< Back to press page

Little Silver resident is the Front Yard Farmer

By AMANDA OGLESBY • Staff Writer • October 7, 2009

Wendy Weiner's front yard doesn't match the manicured lawns of her neighbors. Rather than grass, her yard is covered in rows of lettuce and cabbage. Instead of evergreens, she has bushes of tomatoes and brussels sprouts.
This "Front Yard Farmer" -- also the name of her gardening business -- has vegetables growing in nine wooden boxes that lay between the street and her Little Silver home. Weiner walks between the boxes, each filled with green plants in various stages of growth, and picks off pieces of broccoli or inspects her varieties of eggplants.
"I put the garden in the front yard because there's no sun in the back," Weiner, 49, said.
Her pragmatic choice did upset some who called the garden an "eyesore," she said, but it was mostly embraced.
"I like it to look pristine," she said, adding she tries to be sensitive to her
neighbors' aesthetic preferences and to municipal laws. "At one time, I was thinking of putting up a scarecrow, but I thought, 'That's really going to bring attention.' "
Weiner's garden provides her with fresh produce for most of the year. She has picked fresh vegetables from her garden in April and January and all the months in between, she said. All the extra vegetables that she does not can, she donates to the Lunch Break food pantry in Red Bank, she said.
"I grow in succession. I'm always putting new stuff in," said Weiner, who moved to Little Silver from Clinton more than one year ago.
Through the use of "cold frames," Weiner extends the productive months of her plantings.
Each cold frame is a 4-foot-wide, square wooden frame with a hinged Plexiglas lid. Two cold frames fit snugly over her 4-by-8-foot garden beds.
Using the cold frame, "I can get an early start by planting seeds in the fall. I put this box on top, and it warms up much faster," said Weiner, whose year-old business installs and maintains home vegetable gardens.
Each frame acts as a miniature greenhouse, trapping the heat from sunlight within and keeping cold air out.
Every time you put on a cold frame -- you're lowering the zone, or the growing region. You're making it a little bit warmer," she said.
In one of her beds, vegetables are covered with a white, gauze-like cloth Weiner calls agro-ribbon. The agro-ribbon insulates the plants from frosts and insects but allows water, light and fresh air to penetrate, she said.
"If I cover with the cloth and the frames, it (the growing process) is going to keep
going," she said. "It's all about insulation."
With these techniques, she plants peas and broccoli in March and harvests parsnips and leeks through the winter, Weiner said.
But even with the extra warmth, some of her plants stop producing in November because of lack of sunlight, she said.
"The sun is much lower in the sky," she said. "You're not going to get growth, you're just going to maintain," she said.
Occasionally, Weiner stops herself mid-sentence, distracted by a passing moth or a bug among her leafy greens.
"Here is a bug that I will squish. I had a bunch of pests this summer," she said.
Her raised boxes are weed-resistant because their 5-inch-high frames prevent weed seeds from blowing into the soil. But each box is no more repellent to insects or rabbits than lower gardens.
Weiner's battle with bunnies is extensive. Once, she found a nest of baby rabbits in her carrots. Another time, she found a rabbit trying to squeeze through a gap in her wire fence. She has tried plastic mesh fencing, but the rabbits ate through it, she said.
Now, she relies on two flush wire fences that bend at 90 degrees at ground level and extend across the grass, preventing any animals from digging under it or squeezing through gaps.
Despite the havocs of insects and herbivores, the raised boxes have their benefits over traditional ground-level gardens: They are easy to maintain, she said.
"I control the soil because I did not dig it up," she said. "The way I built these
boxes, I literally screwed the box together, and I laid down a piece of cardboard. Then I brought in some really great soil: mushroom compost, horse manure, a tiny bit of top soil that I mixed in. It's just a more controlled environment."
Standing near her Swiss chard and kohlrabi plants, Weiner said gardening and teaching her clients how to grow their own food is her passion.
"If you want me to put in a garden, I'll do it. But I really want to hold your hand and
teach you how to do it," she said.
Weiner is doing just that for Mary Grubert of Rumson. Weiner installed gardens in Grubert's backyard in spring and has been teaching the 39-year-old mother and her three children gardening techniques.
"She (Weiner) really did a lot of handholding every step of the way, teaching me
everything. I really needed a lot of help," Grubert said.
The gardens have saved her family money on groceries -- despite the initial investment¹1 -- since she is no longer buying lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, Grubert said.
Each garden box costs over $200 for a frame, vegetables, soil and labor, Weiner said, and prices rise for boxes and yards that require more of her work.
The experience has helped her children get in touch with nature, Grubert said.
"I don't want them to think you just go to a store and get everything. It's got to come from somewhere," she said.
The children are not the only ones who have benefited. Her quiet hours spent pruning the garden have been peaceful and therapeutic, Grubert said.
"The highlight of my whole summer was my garden," she said. "It really brought me so much happiness."
In addition to money saved and the learning experience, home gardens eliminate miles driven to grocery stores and provide fresh organic greens, Weiner said.
"It's a good thing to do instead of grass. It should be a revolution," she said. "Every time I drive by corporate America with these sprawling lawns, I think that they could feed the community. You could feed all of your employees on that front lawn. America's got to wake up."