West Marin food gardeners explored this question as they opened their gardens to the public this spring. The event, sponsored by West Marin Climate Action, featured lively discussion around the opportunities and challenges inherent in coastal edibles gardening, and everyone from curious novices to accomplished gardeners participated. Here’s what we gleaned from our visits to four bountiful West Marin gardens.
Coastal gardeners cultivate food year-round. Growing food in every season is an opportunity afforded by our Mediterranean climate, with temperature highs and lows moderated by the California current along our coast. When many people think of growing vegetables, they imagine tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and beans, and indeed, these are the pride of anyone’s summer garden. But there’s so much more. The garden hosts showed us how to grow kale, chard, bok choy, beets, lettuce, broccoli, potatoes, onions, garlic, asparagus, berries and tree fruits—year-round.
Coastal gardeners cultivate healthy soil. Mark Butler started the lesson in his no-till Bolinas garden by proclaiming: “We’re not growing vegetables; we’re growing soil.” He and Meg Simonds explained how they turn their winter cover crop of fava beans into a green mulch that, layered with compost and straw, adds organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Eleanore Despina and Bing Gong introduced us to the red wigglers in their kitchen-scrap worm bins. In a large compost pile layered with straw from their henhouse, they also turn garden waste into black gold. Eleanore encouraged visitors not to be intimidated by the “rules” of composting. “Just go for it!” she said.
Coastal gardeners cultivate sustainability. By composting, catching rainwater, reusing materials and working with the land, Mark and Meg’s garden embodies permaculture principles. In his Inverness Park garden, Burton Eubank lets his kale and tree collards flower, drop seeds and germinate the next generation of seedlings perfectly adapted to the specific microclimate of the banana belt he lives in. His visitors were delighted to collect collard seeds to dry and plant in their own gardens.
In every garden, water conservation is also essential to sustainability. Practices range from the simple—such as dense planting and mulching to conserve soil moisture—to the sophisticated, such as installing water catchment systems.
Coastal gardeners cultivate lifelong learning. Eleanore and Bing have learned by trial and error how to use row cover to best protect their vegetables from pests. They passed that knowledge along to us. Burton has learned to get maximum productivity and variety from his small garden; through experimental fruit tree grafting, he grows multiple varieties on each tree.
At West Marin School’s extensive garden, Gilo Rodriguez teaches the kids about seeds, planting, watering, pests and harvesting in hands-in-the soil science lessons. When his wife, school cook Aracely Rodriguez, incorporates garden produce into school lunches, students appreciate where their food comes from. When the school garden shares its bounty with school families and the West Marin Community Services food bank, these lessons are brought home to other families, too.
Coastal gardeners cultivate joy. The deep satisfaction and passion demonstrated by the garden hosts during last month’s tours was infectious, inspiring visitors to also share what they love about food gardening. When a third-grade West Marin School docent found a couple of renegade potatoes, one visitor commented, “There’s nothing quite so fun as digging potatoes.” This observation was quickly topped, however, when the student docents, guided by Jo Ann Kempf and a few school moms, exuberantly and gleefully showed us that nothing beats pulling carrots!
Coastal gardeners cultivate a connection with the Earth. We observe our gardens closely, attuned to pests, beneficial insects and other garden visitors. We share our berry harvests (perhaps reluctantly) with the birds. We feel the rhythm of the seasons, from the cold February soil that is not too chilly for peas to the May soil that has warmed enough to plant tender tomato seedlings. We feel the connection when we harvest asparagus for the spring equinox. We feel it when we pull onions and garlic in June after they’ve spent eight long months in the ground. We feel it when we harvest those last two September zucchinis, the plants spent out and invariably mildewy. And we feel it when our August-planted broccoli is ready for Thanksgiving dinner.
Coastal gardeners cultivate community resilience. We share knowledge, and seedlings. We share extra harvest with neighbors and local food pantries. West Marin values fresh, locally produced food and strong community. Considering our changing climate and the increasing frequency of wildfire threat, drought and flooding and challenges like earthquakes and pandemics, our food supply can become less reliable and accessible. It makes sense to act together now to strengthen our community’s food resilience. One way to do that is by encouraging more community members to grow food—for our own health, for our community’s health and for our planet’s health.
Whether you are an aspiring gardener or have been gardening for many years, we hope you’ll participate in the Local Food Action community. To do so, visit westmarinclimateaction.org/contact-us (choose local food as your area of interest). You can also sign up with the Local Food Resilience Group at www.westmarincommons.org.
Kathy Hunting, an environmental health scientist by training, is an avid food gardener and U.C. Marin Master Gardener living in Point Reyes Station. Leslie Adler-Ivanbrook lives in Inverness Park and works in environmental community outreach with the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin. Both are involved in West Marin Climate Action.
Editor’s note: If you are a gardener, please consider contributing to our new monthly Coastal Gardener column. We are hoping to showcase a variety of vegetable and flower gardeners’ practices, experiences, wisdom and tips. Write to Tess at [email protected] with your ideas for a column, or send questions for others to answer.