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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2019)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2019 CONTACT US FOLLOW US Jonathan Williams editor@coastweekend.com facebook.com/ DailyAstorian THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2019 • B1 Photos by Lynda Layne/Chinook Observer Gordon Jensen checks zucchini and cucumber plants in raised plastic tubs. He built supports using scrap lumber and concrete blocks. This allows the plants to drape over the edges, not leaving any produce lying on the ground. It also makes room for planting other vegetables under the tubs. SMALL PLOT, BIG YIELD Ilwaco dad grows vegetables and fruits to feed his kids LEFT: Gordon Jensen, at the edge of his garden, listening to his son explain how the blueberries are doing. RIGHT: Micheal Jensen planted sunfl owers from seed “not that long ago” in the ground of the family garden. He left for a few days to attend a camp. When he left, the plants were about waist high and when he returned, most were rivaling or surpassing him in height. BY LYNDA LAYNE O CEAN PARK, Wash. — It was a taco salad night early this year when single-dad, Gordon Jensen, went into a local grocery store to buy let- tuce. He was shocked to see the price, almost $5 a head. When you’re feeding two teenagers, high food costs can some- times get in the way of healthy eating. Jensen is a skilled gardener, who learned at an early age that families can live mostly on what they grow them- selves and normally, he would be doing that. But it was still too soon for planting his outside garden. The weather was still quite wet, with far too many light frosts occurring. The soil in his sustainable 26x26-foot allotted garden space was too soaked for tilling or serious planting. So what’s a guy to do? The $5 price spurred him into action. At least for starters, he would rely on ingenuity and a great free fi nd to get the ball rolling. Someone had given him a big glass terrarium, a former snake hab- itat, complete with a lid. That would make an ideal cold frame-greenhouse set up, he thought. A little soil, a few let- tuce starts and also some seed, and soon he had what he called, “Lettuce up to here.” Taco salad nights were back on, regularly. The Jensens reside in a mobile home on a small corner lot in Ocean Park. Both kids, Micheal, 15, and Justice, 18, are FFA members at Ilwaco High School and active in a lot of areas. And thanks to their dad’s gardening expertise, they are also healthy eaters. Micheal seems to have inherited his dad’s interest in gardening. He often works alongside his dad in the garden. There are huge sunfl ower plants in a row that Micheal planted from seed and he also started potatoes earlier this year. For his summer job, he mows area lawns for several people so he can arrange his schedule with helping out in the gar- den and also fi shing with his dad. They have been stocking their freezer with surf perch and Jensen said they will be going after salmon soon. Intensive planting, stacking Jensen is always on the lookout for Gordon Jensen uses old plastic storage tubs and coolers elevated on supports to grow vegetables and fruits. free or cheap containers he can use for plants. They range from plastic stor- age containers and coolers, to buckets and old kitty little tubs. He has amassed quite a collection and uses them year after year, adding others when possi- ble. He has found that “stacking” in the garden offers him more growing space. He’s made supports out of old lumber and concrete blocks for many of the tubs. “This saves room, when you don’t have a lot of space,” he explained, while standing near a row of these elevated containers. He pointed to the tubs and commented, “I have cucumbers and zuc- chini in there.” He said that when these start producing and grow out, they’ll drape down over the tub edges and the vegetables never lie on the ground, which takes away the risk of rot. Good thing, because he said he needs all the zucchini he can grow. “The kids love it fried, so it doesn’t last too long.” His gaze shifted to the ground below the squash and cucumbers. “I can plant stuff underneath these containers,” he explained. “I’ve got onions and chard growing there now.” Another row of elevated containers has potatoes growing underneath. And also below are several buckets and tubs with cherry tomato plants. If they get too tall, they can easily be moved elsewhere. Jensen commented, “The only toma- toes I plant are cherry tomatoes and the kids usually keep them wiped out. They walk out, pick them and eat them right there.” In-ground soil amending When he can afford it, Jensen does occasionally buy a few bags of potting soil on sale to use in containers. He has found that he can improve the sandy soil quality with no cash layout. When Micheal mows lawns, theirs or others, he can bag the cut grass and put it in the gar- den. Before Jensen became too disabled to do that kind of work, he also used to mow for people. He recalled, “I brought all the lawn clippings back and stacked it in the gar- den. When I fi rst moved here, this area was pure sand.” So, he not only amended with cut grass, he also got rabbit and goat manure given to him by “a lady in Long Beach.” And, he collected a lot of hay mulch. That mix, tilled into the gar- den plot, worked wonders. Anytime he raked leaves, he always saved them for the soil. “It’s still predominately sand, but every time I fi nd anything that will work like mulch, I put it in there,” he said. It’s working. The entire area is full of thriving plants, so much so that once in a while he has to cut a few back to make a small path for access. It is truly an inten- sive planting situation, with a lot of vari- eties growing close together. See Plot, Page B2
