A new way of vegetable gardening, with someone else’s hands in the dirt in Philadelphia
Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
A Philly company appeals to perfectionists, foodies, people who are nostalgic about the gardens their grandparents grew, and those with money but no time.
By Zoe Greenberg
Philadelphia Inquirer
Apr 16, 2023
Excerpt:
Jessica Dommes’ backyard looked like a life-size advertisement for the joy of gardening on a recent April morning. A yellow forsythia bush bloomed under a cloudless blue sky; the sun shone in that newly spring way that makes you want to go outside and stay there.
Dommes, 33, was preparing for the season — but not by cobbling together a raised bed or buying cucumber seeds at the hardware store. Instead, Dommes had scheduled a consultation with Backyard Eats, a young Philly company that helps people build, plant, maintain, and even harvest home vegetable gardens.
“At my last place, I painstakingly dug up the grass and put in beds myself,” said Dommes, a computer programmer and novice pandemic gardener. “And I do not want to repeat that experience at all.”
Your grandfather’s kitchen garden this is not. The wooden raised beds are absolutely level. Thin black irrigation tubes run through dirt rows like at a tiny industrial farm. QR codes for each seedling detail when and how to harvest. For an added fee, customers can sign up for experts to pluck the finished product, which more than half opt to do.
