Firestone Park residents cultivate, encourage urban gardens
A young couple and a retired railroad worker and pilot are both cultivating the soil in Firestone Park and trying to encourage the idea of urban gardening.
Madeleine Stavarz and Dave Cranston have turned their love of gardening in their small Firestone Park front yard into an Instagram account to encourage others to grow and cook with fresh foods.
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Maurice Howard has turned a vacant lot next to a house he rents in Firestone Park into a community garden with hopes to encourage others to garden and provide food to low-income families in what he calls a food desert.
“Growing food is vital to our own food security,” said Lisa Nunn, executive director of Let’s Grow Akron, a nonprofit that encourages gardening and supports 30 community gardens, including Howard's garden in Firestone Park.
“People are starting to see some of the food shortages based on supply chain issues and transportation issues since COVID hit, but also I believe that people are becoming more aware of the quality of the food that they eat," said Nunn. “You have the most control over what's in your food by growing it yourself."
“Planting seeds that are inexpensive or seedlings that are inexpensive or ones that you can even get for free and to be able to produce your own food, saves you money at the grocery store and ultimately, being outside and working in the soil contributes to your own physical and mental health as well,” she said.
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A COVID hobby turned into a passion
Staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic got Stavarz and Cranston into gardening. Stavarz had bought the Firestone Park house where the couple lives in October 2019. In March 2020, as the world was hunkering down and workers were getting sent home to work, Stavarz, who is an account manager for a local company, and Cranston, an operations associate for a financial planner, decided to start some seedlings in the house.
The front yard was ideal for the garden since a large tree in the backyard blocks most of the sunshine, said Stavarz.
Stavarz said she’s always loved plants and has had non-vegetable plants wherever she has lived. Both said their grandparents always gardened as did several aunts and uncles.
“You get the bug once you grow something successfully. It's pretty addictive,” said Stavarz. “Each year, we've grown more and more, we've shoved more and more plants into that small space. This year, we probably have reached our max capacity.”
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The couple learned about gardening by watching accounts on YouTube and bought a summer starter collection from a gardener they were watching.
They started with a few varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers and squash, starting them from seeds inside and then planting them. They also bought some plants from local nurseries.
Each year, they’ve learned from their gardening what they want to repeat or change for the next season.
This year, they started 130 different plants inside the house.
Their green tomato harvest alone was about 40 pounds this year, compared to about 28 pounds at the end of last season, Cranston said.
Last year, they also did some succession planting, which is staggering planting of different vegetables.
“In the fall we plant our garlic and it’s harvested in July, and when we pull those out, we replace them with cucumbers,” said Stavarz. “Last year that was really productive and we got basically double the amount of canned pickles out of the deal, but this year for whatever reason our second round didn't do nearly as good.”
Sharing their bounty
The couple has shared their seedlings with friends who also want to garden and also shared vegetables from their harvests with friends and neighbors. Similarly, neighbors share and trade from their gardens.
In August, neighbors a few houses away “came over with a big bucket of concord grapes,” said Stavarz. “I had no idea they grew concord grapes in their backyard and they asked if we wanted some, so we exchanged some tomatoes with them.”
The couple has also gotten into canning. They made grape preserves from the grapes. They’ve made salsa and tomato puree, which they use for a lot of soup bases, and have a special recipe for pickles. This year, they made a pizza sauce for the first time. They also canned some hot peppers and a peach hot salsa.
“We cook at home about every night,” they said.
Sharing knowledge, encouragement on Instagram
Earlier this year, Stavarz started an Instagram account with the handle “AnywhereGardening.”
She started it “because of how many questions we were getting from friends, and people were telling us, ‘You should do this as a consultant and try and make money,’ but I don't think that's necessarily our end game. But it's still nice to be able to encourage other people, which we really, really like doing.”
Stavarz has posted colorful pictures of their harvests or dishes the couple has made with items from their garden.
“I'm proud of how much we can get out of our teeny, tiny little postage stamp of a yard,” said Stavarz. “I just like sharing it and helping others and letting them know that even if you do only have a teeny little balcony or what have you, you can still grow and get a lot out of it.”
Stavarz has contemplated starting a YouTube channel, too, but hasn’t gotten that far yet.
Gardening growing among younger generation
Stavarz and Cranston are both 31. They think they are part of a resurgence of interest in gardening among younger people.
“I think there’s definitely a trend of people wanting a simpler lifestyle with all that’s going on,” said Stavarz.
Added Cranston: “I think COVID had a big effect on that. It hit the pause button for so many people and you can get good local food now because the ability to grow stuff is so nice.”
First Fruits via Community Garden
About a mile away, Howard has been cultivating a 5,000-square-foot community garden that he hopes will one day provide truckloads of fresh vegetables and produce for area low-income families.
Howard, 65, moved into a rental property in Firestone Park in 2017 and noticed a vacant lot next door at the corner of Cole Avenue and Moore Street. He contacted the Akron Land Bank and purchased the land for $200.
“This is a food desert to me,” said Howard. “There’s nowhere within a mile or two where people can get fresh produce.” Marc’s and Giant Eagle are more than a mile away from the community garden spot, said Howard.
Howard took a six-week class two years ago through Let’s Grow Akron to learn about gardening. His garden, which is called God’s Garden of First Fruits, gets some support from Let’s Grow Akron.
Nunn of Let’s Grow Akron said she sends over workers and volunteers when she can to help Howard and provides donated soil and wood chips to gardens throughout the city. Workers also helped Howard build raised garden beds.
Howard also recently received an $800 grant from Summit Food Coalition’s NeighborFood program, funded by Cargil, in which the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank was the fiscal sponsor, said the food bank’s Raven Gayheart. Summit Food Coalition awarded funding to those establishing community gardens in neighborhoods that lack nutritious food access and/or were designated as a food desert, she said.
“The food bank envisions a thriving community free of hunger, and we are happy to partner and support various strategies to achieve this vision, one of those being community gardens,” Gayheart said.
In the last two years, Howard has mostly done the gardening himself with some help from some neighbors. He has grown and harvested a variety of peppers, cauliflower, beans, peas, tomatoes and collard greens (which are currently being attacked by a local groundhog).
Howard has shared some harvests with neighbors and often takes the produce to the farmers market where he puts any proceeds back into funding the garden.
Howard is interested in community members who would like to help him with the community garden and also people who would want to rent a portion of the garden for their own growing.
To contact Howard, email Stallpractice@yahoo.com or call 330-798-2963.
This article is part of the Akron Beacon Journal’s mobile newsroom currently located at the Firestone Park branch library. Beacon Journal staff reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com.
Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ. To see her most recent stories and columns, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Firestone Park residents cultivate, encourage urban gardens
