By Amy Ferguson

In February of 2007, my husband and I bought an old brick two and half story house.
From its gorgeous wood floors and pocket doors to the huge plate glass windows, we
fell in love with that nearly century-old beauty. The previous family was selling it
themselves as their elderly father had passed away leaving five grown children who
were already settled with their own families. They shared both heartwarming and funny
stories outlining a greatly cherished childhood. Among those memories, they told of the
times the boys would go fishing only to come home and dump their unused
nightcrawlers in the garden. They pointed out the area where their dad had always kept
a garden and talked about its abundance over the years. I was inspired in so many
ways, but the ground where the garden once grew spoke to me.

 

That spring, though I’d never grown anything in my life, I decided I HAD to grow something in that plot.
Starting out, I eagerly tilled the soil and planted entirely too many plants for our
household of two. In those days, before YouTube or ChatGPT, I was winging it. By
mid-summer, I was ecstatic to have such success. Several varieties of tomatoes,
cucumbers, half runner beans, zucchinis, yellow squash…it was amazing! In our
abundance, it became an absolute delight to be able to share our bounty with a sweet
old lady who lived next door. I’d leave garden goodies out on a table in the yard for her
to come get as she wanted. As time went on that first garden season, I was able to
share more and more of our abundance with neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family.
It genuinely stirred something inside me to be able to actually grow something for our
family and gift a portion of our harvest to others as well. It must have been my deep,
remnant farming roots on both sides of my family tree along with those years and years
of nightcrawlers still working that soil that gave me such an amazing harvest that first
year.

Several years later, after our daughter was born, we moved to a new house. In the
large backyard, I tried planting a garden with no success. The untouched, clay-heavy
ground was my nemesis. Ultimately after a couple attempts at in-ground gardening, I
opted for raised beds and had success. This attracted my elderly next door neighbor’s
attention who also grew a small garden plot. We shared and swapped our harvests and
garden woes over the years. He grew Hungarian wax peppers and big beef tomatoes,
while I grew cucumbers, half runners, zucchinis, and snacking tomatoes. My neighbor
was literally the only person I knew growing a garden. This was my first gardening
“community.” It wasn’t much, but it forged a friendship through a common goal.

Up to this point in my relatively short gardening life, though I still had limited experience,
I had learned some very valuable lessons on the importance of good soil and good people.

The garden, just like relationships with our garden friends, takes time to build
and yield a harvest. Consistency is key with both. Having a community of people who
want to both learn and teach alongside each other is invaluable. After years of little to
no garden community, I joined the Grow Appalachia Organic Gardening Program in my
town. I had googled countless questions, joined online groups, and bought books to
help me learn to grow things, but this group gave me all that and much more. Over the
course of the next three growing seasons, I learned about topics that tickled my brain
like planning a garden, building soil, seed starting, harvest preservation, season
extension techniques, and worm composting to name a few. The program incentives
gave all us eager participants resources and tools to put what we were learning into
practice. Best of all, during our monthly meetings that brought everyone together to
learn, we got to grow an organic gardening community.

At present, things have come full circle. Joining the Organic Garden Program team has
allowed me to be a small part of teaching folks to learn to grow their own food while
cheering them on along the way. What a blessing it’s been to give back to a community I
love. I’m ever so thankful for the success of that very first garden. My encouragement
to anyone wanting to learn to grow their own food is this: always be a learner and find
(or start) a gardening community.