Jeff Lowenfels kicks off the Vail Symposium’s summer season with organic gardening lecture at CMC
This article first appeared in the Vail Daily. By Tracey Flower.
Gardening writer and expert Jeff Lowenfels grew up working, as he describes it, as an indentured servant on his parent’s hobby farm in Scarsdale, N.Y. There he said he was forced to plant, weed, mow and pick fruits, flowers and vegetables on eight acres replete with vegetable gardens, a Versailles-style formal flower garden, a 100-tree fruit orchard and enough rhubarb to eat it every single day until he went to college.
Lowenfels’ childhood of hard work paid off eventually; he moved from the East Coast to Alaska in the 1970s and has been gardening there, and writing about gardening, ever since. A leader in the organic-gardening movement, he has been called “the Cal Ripken of North American garden columnists.” His weekly column has run in the Anchorage Daily News for more than 36 years — he’s never missed a week — and he is author of “Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web,” winner of the Garden Writers of America Gold Award. Lowenfels will be on the Colorado Mountain College campus in Edwards on Friday and Saturday to kick off the Vail Symposium’s summer season with an organic-gardening lecture and workshop.
“Jeff Lowenfels is the Mozart of organic gardening,” said Alby Segall, Symposium president and CEO. “Across the United States, his presentations are met with standing ovations. Jeff delivers a unique combination of expertise and humor. We are very fortunate to host him in the Vail Valley for this one-of-a-kind, two-day gardening experience.”
Lowenfels recently took the time to answer a few questions for the Vail Daily.
Vail Daily: When and why did you find your way to Alaska?
Jeff Lowenfels: In 1973. I was held up and shot in Boston while on a third date with my wife. She saved my life, but I made her agree to marry me and to move to Alaska.
VD: What do you grow in Alaska?
JL: The joke is that we grow snowball cauliflower, iceberg lettuce and snow peas, but actually, we can grow any annual or vegetable and Zone 3 perennials, sometimes Zone 4 and 5, too.
VD: How is your knowledge of gardening in the harsh conditions found in Alaska useful to folks who live and grow in Colorado? Are there similarities?
JL: We have a short season, too. I know the tricks. However, it is the soil food web knowledge that makes me a killer gardener. And it doesn’t matter where I garden; it’s all about the soil food web.
VD: When did you begin writing about gardening? What prompted you to do so, and what continues to drive you to do so?
JL: My first column ran on Nov. 13, 1976, and I have never missed a week since. I originally started the column to help the local paper, which was in trouble at the time. Those first columns were basically letters to my dad in New York as to what I was doing in the yard in Alaska. I submit a column every single week because when you go on vacation, they put your picture in where the column was and announce it — that always seemed like an invitation to rob the house! So, I do a column every week, rain or shine.
VD: How does knowledge of the soil food web result in better gardening?
JL: In short, gardening is a science, not an art. You have to learn the science, and most people don’t. They garden by mythology, thinking, “Grandma used manure and said it was good.” Once the science is simplified, it’s easy to learn. The life in the soil is what makes gardening work, and it is a fascinating story.
VD: What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of gardening? What do you find to be the most rewarding?
JL: I hate dandelions. Being organic means I have to learn to love them or at least learn to accept them; this keeps me humble. The most rewarding aspect of gardening would be talking to other gardeners. This is the biggest worldwide community; maybe it is time for us to unite and take over the world!
VD: What, specifically, will you cover in your Vail lecture and workshop?
JL: In one hour I will give you the science behind organic gardening and show you how to apply it in your own garden and yard, and then you will have it all! Even the reluctant spouse will learn and will enjoy the talk. I promise you will never garden the same way again. And, I assure you, it will be an entertaining talk — I’ve heard it a few times!
If You Go:
What: Teaming with Microbes: An organic gardener’s lecture and workshop with Jeff Lowenfels.
Where: Colorado Mountain College, Edwards.
When: Lecture Friday at 5:30 p.m.; workshop Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Cost: $15 lecture, $30 garden workshop, $40 both.
More Information: Call 970-476-0945, or visit www.vailsymposium.org.
Tracey Flower is the development and marketing coordinator for the Vail Symposium. She can be reached at tracey@vailsymposium.org.