So, when i began the project of installing grow lights in the greenhouse last year, i envisioned lights hanging down 7 foot chains that could be adjusted to be shorter as the plants grew. I figured i would start with the lights right above the little seedlings and then raise them up higher and higher as they grew so that the lights were always just a foot away from the plants. Well, we didnt start out with enough chain. The lights came with very short chains. I wanted to go to the hardware store and get longer chains but the neighbor helping me with the project said there would be plenty enough light if we left the grow lights inches from the ceiling and the plants would grow no problem. The reason i couldnt easily restructure the project myself had to do with the outlets and the cord length of the lights. The outlet on the ceiling was where the original lights cord was plugged into and every light after plugged into the end of the one before. To bring the lights down lower i’d have to plug the originating light into a socket mid wall and then the hooks directing the extension cord lines along the ceiling would be useless and the cords would just hang in amongst the plants. It took a period of 5 months to collect enough 98 cent vs 3 to 6 dollar chain to complete the project. The chain came on a spool and you paid per the final length you bought. They had a cutting tool to break the chain where you wanted it severed. The problem was, it was a small town and they refused to order each type of chain but one spool at a time. So, to make 14 seven foot lengths of chain took collectively 5 months. I had to do the same thing with the pavers for the chicken pens. Those took a collective 3 months to get enough terra cotta pavers to go around both chicken pens (74). I also had to figure out how to stack and carefully drive that many pavers on sheets in the back of my suv to protect the seat upholstery from tearing.
Last year the veggies were rather stunted and took 6 months to start producing a handful of tiny okra. the eggplant and sweet potatoes never produced, and the tomatoes remained unproductive after the first batch save for a couple here and there. I decided to switch the greenhouse around so that the lights could be closer to the plants. This design was less water proof as now the windows were light height. The windows would likely need to be shut during rainy weather. However, something had to be done to give the plants a better chance at growing. It was Texas. Perhaps i could just keep the windows closed during rain. How many days a year could that really entail? With the lights closer and the chains longer i’d also have to worry about wind moving the lights and whether they’d catch anything on fire. But, again, something had to be done to give the plants a better shot at growing and producing food.
I hung longer chains from the ceiling than the ones that came with the lights. Then i cut off the hooks from the original chains and used key rings to attach the hooks to the new chains. After that i threaded the hooks through the tops of the grow lights and turned a few of them on.
I went searching for three plants this year: sun-gold tomatoes, okra, and Japanese eggplant. Ive decided: those are the things that can self pollinate and produce well in the green house. In the interest of trying to grow food i can actually harvest and eat, i shouldnt push my luck with other things. I decided to just grow what i thought i could actually sustain. Its too early for okra and eggplant but yesterday was the first day the plant nursery in fredericksburg had tomatoes. They did not, however, have sun-gold. So, i called the plant nursery in comfort. Typically they order early and dont move product very fast so their plants are always older than you expect a sprout to be. They were the only nursery in 3 surrounding towns that currently had sungold tomato plants. They had 9 plants. They agreed to hold them for me. However, the owner made sure i knew and understood that the plants were taller than usual tomato sprouts in a nursery. I knew what this meant as i’d dealt with them happily in years past and had seen how seedlings grew uncaged and kind of downwards off the side of the table unless their buddies were by their side holding them up. I always just planted the ones growing an odd direction at an angle in the soil and just trained them up a tomato cage. They produced tomatoes. However, i wasnt just shopping for me. My coworker also wanted a sun-gold tomato plant. I made a decision that id keep the smallest nicest most upright one for her and the rest would be for my greenhouse. The smallest one, however, ended up being kind of sickly looking and possibly not even a sun-gold…it had a tag for sun gold tomatoes in it but it was in a different location from the others and had a differently colored stem. Its possible somebody just switched a tag either by accident or just the event of a bored child passing by with a tag they’d picked up. I picked out the most upright healthy one growing in the right direction and standing on its own and offered it to my coworker. I had said if it was not to her liking i’d just eat the bill and she could have it for free, but unfortunately, she didnt even want it for free. She said it was way too big for transplanting. I said i understood and that i’d use all 9 for me in the greenhouse and i’d left her phone number with the nursery in her town and they would call if they found a sun gold supplier in the next two weeks. She didnt answer. I knew she was silently disagreeing with my decision to put the plants in my green house and try to grow them as she’d been very vocal about it last year. She said that stunted plants cannot be salvaged and would never grow right. She was a master gardener; super good at it. She’s probably the most efficient and prolific gardener i’ll ever meet. She’s growing asparagus in texas right now. And they’re growing well! Im not saying she’s wrong. She’s not wrong about the best possible conditions to grow vegetable plants in. She’s right. We just fundamentally disagree on a plant’s ability for resilience. She handles plants with gloves so finger oils dont disturb the plant. She never touches a plants roots. I detangle them with my fingers and