March means longer days, warmer temperatures (hopefully!), and, for many in central Virginia, getting out the rake, trowel, and gardening gloves. Lovers of flowers, shrubs, and beauty anticipate the splendors of Garden Week, while those gearing up for soil and sun are looking forward to eating the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor. If you want to grow your own food, this area has a wealth of resources.
One of the most comprehensive is the Virginia Cooperative Extension. This state agency, affiliated with the commonwealth’s two land-grant universities (Virginia Tech and Virginia State University), is like Google with actual people who, if they don’t have the answer to your question, will find it for you.
Nick Saylor, VCE’s master gardener coordinator for our area, says that, starting during the pandemic, “we’ve seen a growing interest in gardening in general and in producing your own food.” VCE’s extensive resources cover home gardening and horticulture assistance; consumer education programs, including a speaker’s bureau, free classes, and the 4-H program for youth; and the Master Food Volunteers program that helps local food banks and community gardens.
Piedmont Master Gardeners, the local chapter of Virginia Master Gardeners, provides volunteer staffing for a range of community programs, including VCE’s Horticulture Help Desk. While most of the help desk staff have broad knowledge, many also have additional specialized expertise in plants, insects, and diseases. Master Gardener Linda Blum, a soil scientist and retired UVA environmental sciences professor, is the help desk’s vegetable specialist. “I joined 4-H as a kid,” she says, “and have been vegetable gardening since the 1960s.” Blum claims to “know nothing” about ornamental plants or lawns, but loves doing research on any horticultural question and providing accurate, scientific answers for help desk queries.
Blum says growing plants successfully “starts with building and conserving your soil.” For $10, VCE offers soil testing to check the nutrient levels and pH of your dirt. If you don’t have access to a yard (or your homeowners’ association says no gardening), there’s always container gardening on your patio or balcony—as long as you have sun, you can have fresh tomatoes, peppers, herbs, greens, and even eggplants.
Blum’s advice for beginners: “Many people start too big, and they become overwhelmed and give up.” Another common error is not adapting what you learned gardening somewhere else to this area’s much earlier and longer growing season. Also, in 2023 the USDA revised our hardiness zone designation from 7a to 7b as average temperatures have increased, which can affect what to plant and when.
Photo by Eze Amos.
For those who don’t have a sunny backyard or balcony, the next best option is community gardening. Albemarle County maintains a growing space at Western Park in Crozet, with plot rentals handled by the Old Trail Community Garden club. The City of Charlottesville has 120 plots available in community gardens at Meadowbrook Fairgrounds, Azalea Park, Michie Drive, and Rives Park, and there are proposals to create another garden at Booker T. Washington Park.
Justin McKenzie with Charlottesville Parks & Recreation says plots are currently given out via a lottery system, with city residents getting preference and paying slightly less annual rent. “About 40 percent of the gardeners have been gardening their plots for six years or longer,” he notes. “It appears to be people who are growing food for their own consumption—commercial use is prohibited—or just because they love growing things.”
There are a few other ad hoc garden spaces around Charlottesville, such as Common Fields and Solitary Gardens behind Visible Records and the PVCC Community Garden. But growing space is at a premium in a town where real estate pressures are soaring.
The largest non-city community garden is part of New Roots, a multi-faceted food and agriculture program run by the local office of the International Rescue Committee. The New Roots community garden offers plots to more than 100 gardeners—mostly IRC clients, but also some area residents—on five properties in the area. “We are limited by the amount of urban agricultural space available in Charlottesville,” says Cecilia Lapp Stoltzfus, IRC’s manager of food and agriculture programs. “Some landowners in the county have offered us space, but it’s hard to make a match, since most of our clients live in the city and transportation is [a challenge].”
This makes vegetable gardening sound like a lot of work. So why do people want to grow their own food?
Many vegetable gardeners grew up in a vegetable garden. “One of my first memories is planting tomatoes with my dad,” Blum recalls. “Growing up, we didn’t have a lot—we gardened to have quality food.” And now? “I like growing vegetables because I like to eat,” she says. “And I like watching plants grow. Even weeding, it’s meditative.”
