GREEN INTO GOLD.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

CRESWELL - Lettuce give thanks for a student fund-raising product that doesn't make you fat or rot your teeth.

Creswell High School sophomore Amanda Fitzgerald is selling her own home-grown salad greens to raise money for her swim team expenses.

Cookies and candy may be dandy, but the 15-year-old's healthy organic alternative is selling like hotcakes.

"Eating right is important for me as an athlete, and I hope to provide you with the same awesome produce I eat every day," she explains in her Home Grown Greens flier. "I have teamed up with my Dad to offer you a variety of salad greens, hand-picked and washed with no pesticides or chemicals, delivered directly to you at home."

Since Fitzgerald knocked on her first door in June, she has raised close to $1,500 selling colorful $2 and $4 bags of salad mix. Among a growing list of regulars on her five-page spread sheet of customers is Amanda Hoggard, who runs a Creswell home day care business.

"It's incredible," Hoggard said. "It's nutritious and it's delicious." She signed on after Fitzgerald came door-to-door.

"She was very professional," Hoggard said. `And it's self-drive. It's something she came up with on her own, from her own garden. She's not doing it under the push of some company that's said, `Here, sell this and you get to keep 10 percent of the profits.' '

Actually, it was Fitzgerald's father, Bob Clack, who came up with the idea, the teen stressed. Clack was an organic gardening enthusiast long frustrated by poor growing conditions in the shady yard of their former home in south Eugene's hills. Then, in April, the family moved to a new home in a Creswell subdivision.

"He was ordering in topsoil and planting like there was no tomorrow when we still had boxes to unpack inside the house," said his wife, Kathy Clack. In the sunny conditions and this spring's warm weather, the garden flourished beyond expectation.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald - who had finished second in the district in the 100-yard breaststroke as a freshman swimming for South Eugene - decided she wanted to compete for her new high school this year. Creswell added swimming as an official sport, though she is likely to be the only team member and must cover her expenses. She expects to pay $4,000 for a team suit, travel to meets and training through Eugene City Swim Club.

"I wanted to sell candy bars because that's how we'd raised money when I went on an eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C.," she confessed. `Plus, I like candy better. But my dad said it wasn't good for people, plus you don't get to keep that much of the money. And we were already growing lettuce. He said, `This could be a huge thing!' '

Three months later, he has been proven right.

The operation has grown well beyond their original backyard garden bed. Colorful lettuce plants poke out among the decorative shrubs all over their 7,000-square-foot lot. Father and daughter have also leased 2 acres of farmland and begun growing cold weather lettuce there.

Fitzgerald is on a first-name basis with a wide variety of greens.

"That's Tyee," she said, gesturing at clusters of dark green spinach leaves. "That's Revolution" (a nearby patch of deep purple kale) "and that's Speckled Trout" (a mottled romaine).

She reuses cardboard egg cartons to plant her starts from seeds. Her dad, "semiretired" from the insurance business, does most of the soil preparation and cultivation. But Fitzgerald rises at 5:45 on a typical morning to spend several hours picking and rinsing lettuce, soaking it in ice water to crisp the leaves, hand-cranking it in a salad spinner to remove excess water, bagging it and delivering it by bicycle.

Needless to say, she is now sold on her unique fund-raising product.

"I like eating lettuce, too," she said. "And candy is even more special when you don't eat it every day."

HEALTHY FUND-RAISER

Cost: $2 for 3-ounce bag, $4 for 8-ounce bag

Where: Delivered in the Creswell area

Why: Swim team expenses

Contact: Amanda Fitzgerald, 895-4688

CAPTION(S):

Amanda Fitzgerald practices at a 5:30 a.m. lap swim session at Amazon Pool in Eugene before a busy day of deliveries around Creswell. Amanda Fitzgerald harvests the lettuce that is her bread and butter as Creswell High's sole swim team member. She needs to raise $4,000. "I like eating lettuce, too. And candy is even more special when you don't eat it every day." - AMANDA FITZGERALD