This summer, BCFA held our second Food Gardens Tour. This year we focused on three gardens plus a community garden in the Doylestown area. Attendees traveled from home garden to home garden, seeing different gardening styles, ideas, practices, and gaining useful tips! One of the program attendees, John Unger summarized the event for us below, sharing his interest in gardening. Thank you John!
“Gardening has always been a part of my life, going full circle from my childhood past to present day life as a retiree. Growing up, my family had a 50’x100’ garden plot and orchard as a little side cash selling eggs and fresh produce in our neighborhood.. It was just our way of life, a hobby, and an experiment in self sustaining practices- organic gardening, crop rotation, free range livestock roaming the fields- cows, sheep, chickens and the occasional pig. Another gardening inspiration in my life was my father-in-law who turned his backyard into a huge terraced fruit and vegetable garden in the Oakland hills overlooking San Francisco.
After moving to Bucks County in 2000, my family and I soon realized how blessed we were to be surrounded by local farms and farmers markets. And while shopping at these markets and CSAs has always been a joy, there was something inside me that wanted to get my hands dirty, and honor the gardening spirits of my father and father-in-law. In 2017, as a new empty nester, I installed a 22’x22’ raised bed garden in my backyard, rekindling some of those childhood memories, albeit on a much smaller scale. I devoured gardening books and youtube videos to update the gardening memories and skills from my childhood.
I first learned about the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance (BCFA) garden tours from my wife, Sandy. She discovered BCFA at the Wrightstown Farmers Market, signed up for newsletters, and got me engaged.
We joined the first BCFA garden tour in 2023, which took a group of about twenty of us gardening enthusiasts to several homes and a community garden, all in the Yardley area. It was wonderful to meet so many like-minded people, both those attending and those showing us their gardens. Swapping tips and experiences across a wide span of topics from composting, companion planting, natural habitat certification, native plants, pest control, and many others. With a few years of gardening under my belt, I was able to share a few things I had learned as well- such as the benefits of planting marigolds around your greens and tomatoes, and how tender yellow bush beans can make a nice vegan substitute for penne pasta.
This year Sandy and I again joined the garden tour- this time in Doylestown. Each exposure to another garden inspires me to try something new. The timing of the Doylestown tour in June aligned with the harvesting of garlic scapes- something my brother had been raving about for a variety of recipes. I had always been interested in growing my own garlic but never got comfortable with the timing, process or how to source the plantings. That is, until the Doylestown tour, where I got to learn how to source the garlic from the local farmers market in July so I would have the right variety for this climate; storing the fresh bulbs in my basement until planting in early October; and if all goes well over the winter and spring, harvesting the scapes next June and digging up my own garlic next July.
I plan to show my garden on a Foodshed Alliance tour in 2025, and, with a little luck, I’ll be able to add fresh garlic to the bounty of vegetables I can share with the tour group. For anybody who loves gardening- whether you’ve got years under your belt, or a novice who just needs a little nudge to start your own, I’d highly recommend signing up for one of the Foodshed Alliance Garden tours.”
0 Comments