Take a look at supermarket prices, and you may want to think seriously about alternatives to paying so much for food.

If you’re partial to vegetables, a cost-saving measure could be to start a garden or enhance an existing one. And the knowledgeable folks qualifying as Penn State Master Gardeners are happy to assist.

Among them is Kevin Whitfield, who was present to provide pertinent information during a Jan. 28 seed swap event at Monroeville Public Library.

“We’re here to help people understand the Penn State Extension is a resource,” Whitfield, a Monroeville resident, said. “Gardeners always have some kind of a question, whether it’s pests or a disease.”

He recommended the extension’s Garden Hotline, a free service provided by Master Gardeners. In Allegheny County, the number is 412-482-3476 and email is alleghenymg@psu.edu.

In the meantime, he and fellow Master Gardener Kimberly Roller of Verona joined others in the know from various groups as an added component to the exchange of seeds.

Verona resident Mike Rybacki, for instance, brought mung and lima beans for planting, prime specimens he received from a cousin in New York state that also grow native in Western Pennsylvania. Plus he shared seeds from persimmon trees, including some originating in Lancaster County.

“It’s kind of semi-sweet tasting,” he said about the resulting fruit. “They’re usually really bitter. This is why I brought them here, because they do have a higher amount of sweetness than normal.”

His seeds from Tennessee may be even better: “That’s the sweetest persimmon I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

‘Start thinking now’

Although the seed swap took place five weeks into the winter, gardeners already are planning ahead.

“You want to start thinking now: What do I want to grow in the summer? If you’re going to start from seeds, you’re going to be starting anywhere from mid-February until you put it into the ground,” Whitfield said. “If I’m planting peppers from seed, I’m going to start those indoors by mid-March, tomatoes a little bit later.”

Roller, Verona Garden Club president for 2022, advised an early start in determining logistics.

“The best thing that you can do right now is to plan out your spacing,” she said. “If you’re going to do it in the ground or you’re going to do raised beds, all of that is going to affect what you grow, and where and how.”

She also recommended taking notes from the start and as the growing season progresses.

“Decide where you put them this year. Keep track of it,” Roller said. “See how you did, and then that way, it will help lead what you do for next year.”

Another Verona resident, Jessy Swisher, attended the event to promote awareness of grains — wheat, rye, barley and the like — as viable additions to gardens. She created the Pittsburgh Area Grain Growers Guild as a Facebook group for networking and information sharing.

While working for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, she said, “I learned and I realized, grains aren’t really talked about. You go to the farmers’ market, and there’s local produce and meat and cheese, but not grains, so much.”

Swisher offered seeds for turkey red wheat and sweet cane sorghum, with instructions for each. With regard to the sorghum:

“Plant in spring after conditions are warm (May). In the fall, before frost, harvest canes and press them for syrup. Seed heads also make nice decorative bundles.”

By contrast, turkey red is a “winter wheat,” optimally planted around mid-September for harvesting the following July.

As Swisher acknowledged, readying grains for consumption involves a series of steps — such as cleaning, hulling, milling, grinding, soaking and drying — as opposed to, say, simply picking leaves of greens for salads.

Swisher works on a Mercer County sustainability venture with Darrell Frey, author of “Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm,” who elaborated on Swisher’s mission regarding grains.

“She’s trying to jump-start gardeners doing it on a small scale and making sure equipment is available to process it,” he said, including borrowing essentials from Chatham University, from which Swisher earned her master’s degree in food studies.

‘Help connect the next generation’

Also in the realm of promoting awareness during the seed swap, Tamara O’Brien spoke with guests about the importance of native pollinators to the region’s ecosystem. The New Castle resident is founder and CEO of the nonprofit Plant It Further.

“Our mission is to help connect the next generation — and everyone, really — with using holistic and natural earthkeeping practices, being better land stewards and using native plants where they belong,” she said, in contrast to invasive species that tend to take over habitats. “Every native pollinator has a specialist relationship to one of our native plants.”

A well-known example is the larvae of monarch butterflies feeding exclusively on milkweed, but O’Brien noted that 16 species of Lepidoptera native to Pennsylvania eat only violets.

Likewise, the zebra swallowtail butterfly is dependent on pawpaw trees. The once-abundant species disappeared from the Pittsburgh area about a century, coinciding with the local decline in pawpaws, but O’Brien cited naturalist Gabrielle Marsden as leading efforts to reintroduce the insect.

In addition to her work with Plant It Further, which helps implement school and community gardens, O’Brien is the co-founder and co-president of the Western Pennsylvania Area Chapter of Wild Ones. The national organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of natural habitats through native plants and natural landscaping practices.

Organizing the swap event was reference and instruction librarian Pamela Barroso, a volunteer for the Cooperative Gardens Commission, which functions as a collective to facilitate sharing of resources, including seeds, soil, equipment, labor, land and knowledge.

Participating in the program was Beth Hamill, one of many volunteers for the Home Plate Garden in Turtle Creek, where zucchini, tomatoes, cantaloupe, sunflowers and other plants are grown for the benefit of the community.

Plum resident Meredith Hedeen, founder of Ethical Hope, had items for sale at the library from her company, which carries fair-trade products made by artisans from around the world.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)