Fed Up by Costs, Many Grow It Alone

A national survey of nurseries found that vegetables and their seeds "flew off the shelves," this year, said Robert LaGasse, executive director of the Garden Writers Association.

In Minneapolis, Karen O'Connor, who co-owns the Mother Earth Gardens, said she cannot keep pace with the demand. "We ordered three times as many fruit trees as ever before," she said. "We sold out of all the vegetables in June -- seeds, too."

In Seattle, Marguerite Lynch, an interior designer, put up a sign on a 10-by-40-foot strip on her driveway saying, "We're sick of rising fuel and food prices so we're turning this weed patch into a vegetable garden. Want to help?"

A week later, she had five volunteers. She ordered organic vegetable compost, delivered in two giant dump trucks, and soon had a bed in which to plant beets, basil, Swiss chard, bush beans, peas, acorn squash, pumpkin and kale.

In Atlanta, Robin Marcus, who co-owns the Urban Gardener store, essentially created a home farm when she bought a city house with a 3 1/2 -acre yard -- now full of tomatoes and okra and green beans. "We're doing eight quarts of spaghetti sauce from the yard right now, we've got so many tomatoes," she said.

Beneath the L train platform, Gentry and her daughters, Natasha, 10, and Queene, 6, can stop by the vegetable plot to pick some greens as they walk to the grocery store to buy salad dressing.

"I never thought they'd be able to run through a field of corn and sunflowers in New York City," Gentry said.