Dirt magazine’s Kitchen Garden Tour celebrates backyard food growers

SPARTA, N.J. — At the end of a day touring area food gardens, 85 people gathered in the outdoor pavilion at the Mohawk House Restaurant to eat, drink and await the results of the day’s voting.

Gardeners mingled with the garden peepers who had stopped by their yards earlier, not only to admire their squash and sample a cherry tomato, but also to take in the unique characteristics that make a kitchen garden as individual as the person who tends it.

Garden peepers had voted remotely for up to three of their favorite gardens, or else by paper ballot at the reception.

The nominees for Dirt’s second annual Kitchen Garden Tour spanned three counties, from Goshen, N.Y. to Newton, N.J. This year’s tour also included two community gardens in Warwick and West Milford.

“This is where the revolution starts,” said Nathan Johnson of Vernon after touring gardens with his family. “Taking back and reconnecting with our land, our food, our health and our communities.”

The popular choiceVotes tallied, the popular choice winner of Dirt’s second annual Kitchen Garden Tour was Jennifer Overeem of Goshen (who also won editor’s pick for Most Productive Garden).

From seeds that Overeem saved years ago from a Halloween jack-o-lantern, she has grown her own pumpkins each year, and they’ve become the pride of her garden. Some have reached a record 60 pounds, thanks to a garden expansion that gave them extra room to vine.

About 17 behemoths sit ready for the family “pumpkin picking” day that has become an annual, pre-Halloween event at her house. Overeem says pumpkins are easy to grow, but then again, she spent an hour after work every day of July and August picking cucumber beetle eggs off her vines. Her hard work is paying off in all sorts of ways, some of them unexpected.

For instance, the young Asian pear tree that anchors the garden fruited so heavily this year that it broke two branches.

“I’m Italian,” said the gardener. “I don’t know how to do small.”

Second by popular choiceApril Perciballi of Lafayette, N.J. took second place by popular choice. Inspired by “crazy-wonderful” gardens seen in Napa Valley and Italy, she grew artichokes this year for the first time, which she started inside in February.

In the backyard oasis that she and her husband Rocco have created, a stream flows into a koi pond; and their many edible landscaping plants include blueberries, grapes, currants and alpine strawberries, a fig and a crabapple tree, and pear and apple trees.

This year the couple hosted a family jam day, putting up 100 jars of jam, including their own crabapple jam.

ThirdThird place went to the Warwick Community Garden, located next to a young orchard on the grounds of the Warwick Valley Community Center.

In this innovative take on the community garden concept, 25 or so members put in at least an hour of work a week, and take home an equal portion of the harvest.

Surplus is donated to a food bank.

There are no individual plots here. It’s one big garden, led by a committee of four: Sara Werling, Bernice Mulch, Sherrie DeBergh, and Geoff Howard.

This allows them to follow a master plan and good practices like crop rotation.

Some of the gardeners here are older, some don’t have yards of their own, and some simply enjoy the camaraderie of working alongside others, in a garden that’s neater and more beautiful than what any individual could maintain on his or her own.

Most welcomingEditor’s choice for Most Welcoming Garden went to Cathryn and Robert Anders of Warwick.

When Cathryn said she needed a fence, Robert, a professional designer, designed and built not only a fence but angled raised beds, a partially covered walkway, a Japanese style gate, a fountain, benches, and night lighting.

Cathryn, the gardener of the house, has been tending this sanctuary for about 15 years, and it shows — in the robust asparagus patch, the yellow California poppies that spread from an outside bed and now line the gravel paths, and the triangular herb garden that has sprung up outside the fence, overlooking the pond.

“Kitchen gardeners don’t expect a lot of back-patting — but they deserve it,” said Dirt Editor Becca Tucker. “Every bite of food they grow is a bite that did not have to be shipped across the country or the world, that wasn’t sprayed with Round-up. Every person who gets to eat the food that comes out of a local garden is healthier for it, and more strongly connected to nature, to the gardener, and to the place we all live.”

SponsorsThe tour’s sponsors were Mohawk House Restaurant, Warwick Tomatoes, Warwick Valley Farmers Market, Black Dirt Distillery, TNT Fence Co., and A. Gurda Produce.