Home gardening blooms around the world during coronavirus lockdowns
20 April, 2020
Jaime Calder all but quit on gardening after moving from the fertile soils of Illinois to dusty Texas, but the coronavirus changed her mind.
The magazine editor and her category of five planted collard greens, chard, onions, blackberries, watermelons and peppers this season, expanding their garden while buckling down in the home during the pandemic.
People all over the world are turning to gardening as a soothing, family friendly hobby that also eases concerns over food security as lockdowns slow the harvesting and distribution of some crops. Fruit and vegetable seed sales are jumping worldwide.
“It’s supplementary gardening,” said Calder. “There’s no chance this would sustain a family of five. But we’re amping it up, so we can try and avoid the store a bit more in the coming months.”
Russians are isolating in out-of-town cottages with plots, a traditional way to obtain vegetables during tough times because the Soviet era, and rooftop farms are planned in Singapore, which relies heavily on food imports.
Furloughed workers and persons working from home are also looking for activities to occupy their leisure time, after the cancellations of major sports and the closure of restaurants, bars and theaters. Parents too are embracing gardening as a patio activity related to children stuck in the home after schools shut.
"Planting a few potatoes can be quite a revelation to a kid," said Guy Barter, chief horticulturist at Britain's Royal Horticultural Society, which has seen a five-fold rise in queries for advice on its website through the lockdown. Gardeners without yards are even planting potatoes in trash bags, he said.
Gardening could trim retail demand for produce but trips to the supermarket it's still necessary. Bert Hambleton, retail consultant for Hambleton Resources, said supermarkets will continue steadily to see an overall upsurge in produce demand as would-be restaurant-goers eat in the home instead of dining out.
Seed boom
US seed company W. Atlee Burpee & Co sold more seed than any moment in its 144-year history in March as the contagious respiratory virus spread, Chairman George Ball said.
If they cannot find seeds in stores, would-be gardeners in Britain are seeking advice how to extract them from tomatoes and squash purchased in supermarkets, Barter said.
In Russia, demand for seeds rose by 20%-30% year-on-year in March, according to online retailer Ozon.
Seed demand typically rises in tough financial times, said Tom Johns, owner of Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove, Oregon. The company temporarily stopped taking orders over the phone due to a surge in demand and reassigned some phone employees to physically fill online orders, he said.
"It generally does not take long for people to become very worried about the food supply - either the cost of food or getting food," Johns said.
Johnny's Selected Seeds in Fairfield, Maine, saw a 270% jump in orders the week of March 16, after US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus.
Canada-based Stokes Seeds, which ships to the United States and Canada, received 1,000 online orders through the weekend of March 21, four times a lot more than normal, President Wayne Gayle said.
"We didn't have the staff even merely to enter them in to the system, aside from fulfill them," he said.
The business temporarily halted all online orders and is prioritizing orders from commercial vegetable growers "to ensure our food security come early july," according to its website.
'I grow tomatoes, you grow carrots'
With so many digging into gardening for the first time, there has also been a push to pool resources and collective knowledge on home food production.
Nathan Kleinman, co-director of Philadelphia-based Experimental Farm Network, said more than 2,000 people registered and attended weekly calls to go over gardening best practices because they get started putting seeds in the ground.
"The reaction was overwhelming," Kleinman said. "It struck a nerve with lots of people."
Melanie Pittman, an teacher who lives on 5 acres near Crete, Illinois, said while everyone was stocking up on wc paper, her partner ran over to the local do-it-yourself store to fill up on seeds and gardening tools.
Pittman is a lot more than doubling her garden, planting corn, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, onions and growing mushrooms. She is also dealing with other growers in her community to expand her reliance on local food.
“I try to get in touch with other individuals who are growing food in the region, in order to avoid the overlap - ‘I grow tomatoes, you grow carrots,'” she said.
Gardening could be a rare positive trend to emerge from the crippling pandemic, said Diane Blazek, executive director of the united states industry group National Garden Bureau.
"We'll come out ultimately and hopefully everyone will be eating better and gardening an increasing number of self-reliant," she said.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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