Kitchen Garden Tour returns Sunday, Aug. 3

Dirt magazine’s annual Kitchen Garden Tour is this Sunday, Aug. 3. The event, now in its eleventh year, gives “garden peepers” a one-day opportunity to tour backyard veggie patches throughout the historic Black Dirt Region. The tour runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., then is followed by a farm-to-table after party at Meadow Blues in Chester, N.Y.

This year’s tour features 15 home gardens bursting with fresh produce - from berries and backyard orchards, to vegetables, herbs and potatoes. One garden even has its own honey operation.

Learn from a permaculture pro

Chris Harrison’s Warwick, N.Y., homestead is on the tour this year. His sprawling garden generates about 200 pounds of potatoes, 45 tomato plants and 35 pepper plants.

For Harrison, gardening is in his blood. He grew up eating produce straight from his parents’ yard – something he missed desperately while attending engineering school. He started his own garden almost 20 years ago, and now his veggie plots generate enough produce to eat throughout the year.

Harrison, a professional permaculturalist, said gardening is “the gateway drug to leading a more ecologically aware way of life.”

He composts and creates his own organic mulch with grass and-clover hay, which he harvests with a scythe, and fills empty space in his garden with cover crops to harvest water. He plants seedlings in a greenhouse that connects to his basement, which he donates to the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization to support the farmworkers’ kitchen gardens.

For Harrison, gardening isn’t just about growing produce; it’s also a way to connect with the environment. “It brings people into a basic relationship with nature,” he said.

Green thumbs in Greenwood Lake

Common Ground Community Garden in Greenwood Lake, N.Y. is another popular stop on the tour. About four years ago, Greenwood Lake resident Chad Pilieri learned that a vacant lot in town was not buildable due to a high water table. Pilieri, founder of Grow Local Greenwood Lake, saw an opportunity to get his hands dirty, and Common Ground Community Garden was born.

The once vacant lot is now bursting with produce: tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, kale, rhubarb, berries and fruit trees. There’s a hoop house, rainwater collection and a compost system.

Nearly all of the plants in the Greenwood Lake garden are edible. Some of Pilieri’s favorites are those that serve multiple functions, like nasturtium. “It’s very beautiful. It’s edible; flowers and the leaves,” he explained.

Still time to garden hop

Dirt, a nonprofit, is dedicated to hosting this event each year to teach locals how they can reduce their carbon footprints and access healthy food by harvesting crops grown in their own backyards.

Tickets are available until 9 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 3 at kitchengardentours.com