One Gentry businessman has taken a different approach to keeping the lawn in front of his business beautiful. Instead of mowing it, he put in a community garden and shares fruits and vegetables with area residents.
Tom Krein, owner of Krein Knives on Main Street in Gentry, was tired of growing and mowing grass in front of his knife shop, so he built raised gardening beds -- seven of them -- brought in some soil and planted garden crops -- spinach, onions, peppers, tomatoes, okra and squash. The produce is free for the taking, Krein says.
"All I ask," Krein says, "is that people take only what they can eat and eat what they take."
Krein says he dislikes mowing grass and used to get warnings from the city when it got too long.
"I decided to grow food instead of grass," Krein says. "And it's really pretty easy to grow food," he adds. "You can grow a lot of food in a small space."
Krein demonstrated that with his garden this year. He built three 4-by-10-foot garden boxes, two 4-by-8 boxes and two 4-by-4 boxes. In that space, he's already harvested about 800 onions and bunches of spinach. The tomato plants are now full of ripening cherry tomatoes. He has cayenne and jalapeno peppers and yellow and zucchini squash ripening. And the gardening season won't be done when those are finished. He's planting green beans in the beds where his other crops have been harvested.
Krein isn't growing the produce for himself. He says he has a garden at home, which keeps him well supplied. He's growing the food for others and hopes his gardens might inspire others to try gardening for themselves.
Krein says he'd like people to see how easy it is to grow their own food and says it's becoming more and more important for people to do so. He considers it part of going green because it removes the need to ship in vegetables from other far-off places.
"Most of the fruits and vegetables you buy at the store are treated with GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and pesticides," he says.
That's not the case with Krein's community garden plots. While he won't go so far as to say everything is organic because of all the requirements for using that term, he says he uses no sprays or chemicals in his gardens and says it's really not that hard to grow gardens without chemicals if you spend a few minutes a day and pull weeds and remove bugs.
Krein says it's really not that expensive to do, either. He bought the lumber for his boxes from Parks Lumber (a block away), the soil from Heritage Soils (just a few miles away) and most of his plants from Janie's Greenhouse (just behind his knife shop).
The community garden has become a big hit. Some are reaping the benefits by picking and eating the fresh fruits and vegetables. Others are following Krein's example and putting in raised-bed gardens of their own.
To help promote his garden and share ideas on home gardening, Krein started a Facebook group for Gentry Community Garden. There, not only information on the garden is shared, but gardening tips and food recipes for home-grown produce. It's becoming a popular place with 48 members and many more visitors.
Why spend money and time to grow grass when you could be growing your own food? Krein has found his answer. Don't.
NAN Life on 08/20/2014