Victory Gardens 2.0

New vegetable gardens are springing up all over town. Photo: Andy Shelter

I’ve got to grow food this year.”

Becca Ball had that thought last spring as the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled many aspects of life. Her husband, Tom, had started his tomato seedlings in March as usual. But Becca is the one who usually decides what else to plant in their family gardens on the side of the house. She realized that, this year, tomatoes weren’t going to be enough. So, in her window boxes, where she usually grows flowers, Ball planted lettuce and spinach instead. Still, she wanted more. 

She decided to rent a plot in Swarthmore’s Community Garden, on the corner of Yale and Harvard avenues. There, she was able to grow her personal favorite, zucchini, as well as other vegetables there wasn’t room for in her yard. “We are a family that eats and cooks,” Ball says. “I’ve been blanching and freezing green beans. We’ve made salsa and sauce.” They’ve also made tomato pie, stuffed zucchini, and ratatouille. But Ball says she’s not done yet. “The squash will be petering out soon, and I’ve got broccoli seeds and radishes to put in. I’m hoping to continue using the plot for as long as I can.”

Ball is not alone. The pandemic may be keeping Swarthmoreans at home, but it’s certainly not keeping all of them in the house. New vegetable gardens are showing up in backyards, patio containers, and community plots all over town, giving many COVID-weary locals reasons to linger outside, while also providing fresh food and abundant beauty.

“Victory gardens began in World War I and World War II to support the war effort,” explains Leah Fronk, a horticulture educator at Penn State Extension. “In COVID, we’re doing the same thing — as a way of supporting the effort to stay at home and shelter in place.” This past spring, she and her colleagues produced an eight-part webinar on the subject. Over 3,200 people registered for the initial broadcast. 

Cathrine StClair had started a nursery business, Green Haven Farms, just last September. She’d been planning to start selling plants this spring. “Then COVID happened,” she says. At first, unable to operate her business because of coronavirus restrictions, she gave away the annuals and vegetables to friends and neighbors eager to start growing. Then in June, when the county partially reopened, StClair held an outdoor sale, which she thought would be small. To her surprise, she sold her whole stock in under three hours. “It was astounding,” she recalls. The sale drew experienced gardeners, but a lot of her customers had never gardened before. 

StClair hopes that first-timers have not been put off by this year’s unusually variable spring weather and hot, dry summer. “Hopefully,” she says, “they persevere.”

Terri Reese was one of the beneficiaries of StClair’s initial generosity. She picked up free vegetable seedlings from StClair’s driveway in May. Now, she’s harvesting herbs, cucumbers, and other vegetables. The ones she’s most excited about are the tomatoes, which are still ripening on the vine. Reese says she’s enjoying “watching the plants thrive during this time of isolation.”

Artist Shirley Fink is getting an additional kind of nourishment from her garden this year. With more time than usual to spend in it, she’s been enjoying the beauty of her flowers, and has made still-life paintings of her daffodils, peonies and roses. 

“I love that I can look at my garden and see a painting,” she says. Right now, she is working on a painting based on some yellow cherry tomatoes she grew behind her garage. Luckily, Fink had added a gallery wall to her home last Thanksgiving, so she has enough space to display her new work.

Gardening at home has been critical for many people facing food insecurity, especially during the pandemic when other sources of food may have been cut off, according to Helen Nadel, education and partnership director at Greener Partners — an urban farming, food-access, and education nonprofit. For example, schools, having been closed, were swamped trying to continue providing meals to their students. Greener Partners had long been distributing food to families in need in Chester. But they pivoted when the pandemic hit. They began working with community partners, including the Ruth Bennett Community Farm, to get food to families in need.  

Greener Partners also began distributing free gardening supplies, such as high-quality compost and trellises, to families in need, not only in Chester, but also in West Philadelphia and Norristown. “Access to supplies is still an access issue,” Nadel says. One of their initiatives was to give out free window boxes so that families with limited outdoor space could start growing their own food. “Gardens take many forms in different communities,” Nadel says. “We are growers. This is what we do.”

Gardens aren’t the only kind of agriculture popping up in local backyards. Helge Hartung and his family are in their second year of backyard beekeeping. They maintain two hives, with 40,000 to 100,000 buzzing pollinators in each. This year, for the first time, the family harvested honey — enough to fill 50 one-pound bottles. The two children, Emil and Maya, sold the bottles to friends and neighbors, and donated the proceeds to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. 

And Autumn Mansor’s family, which has raised hens in a backyard coop for several years, added to the flock and expanded the coop this past May. The Mansor children think of the nine chickens as pets, playing with them in the yard and even snuggling them. Watching the flock move, eat, and interact has been educational for the whole family, she says. “The eggs are really a bonus.” 

“Victory Garden Reimagined!,” a free, eight-part webinar, is available on the Penn Extension website.