Victory Gardens spring up in Chatham

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In the wake of COVID-19, many residents have been grappling with depleted grocery shelves and anxiety over access to food. As a result, many are turning to creating Victory Gardens in Chatham County.

According to Google Trends, searches that include “garden” are up more than double the average of the past 15 years. The national trend holds not only in North Carolina, but in Chatham region.

The term Victory Garden has its roots in World Wars I and II. As Americans began rationing of foods due to limits of supply during those global conflicts, many Americans began planting vegetable gardens to reduce the strain on the food supply. After the U.S. entered the second World War, then-Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard promoted the idea of Victory Gardens, creating pamphlets urging Americans to build their own gardens as a sign of patriotism.

As a rural county, Chatham already has a strong contingent of family gardens, but in the current pandemic, many residents are creating their own for the first time.

For Siler City resident and Chatham County Board of Education member Jane Allen Wilson, her home garden is the first she’s had since her childhood. Her reasons for starting the garden run deeper than just COVID-19.

“Deciding to have a garden during COVID-19 has turned out to be a beautiful communion with my father,” Wilson said. “I keep hearing his voice in my mind. I was 4 years old when I started working with him in the garden hours and hours until I left for college.”

Wilson’s father, Dr. “Noah” Rouse Wilson, Jr., a well-known dentist in Chatham County, died in 2018 after suffering from Alzheimer’s. He along with his wife, Betty Wilson, who was a Chatham County Commissioner, raised six children in Chatham County. Another one of his daughters, Bett Wilson Foley, a former Pittsboro Commissioner, was also inspired to build a garden this year at the Bynum Community Garden.

“When I was offered two raised beds at the Bynum Community Garden in early spring, I jumped on the opportunity,” Foley said. “The garden is located between work and home so I figured it would be easy for me to stop by. I started planting spring vegetables just as the coronavirus hit. My workplace closed. I began self-isolating. It turns out these two little gardens were my saving grace.”

She said she was grateful to her father for her interest in gardening, saying he was “an organic gardener before it was a thing in Pittsboro.”

“As kids we complained and complained about all the work,” Foley said. “Yet all six of us garden now.”

Pittsboro resident Lesley Landis said she had been interested in growing flowers in her yard and had “informal gardens” in the past, but this year she decided to build one again due to a “concern for a supply of clean food” and “potential for supply chain snags.” She also had a “desire to stay out of crowed stores and markets.”

Bruce Davis, whose home is technically in Pittsboro, but is located much farther west of town off of U.S. Hwy. 64, has been cultivating a home garden for 10 years.

“Home gardens are always important,” Davis said. “Whether it is in containers beside the home or the half acre of production or any level in between, each is important. It is just that in times of stress their importance may be more likely to be noticed. Food uncertainty is currently an issue. The food supply chain dysfunctions, or the availability of money to purchase available food, or the potential to contract a virus can all raise the awareness of the multiple benefits of home grown food.”

Diversity in the garden

For each of these home gardeners, an array of vegetables are the foundation of their gardens. Each have tomatoes and greens, staples of the South. The variety of vegetables planted depends on the size of their garden. Landis has just a few other items, like peppers, cucumbers and herbs in her backyard garden. Foley, whose garden is a bit larger, also included root vegetables, beets, peas and squash. Davis has the most variety in his garden, adding sweet corn, sweet potato, asparagus and also having a small orchard selection.

The food Davis and his wife grow often exceeds their personal needs. When that happens, they donate their excess to CORA, the food pantry in Pittsboro.

“We have done that for several years,” Davis said. “One reason that we like to donate is that often we have more food than we can eat or put away. Thus we can donate it to CORA and it becomes a community beneficial resource and does not go to waste.”

Growing a garden

For Wilson, working the soil is key to a good garden, something she learned from her father. Having started in her father’s garden as a small child, she was “fascinated by all his techniques.” This spring, while working in her own garden, she realized how much of her father’s lessons she retained, likening it to “opening this major time capsule of memory,” hearing his voice as she worked.

“From age 4 on I spent hours and hours in the garden with my dad every Saturday and most evenings when he got off work, as he taught me how to till and sift and prepare the soil and also about what plants needed,” Wilson said. “I keep hearing him in my head guiding me in hoeing techniques, etc. It’s a real communion with my dad.”

Landis suggests raised beds for first-time gardeners because “dealing with Chatham’s clay soils is very challenging.”

She also suggests using some sort of fencing to guard against “deer, rabbits and other critters.”

Foley suggests gardeners use resources and gardening guides. She recommends “Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast” by Ira Wallace, a “great book for beginners.” The book includes a month-by-month list of garden task recommendations including the best time to do them. She also suggested residents take advantage of the town of Pittsboro’s free leaf mulch, which “makes a great soil amendment” and is “full of beneficial earth worms.” The mulch can be obtained from the town’s public works department.

“If you have a patch of sunshine, you can garden,” Foley said. “No yard? Plant in pots. I have vegetables and herbs in my flower gardens.”

Davis, perhaps the most seasoned gardener the News + Record spoke with, suggested educating yourself by reading, talking to others and utilize Cooperative Extension classes which can help a gardener be successful. He also urged first-time gardeners start “small and learn.”

He noted that “some foods are harder to grow given the disease and insect pressure in our local environment and climate.” And he suggests not trying to “grow too much” to avoid “being worn down by all the work required.”

“We have stopped growing cucumbers, summer squash, Irish potato, pumpkin, eggplant, and several other items,” Davis said. “Becoming knowledgeable and learning better methods of growing food is always a work in progress. Continue learning and expanding to the point that fits with your life.”

Challenges bring rewards

For Wilson, her garden hearkens back to when her father was young and his family went through the Great Depression, connecting her, with each moment, to her family’s past.

“The land and gardening is how the family got through it,” Wilson said. “As these gardening techniques are running through my head via my father’s voice, I realize he learned them from his grandfather who he lived with when he was very little. In a way the voice of my father is the voice of many generations. My father always appreciated his history including the land. I’m am feeling it run through me.”

For Foley, the garden has been a respite from the stress and anxiety of COVID-19.

“During the pandemic, I found there were benefits to gardening beyond what I am harvesting,” Foley said. “It felt so good to be outside in the sunshine, digging in the dirt, watching seedlings emerge, listening to the birds sing, including a Great Horned Owl, chatting through the fence with neighbors who stopped by (at a safe distance) and swapping seeds with fellow gardeners. And just being in Bynum, watching the river flow. It is definitely good for my soul.”

Landis said that vegetable gardens “provide a semi-certain supply of some food in uncertain times.” The rewards for her are “watching the progress” and “having daily tasks that require time, attention and physicality.”

They offer lessons in patience,” Landis said. “They provide an appreciation for the knowledge, talents, and skills of our local farmers. They get us outside and enjoying nature.”

Davis calls gardening a “beneficial activity” because it provides food, it’s calming, is a physical workout, and brings the reward of “successfully making something from an idea on to an achievement.”

“As Kathryn has pointed out many times to me, ‘Plants are so generous,’” Davis said. “We do a little and they give back so much. Think about it, we plant one seed or root of any of the items in our garden or orchard or herb bed or flower bed and each one, say tomato, may give us back 50 or more tomatoes to eat or put by for later in the year.”

Casey Mann can be reached at CaseyMann@Chathamnr.com.