Ballardblog.com

It’s been all over the news and Internet – the popularity of vegetable gardens this year due to the poor economy.  There have been reports that seed companies are making record profits and have sold out of some of the more popular vegetable seeds already as citizens hunker down in the dirt and plant gardens similar to the Victory Gardens of WWII.    In my opinion, this can only be a good thing, reducing reliance on big corporate farms for our food and getting the freshness from food that has not been shipped thousands of miles.  Admittedly, I am a little biased as when we traced my family history, we come from a long line of farmers going back centuries.  How to explain then my lack of gardening skills?  I was a child of the suburbs who had lost that connection to how food is grown.   I do remember one year growing up we rented a p-patch, but all I did was fetch the water from the nearby creek to water the plants.  We didn’t continue the p-patch as we  discovered that people were taking our produce for themselves.

So, inspired by the news stories of gardening as the new hot trend, and friends’ gardens, I decided to take the plunge when I saw a free class advertised in the Seattle Parks and Recreation catalog.  March 14th was the first class about soil preparation and planting peas and potatoes.   If the instructor wasn’t so knowledgeable, I might have slunk away early as the class was outside on a bitterly cold and windy day.  Ingela, the instructor, is a member of Sustainable Ballard and is part of the Garden and Natural Environment Guild and a self described ‘plant geek.’    She walks the talk with her own urban farm in Ballard where she raises all types of plants and is the proud owner of some chickens to boot.    As a complete beginner, I was in good hands as we first learned a lot about what makes for good soil before getting to the part about planting.

This Saturday there is another free workshop entitled ‘Spring planting’ and I cannot wait to learn more.

Loyal Heights Community Center

2101 NW 77th St.

Call for registration information   206-684-4052