Photo by Horace Long Photography
By Christian Messer

I was referred to Sarah Pool by a colleague, Chuck Arbuckle of Chuck Arbuckle Interiors at a networking function. He and I discussed the magazine and the stories we were working on. He instantly asked if I knew Sarah Pool. No, I had not met her, but when I did, I found she was so full of information, I wanted to include it all. Sarah’s business is Grow Me Organics where she specializes in backyard gardening for her clients. As you’ll see, we had plenty to cover, on sustainability, all the way through to California banning rain barrels.

id Magazine: How did you arrive at opening your own business?

Sara Pool: Well I have a background in landscaping and vegetable gardening and so it was really just the encouragement of my friends, who after a while, continually saw me working for other people just to kind of go out of my element, to become a bit more of a consultant. The backyard gardening thing, I had the idea that ironically other people were going in that direction, so it just kind of happened all at once.

Do most landscaping companies do that kind of service?
I specialize in backyard vegetable gardening, and I kind of had the idea of coming in and being a consultant, doing edible backyard gardens. But, since I have a background in landscaping, then that kind of helped the component of the consulting business. At the time, I did some research, and found another company here in Portland who had been doing something like that for a couple of years.

I noticed that you have a large array of services available…what are, for the newbies, what are native landscapes?

I advise my clients to go with native plants. Native plants support the native environment, both with the animals, the flora culture…and it’s a little more of a mimicry of what Mother Nature is really doing out there – as opposed to a humanistic approach, instead of going just ornamental. For example, certain bee balms, if they’re double flowered or peonies, sometimes that is an exchange of pollen. So if you go with a native type of plant, you actually are more able to sustain more of the wildlife, bee, and insect population.

Using plants that are native to this part of the country?

Especially in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of them are really important…like Milkweed; for example. Milkweed is the only plant that the Monarch butterfly will lay its larvae. All up and down the West coast we’ve pretty much taken most of that out with our highway construction. So there’s a movement to repopulate certain areas with Milkweed to flourish a certain insect. There are certain criteria that are needed in order to maintain more of a balance approach to nature.

That certainly makes sense; do you know of a group that is dedicated to taking out ivy?

Yes, there are a couple of groups in Washington and here in Oregon that really go out there and try to get rid of the English Ivy.

English Ivy…yes, that’s right! We’ve heard about a renegade group that goes out in all black clothing to attack the English ivy…

That’s interesting, because I have been going to the Green Team meetings with the Office of Sustainability, and they have been talking a lot about this idea of Guerilla Gardening and public use and private land, and how that is all shifting now, at least here in Portland, how our government is going to start approaching that so people have more access land like that in order to do garden projects.

Would that include more community gardens?

Yes! The City of Portland in their Climate Action Plan for 2009, I think is wanting 1,300 more community garden plots by the year 2012…so they really establish community gardens, eco-roofs…they want to extend the forest canopy over Portland, and just a really aggressive plan for reducing CO2 emissions.

Tell me about rain barrels…what are they?

Well, another issue with gardening is irrigation, but water usage is…if we could reuse water like grey water systems, rain barrels, or other collection devices, we could have a lot more access to water…without the chlorination and all the processing that needs to go into fresh water making. Rain barrels are really easy to put into a garden, and most of my clients are do-it-yourselfers, so I usually tell them the cheapest way to go, whatever water collection system works for them. It’s just a gravity system that basically plugs into your gutters, and it collects in one barrel. You can use it instead of using the City of Portland’s water or the reservoir water.

It’s illegal in California, so it’s kind of a rare treat for us.

Really? Wonder why that is?

I’m not sure why, but I’m sure it probably has to do with the health and sanitation. Recycling of rain water is somehow not permitted…especially on farms and in drought state it does sound ridiculous (we both laugh)

What are permaculture yards?

Permaculture is again, mixing nature…that includes everything like animals. Having urban chickens or ducks. Again with natives, so native bee and bird population. You know, just before talking with you, I was just watching a hummingbird and it was feeding out of a native plant, so it is really a way to bring in and already support what’s already going on. I think gardens thrive better when we act more as facilitators rather than controllers. So we need all of those animals, insects, birds, and worms…we need all of that, that’s what keeps a garden more pest or disease free.

Of all the services you offer, what would be your favorite area?

Definitely the edible vegetable gardening. I do maintaining of existing gardens, and can come in and help out with orchards, trimming an orchard tree, pruning trees. The food production has been the most important aspect for me. It’s the most fascinating to me, all the different varieties of everything so there’s different options to put food in and around your house.

