When I was a kid my dad kept a garden. The kind of garden that replaces nearly all of the grass in a suburban back yard, save for the space behind the garage which was where our compost “pit” was. I think he would have planted a garden in the front yard too if the city would have allowed it. He hated mowing the lawn.

I say compost “pit” because it was quite literally a hole in the ground that he would dump all of the grass clippings and the leaves in the fall into and we would use rakes and shovels to turn it over in the fall and then again in the spring about a month before we would haul it out and dump it on the garden bed by the wheelbarrow full for him to till it into the soil to feed the plants for the season.

I think stomping around in that pit with the decaying vegetation helped to foster my love for insects… and probably my repulsion to centipedes. Those quick creepy fuckers make my skin crawl!

Every May, the weekend of Memorial Day, we would spend the day at the nursery picking out flats of tomatoes, zucchini, spaghetti squash, egg plant, and jalapenos and over the course of the 3 day weekend all of those plants would get put in the ground and our garden would be started.

I have fond memories of him teaching me how to plant tomatoes deep and explaining that all of the little hairs on the stem would turn into roots creating a strong a healthy root system to support a strong and healthy plant.

My mom had an herb garden, but her garden was perennial so it didn’t need the yearly overhaul like my dad’s vegetable garden did. The last time I remember making that pilgrimage was in 1997, the day after the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. I was almost 14, and I think it was the last year he attempted a garden.

Years later my extended family would share with me that back before my great grandparents came over from Poland they were property owners and farmers. These family members attributed my draw to gardening to it being “in my blood”.

A year after we bought our first home in 2021, I decided that I wanted to start gardening. I didn’t really have the time or tools to dig up a large plot of my yard and turn it into a garden, so I started with 5 gallon buckets for tomatoes and peppers I got from the nursery. This started an annual tradition with my mom and my sister of what was our version of a pub crawl, but instead of visiting bars and getting inebriated on alcohol, we visited nurseries and got drunk on thoughts of the upcoming season.

That summer, we dug up all of the pavers that made up the little patio in our yard because it was the spot that got the most sun and it made more sense to me that the garden be there and the seating area be in a more shaded spot. In spite of not having the time or the tools, we relocated our patio over the course of 2 years, and in its place I built 2 raised garden beds out of cinder blocks reinforced with 2 foot long sections of rebar to keep the dirt from displacing the blocks.

In 2023 the 2 raised beds was still only 1. It was too large to manage without climbing into it, and the point was to make it so I didn’t have to climb in. The plan is to increase the height every couple of years until it is 4 or 5 cinder blocks tall, so that when my back can no longer tolerate me stooping over to pull weeds and harvest leaf lettuce, I can just lean slightly instead. I also made the mistake of using mulching straw from my local garden center. They had not removed the seeds from it, and I ended up with more weeds than I would have if I had not mulched. Then my dad died right in the middle of the growing season and the garden went wild. I divided the bed into 2 portions that fall.

2024 was the first year that the garden was fully functional in my eyes. I still used the 5 gallon buckets for some of the extra plants that I didn’t have space for in the raised beds. I made SO MUCH salsa and hot sauce that year!

This year (2025) I have corn, spinach, leaf lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, 3 types of cucumbers, butternut squash, 7 varieties of tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, habanero peppers, sweet banana peppers, asparagus, and more perennial herbs that I could ever hope to use. The squirrels have already been a challenge this year, they’ve sat on and broken several of the corn plants and tried to dig up some of the squash.

Its all very challenging sometimes, but also rewarding and therapeutic.

What are your favorite plants to grow? Is there something you would suggest I try next year, tips or tricks that might work well? Suggestions or questions are welcome.