UCCE experts comment on the roots of gardening

Opening with what must be an old Irish idiom, Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reporter Meg McConahey said her subject, local gardener Tom Berger, was just a "wee shaver" when he began collecting gardening wisdom.

He "always remembered The Green Grocer's TV admonishment to Bay Area housewives: 'Do NOT buy tomatoes out of season,'" she wrote.

The story said Berger is part of a wave of new gardeners raising food for themselves. The article includes information from UC Cooperative Extension experts Rose Hayden-Smith, the 4-H Youth Development advisor in Ventura County, and Paul Vossen, a tree crops farm advisor in Sonoma County.

Vossen, the county's Master Gardener coordinator, said the program's Web site is getting more hits and the advice line more and more queries related to vegetable growing.

"I think a lot of people did it before, but they've expanded their gardens," Vossen was quoted. "People who have small plots have gone out and planted more."

Hayden-Smith said the interest in vegetable gardening plays into a national revival of the Victory Garden movement, where increasing food production was seen as bolstering national security by creating a more secure food supply.

"It's a different 'Victory' now," she was quoted. "In addition to the really concrete, positive things that gardens can provide to people right now, they can certainly help with a family's bottom line with high food prices. And what I'm trying to encourage is increased food security in communities by looking at the idea of school, home and community gardens."

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