Is there one service that is in more demand than others?

It’s funny, because when I usually come into do a vegetable garden or landscape consultation, people usually point out all sorts of things in their yard that they have questions about…so I think the consulting has been the most in demand because people are really interested in doing things and they want to know how to do things, but they’re not really sure what this bug is or why this plant doesn’t like being here. I think the quest for knowledge really.

Do you see the recession and the economy shifting people’s interests into the do-it-yourself gardening and that type of thing, like growing your own food? Rather than say, going to New Seasons etc?

I would say that is true for a certain percentage of the population. Because we have milk prices going up, and tomato prices are going up and yet our income isn’t going up. I think that part of the population is turning to gardening as a way of sustaining ourselves. Then with people where money is not an issue, saving money is attractive, but I think they think it’s important to teach their kids that, in order to have a certain respect for our planet in the future.

On your website, you list “weekly harvesting delivered to your door” – what does that entail?

The backyard gardening, beside the consulting, the other part of what I do is, people have backyard spaces. I come in once a week and plant new seeds, check and make sure everything is getting irrigated, check for any bugs. I do maintenance, and I come in and harvest the food and get it ready and put it at your door. Sometimes people have too many tomatoes or zucchini. Often times my clients are able to have a yard sharing they are able to have food that they didn’t necessarily grow, but they have a greater variety. That’s the other part of what I do.

Most of my clients don’t know how to grow food, but have the space to do it, or they just don’t have the time. It is really time-consuming, so I run that for them.

You mentioned yard sharing…If I have too many tomatoes or too much zucchini or squash, what would you recommend if I don’t have friends or family to take it off my hands?

First of all, the food bank is always accepting donations. You can drop it off at places like, I think Pistils Nursery and they deliver every day to the food bank. The other thing you can do is contact someone like me, or contact…gosh there’s so many places. I’ve always wanted people to have the opportunity to share with their neighborhood. I know there’s PortlandYardShare.com, and so there are many different forums that do that and have yard sharing.

What produce is available to grow year-round?

There are lots of ways you can extend your growing season. There are garden hoop houses, which are mini versions of a (at right, Pool doing what she does best, in the garden) greenhouse. A lot vegetables are really cold-hardy. So if you were to plant, say, arugula, Swiss chard, or any of your mustard greens, those can all be harvested throughout the winter, especially if they’re under a little hoop house. Other than that, you can keep things in the ground for a long time, for example, if you were to plant radishes or potatoes, rather than harvesting them and keeping them in your refrigerator, you can just leave them in the ground and take them as needed.

In October or November, I usually plant things like fava beans and garlic. Those will ripen in June, but they’ll survive the winter. During the winter I’ll always do mustard greens, just to keep greens going…then I’ll usually plant late harvests, so that I can harvest out of my yard the entire winter too.

Things like radishes, like small root vegetables do well. Certain kinds of beets are meant for really cold hardy, so if you were to plant them now, they’re a little bit smaller, but they’re really sweet…and you plant those and harvest the greens and the beet. Much of it is kind of knowing variety…there’s a purple broccoli you can plant and it’s ready in March. Snow peas, if you plant those, you’ll be harvesting through November…and shallots.

What about kale? I’ve never attempted to eat it, but you can grow it in the winter, correct?

Yes! I grow a TON of kale!

Do you grow it in the winter?

Yes…it’s great! You can make kale salad, kale soup…It’s really high in iron and all those good vitamins…and it is so winter hardy! Oh…it’s so good…I think it going to save the world! You know what I mean? (We both laugh)

People aren’t a huge fan of kale, because kale is a little bit of a thicker texture. You do, I think have to look into how to prepare it and you like it the best. I think it’s just great in all kinds of soup; I use the heck out of it.

I’m going to have to try that sometime…

Yes…and there’s like a Russian variety of kale…they are all really hardy, but it grows really big…there’s an Italian kale that grows pretty big…but it may not taste as well…there’s just so many different varieties of kale and a lot of those greens. It really has to do with catering to each persons cooking style. That’s what makes food and planting and gardening really fun…I think it really hinges on how you want to prepare food.

Can anyone do this kind of gardening? Or is it dependent on the space you have? I know it’s ideal to have a ten by ten-foot plot. If someone had, say, a concrete yard, could they do raised flower beds?

