My very first lessons in gardening came from my father. More than a book or any actual experience in the world, my Dad is the one who taught me how to begin. It didn’t start with the plants themselves, it started with the earth: the land and the dirt beneath our feet. Before we even thought of heading out to the garden center to procure any living items, Dad showed me to prepare the bed for planting.
Tilling and toiling over his vegetable plot, he worked the soil skillfully, painstakingly removing every stone or unwanted piece of detritus, until it could be raked through cleanly. He turned over the top layer of upstate dirt into something of deep richness, making the hospitable space for roots to take hold and flourish. He dug in manure and fertilizer, showing me how to enrich the ground and prepare the proper home for good root growth. I learned patience there and then, and the importance of preparation.
By the time it came to actually planting, much of the hard work had been done. What came next was the careful process of planting, and how it differs from plant to plant. He taught me the technical things specific to tomatoes, like how to plant a tomato’s stripped stem sideways in the ground so more roots would grow and it would have a stable structure. He taught me to pinch out early side shoots, allowing the plant to focus its energy upward. He taught me to carefully tie a tender young stem to the support it needed early in its journey, and then to release it when it could stand on its own. Later in the season, he would show me when and how to harvest the ripened results, twisting them off and leaving them on the sunny windowsill of the garage until perfectly red.
I would take these lessons and apply them to our flower beds – vegetables weren’t as pretty or frivolous as flowers – as that’s where my interest resided. I didn’t see it then, and maybe he didn’t either, but he was actually carving out a way of showing me how to survive in the world. Not in any literal way of feeding myself with homegrown vegetables, but in teaching me that the path to anything good and worthy was in working slowly in service of the end goal. I learned not to hurry things, to take my time and invest diligence and care in every endeavor, being patient and careful, and properly preparing without rush or haste.
When fall and winter came, the tomato patch wilted and crumbled and fell back into the earth. The wire supports stood forlornly bare, the remaining metal exoskeletons of what they once held high against a summer sky. And every spring, Dad would clear the plot, begin the soil preparation, and start all over again – a circle of life that generations had done before him.
