By JOHN GLADDEN Staff Columnist

So it’s not just my imagination. Not this time, anyway. As I’ve been driving through neighborhoods and down back roads, I’m seeing more tall wooden stakes in manicured suburban yards. Squares and rectangles of freshly turned soil. Green stuff growing in neat little rows. And fences to keep the rabbits and groundhogs out of the salad bar.

By golly, those are vegetable gardens out there. And they seem to be popping up everywhere.

At Boyert’s Greenhouse & Farm in Montville Township, Patti Boyert estimates sales of vegetable plants and seeds are up by 15 percent this year. And by the conversations she’d had with customers, growing produce is a new experience for many of them.

“Just talking to people, first-time gardeners are asking questions,” Boyert said.

The Associated Press reports similar trends nationwide. The country’s biggest seed company, W. Atlee Burpee & Co., has doubled its seed sales over last year — with half the increase from new customers. When the economy goes down, sales go up, as consumers try to save a little money by raising their own fruits and vegetables. Seed companies say a dime spent on seeds yields $1 worth of produce.

Good times or bad, it’s hard to argue with that kind of return on an investment. Of course, much of what we pay for when we buy grocery produce is someone else’s labor. For us to get from the dime to the dollar does require a little garden sweat equity. But even that pays dividends in exercise and time spent outdoors. Weeding a garden burns some 306 calories an hour — more, if your garden is as weedy as mine after all this rain.

Former Ohio agriculture director Fred Dailey once observed that expansive suburban lawns were too big to mow and too small to farm. It seems the tough economy, plus recent health scares over the safety of produce, have inspired us to find a happy medium: growing fresh food for our tables and freezers.

For many of us, growing a portion of our own food isn’t a sign of the times. Quite the opposite. It’s a part of the good life. Good for body, mind and spirit.

A little before suppertime, instead of getting into your car and driving to the store, you walk down to the garden and depending on the time of year, you gather a few handfuls of strawberries, a colander of lettuce, some green onions, new potatoes, tomatoes, green beans or sweet corn, and bring them back to your kitchen. For Thanksgiving dinner, maybe you go into the basement and pull out some winter squash and sweet potatoes — reason alone to feel thankful.

Unlike when you buy these fruits and vegetables at the grocery, you can personally vouch for everything that has — or better yet, has not — been sprayed on your food. You eat them — as Garrison Keillor says, while they are practically alive — in season and at their peak of ripeness, not picked green and shipped cross country in a crate.

This is luxury, this is fine dining, this is the good life. To those of us who grew up with gardens, it just seems like the right thing to do. It’s also healthy and practical, as more people are discovering.

“I’ve definitely seen an increase in people wanting to do at-home gardening and organic gardening, looking for different ways to grow their foods safely at home and more economically,” said local independent garden consultant Jennifer Martin of the Happy Gardener. “And definitely for the organic pest control so they’re not putting chemicals to kill the bugs on the same food they eat.” Martin is hoping to teach some organic gardening courses in the spring.

Even though it’s July, it’s not too late to plant a little something to put on your dinner table, Boyert said. There’s still time for fast-growing vegetables like zucchini, cucumbers and radishes — even some short-season tomatoes. You may not get the same quantity of produce as if you planted in May, but it’ll be worthwhile.

“You’re still going to pay for the plants, plus,” said Boyert.

In the creation story in the book of Genesis, it says God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. I have always believed there’s a little bit of that original Garden of Eden soil floating around in our veins. How else can you explain people who pay good money for cosmetic mud baths? Or, for the rest of us, the inexpensive joy of digging our fingers into warm soil and putting in a tomato plant? Born from economic necessity or not, gardening is in our blood. It’s good for us.

Now, get out there and start weeding. And take this column with you. It’ll make good mulch.

Gladden may be contacted at gladden@ohio.net or 330-721-4052.