Backyard Bounty Vegetable Gardens Offer Much More Than Fresh Food: They’Re Fun
Backyard vegetable gardens rarely save people money.
That doesn’t bother the gardeners; it’s seldom the grocery budget that motivates folks who grow vegetables and fruit for summer menus.
Rather, it’s the flavor of corn on the cob that came off the stalk only an hour before dinner. It’s the earthy satisfaction of growing your own food. The beauty of ripe tomatoes clinging to plants or grapes hanging in clusters or dark green spinach in a neat row. Or simply eating healthy foods.
“I don’t think I save a dime with the backyard garden,” says Barbara Sinsley, a Coeur d’Alene gardener. “I probably could go buy the produce at stands cheaper than I can grow it. But the fact you grow different varieties and can experiment with new plants, that’s where the fun comes. If I get high yields, that’s so much better.”
For years, Coeur d’Alene gardeners Bob and Lee Ray have grown a wide range of vegetables and fruits on several acres just west of Coeur d’Alene Lake. Their focus is healthy eating. In the past few years they’ve packed 20-foot-long raised beds with vegetables high in antioxidants.
“We eat as healthy as we can in the summer,” Lee Ray says. “Most people who grow home gardens do it to eat healthy food. We do whatever we can to eat good food.”
Ray says dinner at their home is typically organic meat and huge salads - “as much as we can stuff ourselves with made from antioxidant foods like broccoli and spinach.”
For dessert? “My husband is a chocoholic and I have fresh fruit,” Lee said.
Backyard gardeners say there’s no such thing as too fresh. That means a lot of home-grown produce never even makes it to the kitchen before it’s eaten. “Most of my fruit and vegetables are yard food,” says Spokane gardener Bob Snider. “I like to eat when I’m out here in the back yard and I’m out here most of the time.”
As he ambles through the berry patch he plucks raspberries and blackberries off the canes and eats them right there. In passing, four varieties of cherries are pulled off a grafted tree. Snider planted 18 blueberry bushes in the berry corner because the berries stay on the bush so long. He also grows both alpine and domestic strawberries, two types of pears and plums, grapes, mushrooms, mesclun, basil and tomatoes.
“My favorite thing is tomatoes, basil and mozzarella with salt and pepper on it. I wouldn’t grow basil if it weren’t for that one thing,” Snider says.
His garden is lush with narrow paths carved through dense undergrowth. His passion is growing interesting plants and some fruits and vegetables just happen to interest him. Harvest is secondary.
Sinsley’s garden is just the opposite: Designed for high-yield, it’s low in aesthetic qualities.
When the Sinsleys moved to their new home five years ago, the top landscaping priority was the backyard vegetable garden.
“The first garden got flooded out because the neighbors’ yards drain into our back corner,” Sinsley says. So they built raised beds 4 feet long and more than 5 feet wide, surrounded by gravel paths to keep their feet dry.
Not satisfied with the modest amount of space the raised beds offered, Sinsley went to a county extension class where she learned about growing produce vertically.
Now, Sinsley uses a system of plastic tenting that allows her to plant around the first of April, starting the growing season two months early. And when the tents come off, a long trellis goes up for the beans and peas.
She also systematically rotates her crops and succession plants so there’s abundant produce from May well into autumn.
“In mid-June, I harvest the broccoli; we eat what we want and freeze the rest and that gets us almost through the winter,” Sinsley says. She then takes out the broccoli plants and underneath, tomatoes, beans and squash are already growing.
“I plant really dense. If they say to plant two feet apart, I put mine in one foot apart, but my yield is the same if not greater.”
She also plants a couple of varieties of each vegetable that ripen at different times. “I might put in an early type of broccoli that is ready in 55 days and another that’s ready in 70 days. I put in three kinds of beets two weeks apart so we have continual beets. I plant bush beans and pole beans because pole beans come on a little later than bush beans.”
And, Sinsley says she won’t waste valuable space on growing anything she and her husband don’t like to eat. “I plant summer squash but no fall squash because we don’t like it.” She grows only as much corn as they can eat fresh because they don’t like it canned or frozen. “We’re just not crazy about frozen or canned vegetables so the only vegetables we preserve from our garden are peas, broccoli and beans,” she says.
“We eat right out of the garden all summer. I do a lot of stir-fries,” Sinsley says. “But when it comes September, I’m done gardening and ready to teach again,” says the Coeur d’Alene first-grade teacher.
Lee Ray also says dense gardening is the key to her productive raised beds. “My grandmother was German and we don’t waste space in the garden.”
Sweet peas, parsley, spinach, chard, Walla Walla onions, tomatoes, string beans, lettuce, arugula, mesclun and Roma beans grow thick in black dirt. “One of our secrets is that we put a carton of nightcrawlers from the bait shop in each raised bed,” Ray says. “We add the compost directly back to the beds and the worms take care of it.”
