Why I Garden

If you grow it, they will eat it

I was eight when my brother was born; he was the fourth of five of us. That following summer, I remember walking into the kitchen where my grandma and mom sat at the table. They had three large grocery store paper bags overflowing with green beans at their feet. My brother was safely ensconced in a bouncy chair on the kitchen table; they were chatting and snapping beans at the kitchen table. The breeze wafted through the kitchen as were watched my other brother and sister rummaging through the garden like raccoons. (The unspoken competition for the peas was real!) 

As I entered the kitchen, I heard my grandma say, “See? If you grow it, they will eat it.” It was a casual comment that stuck to me like spaghetti to a wall, and it was years before I asked my mom what it meant. Her response hit me like a 2×4 because it was the first flash of pure parental brilliance I can remember, and she had a few. “Think about it. Don’t peas, beans, or tomatoes taste a million times better when they are stolen from the garden?” 

They always had Tomatoes

My great-grandmother Louis ran a large family and a large corn farm in Indiana for decades by herself. I wish I could have met her when I was old enough to sit down and chat. My grandmother Donnabel and my mother left for work and college and didn’t work on the farm as grown women – but they always had tomatoes. Fried green tomato sandwiches were a favorite. As it often goes, I was not fond of those sandwiches as a kid. Now, I relish the one or two I make myself every summer.

When I started gardening, my mom jumped in to help set up my first garden (Community Oasis Garden). Just like you’d pull on an old, comfortable, soft sweater and settle into a couch on a snowy day with a book, and like second nature, she dropped to her knees and easily slid her hands into the soil. She matched my energy that day, knowing we had a time limit until the kids got restless.

If you grow it; they will eat it

It was a sunny summer day, my daughter was two months old, and my son was just under two years old when this saying came floating back to me. We had wandered out to the backyard of our rental house to “check on the beans.” 

To my son’s delight, they were ready. His attempt to gently get the bean off the plant was admirable but fruitless as the whole plant popped out of the ground. I was holding our daughter, so I couldn’t help him, but I’ll never forget the sparkle in his eyes when he realized the bean gripped in his fist. And that was it, every day we checked the garden. Cherry tomatoes and beans were a favorite and readily gobbled up by the two-year-old like candy. And that was it; we were both hooked! My kids (and a few close friends of theirs) grew up with The Gardening Passion Expands Garden in our backyard. To my delight, they were often found foraging around like raccoons.

Pure Parental Brilliance

That off-hand comment dropped in the summer heat between two moms surrounded by children while snapping peas proved important to me. As I became a mom who wanted my kids to eat well, who enjoyed gardening, and who craved a bit of self-reliance not formerly taught – it was a natural progression. A progression that has snowballed into The Gardening Passion.

To be honest, everything I’ve learned was already known and lost in just a few generations before me. Maybe it was crucial for me to relearn it all to understand the joy in all of it. Who knows? After all, the stories from the past were that farm life was a difficult life. Difficult on many levels, especially in the early 1900-1950s when my great-grandmother ran her farm. Would learning from my great-grandmother be as rewarding? Or perhaps more rewarding? I do know that learning and teaching gardening, preserving, chicken keeping, and harvesting skills have led to a rewarding sense of independence I enjoy.

 ~ Lola

“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments!”

The gardens we’ve built

Why I Garden; if you grow it, they will eat it 
Community Oasis Garden; exploring the passion
The Gardening Passion Expands; the garden that created a bidding war
Quick Turn Garden; two years and counting
The Empty Nest Garden; totally out of control

The coops we’ve built

How NOT to Build a Chicken Coop
The Bored Engineer’s Coop

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see our disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting The Gardening Passion!

This content was originally published at The Gardening Passion and is copyrighted material. If you are reading this on another website, it is being published without consent.