Local food educator and gardener Becky Calvert has similar memories: “My dad always had radishes growing. He’d say, ‘You can’t get good ones at the store.’ My mom had a vegetable garden, and each of us kids got our own little plot. In college, I missed digging in the dirt.” From her experience running cooking and gardening programs for young people, Calvert says, “Get your kids involved—they love messing around in the garden and they are excited to eat something they grew themselves.”
In addition to being fresher, more nutritious, more sustainable, and more environmentally sound, homegrown food is also a way for households to make the most of their food budget in a time when economic pressures continue to rise. But the obstacles to gardening for food are substantial: the city, county, and IRC community gardens all have waiting lists, and there’s the up-front costs of transportation, tools, seeds, and plants. Also, tending a garden is a significant time commitment for people who may be working two jobs, lack child care, or have health or mobility issues.
In the meantime, food insecurity is a growing problem in our area. In October 2024, the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank logged almost 190,000 “guest visits”—“a new record,” notes Les Sinclair, the Food Bank’s communications and public relations manager. Demand for hunger relief used to rise and fall with the unemployment rate, but that’s changed, mostly due to the end of pandemic-era benefits, continuing high food prices, and other economic pressures, he says. “In our area, unemployment is near record lows, while the food bank is serving record numbers of people and distributing record amounts of food.”
Organizations, nonprofits, and volunteers throughout the area have stepped up to try to address this growing need by growing food. Aleen Carey, co-executive director of food equity nonprofit Cultivate Charlottesville, notes that “Charlottesville’s level of food insecurity is higher than the state’s average, and was even before COVID.” The five community gardens in Charlottesville’s public housing neighborhoods, started by the Urban Agricultural Collective (an initiative that has been incorporated into Cultivate), are no longer being maintained as these neighborhoods undergo resident-led redevelopment.
In the meantime, Cultivate/UAC operate three community gardens, the largest on a three-acre site at CATEC. Produce grown there by staff and more than 100 volunteers is distributed at UAC markets days around the city, and through the Food Bank and other food pantries around town. (Cultivate is also a key participant in the City Schoolyard Garden youth education program and the Food Justice Network, a collaboration of organizations addressing food access, food insecurity, and food equity.)
Another asset is Virginia Fresh Match, which enables recipients of SNAP benefits to use them—at double their face value—to purchase fresh produce, seeds, and food plants at participating farmers’ markets (in our area, that’s City Market, Market Central at IX Art Park, and the markets in Stanardsville, Waynesboro, and Orange). Since 2015, the Fresh Match program has increased access to fresh foods for thousands of families (VFM estimates that 10 percent of Virginia residents rely on SNAP benefits) while helping to support the state’s small farmers.
Other organizations around town have been able to harness the enthusiasm—and commitment to healthy eating, sustainability, and social justice—of the gardening community:
Piedmont Master Gardeners and other volunteers maintain a community garden at Yancey Park in Crozet, and most of its produce is donated to local senior citizens and the Yancey Food Pantry, but community members are welcome to come and take some of the harvest, even if they haven’t helped tend it.
The Bread & Roses program at Trinity Episcopal Church operates a volunteer community garden that supplies free produce to individuals and organizations, as well as to its own community kitchen.
Holly Hammond, co-owner of Whisper Hill Farm in Scottsville, sells most of its organic produce through farmers markets and CSAs (an agreement in which an individual pre-pays for a season of produce), and she’s starting a program called Feed My Neighbor, which lets people donate money toward buying CSA shares for low-income households.
Sometimes it’s as simple as home gardeners sharing their bounty. Hanna Strauss, the Food Bank’s partner engagement manager, says the food bank relies on fresh food donated by local farmers and gardeners, as well as packaged food from area grocery stores and food distributors. “We tell people, if you’re going to grow food, plant another row for us,” she says. Many other pantries will accept gardeners’ surplus.
Taste, nutrition, cost savings, sustainability … there are still more reasons to grow your own food. Stoltzfus says her organization surveys its gardeners, and has found some surprising results. The majority of respondents say they garden to have access to healthier foods (60 percent) and to supplement what they buy or be able to have foods from their cultural/ethnic background (55 percent). Fully 95 percent say the New Roots program has improved the quality of their diet (food that is organic/better-tasting/fresher/more familiar). And yes, they report saving on average $56 dollars a week on groceries.
