Seed Sales Up, More People Gardening For First Time

Gas and food prices are sky-high and according to the USDA, food prices are expected to go up 6 percent this year.

Those high prices may be creating thousands of new gardeners.

The Burpee seed company has sold twice as many seeds this year than last. The company said half of the increase is from new customers.

Joan Brenckle, owner of Brenckle’s Farm and Greenhouse, said she’s seeing more first-time gardeners this year than ever before. Brenckle said, “They want to grow it instead of paying the high prices at the grocery store.”

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Food gardens a growing trend
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 06/11/2008 06:09:20 AM MDT

Seed sales are way up. Community gardens are long sold out. Calls for help to convert suburban lawns to lush raised vegetable beds are coming in to extension agents fast and furious.

Folks worried about rising food and fuel prices, and concerned about how and where their fruits and veggies are grown, are investing heavily in home-grown produce.

Soil, it seems, is the new oil.

“I’m not a psychologist, but when times are tough — like the mortgage crisis, the financial crisis and the energy crisis — people tend to think a little bit more about covering their bases and being self-sufficient where they can,” says Jim Dyer, who serves on the board of the Sustainability Alliance of Southwest Colorado and who gardens on

Junior master gardeners work inside the Cripple Creek community greenhouse. “This got started when a woman (from the area) called me and said, ‘People up here are trying to decide whether to eat or heat their homes,’” says Larry Stebbins, who teaches gardening to kids and adults in the greenhouse. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)a ranch west of Durango to feed his immediate and extended families.
Up in Cripple Creek, where the prices of gasoline and home-heating fuel are inching as high as the altitude and the nearest big grocery store is 25 miles away in Woodland Park, a community group commandeered an unused city greenhouse to start a garden.

“This got started when a woman (from the area) called me and said, ‘People up here are trying to decide whether to eat or heat their homes,’ ” says Larry Stebbins, who teaches gardening to kids and adults in the greenhouse.

The greenhouse plots are going fast.

Gertrud Wuellner, 41, a school bus driver, brought her four kids to a Wednesday morning class at the greenhouse because her sprouts are enthused about the garden the family started at home.

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