Sure…and I do condos, or patios who want to grow their own herbs. You can grow your own herbs and really off set a ton in terms of driving and the money you spend at the grocery store. As long as you have enough light, you can grow anything in any space.
I think that that’s really changing too…people are really starting to learn about different vertical methods. I mean, some people are planting things in Coke bottles and stringing them up from their windows and they grow right into their window. You know if you cut the bottom off of a Coke bottle and poke a hole through the lid, fill it with soil…people are taking rain gutters and taking them and putting them up against their house or apartment or whatever space they have and filling it with dirt and planting strawberries or whatever kind of thing that they can grow.

Really? Wow…

Oh yes, people are going all out to put food in any space. One of things I’m doing with a friend is setting up an aquaponics situation…which is where you have fish that produce ammonia, it turns into nitrogen, and that water is circulated through to the plants through a hydroponics system…so the plants grow using the water from the fish, and they filter out the waste product from the water and they recycle it back into the fish. S o it’s a closed loop system.

Nice! Is that close to…I know there is a way to grow plants without soil, is this close to that?

Yes, that’s hydroponics…the aqua comes from the aqua culture, so it’s the harvesting of edible fish…so if you were to take…there’s some different models…but there is a way to grow both your meat and plants without soil, completely circulating their own nutrients around.

Wow…that’s crazy…but great!

We’re going to start out with goldfish and see how it goes. But you know, in the future there’ll be all these different methods and ways of thinking of how we grow foods in our apartments or houses.

And the sky’s the limit! So let’s say I didn’t plant a fall or winter crop, do you have any suggestions of where to buy produce?

Yes, Coops and things like that…farmer’s markets shut down in the winter, although there is one farmers market that operates year-round. I like to think of it this way…we didn’t evolve to see gardening as a hobby or agriculture as a hobby…it was a necessity. When you think about it,…I plant things like buckwheat in my yard for a cover crop in the summer, and I can use that grain if I want to. If you plant fava beans and garlic right now, you’ll be eating out of your garden by June. So there’s really no time to not plant in my book… (we laugh)

There are other things too like Jerusalem artichokes or oca (pronounced oak-ah), those are tubors that were precursors to potatoes. I like to plant a lot of perennials, like the artichoke or oca, you can harvest those all the time. So you can plant those right now and they may not be ready for you, but they’ll be ready for you soon enough. You can always play catch up, that’s the way I like to think of it.

The Coops usually do have fresh local produce then?

Yes…even New Seasons, Whole Foods…the coops, they are really good about harvesting locally.

But…the other things is it is a little ridiculous to expect a really beautiful ripe red tomato any time other than tomato season. We have to start thinking about how we…about being soiled brats with our food.

Right…Like, “It’s December…but I want a ripe tomato! Why can’t I have a ripe tomato?”

Yes…exactly…”I want a Caprese Salad! Why not?” (laughter…)
Well you know…until we start approaching things like indoor growing…again that becomes an issue because you’re spending electricity on things like lighting, or with the aquaponics…like the exchange for electricity with but until we get that all figured out and we start growing indoors, if we want tomatoes.

One thing I’m doing too is that I have rabbits at my house, and their body temperature runs at 110 degrees…so I build a little miniature greenhouse or hoop house over them and I can extend my seeds really a lot longer because the vegetables have heat and light.
Staring to use animals in that way…or even compost. If you run a hot compost, you can close that off and use that heat. Certainly, you can’t have tomatoes, but you could have all sorts of vegetables at that point if we’re not dealing with any cold.

I don’t have any clients that have rabbits right now, but I do think those kinds of uses will become important too.

It’s interesting that we are…in so many ways…there is a shifting occurring in our society. With all the technology we have, with all the convenience we have, it’s like the pendulum is beginning to shift the other way…we are going back to one-on-one communication, spending more time with family and friends, sharing a home cooked meal together, having that in-person interaction, and growing our own food. It’s great that it’s actually happening.

Yes, it’s true…like you said, it goes back to the economy and the environment, I think that we were at a crossroad. I think it’s really making us rethink who we are.

Now if only we could close down a bunch of McDonalds, we’d be making progress…

Actually, you know…years ago they came up with a plastic alternative to made from the casing of shrimp shells…and the reason nobody wanted it was because they couldn’t get rid of the pink color. It’s like, I think at this point in our evolution, deciding something is valueless because of its color is pretty silly when it’s completely biodegradable and it’s a by-product. I don’t know…I think we’ve been so silly and careless for so long.

Far too long…you know I get shocked when I get my left-overs to go from a restaurant and they give me a Styrofoam or plastic container. In doing the research for this magazine and other stories we’ve worked on, I know you can buy biodegradable plates, to go boxes, and even silverware…and it isn’t all that expensive.

I think there’s a law in Portland, where you’re not allowed to use Styrofoam. There’s a place you can call to report abuses like that.

