Gardening & Trellises
“God Almighty first planted a garden. And, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.”
Fear of failure has paralyzed me from enjoying some of God’s greatest gifts. For 40 years I believed the lie that I did not have a green thumb. The truth was, however, that I had not taken any time to learn the fundamentals of gardening. To produce a harvest, we must first become students.
At the age of 38 I decided it was time to learn. I started with a baby step by simply potting some small herb plants in early Spring. I bought Greek oregano, thyme, basil and cilantro. To my delight, my first herbs sustained for many Spring months. I learned by failing forward that you must prune even your herbs to prevent them from flowering and ultimately going to seed. I killed my cilantro by Summer. My basil carried through but did not reproduce the following year. However, three years later, my oregano and thyme continue to flourish (and, quite honestly, I have done very little to maintain them other than using it regularly in my cooking and watering come the warmer weather months).
I gave lavender and rosemary “a go” together but I think they needed more space and, ultimately, they died too. Last year, I planted some mojito mint in a small pot (a too-small pot come to find out) and it did not survive either. For those who say you cannot kill mint . . . I am here to tell you, you absolutely can. Ha!
With each plant massacre, I believe I have come to realize that failure in gardening is not only possible, it is, in fact, inevitable. As a recovering perfectionist, this truth has brought me great freedom. I am going to fail not because I am a failure, but because God uses failure as an opportunity for growth and gratitude. With each mistake, I learn how to improve the next time. In humility I have had the privilege to ask questions from many amazing gardeners who are always eager to share what they know. Failure has also produced in me a much deeper appreciation for our farmers who labor and invest their time, talents and resources knowing that weather is unpredictable, and a harvest is not always guaranteed.
How much more I find myself thanking God for my food, now that we have begun growing our own crops.
After some wins (and losses) with herb gardening I embarked on a new quest last Spring: to grow vegetables from seed. There are many reasons this was important to me. I desired:
To increase the amount and variety of micronutrients we are consuming as a family
To fall back in love with learning new things; to teach my children by example
To develop and pass on skills that can bless our children and their future communities for generations to come
To delight in God’s creation: from one tiny seed, He can feed many
“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.””
Last Spring we sowed beets, kale, Brussel sprouts, and cucumbers. Sadly, we only produced two small beets. Our Brussel sprouts broke ground but never produced an edible harvest (I have since learned that I planted this Fall vegetable during the wrong season). However, our kale and cucumbers were plentiful! I learned, through failure again, that I had planted the cucumber seeds too close to the kale. Fortunately, a fellow gardening neighbor told me that cucumbers can be trained to climb. She mentioned a trellis and we began our next learning experiment.
I quickly hopped on Pinterest and began to look up a variety of trellis designs. Interestingly, located at the front of our subdivision is a bamboo forest! Without looking much further, we opted to construct a bamboo tri-pod trellis following the guidance of the Seattle Urban Farm Company. They offer a great tutorial with step-by-step instructions (including photos). Very quickly we were able to design are shorter version that would fit the tiny garden space we were using (we cut our 3 bamboo trunks to about 4’ in height). Just as speedily, we were able to guide our sprouting cucumber plant to climb up the twine! We had so much fun watching a harvest of juicy cumbers produce all Spring long. Our middle son, who refuses to eat cucumbers from the grocery store, was the most eager of all to cut the vegetable from the vine and gobble it up as a snack. Truly, the flavors and textures of home-grown veggies is incomparable to anything we can buy from the supermarket.
We continued our gardening adventure into the Fall where we removed bushes from our backyard, tilled the soil and integrated fresh gardening soil to create a new in-ground gardening landscape. We attempted to plant beets from seed again (they failed again; I clearly need to do more research here). We also planted spinach and lettuce, but after a heavy downpour our little seedlings washed away (I think I will need to grow those seeds indoors first next time before transplanting into the elements). Our kale from the Spring continued to produce. And, God graciously gifted us a harvest of sugar lace peas! We purchased the seeds online from a company called Park Seed. No snap peas made it to the actual dinner table though, because as soon as we found some, we would eat them! They were so delicious!
Spring has sprung here in the Carolinas again and we officially have a new array of seeds sprouting. This season, we have more space to plant (due to the work we did in the Fall). We have added basil and rosemary plants to our herb collection (I recently learned that white flies do not like basil, so we have strategically planted them next to our kale). We have also planted the seeds of cucumbers, zucchinis and watermelon. Because our space is limited, we have built 4 trellises to help our cucumber and zucchini plants climb!
If gardening feels a bit intimidating . . . good! The greatest rewards come from starting and finishing quests that are challenging and unpredictable, that require dependency on God and that insist upon a process of patience and intentionality. It took me forty years to believe I could. It’s never too late to start learning something new!
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is too feed not just the body, but the soul.”