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Gardening: Just for Yuppies and Econerds?
In a recent New York Times piece, Michael Pollan lamented how little we, as individuals, can do to ward off climate change. But he also made a strong case for one activity that just might help the environment—starting a backyard vegetable garden.
You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way ‘solutions’ like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon.
That is, gardening is one exercise that never involves a car trip to the gym. It’ll leave you with the freshest veggies you’ve ever tasted, and if you grow more than you can consume it might even help you reconnect with your neighbors. Sounds like a can’t-lose situation, but Andrew Leonard of Salon challenges Michael Pollan’s stance on the grounds that Leonard—like many of us—just doesn’t have the time to “weed or hoe or water.” In Leonard’s opinion, gardening is hard work:
To be able to enjoy it as play, or as an almost spiritual exercise that connects you more deeply to the earth and all living things (some of which you must kill: Die, all aphids and snails!) can be a tough call after a long day or week at the office. It can also be an affectation that is only accessible to those who spend their Sunday mornings working their way through the New York Times, before deciding where to put their snap pea trellis.
So, he’s saying that gardening is not only laborious—it’s also a bourgie pastime for people with nothing better to do, kind like playing croquet while sipping white wine spritzers. The gardeners among us may take offense to such a statement, but at least we can take comfort in the fact that once Mr. Leonard’s green-thumbed neighbors get wind of this piece they’ll be taking their backyard produce to more appreciative recipients.
Posted by | Friday, April 25, 2008 at 3:08pm | 6 comments
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There speaks someone who doesn't know anyone outside his own urban elite social circle. Millions of people around the world have their own vegetable gardens, or they don't have their own garden, use community plots, gardens and commons areas. Really, it's all a matter of priorities. Maybe it's an affectation for Andrew Leonard, but for many people it's an avocation and something they find so important for a variety of reasons ranging from necessity to enjoyment that they actually make time for gardening rather than that oh-so-important activity of reading the Sunday New York Times.
His argument is a very urban/suburban one. Tons of people grow their own vegetables because it's less expensive to produce their own, including preserving by canning and freezing what's not immediately eaten. It's a low-cash way to live, especially in areas not reliant on city water. I can't speak for urbanites, but understand the issue for middle-class suburbanites who are tied to the car culture, and live too far away from their jobs. Even those people can reap great rewards from the square-foot gardening method, which would minimize a great deal of his concerns. You can get a great result with minimal effort.
Of course, if those suburbanites would consider replacing all that grass, their efforts with lawn care could go towards more profitable pursuits.
I agree with the pro-gardeners here. Let me add my own spin to this too. Gardening can help you live a healthier lifestyle in 2 ways: you get exercise from being out there working in the garden & not munching on Doritos and watching TV. Also, once you grow the veggies, you have to eat them! My husband and I routinely drop 5 pounds each summer because of the constant string of zucchini, summer squash, sugar snap peas, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, and lettuce we eat from our little 12 x 5 garden. I think it's a great way of life: you spend time watching things grow, eating food that you have not bought from anywhere, food that has not had to be trucked, shipped, carried, picked by low wage people, frozen, refrigerated, packaged, or boxed. At the very least, everyone should have their own little pot of tomatoes growing on their porch. That is almost no effort and reaps delicious rewards.
The Salon commentary is absolutely infuriating! That just sounds like a lame excuse for somebody who's too lazy to find one spot in his "non-negotiable" lifestyle that can be let go to make time. I tend to think that a lot of people's "busy lifestyles" that are constantly being touted and shoved down our throats by advertisers are just buzzwords to convince us to buy their "convenience" products or services or WHATEVER. BS! How much of the stuff and activities that contribute to the "busy lifestyle" are actually necessary? Do kids really need to be taking 40 lessons a week, or would they be better served by playing in their own dang backyard?! Etcetera. I could rant long and hard on this subject, but I'll stick to the one at hand: GARDENING.
I come from a very working class family. My dad was a millwright at General Motors and my mom worked full time or part time throughout my childhood. We also always had a garden. It was just a priority with the folks, and lowered food bills. And made their kids do something other than sit in front of the TV!
God, that's annoying. Let's see, who do I know who gardens in a serious way? My friend with four kids. (No, she doesn't have a fulltime outside-the-home job, but she does freelance, and did I mention four kids?) Her husband's Italian immigrant parents (an engineer and a nurse, real yuppies there.) My grandparents, of course, with their 5th and 8th grade educations. What snobs! Oh, my friend the painter, who lived for years in his studio, eating off a hot plate and showering at the Y. He had a plot in a community garden, and he learned to make pickles, too.
Why would these people garden? Maybe because it's a cheap way to get food? Particularly if you save seed. (They all do/did.) As for the trips to the garden center that make gardening less "ecofriendly" than buying food, those can be avoided pretty easily. Compost, compost, compost.
Egads, it's irritating to read wealthy Salon columnists pretending to have so much sympathy for the overworked poor who just don't have time to garden or cook, while from what I can see it's always the poor, new immigrants who plant their tiny urban yards with vegetables and buy the cheap-but-labor-intensive beans, grains and greens at the grocery store to make their supper. Meanwhile, back in the suburbs, our fair columnist can laugh at the "unrealistic" idea of growing his own food while he maintains his busy lifestyle of watching television, going to the gym, mowing the grass, and eating out at "nice" restaurants that get their entrees frozen from Sysco. Enjoy it while it lasts - and when the economy tanks, you'll be begging tomatoes from your "yuppie" friends who made time to garden.
HAH! Bingo, Curiousbaker! I got cut-off in mid-rant this morning. Thanks for continuing the argument with such eloquence.