What do Frankenstein, battle of the beetles, blessings for church members, and memory making all have in common? My garden. Thank you to Build it Up, my family finally has a garden on our 46-acre farm. Although I have gardened in the past, I have not had the accountability, resources, supplies and proper education to successfully garden until being accepted into the BIU program. Thanks to BIU, I have been able to not only feed my family and church family, but I’ve also been able to make so many wonderful memories with family and friends.
Frankengarden
Just as Frankenstein was put together with many different parts, so was my garden. It was an everchanging project that evolved from one row of plants to now 10 rows of a variety of companion plants, a small corn field with a perimeter of pole beans and two sets of mounds for melons and squashes. There is a staging area for my tools and supplies and the garden is surrounded by some naturally grown flowering plants like clover and chicory to attract the pollinators. I have used mainly things on my farm like used stakes, old wooden produce boxes, tobacco sticks and some used landscape fabric to set up my garden. I did have to invest a little money in brand new landscape fabric, soaker hoses and organic pesticides to make gardening a little easier. In all, I have been very fortunate to keep my overhead costs down thanks to BIU and my knack for recycling and reusing resources to create my Frankengarden.
Backyard Blessings
A lot of labor and commitment has gone into this garden, but the results have been an overabundance of produce to not only feed my family but also bless my church family. Each day as I left my garden, I would say a little prayer of blessings over my garden. God surely answered my prayers. My first harvest of lettuce that I took to church included six lettuce heads weighing about 4lbs each. My church family was so impressed by these beautiful lettuce heads that they donated to our farm to help cover the costs for my time, efforts and expenses. Next, is my unlimited kale and Swiss chard. I have been able to provide kale and Swiss chard for my family and for my church family from the spring months all the way to today. My plants are starting to taper off, but we are still harvesting kale and Swiss chard weekly. The hoop house BIU provided has prevented the cabbage moth from getting a foothold on my kale and Swiss chard. Beets were such a huge hit for one of my church members, that I ended up blessing her with all of my beet harvest. She is still eating them to this day. The absolute biggest blessing, however, is when I was able to provide 2 beautiful heads of green cabbage to a church member. This particular church member has a very serious autoimmune condition that allows her to eat only two types of vegetables- cabbage and rutabaga. It is very sad that she is so limited in her diet. She was so thankful for the organic green cabbage that she could eat. Thanks again to BIU for providing many of the plants and seeds of my produce and helping me grow these items successfully.
Battle of the Beetles
It has been an all-out war in my garden battling the beetles, costing me time and money. It all started with the flea beetles attacking my potato plants. I found these little nuisances to cause little holes in leaves making them look like Swiss cheese. Thankfully the potatoes were able to grow out more than the little munchers could decimate which helped them still produce over 40lbs of potatoes this year. However, they have continued their attack on my eggplants and, unfortunately they are not as resilient as potatoes. I have had to replace two of the plants and pull out another. To this day, I have not harvested a single eggplant from the remaining plants. Then, it was the Colorado Potato beetles. Thankfully these little guys were easy to spot and their nymphs even easier. I incentivized the capture of these nasty creatures by giving my children money for each beetle they found, which helped.
The most frustrating, time consuming and costly attack has come from the Cucumber and squash beetles. These horrible nuisances have caused me late night reconnaissance and attacks on their numerous beetle armies. At night, I hunt for them with a headlamp, annihilating as many adults and eggs as I can. I’ve again incentivized the destruction of the “golden eggs” to my children. If they find a cluster and destroy them all, they get money. I have also invested in pesticides and have tried kaolin clay to try to ward off the beetles; however, I can’t figure out how much either of them works. Pyganic is expensive, and I have only seen lower numbers of beetles one night after spraying the plants with the pesticide at around 6pm and following up with kaolin clay around 8pm. I haven’t tried it since, because it is hard to get the timing right. Thankfully most of the plants have grown healthy and strong and can stay ahead of the beetles. The poor seedlings are what suffer most. But I have found a pretty effective method of warding off the beetles from my developing plants- I make individual tulle or organza tents for each of my melon and squash seedlings after they germinate to block the pestering insects. In addition, I spray each plant with organic insecticide as I have found some sneaky cucumber beetles to make their way into the little tents. Overall, these little guys have kept me busy in my garden. I guess gardening would be pretty boring and too easy if it wasn’t for them.
Memory Maker
The biggest blessing that this garden has provided for me, my family and even some friends are all of the memories we have made together. It all started from the making of the first row. After BIU came to rototill my garden space, I did not quite get out there in time to cover it up before the weeds came. So, a friend and her family came over to help me de-weed and form what would soon be the first row of the garden. It was a hot day and backbreaking work. On the same day, my daughter came up with a handy way to remove the dead weeds from the garden space. She hooked two metal rakes on the sides of our goat with a harness and walked her across the garden space picking up dead weeds as they moved along. It was comical. I also had a dear friend come out to visit during some cooler weather. She is very fit and loves exercise and farm work. She manhandled that shovel and formed the remaining rows in my garden giving me a head start in the gardening process. I thank her and give her credit all the time. My girls and mom have also been a big help- weeding, pruning the tomato plants, harvesting ripened produce, spreading out straw over our mounds and rows, watering and just spending time together. We even bring our three little kittens into the garden to explore, attack bugs and play. My girls’ favorite memories of the garden include the kittens, planting seeds and seedlings, sneaking a cucumber or snap pea as they worked in the garden, the Japanese beetle swarm, working the garden with friends, potato harvesting, and entering some of our produce into the Greene County Fair!!
We are truly thankful to have this garden on our farm. Thank you to Build It Up for giving us a foundation of good soil, education, basic tools, plants and seeds, organic sprays, accountability and resources. We think we have the tools necessary to continue our garden year after year. It is my hope that the legacy of BIU will continue on into my girls’ lives as they will one day manage our farm and garden- making memories with their family and blessing friends and family with the fruits of their labor.
Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.- Proverbs 28:19
~ Liz K.