No kidding?

Yes…It really makes us progressive, but it also makes us…I didn’t know that until last week. There’s not manpower to go out and enforce that…I think until we start making those phone calls more and more…nobody’s going out and picketing those restaurants.

On a different note, would you suggest getting a chicken?

Chickens are not for everyone. They are really neat…but they are livestock, so they are susceptible to the same kind of sickness that your cat or dog would be. It’s a bit more maintenance, if you’re not willing to make that commitment…I wouldn’t suggest it.
Chickens are great though! I think they’re amazing. They eat a ton of slug eggs, they produce eggs; you can keep them in a small area. They are relatively quiet, but…usually they have a giant celebration whenever somebody lays an egg which is pretty funny…

(We laugh)

Even the girls. They’re really smart…which my rabbits are sweet, but not exactly…intelligent? Whereas I think, chickens and birds must be smart overall. They’re like garden companions. They like gardening with people; they claw at the dirt. I worked at a garden nursery…Buffalo Gardens, and she had chickens…I got to work with chickens every single day and it was just…they were just my friends!

(We laugh again) That is pretty cool…

Yes…and they slow down your pace of life too…you can’t go to fast or step on them or spook them out…there’s something about holding your animal too that kind of slows down the rest of the world and to have that kind of attitude with your landscape where they’re helping you out.

My rabbits, I use their fertilizer almost exclusively. That’s really good for my business…I feed them the weeds I pull out of people’s yards. They’re instant composters. Chickens eat weeds and stuff like that too, they’re not as easy because they want to eat little sprouts and they eat protein too…for instance they eat the slug eggs. It’s a little harder to have them…but it really depends on your lifestyle.

For chickens, they’re instant composters, but you have to compost it first…but then you have a nice hot compost going. They do take work, you have to clean out their pen, make sure they have water, let them in and out at night that when they roost.

And in the winter?

Well you have your chicken coop, which is enclosed and people like to insulate then for the winter. Chickens are pretty hardy in the winter; they still like to go out into their run even in the wintertime.

Most chickens and rabbits are pretty hardy in the winter…it’s the summertime when it’s really the big one for poultry; the heat is what will kill them really fast.

Pests…a never ending battle. You suggest Neem Oil? Is that straight Neem Oil or is that mixed with something?

There a couple of different varieties you can get on the market. I use Dyna-Grow Neem oil and it’s actually 100% Neem oil, so it’s concentrated…I have mixed a tablespoon and a half per gallon, then you add a little bit of a dish soap to use as a demulsifier so it actually holds to the plant. It’s amazing because there’s a tree in India called a Neem tree and it has these nuts…the nuts it shed, that’s where the oil comes from. It’s used in cosmetics, mouthwash, and anti-fungicide.

Soft belly insects like aphids? It harms them, but it doesn’t harm bees. It’s kind of one of these miraculous things that nature provides, and it works as a leaf conditioner. It’s an amazing product as far as I’m concerned.

It helps with spider-mites which I find impossible. It’s put into Slug-O which are little pellets that slugs ingest, so I’ll look for Neem products or to Neem products because they’re so great…this one thing can be used in so many ways.

Is a compost pile or bin hard to upkeep?

It depends on the one you have…if you have the one from Metro, the black plastic one? Those are a little more difficult because it’s hard to turn, to turn the compost, and they fill really quickly.

Depending on the space, so for example…if there were a ledge where you could have a bakashi compost, which is something that would be perfect for apartments and condos. If you have a lot of land and you’re not good at maintaining your compost, which most people are not…you could do direct-to-trench composting. So the homeowner can dig out a hole, fill it with organic compost, layer it with dirt from that hole, and then rotate and find another spot. Within about four months, that is all composted dirt.

Compost, again is one of those things that it depends on the people’s likes and their lifestyle. There is a solution for everybody if they’re willing to invest a little bit of time.

I know Rose City Mortgage, when they had an office, they had a worm compost bin in their office.

I’ve heard of schools who use the bakashi method where they actually compost meat scraps and things like that. Kitchens, home kitchens are staring to put in things like that or worm bins. It’s kind of amazing how many businesses and schools are doing it. You can compost almost anywhere…I think the city is going to put in roadside composting.

Awesome!

Yes, so pretty soon you can take the recycled decomposable bags that they provide…right now they do this for restaurants. So soon all restaurants and residents will be able to compost food waste through the city.

That’s great to hear!

Yes, Seattle does it right now. They launched their program,
last week.

Find Sarah Pool’s company Grow Me Organics here