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closePeople can study how to invest their money, yet many seek the expertise of financial advisers in the hope of reaping bigger dividends.
Advice on diet and exercise is everywhere, yet people hire personal trainers to help them trim fat and grow muscle.
Information on planting a Northwest garden is bountiful, so will anyone hire a personal garden consultant?
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HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
To contact Debra Gear, send an e-mail to debragear@gmail.com.
Here is some of what Debra Gear grows in her garden: Salad greens, pumpkins, raspberries and strawberries, herbs, potatoes, beans and corn, tomatoes and tomatillos, eggplants, broccoli and peas.
To see “Old Northwest Foodie Thinks It Through,” Lane Morgan’s blog on seasonal food and other topics, visit www.nwlocalfoods.blogspot.com.
Some people already have … and her name is Debra Gear.
Gear spent her childhood in British Columbia, where she helped in her mother’s everpresent garden. She later lived in Washington and Alaska, and settled in Bellingham 10 years ago.
A Master Gardener, Gear, 34, has studied landscape design and horticulture. She has worked with organic farmers and with landscape contractors. She has cultivated her own vegetable garden the past 11 years, and has designed and maintained landscapes on her own.
This year, she merged her zeal for growing food and creating landscapes. Voila! She’s a personal garden consultant, helping people who want to raise fruits and vegetables year-round.
“I just want people to grow food,” she said. “It’s always been my passion.”
To start, Gear meets with clients to discuss what they want to grow and where their garden should go. Do they want a large garden, or do they only have room for a small one?
Do they want lots of fruits and veggies, or a chosen few? (Hint: Go easy on the zucchini.)
Will the client help install and maintain the garden? If not, Gear can find someone to help.
Gear then drafts a gardening proposal for the client’s OK, and the work begins.
She offers a veritable stew of advice to her clients. Topics include pest management without insecticides; using compost to create new soil for the garden; and harvesting and storing produce, possibly in a root cellar.
She prepares an annual calendar showing when to plant and harvest what the client wants to grow, with advice on how and what to grow during our chilly, wet winters.
It’s a new business focus for Gear, but the timing makes sense. Growing and eating local produce is all the rage, for a variety of good reasons.
Done right, it’s good for the environment and your health. With the high cost of food and other necessities, and the fear that prices will stay high, the idea of eating what you grow makes economic sense, with a dash of self-reliance as extra seasoning.
Gardens were a necessity during the Depression and a patriotic duty during both world wars.
“In hard times, people turn to gardening,” Gear said, “but we should always be doing it.”
Contact Dean Kahn at dean.kahn@bellinghamherald.com or 715-2291. Read his Now and Then blog at TheBellingham Herald.com/blogs.
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