How Does Your Garden Grow?

By Contributing Writer, Yvonne Harink

It’s been a long winter for us here in northern Alberta. After more than 6 months of a snow-covered world, we are eagerly watching the soil reappear and thoughts of gardening are sprouting up in our minds. Every year I am a little more excited about getting a chance to turn our little patch of dirt into a hint of Eden. Every year I see more value in learning the art of tilling the earth.

Gardening has yielded so many more rewards than food. It’s therapy for body and mind; it builds mental and physical muscle; it gives us an opportunity to work together as a family, to talk and soak up the vitamin D. But above all, the garden is an ideal place to grow great thoughts.

Are you a gardener? Have you ever tried to coax some fruits, vegetables, or flowers out of your patch of dirt? Even if you only do a bit of pot gardening, I’d encourage you to get your hands dirty and try it. After twenty-four years of growing a garden, I still don’t consider myself an expert, but do have a few ideas to share with you.

It pays to plan.

While our whole family gets involved in the garden, someone has to spearhead the project and make decisions. Since my husband works full-time, the job falls to me. Over the years I’ve found that things become less haphazard if I  make a plan.

A friend once told me it helped to keep a gardening journal, and I thought I’d try it. While it took me a few years to get into the habit of using it, I have felt that it helped us and is interesting to look back at. It’s also a way to involve the children.

We start off by making a list of the seeds we need to buy. I can check them off and record costs. We then draw up a simple gardening plan, making sure to compare it with last year’s plan. It is important to rotate certain plants, like potatoes, for disease control. It’s hard to visualize space so we usually make an initial plan, and after seeding, we draw the actual plan.

We learn from our mistakes.

My first years at gardening were a hit and miss experiment. In order not make the same mistakes over and over again, I try to get my children to write down the problems we see in our garden in the journal. We’ve made observations, for example, if our carrots were not thinned enough or if our corn was planted too close or too far apart.

I try to  mark down tips gleaned from friends or books. Sometimes we brainstorm problems.  Why are our broccoli heads so small? What’s missing in our soil? How can we improve our soil? Which plants like to be neighbors? What are the best dates to plant for our climate? How can we give our corn more warmth?

Many hands make light work.

Gardening is hands-on science for children, and it’s a great way to instil good work habits. Children love to plant seeds and watch the miracle of seedlings sprouting up. Once the weeds all germinate, however, it’s a different story as most children quickly tire of weeding.

We’ve tried different ways of motivating them. Some years they’ve had their own special garden plots, and at other times they’ve been assigned something specific. For example, one son will take care of the strawberries, and another one will tend to the corn.

For our family, we’ve accomplished the most when we set aside regular times to work in the garden together. Even fifteen to thirty minutes a day can accomplish a lot. They keep their spirits up if they know they may quit at the appointed time. Children need a lot of encouragement to persevere, but they can do an excellent job. It also helps to focus on good conversation, tell stories, or play word games during gardening time.

Conquering weeds is a picture of life.

If you plant a garden you can expect weeds. Quack grass, dandelion, and chick weed will choke out all the precious seedlings. What a reminder of the reality of sin; the thorns and thistles are a picture of our own thoughts and deeds.

The best way to stay on top of any weeds, be they the ones in our garden or the ones our hearts, is to tackle them as soon as possible. Weeding is so much easier if you turn over the soil just as the tiny sprouts show up. After a few weeks of diligent weeding, the vegetables have the upper hand, and weeding becomes much easier.

You can try again, next year.

Some years, our garden gets away on us. Two years ago it seemed everything turned against our garden. Being pregnant, I had a low energy year. It turned out we had record amounts of rain, so no one could get in the garden, and to top it off our rototiller broke down. Every type of weed took over so we harvested what we could and left the garden be.

The next year we planted a small garden to stay of top of the weeds. Hopefully this year will be more successful. It doesn’t all have to happen in one year. My motto is “master your garden, but don’t be a slave to it.”

You will reap what you sow.

While it’s okay to plant less, when I visit friends in the Fall, I notice the cause and effect principle. Seeing others’ bountiful harvest, I am reminded that you really do reap what you sow. Vegetables don’t just magically appear. They first have to be sown.  Gardening reminds me how important it is to sow in every area of life.

It doesn’t matter how hard we work, ultimately only God can grant the increase.

If we ever want to give ourselves the credit for an excellent garden, God has many ways to humble us. There are years in which our hard work gets eaten up by grasshoppers. Sometimes we don’t get enough rain. Other times wind or hail will wipe out a crop. In our northern climate we have to be prepared for the reality that we can possibly have a night frost at any month of the year. This means the quick end of our corn, beans, or other delicate plants.

Gardening is a picture of living by grace alone.

Have you  caught the joy of gardening? It’s hard, sometimes dirty work. While we set out to grow things, the garden has a way of growing on us. Gardening, to me, is therapy. It provides an atmosphere for discipleship, training, discussion, and thinking. As we cultivate the science and art of growing things, we find that the ideas and thoughts that germinate in our minds are probably the most worthwhile products that come out of our gardens.