By Special to the Town Crier

Backyard food gardens in Los Altos Hills and Mountain View will be featured on a tour of local organic gardens planned for Saturday, June 23.

Organized by the Valley of Heart’s Delight project, the tour highlights different approaches to organic food gardening. The tour begins at 9 a.m. or at 1:30 p.m. at the Foundation for Global Community, 222 High Street in downtown Palo Alto.

Participants can choose to visit five homes in the Los Altos Hills/Mountain View area or five sites in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

Attendees will carpool to the sites and receive a resource packet to help them get started growing food organically. Tickets cost $10 in advance and $12 on the day. The cost for taking both tours is $15.

“We organized a similar tour last year, and it was so popular, we decided to put together another one this summer,” explained Debbie Mytels, tour organizer. “These are all different gardens from last year, and we will allow a little more time at each site so people can ask more questions.”

On the Mountain View-Los Altos tour, one homeowner will show how he changed older landscaping to create a food garden, choosing appropriate locations for vegetable beds and selecting new fruit trees. Another will demonstrate use of a compost starter made of micro-organisms such as yeast and beneficial bacteria. A third shows how a food garden can be part of a large back yard that extends the living space of a small home.

The five home gardens in Menlo Park and Palo Alto will emphasize different organic techniques, such as composting, mulching, nontoxic pest control and companion planting. One gardener will show espaliered fruit trees, while another has kiwi fruits and beehives.

Another has turned part of her front yard into a demonstration of biointensive, “double digging” methods.

For information and tickets, call Debbie Mytels at the Foundation for Global Community, 328-7756, ext. 608, e-mail to dmytels@globalcommunity.org or send a check to Valley of Heart’s Delight Tour, c/o the Foundation for Global Community at 222 High St., Palo Alto 94301.

The goal of the Valley of Heart’s Delight project is to reduce reliance upon chemical fertilizers and pesticides, restore soil quality and re-connect people with the Earth as our source of physical and spiritual nourishment.