gently spread them apart if the plant is root bound. I arrange and handle all the plants with my bare hands. Basically, she grows food for sustenance and i grow food for therapy. I need to see that the plants that didnt get what they needed in the beginning can be given the right conditions and then nurtured into a good productive life. This is because i did not have the best and most nurturing of conditions during childhood. I am the overgrown plant in the tiny seedling cup that has now been planted in well draining, nutrient rich, and regularly watered soil. I am producing good fruit in this period of my life. I dont view myself as stunted and useless, and the more i can put plants into soil and give them air flow, light, and just the right amount of water and watch them grow…i am re-enforcing the idea for myself that there are second chances in this world and not having the right conditions in the beginning doesnt make you something to scrap and throw on the compost heap because you’re less than perfect and the start was less than ideal. I need to believe that every living plant is valuable and can be salvaged, because God has salvaged me. I planted all the tomatoes, added cages, put in my two dill plants, turned on the grow lights, and watered them so their roots could get a drink and get nice and settled. I thought of how much trauma i’d been through in my 37 years of life and how broken i’d felt at various times. I thought of all my health issues and all the medications it takes to keep me alive. But, im now in a season of my life where i have people around me who love me and get something valuable out of being around me. I am more fulfilled than i have been in 2 decades. I have all these projects im working on with people or for people. I have great friends. Im about to have a whole new batch of chickens. I love my dogs. I love my land. I love my job. What if somebody had said at the beginning of my life, “hup, non-ideal start to life…trash this one…” ? I would never have met the people i care about in life. I wouldnt be here to train and love my dogs. I wouldnt be here to provide the chicken retirement center for menopausal chickens who have worked their whole fertile lives in the egg factory. I wouldnt be here to take care of the elders that most of the world has forgotten. I wouldnt be here to own the land i do so the trees can live in peace without fear of being cut down. I wouldnt be here to pour into the lives of my friends with children who are too busy raising them to do things like make ragdolls. I would just be dead. What a waste of a perfectly salvageable life. The thing is: i’ve seen this mindset before. We had it in nazi germany. Only the best of the best. Everything else must be scrapped. For hitler, this meant people who were disabled, dwarves, jewish people, and just generally anyone who did not have the physical features he considered best. God creates diverse life. He does this for a reason. Life would be terribly boring and hard if we were all the same. Many of the world’s brightest problem solvers are those who are outside the box thinkers. Many of the world’s greatest leaders and problem solvers are those who have been shaped by pain and hardship. The world is full of different kinds of people and most of them did not come up in the most ideal of situations, and that doesnt make them useless. I am reminded of all the plants ive ever seen growing out of cracks in the concrete or growing up the pole and out a screw hole of a stop sign…. Plants grow in unlikely places and unlikely conditions all the time. Its called resilience, and resilience is both a choice and a gift from God. The fact that we have it to choose is God’s grace. I dont believe plants should be scrapped because they are less than perfect. In fact, last year, while this coworker entrusted me to put a cage over one of her tomato plants after work, i snapped off a major branch. Not wanting to let her down, i taped it back to the plant tightly with scotch tape. Just like human skin heals when two sides of a cut are taped together, the plant healed itself and continued to feed the leaves of that particular branch until its eventual death at the end of the season approaching winter. Her own plant proved my point. Resilience exists. For her, gardening is a precise and exact science that must be gotten just right each time. It involves measurements and log keeping. For me, gardening is messy and miraculous and involves no math…only love, awe, and instinct. I will admit to anyone who will listen; her garden yields more food than mine. But like i said; we garden for different reasons. She is seeking to create food for canning and i am trying to heal my wounded inner soul, which i believe is best done through light, dirt, water, and green things. I dont need those plants to be perfect and i dont need them to yield a million fruits. I just need them to make one tomato each, and then i have seen a miracle of God, that something once deemed beyond help became something thriving enough to support itself and then had some energy left over to produce fruit. For me, the reward is in witnessing the tomato more than eating it, and knowing that the tomato is a possibility. I simply think scrapping a living thing because it is less than ideal is a sad way to walk through life because there’s only one man that ever was able to stay ideal from start to finish and that’s Jesus. The rest of us are less than ideal in some way or will be at some point and if resilience is not a notion you have in your vocabulary, will you scrap yourself when you get there, or try your hand at resilience, like the crooked tomato plants? God can take the most lost, broken person and use him for good, redeem him, put him back together in front of the world who broke him apart. So why not plants? They pump water and nutrients into limbs i tape back on. They regrow leaves when frost kills the first batch a tree puts out. They sprout roots from stems that lay against the ground. They do all sorts of things to survive in a less than ideal environment or set of conditions. I refuse to garden with only the barbies and kens of the plant world. Mine will be mostly shreks and donkeys and i will celebrate every little quirky tomato that arrives.
