill, you can grow a few kitchen herbs and some common types of veggies. It’s really fun to be able to walk outside on a nice summer day and pick your dinner! Some common types of urban residential gardening are:

• Container gardening. This is simply growing veggies, herbs and even some fruit in pots, flower boxes and window boxes. This site can help you pick out good varieties of veggies to grow in containers. I do this because my yard is pretty shaded and the soil is mostly clay and rock. At the very least I always plant a couple of cherry tomatoes, a small herb box, and some jalapeno peppers. In addition I have grown mixed lettuce (works well, short growing season) and swiss chard (a total dud).
• Square foot gardening. If you have a small yard, but have decent light you could try square foot gardening. This is a way of planting large volumes in a small space. It requires some attention to the soil – you’ll need some compost – but it looks like once the initial setup is done it’s pretty low maintenance.
• Plant the lawn! This one may seem a little goofy, but some people turn their front yards into vegetable gardens. This story talks about a group in England who helps people petition to their local councils to get permission to do this. Depending on where you live, you may or may not need permission to plow up your lawn and plant kale instead, but please check into the legalities before you buy a tiller 🙂

Community Gardens

If you have absolutely no space and/or no talent for growing anything, or you just like to work in teams, then community gardening may be the thing for you. In community gardening generally residents of a certain geographic area such as a neighborhood, have access to a plot of land that they can plant. There may be a small fee associated with using the land or to help pay for water, tilling and the like. Some community gardens assign individual plots to individuals and families. Others are more of a communal effort with everyone helping out a certain number of hours in exchange for a share of the crop.

The Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council maintains a list of community gardens in the Grand Rapids area. Take a look and see if there is one in your neighborhood! If you don’t see a community garden that is accessible to you, think about starting your own. I have a co-worker that lives in an apartment complex with a large amount of green space. She’s going to ask the management for permission to start a small community garden on the grounds.

Blandford Farm

If you don’t have the time or interest to take care of a garden during a whole growing season, but you still want to play in the dirt, you can volunteer to help at the Blandford Farm. This is the first time in over 20 years that Blandford Nature Center & Mixed Greens will have a functioning farm plot and they need your help! While the bulk of the farming will be handled by the Youth Farm Team, they are looking for volunteers to help with weeding and lots of other tasks throughout the summer.

While you won’t be paid in produce, you will definitely have a cool experience of contributing to a real working farm right in the middle of city of 500,000 people. The picture on the right is from this Sunday’s Dig In! event. For me, the highlight of this day was seeing the 1 acre farm plot being plowed by farmers using teams of Belgian horses. It’s really crazy to think that all of this was going on just a few blocks from a bus stop.

If you’re interested in volunteering, check the Volunteer page or contact Kristen McPhee Laura Worth at lworth(at)blandfordnaturecenter(dot)org or (616) 735-6240.

Veggie photo by Meliha Gojak.