Walnut Grove: The Evolution of a Garden

Youth and ambition are frequent companions. Some of us dream of traveling the world, experiencing new cultures, scaling great, high mountains; while others seek to climb the corporate ladder and live the high life in McMansions. Fresh out of college, I wanted to make my mark on the world in a very Emersonian way--by cultivating a plot of land. Of course there was nobility in this goal. I wouldn't simply be puttering around with a hoe, but I would be part of a growing movement away from fossil fuels, from monoculture, from chemical-laced fields of grain. Like Wendell Berry's mad farmer, I was going to prove everyone who buys tomatoes in January WRONG. So one of the first things I did when Lance and I bought the farm was to plant a garden. We recruited our neighbor, Mr. Smoot, to plow up the "yard" behind the house, so I could go to work sowing seeds. Looking over that freshly tilled dirt, I had visions of preserving the harvest and filling my basement full of jars of beans, vegetable soup, jams, jellies, and pickles, just like my grandmother did. It seemed like such a do-able goal. I didn't want to climb Mount Everest, just grow corn. Little did I know that the Garden Gods were peering over me, ready to make my task appropriately Herculean. They were laughing. They knew how many thousands of weed seeds would sprout headstrong from that red clay soil, how many droves of japanese beetles would emerge from the ground hungry for bean leaves, how many rainless days would make up the summers, and how many guzillion spores of blight would fall upon my burgeoning tomatoes.

Needless to say, the Garden Gods have put me in my place. Ten years of tending this plot of land has taught me many things about gardening. First of all, you need a teacher, a flesh and blood one. In this case (and in many others), books simply cannot take the place of oral tradition. What is written on the page is far less effective than what is spoken to you directly by people who know the soil and weather in your particular location. I would trade all my Eliot Coleman (leading organic gardener) books for one afternoon with my grandmother in her garden. I've also learned that gardening might not be the best occupation for an INTJ. Myers Briggs tells me that I thrive on organization, control, predictability, and closure. My garden, however, is a study in chaos and "undoneness." I can never haul enough water or squash enough potato beetles or strangle enough bermuda grass. This is a harsh lesson learned over and over again each year when in February I look out over bare dirt and think, "This is the year that I'm going to stay ahead," and then come July, I wistfully proclaim, "Well, there's always next year." And that brings me to the final lesson: start small. You can't save the world if you spend all of your time pulling weeds.

Below are pictures of my garden from the last ten years.