How Does Your Garden Grow?

I forgot how much I loved gardening until the past two years when I had a chance again to get my hands dirty with vegetable gardening. Smelling the earth, seeing the earthworms, planting tiny seeds, watching them grow, fighting the battle against pesky weeds, and eating the lovingly grown fresh produce is wonderful. My newfound connection to gardening is as a volunteer at the MacGregor Ranch Garden.

The garden is part of historic MacGregor Ranch. The homesteaders who lived there had a large garden. Our efforts represent times past when people relied heavily on gardens for food for summer and winter. Volunteers plant the garden with traditional vegetables—carrots, onions, beets, potatoes, cabbage, and squash, although we also planted kale and kohlrabi last year and I doubt the settlers had those veggies. The volunteers share in the harvesting of the vegetables when they mature.

Growing up on an Iowa farm, gardening was in my DNA. The family garden was a supply of food year around. Mom wasn’t big on flowers, but she loved the vegetables and I learned to love them similarly.

When I joined 4-H as a 10-year-old, I had my first 4-H garden project. The garden was the minimum required, 10 feet by 10 feet. The next year I begged for more, and eventually I was responsible for the whole family garden as my 4-H project. Sometimes I had extra vegetables to give away or to sell a bushel or two of tomatoes. Every summer included a garden judging when a judge and the 4-H gardeners in the area visited each other’s gardens. We were rated on how weed and insect free the garden was. When I was in my teens I became a junior garden judge. I loved seeing other people’s vegetable patches.

A second part of the 4-H project was to take vegetables to the county fair for judging on size, color, and conformity. My mother was hospitalized during my first county fair and my grandpa helped me with the 4-H exhibit. I had some insect holes in the tomatoes, and he told me to turn them upside down and no one would notice. Little did I know that the judge would pick them up. I got a red ribbon that year but learned a lot and always got blue ribbons years after.

Gardening in my adult life has been a trial. In Wisconsin, we had a garden in the yard not far from the water on the lake where we lived. The garden flourished but I had no idea that muskrats could be a pest.

Gardening in North Carolina was a disaster. The ground was not the fertile black earth of the Midwest. I could grow nothing in the shade of the trees despite how much dirt I hauled in. The plants were totally spindly, and I got no produce. I gave up after two years and grew some tomatoes and herbs in pots on my patio deck. I never found patio gardening as satisfying as having dirt to dig.

I share the MacGregor Garden with three dozen other volunteers. We endeavor to battle rodents, keep ungulates out, and monitor irrigation for this high desert area. We are successful, however, and I love watching this garden grow!