I can't remember a time in my life that I haven't loved having my toes and fingers in the dirt doing some sort of gardening. My whole family shared the work of putting in a big vegetable garden every year at my grandparents' place. We grew sweet corn, okra, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, multiple varieties of squash and melons, onions, radishes, and cucumbers. We also bought black eyed peas and purple hull peas, and October beans from local farmers. When the garden came in, we gathered together to harvest and then either freeze or pressure can what vegetables we didn't plan to eat fresh so that we'd all have some for the Winter. I learned to can and freeze and pickle and ferment all kinds of vegetables and fruits. Those Summer preservations helped my struggling family get through a lot of lean years.
Not all the gardening was practical. Some was for beauty and the sheer enjoyment of it. My mother loved roses and hosta, and we planted and tended her both together when I was growing up. Purple roses were her favorites. My grandmother had beautiful raised beds of purple and yellow irises, and she planted impatiens and paintbrush plants, and princess feathers. She also had roses at the edge of the front yard. Seven Sisters heirloom roses. Around the base of the tree where our tire swing was, Grandmother had the prettiest tiger lilies and money plants. Just at the corner of her house close to the back door was a massive sweet shrub that I can still smell when I think about it. Its blooms looked like burgundy suede leather, and they smelled wonderful.
The tire swing tree fell in a tornado, and the sweet shrub was pulled up years ago. We sold my mother's house after she passed, and I don't know if any of the roses survived. I have tried to root and grow clippings of the Seven Sisters roses, but they won't survive our Winter here in Minnesota. I can't bring their gardens with me, but I can bring what they taught me to build my own.
Every year we've lived together, my wife and I have had some sort of vegetable garden, but we've really started building something permanent and expanding on it during the last five years. In 2020 when we were all on lockdown, we build three raised beds out of wooden boards and corner stone blocks. We planted what we called our salsa and salad garden: tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, and squash. That year was absolutely the most perfect weather for gardening. Given that we were all stuck at home because of the pandemic, maybe that was the universe's way of giving us a bit of a blessing to balance the bad. My father had just passed in February of that year, and gardening that Summer saved my sanity I think. It gave me something to focus on outside of myself and something that needed me to survive and thrive. I put all my energy into it. When the vegetables started rolling in, the harvest was immense. We at so many fresh vegetables with every meal. We canned and froze vegetables. We put bags and bags and bags of vegetables on our porch and messaged all of our friends in the area that they were more than welcome to drop by and do a pickup. A lot of people ate from our garden that year.
The next year, we decided to expand our garden and add another box or two. By then in 2021, the price of wood and other building materials had gone sky high. It was three times more expensive than it had been the year before to build one of our wooden boxes. We decided to go with a 4ft x 4ft metal raised bed instead to test out how well they stood up to the Minnesota weather. It started out as an herb garden and later transitioned into being the place where I would plant zucchini and squash and pumpkin. The next year we added two archways made from cattle fence panels and used those to grow beans and cucumbers and even some small pumpkins. The next year we added two more 8ft metal raised beds to plant pollinator friendly flowers in and a star patterned metal bed to be my new herb garden. We've also added a big, free-form pollinator garden in the front yard, have planted a row of Sonic Bloom Weigela in front of our house, and a long row of lilac along our front property line as a visual and audial barrier to the busy road. Two years ago, we also planted two Easter Redbud trees because they remind me of the mountains I grew up in. They were small and will probably take another year to full mature. I am hoping next year we will see early Spring blooms.
This year, we've decided to upgrade a few garden boxes from 1ft tall wooden boxes to new 3ft tall metal boxes. Neither of us look forward to crouching or kneeling on the ground in order to weed or harvest our current boxes. We are hoping the three foot eight will greatly reduce the strain on our backs and knees. And, it will have the bonus of putting the fresh produce far above the hungry mouths of our neighborhood bunnies and mice.
Our Winter this past year had a lot of harsh, negative degree days, and we didn't have the thick blanket of snow we normally do to insulate the plants from the worst of the freeze. This sadly meant that I lost almost all of the thirty six native perennial flowers I planted last year in our pollinator gardens. We also lost all of the old growth on one of our Redbud trees and all of our herbs other than our mint and chives. Our little blueberry bush isn't dead, but it's struggling to put on new growth. I am really sad to have lost my well established Marshmallow and Boneset and St. John's Wort. By the time I knew they weren't coming back, it was too late to buy new plants from the very few places that stock those medicinal herbs. I will have to start them from seed next year to replace. I have replanted several of the culinary herbs: oregano, thyme, sweet basil, borage, lime mint, and lemon verbena so far.
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