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Restaurateur's home garden is source of best food he eats
Whether it's a desire to be greener, to eat more locally, save on food costs or ensure food safety, more North Texans are growing vegetables at home. Tim Runté, a buyer for Fort Worth-based Calloway's, says the company has experienced a significant increase in sales of vegetable plants during the past two years. And much of that bump, he adds, is coming from people new to vegetable gardening. As many of the new micro-farmers have discovered, growing food is a challenging and sometimes frustrating task. Beginners can learn best by listening to advice from experienced gardeners who deal with the same issues of problem soil, lack of rainfall and summer heat. Over the next few weeks we'll share urban gardeners' success stories of bountiful harvests in plots large and small. John Spyropoulos' face lights up when he talks about his favorite salad. With dancing eyes and a Greek accent, he excitedly explains that you combine chopped tomato, cucumber, a little olive oil and lemon juice. Throw in a little feta cheese if you want to make it fancy. What makes his simple salad great isn't the recipe. It's the ingredients, and more specifically the vegetables – the ones he grows in his backyard garden. What appears at first glance to be a manicured Richardson lot with grass, a deck, a few trees and a medium-size vegetable plot is upon closer examination a fresh-food paradise. From figs and lemons to cucumbers and tomatoes, John grows it all, and he grows it well. "I just love it," he says. "It's how I relax." Tending the garden helps him unwind after the long days he spends at his restaurant, John's Cafe on Greenville Avenue. Casual customers probably don't realize his summertime routine involves waking up around 4 a.m. to water the garden before arriving at the cafe around 5:30. When he leaves work in the late afternoon, he returns home to the garden and takes care of it into the evening hours. Seven days a week. John's son-in-law, Mike Niotis, works at the family restaurant, helps out with the garden and vouches that what John says about his routine is no exaggeration. "If you're going to have a garden like this, you have to love working on it," Mike says. Mike helped rototill the 15-by-60-foot vegetable plot at the beginning of the season, which they do each spring to properly prepare the soil. They also add organic matter, including discarded eggshells from the cafe. The restaurant goes through 15 cases of eggs a week; each case holds 15 dozen eggs. Calcium-rich eggshells feed the soil and the earthworms. After tilling comes planting, time and attention. The family planted 40 tomato plants this year, most of which John says are common heat-hardy varieties from Home Depot. About a dozen are a beefsteak variety that Mike's father, who lives in New Jersey, contributed. Those have yet to produce, but the gardeners expect them to bear fruit later in the season, when temperatures are cooler. The garden plot also has peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, corn, squash and melons, all of which are thriving. Fruit trees are planted in another part of the back yard. Figs and pears are John's favorites, and he also has a couple lemon trees in large containers that require winter protection. Last year, one bore a particularly large fruit, weighing in at just over 2 pounds. A 4-year-old containered olive tree John bought at a Greek church festival will eventually get planted in the ground, and he expects it to start producing fruit next year. He also grows broccoli rabe, which is common in Greece. Beyond how well the vegetables grow, one remarkable aspect of the overall back yard is how all the elements blend together into a landscape that doesn't appear overrun by vegetables. There is a large central area of turf, and the fruit-bearing trees are positioned to provide shade. Herbs in pots and a night-blooming jasmine the family brought home from Greece add to the charm. During summer months, the garden produces so much that the Spyropoulos family doesn't buy produce at the grocery store, John says. Extra tomatoes often end up in special salads for regular customers at the cafe, a fixture on Lower Greenville. While it's clear John is proud of what he's accomplished, he doesn't offer a secret to his green thumb. Years of experience – he's had a vegetable garden at this house every year since 1980 – and close attention are keys to his success, he says. The only real problem he has are birds. Instead of picking the harvest early and letting produce ripen inside, before birds get them, John covers his plot, plus a fig tree, with netting from the hardware store. The fence supports the material on one side, and wooden posts on the other. A small, overlapping flap provides human entry. When inside, it feels like an enclosed vegetable room, a maze of tightly planted produce that is dinner waiting to be picked. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/lifetravel/stories/ DN-nhg_veggarden1_0801liv.ART.State.Edition1.369a540.html |
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