How does their garden grow?

By Frank Ruggiero

ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

The Leola Street Community Garden may grow a unique variety of greenhouse.

If all goes as planned, the garden could soon feature a passive solar greenhouse, allowing crops to flourish during the winter months.

Mike Duus, a biology graduate student at Appalachian State University, helped Dr. Terry Carroll build such a greenhouse at Parkway Elementary School, and hopes to see the same grow at the community garden.

Such a greenhouse, Duus said, could show local growers that they have the ability to dominate their markets during the wintertime, placing them a step ahead of those who ship their product.

Instead of fossil fuels or electricity, passive solar greenhouses rely solely on the sun. Heat is maintained through a system of 55-gallon drums filled with water, which store heat from the daytime hours.

Duus said the Parkway greenhouse maintained a temperature of above 63 degrees Fahrenheit when it was a mere 23 degrees outside.

“So, all heating and light requirements are met by the sun only,” Duus said. The garden’s greenhouse would also feature an office for the comunity organization, the equipment of which would run off solar power through a photovoltaic battery.

The Parkway greenhouse was designed by Carroll and built through funding from Appalachian State’s Goodnight Sustainable Family Program. Though Duus said Carroll would assist in the garden’s project, funding would have to come from elsewhere. Considering the price tag on a greenhouse, including design and aesthetics, would cost between $35,000 to $50,000, several sources may have to be tapped.

Matt Cooper, founder of the Appalachian Cooperative for Progressive Sustainability (ACPS), which operates the garden, said this funding would likely come from grants, private donations and any funds raised through the community garden.

The greenhouse could also help pay for itself, Cooper said, by selling its products to neighbors and restaurants.

Horticulturalist Andy Watson could help see to that.

“It would be easy to keep any cool weather crop,” Watson said, mentioning lettuce and claytonia as examples. “All of your herbs — basil, chives, dill — you could have growing, as well as medicinals.”

Watson said it could also be possible to grow citrus fruit in the greenhouse.

Since the town of Boone leases the garden’s 1.2 acres of land to ACPS, Cooper presented the greenhouse plan to the Boone Town Council at its May regular meeting.

Council member Janet Pepin asked Cooper about the size of the greenhouse, and Duus answered that it would have a footprint of 24 by 72 feet.

Town manager Greg Young said the lease would have to be examined and possibly modified to include a greenhouse, and suggested Cooper speak with Boone Development Services to determine whether or not a greenhouse would be a permitted use for the property’s B-3 (general business) zoning designation.

John Spear, director of Boone Development Services, said commercial greenhouse operation is a permitted use in B-3, but noted that ACPS’s proposed operation would not fall under that category. Rather, it’s an agricultural operation, which Spear said is not a permitted use.

“The safe way to go is to just allow agricultural operations within general business zoning classifications, if that’s what they want to do,” Spear said.

At the meeting, council member Lynne Mason asked development services to present a recommendation on how to modify the current ordinance to allow such a use in B-3 zones.

“The first thing they (ACPS) really have to do is modify their lease,” Spear said.

“Then they’ll have to have the table of permitted uses changed so they can [build a greenhouse].”

Spear expects such an amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance to appear at August’s quarterly public hearing, with action to be taken later that month.

For more information on the Leola Street Community Garden, visit www.leolastreetgarden.org on the Web.