BLYN — Imagine a vegetable garden that is chemical-free, requires little water and weeding, and produces healthy kale — the most nutritional of leafy greens — throughout the winter.
Sounds too good to be true?
Talk to Steve Fry, a Chicken Coop Road-area gardener and owner of Common Sense Yard and Garden.
“In the cold months, when you’re jonesing for greens, you have it,” Fry said.
He’s been experimenting over the past three seasons, building alternative permaculture garden plots.
He uses compost produced by longtime Dungeness Valley apple, vegetable and Christmas tree farmer Steve Johnson at Lazy J Tree Farm, off Gherke Road.
Johnson has perfected compost that contains everything from yard waste plus recycled Christmas trees and other wood debris ground up at the farm, mixed with about 10 percent soil and turned over in about 10 months’ time to keep it cool and free of mold.
The result: deep, dark compost in which plants thrive.
Fry has also convinced the national tree-trimming company Asplundh to drop tree waste at his home, where he grounds it up using a chipper for chips around the garden plots, further deterring weed growth and bug infestation.
“It keeps the soil really healthy, and the slugs don’t get into it,” he said, standing over new plots to be built in a day for those who want to garden in a high-yield, low-impact and minimal-maintenance way.
“I weeded once this year,” Fry added.
Shovel in organic chicken manure, he said, and there is seemingly no end to green growth all winter long.
He starts with a layer of cardboard to further block weed and grass growth.
The chip and compost base makes for a soft place to kneel, he said, a feature that aging gardeners with knee trouble can appreciate.
Permaculture was not always a gardening lifestyle for Fry.
“I come from traditional gardening,” he said.
“You get out the rototiller and get the seed and then you slave away,” he said, adding this style of gardening is a distinctly environmentally friendly alternative.
Then he became a disciple of his neighbor, Paul Gautschi, who is known for his apple orchard and vegetable garden planted in compost and chips, with little soil and water required for heavy yields.
“This is the time so you have all winter to get wet,” he said.
“Once I put that [garden plot] in, this is the only tool they need,” he said, holding up his hand.
A rake will do for those who choose to weed standing up, he said.
Fry’s demonstration garden is near the commercial kitchen where his wife, Sherry, a nutritional therapy practitioner, bakes at Live Bread Shoppe, selling Live Cookie and bread at the Sequim Open Aire Market.
She also teaches healthy baking classes using fresh-ground flour and unprocessed whole-cane sugar — sucranat — to those with allergies and other health problems.
“He grows the food, and I teach him how to cook the food,” Sherry Fry said with a smile.
Phone Fry at 360-683-2756 or visit the couple’s website at www.csntherapy.com.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
