Flowers

Caleb's Garden

19.04.11

For all the thousands and thousands of vegetable gardens you're likely to see as you drive through this agriculturally abundant valley, precious few of them stand out as notably attractive, healthy and diverse. And so what? Vegetable gardens are made for eating, not looking at, right? Well, to a point. But how a vegetable garden looks, particularly if that garden grows in a city, on a pretty typical house lot of a quarter of an acre or so, can absolutely tell a passerby something about not only the garden—Is it overrun by weeds? Are its plants being consumed by pests? Is it arranged and planted in such a way as to keep producing lots of varied food throughout the whole of the growing season?—but about the gardener who tends it (or not).

Caleb Rounds' garden is notably attractive, healthy and diverse, the epitome of efficiency, where form follows function and small but daily doses of effort keep things in order. Unlike many gardens you'll see, Rounds' isn't the type that looks great in May or June, but ends up an unproductive jungle of weeds by Labor Day. Rounds' garden looks good year-round, even when it's covered in snow, and it produces food his family eats not just during the growing season but all year.

Source: Valley Advocate