Calling all vegetable gardeners

My tomato and garlic harvest last September
If you or someone you know is a star at growing veggies, you might be interested in a photo contest that Stokes Seeds announces in this email, which came across my desk this afternoon:

Across the gardening industry it has been noted that vegetable gardening has become extremely popular again. This is probably due to communities across North America, setting up "eat local" campaigns as well as the rising prices of fresh vegetables in our grocery stores.

This year Stokes Seeds plans to help new gardeners plan, plant and harvest their own fresh vegetables. We are asking you, our valued customers to help. We are in need of photos of vegetable gardens to accompany articles and possibly be featured on the front cover of our catalog. A photo of you working in your garden would also be of interest to us.

Stokes will award 4 of the best photos with a $25.00 gift certificate from Stokes. If your photo is chosen for our catalog cover, a $100.00 gift certificate will be awarded. Any photos used will include a photo credit with your name and the area you are from.

If you use a digital camera for your photo, please make sure it is set at the highest resolution for the best printing quality. Send in digital photos to jadam@stokeseeds.com.

Prints can be sent to:

Joan Adam
Stokes Seeds Ltd.
Box 10
St. Catharines ON L2N 3M5

Please make sure you include your name and address with your submissions.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Vegetable gardening is "in" - but not here

There's a lot of news about vegetable gardening enjoying a big jump in popularity. Garden bloggers are writing about it, and my brother who owns a garden centre in London, Ontario, reports a big increase in sales of vegetable seeds and gardening supplies.

But I'm bucking the trend: last fall we sodded over what was left of our vegetable garden. We're still enjoying our home-grown asparagus. It's succulent, sweet and easy to pick, but it's all we grow to eat, aside from a couple of tomato plants, a single Swiss chard and some kitchen herbs.

It wasn't always that way: when we started out here a decade ago, veggie gardening was a big thing for me.

I was way more Martha Stewartish then: I grew many varieties of tomatoes, string beans, peas, even onions and shallots from seed. Our vegetable garden was 50 by 100 feet times two, beautifully laid out with straw-mulched paths and edged with parsley and orange gem marigolds. One of the patches would be filled with pumpkins and squash. And then there were two smaller patches closer to the house with yet more veggies and cutting flowers.

So what happened? Well, I'm 52, not 42, there's still just two of us to feed, and it simply was an unsustainable amount of work. We grassed in the giant veggie gardens about four years ago, and that area is now planted with a grid of 12 White Angel crab apple trees.

I kept the two smaller veggie patches (two times 8 by 16 feet) until we sodded them over last fall (pictured left).

All that remains is the asparagus patch, which was one of first things I planted when we moved here a decade ago.

Have I given up on farm-fresh, wholesomely grown vegetables? Not at all. Instead of growing our own, we now buy a share from a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) farm called Plan B. (The family that runs it lived several blocks away from us when we still lived in the city, and while hunting for a country property we actually looked at the farm they eventually bought. Small world!)

Also down our road, as of last year there's a new market garden full of good things. The bottom line for me: as much great, affordable, fresh, organic, locally-grown food as we could possibly want, minus all the work. Been there, done that, had enough.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener