Food not lawns: Hungry Gnome empowers homeowners to grow food

By ANDRE GALLANT – published Saturday, February 16, 2013

“Few people are thinking about their gardens as February’s moody weather freezes, warms and cools again. Rather than amending soil and arranging planting schedules, just what clothes to wear during such shifty elements is perhaps the more pressing question.

But the wiry green thumbs at Hungry Gnome Gardenscapes never stop preparing and supporting vegetable gardens at homes around Athens. There’s always dirty work to be done.

And in February, the gnomes are scurrying around in rubber boots to clients’ homes to build garden beds, plant onions and ready soil for a busy spring and summer planting season. Healthy plants start with healthy soil, the Hungry Gnomes say.

Since 2009, Hungry Gnome Gardenscapes has been following a mission to empower people to grow their own food, and doing helping homeowners do so in their own backyards by setting up and maintaining gardens.

Homeowners call up Hungry Gnome for a variety of reasons, said owner Kevin Yates, “but a lot of them want a connection with where their food comes from and a connection to nature as experienced through their land.”

But today’s fast-paced lifestyle offers only easy digital connectivity and little time to dig into the earth. Yates said that most of his clients have a dearth of time, or a dearth of knowledge and experience with vegetable gardening.

“Depending on the client, it can be a combination of the two,” he said. “We build programs that span that continuum.”

Yates calls their services vegetable garden support programs.

For $60, a Hungry Gnome will come out and assess your land and offer his advice about how best to turn it into a productive edible landscape.

From there, Hungry Gnome has cheaper do-it-yourself packages aimed at gardeners who have some weekend time to help tend their plots. For $1,086, Hungry Gnome will set up soil and compost and plants four seasons of crops. They offer a Busy Bee package in which 90 percent of the gardening is performed by staff, leaving only harvesting to the homeowner. Around the middle of that spectrum in the Guided Gardener package. Yates and his staff will lay out, prep and plant the garden, and stop by through out the season to check in, but it’s the homeowner’s duty to water, weed, kill bugs and harvest. A 100-square-foot guided garden that’s full of sweet potatoes, tomatoes, okra and seasonal veggies all year round will cost $1,917, or roughly $160 a month. The largest edible landscape Hungry Gnome currently maintains is 350 square feet.

Every two weeks, Hungry Gnomes come by to add organic fertilizer and tend and replace any failing plants.

“It’s important to stress that a garden is a dynamic place,” Yates said. “There are a lot of variables.”

Often, garden emergencies that require a service call are the result of under-watering, Yates said. During initial conversations with clients about their future garden, Yates said he urges caution and asks homeowners to be honest with how much time and effort they can commit to the project. Yates and his staff will leave notes and written directions when they make their visits, and it’s up to the homeowner to keep up his or her side of the bargain. Yates has all clients sign a non-legal contract to help them address their desires and ability.

Yates said children often influence parents’ decisions to hire Hungry Gnome to start a vegetable garden. Many people, Yates said, grow up not knowing where their food comes from, and they don’t want their children sharing that experience.

“A lot of our clients have children,” Yates said, and a garden engages the next generation in an experience of nature.

For more information, visit www.hungrygnome.org or call (706) 206-3858.”

Happy growing!
EvanGelical The Gnome

Hip hip hooray…it’s March!

The March calendar gnomes are helping squirrels protect their nut stash. Word to the wise…we all need to be protecting our nut stashes. Check on that for awhile. Or don’t.

But March isn’t only about squirrels….it’s about the emergence of other creatures too. Namely, the lion and the lamb.

When I was a wee lil’ gnome, my poppy always used to set out my stuffed lion and stuffed lamb at breakfast on March 1st and ask me whether March was coming in like a lion or a lamb. Because supposedly, it would go out the other way.

As a wee gnome, I accepted this as logical fact. Today I question everything.

According to somewhat credible sources, the whole lion/lamb thing comes from an English proverb. In Wales, this proverb is applied to the month of April more often than March.

Wales is weird. Why do they leave out the “h” and do they even have whales there?

Although it didn’t work so well, the saying was used as a prediction contingent on a year’s early weather in the 19th century. Conversely, if the weather is nice early, it comes in like a lamb and will go out like a lion.

The Farmers’ Almanac says it’s all kinda bullshit. And farmers are never wrong.

Regardless, it’s pretty cold and snowy here at The Gnome Abode today. So I’m keeping my hopes up for an amazingly tropical 90-degree March 31st. Who’s with me?!

ROARRRR,
Horace The Gnome

February 29, 2012 was a boring, hungover day in Chicago. We gnomes were celebrating Leap Day and tossing bottles of champagne around. No one knows exactly who suggested it first, but the idea of a “gnome blog” came up.

A few shots and incidents of porcelain kissing later, www.thedrunkgnome.com was born!

And it has been a great first year for us drunk gnomes! 262 blog posts and 112 Facebook likes later, we feel like our thoughts and concerns are finally being heard. There was talk of having a 1-year anniversary party, but there is one teensy little problem…

THERE IS NO FEBRUARY 29, 2013.

Leap day, goddamnit! Does this mean we can’t celebrate our 1-year anniversary until 2016?!

GAH! Somebody DO something! Somebody throw us a party anyway! Either today or tomorrow will do! We’ll wait (somewhat) patiently for your invite.

Celebrations aside, thanks so much for stalking us on the Interweb and entertaining our awesomeness for the past year. 2013 is going to be even more amazing, so you’ll definitely want to keep up with our shenanigans on Facebook and Twitter.

Slobbery smooches on your ankles and cankles,
All of the gnomes at The Drunk Gnome