Some of you may think you already know this one…but until now no one has heard the real story. The full story.

Adam has always wanted his own garden, even back in the days before he had space for one. This story really begins back in 2006 when we lived in our apartment in Arlington. Some people who don’t have space for a full garden, grow herbs. Or get a plant. Even a Chia pet. But even then Adam always thought big. No – he wanted to grow a full peach tree out on our little balcony. So he got the idea to save up all of our peach pits and germinate them, by keeping them covered in a damp paper towel, stored in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. And this is where they stayed for about two years – first in our apartment with shared roommates, and even surviving the move to our own apartment. I mean, how could we possibly get rid of them after all the progress that was made?

Well for those of you who may not have as green a thumb as Adam, and are wondering right now if it worked, the answer is no. No it did not. It was never even a possibility. Two years later and we still just had little baggies of wet, covered peach pits in our fridge.

Well you can imagine his excitement when we finally moved to a house in the suburbs. Growing a garden was one of the first things on his to-do list. But it turns out there are things like the right kind of sun and proper amounts of watering that come into play. So year 1 nothing grew. Year 2, he dug up a new spot of our lawn. Still nothing. Year 3, yet a new area of dirt was carved out and this time it started to take. Only, the critters around the yard ate every last bit of seed before it even grew into a harvest. So by year 4, he was ready to step up his game. And that’s where this story really gets interesting.

He carved out a 4-step plan:
1. Grow plants from seedling indoors during the winter.
2. Build a deer barrier.
3. Design an irrigation system.
4. Implement a system to scare off/physically remove any possible animal threat.

Let’s address each step separately shall we?

Adam was convinced if we could just get the plants past the seed phase by the time of planting them in the spring, then the smaller critters wouldn’t be able to dig up and eat the seeds. But he had no interest in buying a few $5 ready-to-go plants from Home Depot. Instead he decided to build his own greenroom out of our garage to grow these plants all winter long. This required space (his car was now permanently moved to the driveway) and sunlamps. Lots and lots of sunlamps. Of the brightest purple UV light you can imagine that would automatically turn on at night and shine until morning. If you drove past our house any night that winter, you would just see an unknown purple hue shining out from all our garage windows. I’m pretty sure our neighbors thought we were growing something far shadier and more exciting than basil. Or hosting a rave.

*Note: Sadly we have no documentation of our own purple garage, so this is just an example of what it looked like.

Next came the deer barrier. He bought huge planks of wood (2x4s) that didn’t actually fit in our car. We had to drive home on Rte. 17 going 5 miles an hour with our trunk open and planks of wood sticking out the back. And with these, he built a four-foot high border to the garden…a fortress if you will, to ensure no deer could possibly reach over and graze. You can imagine how serene this looked in our backyard. Just how I had always dreamed it would be.

Next came the irrigation system. Although we already had spigots in our yard and could easily turn on the sprinklers that were in place, Adam thought it was a waste of money. And he didn’t want to be stuck watering the garden with a hose himself. So he stepped up his game.

He designed a system where 275 gallon containers would catch the rain fall from our gutters and hold it for safekeeping to eventually water the garden. Now most people don’t have 275 gallon containers sitting around, and they are too large to be stocked even by a Home Depot or Lowe’s. So he tracked them down through a shipyard over an hour away that was getting rid of old barrels for the bargain price of a few hundred dollars. Score! Except he didn’t actually have a car large enough to transport this, so he had to rent a truck – which ended up costing more than the barrels did.

(Sidebar: He thought he was renting a truck for the economical cost of $19/hour, but apparently that only covered local driving…since the shipyard was considered long distance driving, they “robbed” him and charged a premium which he is still bitter about to this day.)

Now this genius water irrigation plan would only work if there was a pump that powered it. But I was NOT okay paying an electrician to run a line underground to fuel this ridiculous plan…so that’s where the solar panels come in.

He decided to buy four solar panels for his shed, which he wired to somehow route to the sprinklers connected to the water barrel system. And voila! We now have an automated sprinkler system that requires no electricity, and waters the garden without him having to lift a finger.

Problem was, we still had the critters, who could easily dig under the deer fence and get in. He had the perfect idea though – an automated water sensor that would spray and scare away any creature that came close. Unfortunately for Adam, his memory has never been his strong suit. So on at least 6 occasions I would watch him casually approach the garden – often with a cup of coffee in hand – completely forgetting about the water sensor (or the fact that this exact scene had occurred the previous day), and just get sprayed in the face and soaking wet because he himself had triggered the sensor. Clearly Pavlov’s Theory was hard at work.

So alas began his relocation project. Over the course of weeks, he put a live trap out to catch every squirrel and groundhog that even looked at our garden…packed them into the car and drove them 5 to 10 minutes away to a nature reserve where he was certain they were sure to find a better life. Running to the grocery store? He’d pack in a squirrel. Off to get the girls at school? He’s bring a groundhog along for the ride.

Finally his plan had come to fruition!

After the indoor growing…
The wall building…
The truck renting…
The barrel transporting…
The hand-made sprinkler creating…
The solar panel energizing…
The failed water sensor testing…
And the critter relocation project…
He was FINALLY able to grow his garden in piece.

And in that year, this was the fruit of his labor. This one, small, pathetic baby carrot.

Now full disclosure, he claims he planted baby carrots without realizing, so he felt this was actually a great success.

In the years that passed, this garden has truly flourished. Like the abundance of this garlic he planted (because a family of four surely needs this much garlic all at once):

I also received this text from him a year or two ago:

“And now we wait…in 720 days we’re gonna have SO much asparagus!”

So we’ll look forward to that.

He has gotten so into gardening in fact, that he told me for his next job, he is considering getting out the sales gig, and just going back to school to become an arborist.

But I think my favorite garden story of late is how incredibly excited he was to plant honeydew this past spring. He waited patiently for months for it to grow. And when the day to harvest it finally arrived, he documented the big reveal on Instagram…only to realize he grew a white pumpkin instead.
#shmadum