The Rays eat something from the garden every day. “Today, for example, I made chicken soup with lots of vegetables from the garden,” she says.
To increase the yields on plants that love heat, such as tomatoes, basil and peppers, these backyard gardeners all use heat reflectors of some sort, ranging from foil to plastic reflectors to Ray’s method: “I just put light-colored rocks in a ring around all of the tomatoes. The rocks get hot in the sun and keep the tomatoes warm all night.”
Barbara Sinsley offers this family recipe from her aunt, Betty Jo Dahnke. Most of the ingredients come from her garden.
Pea Salad
3 cups peas
2 tomatoes cut into bit-size pieces
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 cups chopped ham
1 cup grated cheese (cheddar or jack)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup mayonnaise
Mix all the ingredients together. Add enough mayonnaise to hold the salad together. Sinsley usually freezes the peas from the garden when they are ripe and uses them later when the rest of the ingredients are ready for harvest.
Yield: 4 servings Nutrition information per serving: 747 calories, 60 grams fat (72 percent fat calories), 31 grams protein, 22 grams carbohydrate, 99 milligrams cholesterol, 7 grams dietary fiber, 1,789 milligrams sodium.
Pickled Dilled Beans
From Sinsley’s neighbor, Carol McCabe
4 pounds fresh tender green beans
8 to 16 heads fresh dill
8 cloves garlic
1/2 cup canning salt
4 cups white vinegar (5 percent)
4 cups water
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes (optional)
Wash and trim the ends from the beans and cut into 4-inch lengths. In each pint jar place 1 or 2 heads of dill, 1 clove garlic and beans in upright position. Make sure beans don’t touch the lid. Combine salt, vinegar, water and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Add hot solution to beans, leaving -inch headspace. Adjust lids on jars and use conventional boilingwater canner processing or pressure cooker canner processor.
Yield: About 8 pints
Nutrition information per pint: 464 calories, less than 1 gram fat, 4 grams protein, 115 grams carbohydrate, 8 grams dietary fiber, less than 1 milligram cholesterol, and 7,016 milligrams sodium.
Greek Salad
From Lee Ray of Coeur d’Alene
3 medium tomatoes or 4 Roma tomatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
1 large firm cucumber, peeled, scored with fork and cut into chunks.
1/2 medium sweet onion, cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 to 1 package of Athenos feta cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup Bertolli Extra Light olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Prepare tomatoes, cucumber, onion and feta. Mix lightly in a large bowl. Drizzle the olive oil over and turn the salad again to mix oil. Taste before adding salt and pepper.
Yield: 4 servings
Nutrition information per serving: 310 calories, 26 grams fat (75 percent fat calories), 10 grams protein, 10 grams carbohydrate, 50 milligrams cholesterol, 2 grams dietary fiber, 716 milligrams sodium.
Creamy Garlic Parmesan Dressing
From Lee Ray
1 cup Kraft or Best Foods mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk (whole or 2 percent) to thin consistency of dressing
1/2 cup hand-grated Parmesan cheese
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced (more if you want a spicy taste)
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix mayonnaise and milk with a whisk until it reaches desired consistency. Add cheese and garlic and mix with a spoon. Taste, then add desired seasoning. Do not use a mixer or blender.
Note: I prefer to hand-grate all-natural Parmesan cheese to release its wonderful aroma, that is sometimes lost when buying already grated cheese in a package. I never use canned cheese. Also, using real mayonnaise makes a huge difference. Salad dressing that looks like mayonnaise has too much vinegar. You may substitute soy or rice milk for the milk, if desired. Use on any salad greens. Add leftover meat or cold cuts to turn the salad into a main dish. If it thickens the next day it is wonderful as a spread for a meat sandwich.
Yield: about 2 cups (about 32, 1 tablespoon servings)
Nutrition per serving: 60 calories, 6 grams fat (90 percent fat calories), 1 gram protein, less than 1 gram carbohydrate, 5 milligrams cholesterol, no dietary fiber and 80 milligrams sodium.
This sidebar appeared with the story: Selling produce
Backyard gardeners with extra produce can sell everything from zucchini to herbs and flowers at the Spokane Marketplace Gardeners’ Row on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It’s a new feature this year designed for hobby gardeners.
The market charges sellers $5 per day for a 10-by-10-foot space, plus 10 percent of sales. Sellers provide their own table, cart or stand.
The Spokane MarketPlace is at the intersection of Ruby and Desmet near Gonzaga University. Hours for the Gardeners’ Row are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Also check with your local farmers’ market to see if they welcome individuals selling excess produce from backyard gardeners.