Beyond these benefits, more than 90 percent of the gardeners report health improvements from working in the garden; 78 percent say they feel happier and less stressed; and 76 percent report being more active and getting more exercise.
Especially important for these new Americans—many of whom have endured tremendous hardship, suffering, and dislocation to arrive in Charlottesville for a new life—is the “impact on the social fabric” for its participants, says Lapp Stoltzfus. “New Roots fosters a multicultural community across many ethnicities and languages, creating a stronger and more resilient local community,” she notes in an email. “100 percent of garden members surveyed report a willingness to offer support to other members of the garden.”
Where to go to learn to grow
Virginia Cooperative Extension
ext.vt.edu
Edible gardening section A comprehensive resource for anyone looking to start or improve their skills at growing food, from monthly graphic guides on what and when to plant, to the Get Gardening video series. All of VCE’s informational publications are also accessible online.
Horticulture Help Desk An excellent resource for personalized advice on growing your own food, understanding a soil analysis report, or detecting and treating garden/plant diseases. (460 Stagecoach Rd., 872-4583, albemarlevcehelpdesk@gmail.com)
Other VCE Programs
Soil testing and fertilization VCE offers soil testing services to help you understand the nutrient levels and pH of your soil in order to optimize your gardening.
Plant disease clinics If you’re dealing with plant pests or diseases, VCE provides diagnostic services and advice on how to manage them.
Home food preservation Learn from a family consumer science agent or a certified master food volunteer how to safely preserve your garden harvest through canning, freezing, and drying.
Youth gardening programs For kids and teens interested in gardening, VCE’s 4-H program offers gardening-related activities and educational opportunities.
Virginia Master Gardeners The Virginia Master Gardeners program is designed to provide individuals with in-depth knowledge of horticulture and gardening. A VCE-certified master gardener is a volunteer who has been trained to assist in educating the public on gardening, sustainable horticulture practices, and environmental stewardship.
Piedmont Master Gardeners
piedmontmastergardeners.com
The PMG maintains a website full of advice and resources to help you garden/grow your own food, as well as information on volunteer opportunities.
Free gardening newsletter The Garden Shed is printed monthly, and is also available online.
Speakers bureau Your community group can request a master gardener to address topics about soil preparation, growing ornamentals/flowers/foods, insects, plant diseases, and more.
Master gardener annual spring plant sale A source for low-cost and often discounted stock. Come early! This year the sale is on May 3, 10am to 2pm at Albemarle Square Shopping Center.
Gardening workshops Choose from topics like vegetable gardening, composting, square-foot gardening, and sustainable gardening practices. Many of these are available to the public in Albemarle County and Charlottesville, at no cost through the Garden Basics project. Registration is now open for a series of classes called Foodscaping—The Edible Landscape, run in partnership with Bread & Roses food ministry. On March 30, the group will host Prepping and Planning Your Vegetable Garden, from 1-3pm at James Monroe’s Highland. Register on the PMG website.
Grow and give
The Piedmont Master Gardeners’ Share Your Harvest program invites growers to share their bounty, as do many food pantries in the area. Contact individual facilities to confirm what donations they can accept, and when.
In Charlottesville
Church of Our Savior
973-6512
1165 E. Rio Rd.
Church of the Incarnation
973-4381
1465 Incarnation Dr.
Holy Comforter Church
295-7185
215 Third St. NE (donation location)
Loaves & Fishes
996-7868
2050 Lambs Rd.
New Beginnings Christian Community
996-9137
1130 E. Market St.
Blue Ridge Area Food Bank
296-3663
1207 Harris St.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
293-8179
717 Rugby Rd.
In Albemarle County
BF Yancey Community Food Pantry
286-2558
7625 Porters Rd., Esmont
Buck Mountain Episcopal Church
973-2054
4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville
Crozet United Methodist Church—
Grace Grocery
823-4420
1156 Crozet Ave., Crozet
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Ivy
979-6354
851 Owensville Rd., Ivy
United Methodist Church—
Bread of Life Ministry
409-6175
at Scottsville Community Center, 300 Page St.
