Garden Fever

Everybody wants “locally grown.” There’s nothing more local than your own backyard.

It’s planting time. Rake and hoe and seedling time. And there’s garden fever loose in the land. Everybody wants to eat local these days. Get close to the earth. Save a buck. And there’s nothing more local, earthy, and thrifty – if it works – than a kitchen garden in your own backyard. Veteran gardeners know that.

Now a new generation of American gardeners – twenty and thirty-somethings with a yearning to plant– is getting its fingers in the dirt. They’ve got gardens and gardening tales and gardening questions.

This hour, On Point: we’ve got gardeners, and garden fever.
-Tom Ashbrook

Charlie Nardozzi, garden coach and consultant. He is host of the Vermont Garden Journal and author of several books, including Northeast Fruit and Vegetable Gardening, Vegetables from an Italian Garden, and Vegetable Gardening for Dummies.

Karen Wolfgang, owner and project coordinator at Independence Gardens in Portland, Oregon.

The Washington Post  "'I was like any other hopeful gardener with a pot out on the windowsill or a small plot by the back door. I was nervously watching the sky. Would it freeze? Would it snow? Would it rain?' she [Michelle Obama] writes in her first book, 'American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden adn Gardens Across America.'"

2012 Garden Trends Report "Generation X and Y are taking up the mantle to protect and defend the earth. “These new ‘urban-knights’ are creating oases wherever they can find a patch of earth.”

The New York Times "This is great for garden geeks more interested in obsessively tracking every aspect of the growing season than designing a plot. You create a garden using the simple, uncluttered interface, then add plants from an index of 50 vegetable types and 500 varieties."

Little Potato by Metamora

Vegetables by The Beach Boys

Homegrown Tomatoes by Guy Clark