Nearly two dozen oyster enthusiasts arrived at the Northumberland Public Library in Heathsville on Saturday morning, April 12, to see what it takes to become gardeners of a different sort – oyster gardeners of the Chesapeake Bay oyster. They came to hear Richard Siciliano, a master oyster gardener from the Tidewater Oyster Gardener Association (TOGA), and former college professor, who’s been raising oysters in his retirement for fun since the late 1990s. He, along with Kent Eanes, also a master oyster gardener, educated and entertained the crowd with information, advice, and stories about gardening oysters.
How long does it take to grow an oyster before I can eat it? What do I need to start an oyster garden? Do I need a permit? How much work does it take? What type of oyster should we grow? These are just some of the questions that Dr. Siciliano fielded during his 90-minute class on the Basics of Oyster Gardening (OYS-101). His lecture and discussion covered step by step how it’s done, from buying the “spat” (baby oysters) from local spat suppliers, to keeping the immature oysters safe from non-human predators (blue crabs, mostly) in cages or floats until they’re “market size,” and then harvesting them to eat, if that’s what the O-gardener’s motivation is.
Siciliano explained how most oysters served in restaurants and sold in markets in Virginia’s Tidewater region are farm-raised by commercial growers who keep their aquatic crop in cages floating on the brackish waters of the creeks and rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay. Unlike commercial watermen, oyster gardeners raise their bivalves for fun, not for profit. Many gardeners, like Siciliano, raise oysters not to eat but because the Chesapeake Bay oyster, or Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea Virginicus), is a “filter feeder,” helping to clean the Bay naturally, each adult filtering up to 1.5 gallons of water per hour. He returns his mature oysters to a sanctuary reef in Kilmarnock, on Pitman Cove.
TOGA has offered the OYS-101 class free of charge, as part of the non-profit organization’s outreach effort, to over 200 Virginia waterfront residents since February throughout the Northern Neck, Middle Peninsula, and Gloucester region. The next class is on Saturday, April 26, at the Chesapeake Bank Training Center, from 10am – 11:30 am, 35 School Street, Kilmarnock, Virginia. To register for this free class, or to see when other OYS-101 sections are available, go to TOGA’s website: www.oystergardener.org. Contact Richard Siciliano for more information at rjsiciliano@yahoo.com.
