Everyone Can Garden
Many people think gardening isn’t for them. They just can’t do it. If you have the deep desire to garden, however, few things could be farther from the truth. In fact, everyone with that passion can learn to garden. That’s the biggest secret ingredient!
The Usual Lot
The tomatoes seem leggy and are only setting meager fruit.
The broccoli heads are so small they just don’t seem worth the effort.
The peppers barely have any peppers and it seems as if they might have an insect problem.
And the beans have stayed as stubby little fists, seemingly held in suspended animation, for weeks.
What do I do?
This is gardening life for many of us. Most of us haven’t had the luxury of gardening with an “old-timey,” green-thumbed gardener whose vegetables seem to magically burst forth in profusion as if put there by the hand of some divine force—while even our proudest plants pale in comparison. We wonder how these gardeners can continually grow such beautiful produce. Are they just that lucky, or do they have some sort of magic…or do they cheat somehow? What do they know that we don’t? Is there something they see that we’re not even aware to look for? Are there some epiphanic lessons we could learn from them, or is it a complete paradigm shift? Do they just see the world in their garden that differently? What DO they see when they look at a garden? If only we could be in their head for just a season.
Not knowing what we’re missing, settling into our usual station of defeat, we often wonder if these old-timers could even really teach us anything.
“Maybe it’s just a God-given ability. Is that even something that can be passed on?” our skeptical mind ponders.
But it’s not a God-given ability. And it is very much something that can be passed on!!
An Example That Seems to Prove It’s an Innate Gift But Proves the Opposite
My dad, rest his soul, was one of those green-thumbed gardeners.
I could tell he appeared to others as if a lightning bolt had struck his hands the day he was born. My whole life I watched people regard him with both a deference and disbelief that treated him as if he knew, or was, magic. They weren’t satisfied saying he had a green thumb.
“Dave?” They’d say. “He has two green thumbs!”
Others were incredulous.
“You didn’t grow huckleberries in Wisconsin,” my aunt once cut in curtly on my mother’s story comparing the tastes of the captive ones my dad grew to the wild ones where my aunt lived. “They’re native here, and people struggle growing them in captivity here.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jackie,” my mom replied flatly, shoulders and eyebrows pulled up and palms raised to the sky in subtle supplication to her sister’s disbelief. “Dave grew them.”
He accomplished incredible horticultural feats like that so regularly that my siblings, my mom, and I just got used to it—until we had to try to explain them to someone outside our immediate family. His exploits were so unbelievable that we found ourselves avoiding conversations about them because our truths made others think we were liars. But we understood why most people would never believe us.
His gifts were miraculous and bordered on alchemy; good gardening often does. And it was magic to the uninitiated.
The Real Truth and Good News from Behind the Scenes
But I was by his side from my very beginning, and I saw the real secret to his magic: his sincere interest—his passion—coupled with his very open mind and an even more open heart.
I was his little buddy then, so he taught me everything he knew, starting earlier than I could understand words. And I watched, listened, and learned, as I too was interested and had inherited at least some of his same open mind and heart (He’s really the one who should have written this book.). And, luckily, I had him as a loving father to show me the way. It was a glorious induction, from the youngest of ages, into the secrets, and the seeming magic, of the two-green-thumbed gardeners.
Still, the most important thing he taught me, without even trying, was how he knew these “secrets.” I’d watch him spend his evenings bent over horticultural literature, dedicate weeks traveling to horticultural conferences, be open to trying new ideas every year, and work through and solve problems constantly. I’d see his mistakes—yes, even those with seemingly God-given talent make mistakes—and see how he learned and grew from each. In short, I learned not just what he knew, but how he knew it and, in so doing, how to find more of it myself. And, because of all of this, I always knew that it wasn’t magic but wisdom that emanates from a sincere interest—a burning desire, even—for growing plants, and a heart and mind open enough to be willing to continue to learn long after he was considered the most knowledgeable horticulturalist anyone of us had ever met.
The Real Secret
You see, the lightning bolt didn’t strike his hands; it struck his heart, and it came in the form of my grandmother. My dad, being the youngest of the first four boys on the farm, was tasked with helping her in the garden, and she taught him, at the youngest of ages, the magic of seeds—that each tiny little pip miraculously holds the complete code to build the entirety of our later massive, majestic plants; the wonder of soil whose fertility sustains both our garden plants and everything else alive, including us; and the intricate beauty and soul elevating smells of flowers. He was never the same, and, because of it, he spent his whole life immersed in this beauty—and then he pulled me into it.
But I always knew the real magic was his deep interest in the living world that opened his heart and mind to learn whatever lessons it had to teach. That was the real gift he was, in part, born with, as I think we all are, and luckily had fostered by my loving grandmother. Her inspiration and love made everything else possible. She was his loving link to the best sides of his humanness and the lessons long passed down from hunter-gatherers to today in a chain unbroken, at least for some of us.
What This Means for You
This is why I think of all of you now who have been disconnected from this link just because one generation decided not to pass on these gifts, gifts that had been ever person’s birthright for all of human existence up to that point. And I think of you who somehow still have this same deep desire bubbling up inside of you even though you were never inspired by someone you admire. The fact that this desire still somehow finds a way to burn in human hearts who’ve never had access to it gives me chills. And it breaks my heart. You all have hearts and minds just as open to growing and are just as ready to learn all of the lessons the living world has in store, but you just weren’t as lucky as both my dad and I were to have someone, especially someone you love and trust, pass on what can be a confusing but amazing array of knowledge and wisdom—and a gift that was held in the hands of most humans throughout time.
Knowing you desire what used to be your birthright so deeply but often feel lost when trying to bring that passion to fruition breaks my heart. People who care so deeply should have the opportunity to become people who know just as deeply. That is why I teach gardening. If you have that same passion for growing—and it has become clearer and clearer to me that it’s innately human that so many of us do—it seems to me only fair you have someone enter your life to help you on your journey to learn how to do such a beautiful thing. Because partnering with a little plot of ground, and everything that surrounds it on this earth, to grow your own food is such a beautiful thing!
Therefore, if you have that passion, this book and website are dedicated to your open mind and open heart. I’m here to teach you the biggest secrets—and then maybe some smaller ones too—to try to help you bring your passion to life in the ground in front of you.
If enough of this clicks for you, join me as we explore how to be an amazing gardener.
If I could give a little advice to start you on your way then:
Start small. You can always expand, but it can take two or three years to recover from a growing season that completely overwhelms you…if you ever do.
Be easy on yourself and forgive yourself for what you consider your “failures.” Think of them as lessons… well learned. And remember the absolutely best gardeners and best horticulturalists, make mistakes all the time, every year, every month. How do you think we got this good? Every lesson we really learned, we learned the hard way through a seeming “failure,” often one that was our mistake, and often one that was for trying to get away with something we actually knew better about, and often one we had to learn more than once.
Follow your plants. Look for what works for them and they’ll show you the way. They always do.
And follow your passion. The rest will come with time and your openness to your own growth as much as your plants’.
Trust that process and enjoy that journey, for it is a truly beautiful journey of joy and exploration.
And may you always stay open to growing.
