In the News

Fertile Mind: Save By Planting a Recession Garden
Columbia Daily Tribune
Feb. 8, 2009
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By Jan Wiese-Fales

Sometimes wishes come true, and earlier this week I got to meet and talk with gardening celebrity Jim Wilson, a passionate gardener who has made an exceptional life from sharing his love of making things grow with others.

This is a man who has co-hosted PBS’ “Victory Garden” and authored or co-authored more than a dozen gardening-themed books, has regularly served as the top-billed speaker at all manner of gardening events and has been copiously honored and awarded for his efforts. He has planted 14 gardens in nine states, in every part of this country except in New England.

Wilson, who moved to Columbia a few years ago, is working on the final draft of his latest book, “Reduce Your Food Bills: Plant a Recession Garden,” co-authored with his friend Walter Chandoha.

Beginning next week, he will present a five-session lecture series, sponsored by Columbia’s Jefferson Farm & Gardens (JF&G), on doing just that. Three-hole punched galley proofs of his book will serve as a course guide with sessions covering successful gardening secrets, necessary tools, living soil, fertilizers, gardening philosophies and methodologies, crops and getting started.

Drawing parallels between the hard economic times of his childhood during World War II and today’s economic downturn, Wilson sees a need for a basic text that outlines how to get started growing vegetables and fruits. Feeding this country’s needy is becoming a pressing national priority, and food banks and pantries are hard-pressed to meet the demand.

“Two generations have gone by with people interested only in ornamental gardening,” Wilson said. “I daresay that many young people have never planted seeds.”

Wilson’s noted that his father was out of work for six years during the Depression and made a living growing vegetables on his farm in Vicksburg, Miss., and selling them out of the back of his pickup truck. Though many went hungry, as gardeners who canned and pickled their surplus, his family had plenty to eat.

“Things were different back then,” Wilson said. “People were close to the land, and everyone had family who lived on farms. If you had anything extra, you shared it,” he said, noting that family members on hard times came for extended visits and were “fattened up” at his parents’ home.

“My father grew vegetables and gave them away to the defense workers — people who worked long hours in jobs as part of the war effort with no time to garden.”

“Gardening in Missouri is good,” Wilson added. “I point out in the book that there are advantages and disadvantages to gardening no matter where you garden.” He observed that gardeners living two hardiness zones to the north of Mid-Missouri are living in excellent pea country, but added optimistically that Southern peas, also known as cowpeas, are easy to grow and do well in our clime.

Wilson has championed the Garden Writers Association of America’s 1996 “Plant a Row for the Hungry” initiative, and he devotes two chapters of “Plant a Recession Garden” to Caring Gardens and Community Garden efforts.

He also writes about organic gardening but pointed out that he has slightly “contrarian viewpoints” on both the topic of “acceptable” garden products — pesticides and fertilizers — and on the debate of the virtues of growing heirlooms versus hybrids. He advocates for informed and judicious choices on the part of individual gardeners with the knowledge that every situation is different.

Wilson said he does not approve of the types of genetic engineering that have made crops herbicide-resistant but adds that he is not forced with feeding the world. “We’d be better off growing more vegetables than grains, anyway,” he observed.

A project of the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute, JF&G shares Wilson’s vision to educate people about how their food is produced — as well as teaching them about conservation and alternative energy. A love of gardening work-in-progress, the farm opened to the public last year and will be open for scheduled events in 2009. For more about their vision and mission, visit www.jeffersonfarm.org.

The bad news is that Wilson’s 35-person capacity course is full, and there is a waiting list for a potential repeat of the course. But the good news is that if you have a passion for gardening, JF&G is looking for volunteers to lend hands to the effort in a number of capacities.

For more information, you may contact JF&G Horticultural Specialist Catherine Bohnert at 449-3518 or cbohnert@jeffersoninstitute.org.

And be on the lookout for Wilson’s book.

Jan Wiese-Fales is a Master Gardener who lives and pulls weeds at Mole Hill in rural Howard County. You can reach her at fertilemind@sbcglobal.net.