Growing Things

While my father has a green thumb, my mother does not. Part of this may be due to the fact that my dad actually enjoys landscaping, cultivating trees, and tending to flowers, whereas my mother doesn’t. In a bizarre twist, though, she actually enjoys mowing the lawn. But being the genetic offspring of these two I had never had an opportunity to see where in the spectrum I fell between the two extremes of loving and hating gardening.

When the pandemic began and work dried up, the idea of growing food instead of buying it became something worth considering. The Condoleons always seemed to have beans, spinach, and tomatoes to spare;  the Egans had fruit trees, carrots, and pumpkins on hand; and the Reynolds had heaps of mandarins among other things. Tim had once told me that ‘Gardening is a gift from Jehovah’, and his family had grown a variety of things here in the past, some of which were still here such as the peppers and rosemary. But the people here weren’t the only ones to serve as inspirations.

My friend Bill has a small but beautiful garden in Cleveland and it thrives. Likewise my friend Steffanie has a well appointed and well stocked garden which is a living work of art. In addition to both of these two people I actually know is a woman named Liziqi who posts enthralling videos from China in which she spends a lot of time growing and harvesting crops and preparing dishes from scratch. I was encouraged by the success others had had, so with a lot of time suddenly on my hands, I decided to have a go myself.

As a preliminary exercise I made use of some spare planting kits Ann Egan had on hand. These contained little packets of seeds, soil, and planters. The featured plants were rocket, radish, beet root, and cress. Radish and beet root were vegetables I knew, but “rocket” was new to me (it’s basically arugula) aa was “cress” (which is in the mustard family and used as garnishing). These mini gardens were for ages five and up, so I felt confident in undertaking the exercise. After following the instructions on each kit, a stalk from each shot up immediately and then died a week later. This was not a promising start. But I moved forward nonetheless knowing that success is built on failure.

There was one main plot here that had been used for vegetables in the past, so that was the spot I used. It had become a bit overgrown and so needed some preliminary work, but in less than a day it was in useable condition.

Most of what I would have planted were summer vegetables, but it was nearly winter, so I was limited as to what would grow: cucumbers, potatoes, lettuce, melons, and corn were off the table. But broccoli, bok choy, broad beans, and carrots were all good, so I went with those. A friend once told me about ‘the three sisters’, which was a growing strategy involving corn, beans, and potatoes. The potatoes grew beneath the soil while the corn grew above and the beans used the corn stalk as a trellis. I would have loved to try, but once again corn and potatoes were allegedly out.

Initially I gathered cow manure from the paddock and added that to the soil, but was later told that it’s horse manure yields results, not cow manure. In an attempt to help nourish the soil I threw some potatoes that had gone bad into the garden and chopped them up with a shovel. I had read that store bought potatoes were grown in such a way that they wouldn’t grow in home gardens, but was later surprised to find they had indeed sprouted and grown, though the yield was small. The size also was small. We tend to think of the vegetables we see in the produce section at the store as the way vegetables are supposed to look, but in actual fact they often are far smaller and more strangely shaped than we might think. (I’m looking at you, carrots.)

Apart from intense sunlight, something else that I had to fight against were the occasional frosts. All it took were one or two nights and some of what might have grown otherwise shriveled and died off. I wasn’t good at knowing when the frost was coming and even worse about covering my plants, so while the other veggies did fine, the potatoes, melon, and lettuce all suffered.

But overall the garden did fairly well, and part of the reason was that I used stored rain water on the crops. To illustrate the incredible effect on green things was an instance where tank water and been poured out on the lawn and that swathe of grass turned vibrant green in a little over a day. Other things helped were the bees. Some things that probably didn’t were the ants and aphids that swarmed the beans. And though there are large rabbits here as well as possums, they did no discernable damage.

Watching things grow that you have planted is quite gratifying, but I actually enjoyed another part of gardening that I didn’t think I would. My mother had always complained about having to pull weeds, and so I thought I would hate it also. But I didn’t. I actually found it a little addictive. Whenever I watered the garden I would also stop and pull some weeds. It was actually really gratifying. A big part of that was having a stake in what I was trying to accomplish.

I was able to harvest a little bit (a very little bit) of everything that grew except the broccoli, but the plant that yielded the most was the Bok choy. A handful of leaves mixed with mushrooms and sauteed in a pan was an amazingly tasty dish when drizzled with soy sauce and honey! I would almost consider going vegetarian if everything was as good as that dish was. I was also able to use the carrots and potatoes in a stew with condensed mushroom soup and beef. It was obviously not enough to keep me from having to go to the Food Works, but it was enough for me to realize I had a love of growing things and wanted to do more. I also realized how much space I would realistically need to have in order to plant a truly productive garden. I still had a lot to learn if I ever wanted to get serious about growing my own food. I harvested some of the Bok choy seeds for the friends here and next year the carrots I left in the ground should have seeds on them too.

One particular sister here is phenomenal with plants and she has various tricks she employs. One of these secret weapons is worm juice. Basically this involves buying or building a worm farm which will allow the compost, scraps, worm food, worms, and worm juice and casting to be separated. For one person a thousand worms is the suggested size to start with for maximum effect. These are not run of the mill earth worms, but a different breed that thrives on food scraps and need to be kept in a cool moist place. The by-product of these little composters apparently has a wonderous effect on garden plants. As one web site says ‘It’s like chocolate for your plants’. The ‘Tumbleweed Can-O-Worms’ even has a tap for the juice! (aaaand dry heave…now.) It was just one of the tricks I learned from her, but it made me realize how well designed the eco system is and how well all the little parts of it, from bees to lightning to worms, work together to make everything grow.

One benefit of being in a rural hall was that the people here understood rural illustrations from the Bible in a way I simply couldn’t. Finally getting my own hands into the soil (and being around livestock a little bit) has helped give many of the agricultural illustrations and references in the Bible a lot more meaning now.

In the final weeks before coming to Australia I would often pass by a window and stop, struck by how incredibly green everything outside was. Perhaps I appreciated this more acutely because I realized I would soon be going to a very dry, very brown place. But now I understand that in large part the green is due to the fact that there is so much rain in Ohio, and so I’m very eager to try planting a small garden when I return just to take advantage of it.

It’s made me truly long for that future time when I’ll be able to plant things, spend time with various animals, and have a truly active and fulfilling life caring for and cultivating living things.

It’s really what we were made for after all.

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