I never thought I would grow a garden. Something about sweating in the hot sun, pulling weeds around dying plants, all for a handful of green beans or a couple of cracked tomatoes didn’t really call to me.
I honestly thought that’s all a garden was. Just a thing we do in the Midwest from May to September to say that we did it.
My mom had a garden. Every year she hauled bags of soil (with no help from me or my dad) and spread it on her garden.
She grew tomatoes, eggplant, and some herbs. She also grew vegetables we couldn’t find easily at the store, like bittermelon, long beans, and opo squash.
For her, it was a way to have a little taste of her and my dad’s home country, the Philippines.
My mother-in-law also has a garden. I would see her tending to it daily, then spending hours in the kitchen preserving her harvest. Sometimes she would have a bumper crop of something. Sometimes plants would struggle and yield nothing but disappointment.
But every year, they both chose to grow.
Is It Worth It?
My husband and I planted our first vegetable garden three years after we moved into our current home. I bought 6 heirloom tomato plants from the farmer’s market in May and planted them in a hastily built “raised bed” filled with a leftover bag of potting mix.
I watered it, kept it weeded, and checked on it frequently.
It slowly grew and put on flowers.
My neighbors all had tomatoes by the end of July. We had our first tomato at the end of September.
And it wasn’t even that good.
I gave up then. Never again will I grow a vegetable garden, I silently vowed. It’s not worth my time or money.
But the very next year, COVID happened. And while I shopped an empty grocery store and confined myself to my home and backyard, I decided, maybe I’ll try growing a garden again this year.
Unfortunately the rest of America had also decided to start gardening in 2020, and there were no plants left to buy.
So I bought seeds. Sage, tomatoes, and petunias.
I planted the sage and petunias in a large planter. I sowed cherry tomato seeds in a plastic pot and waited for them to grow.
To my surprise, they all sprouted.
When the tomato got too big for its pot, I decided to stick it in the ground next to a rosebush I had growing outside our bedroom window.
In September, we had tomatoes. In October, we had tomatoes. In November, we still had tomatoes.
Unknown to me, I had planted my tomato in the perfect microclimate to extend my growing season past our last frost date.
That was when I decided gardening could be worth it.
Gardening was not just for a few sweaty, summer months. I could grow food for my family all year round.
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That winter, I spent a lot of time researching how to grow food. I stumbled upon Niki Jabbour’s The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener and marveled over pictures of her harvesting lettuce in the snow, or her descriptions of exotic Lemon Cucumbers and frost-kissed, sugary sweet carrots.
I found gardeners on YouTube who took me alongside tending their gardens and teaching me what to do.
Finding other people who are passionate about gardening is the best way to learn and be motivated to keep your own garden! I’m so grateful to those who have shared their experiences online.
The First Year
After a long winter, made even longer because of my excitement to start growing food, we cleared the sod off a part of our backyard and filled raised beds with soil.
I bought blueberry bushes, asparagus crowns, strawberry crowns, and lots of seeds.
Part of me was still skeptical. Determined, but skeptical.
Would anything grow?
To my surprise, it did.
A bit slow at first, but once those roots were established, the garden burst out of those raised beds, wild and green, impossible to tame.
My first year of gardening with intention was the most rewarding experience. I learned how to keep myself interested in growing and tending a veggie garden. I delighted in every new plant, flower, and pollinator I saw in my garden. It was really fun.
I felt a connection with our land and a desire to manage what we had for the good of not only my family, but also the wildlife and native plants that interacted with our small backyard.
I felt appreciation for the farmers and food growers who had come before me and a responsibility for my children and those who would grow food after me.
Most of all, I started to understand the richness of growing the food on my plate, the interconnectedness of wildlife to a garden, the need for a healthy soil network for plants to thrive, and the joy of slowing down and being more present in my home and garden.
Noticing the living things change and grow. Birds, frogs, rabbits, butterflies, and bees.
Those are the kind of things that make me excited to garden each season.
So although we don’t have chickens, or sheep, or cows, and I don’t farm my land to the extent that a real homesteader would, I do embrace the homesteading life as much as I can.
Simple living, mindfulness, being content with what I have, and stewarding my land to the best of my abilities are some of my lifelong goals.
What I have in my backyard is more than a garden.
It’s a way of life; it’s an opportunity to interact with nature. It’s a place to grow myself and show love to my family.
What I grow is more than just food for our physical bodies.
It’s food for our souls, an expression of love, a point of connection with one another, with God our Creator, and with Earth.
And that’s a good reason to grow.