After we moved to Oregon over three years ago, I was finally able to have something I’ve wanted my entire adult life—a  vegetable garden that actually produces fresh vegetables.

A couple years after we were married, back around 1978, Don and I had moved into our first house, located in Pomona, California. We had a fenced, big back yard and decided to turn the back half of it into a garden. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, but we went to the local garden store, picked up mulch, starter plants, and portable fencing to keep our dog out of the garden.

I didn’t know much about tomato starters and what several packages might produce, and this was before the internet where we can now go to YouTube and find all sorts of information. Although, I did have some gardening books.

While the garden was supposed to be mine, I would be tending to it, Don agreed to help me get everything set up. To be honest, he was doing most of the heavy work. 

Unfortunately, not long after putting in the garden I received my first cancer diagnoses. What had been an annoying stuffy nose went from possible polyp to a rare malignant tumor. After removing the tumor, I faced six weeks of radiation. Fortunately, Don had good insurance through his work back then, so we didn’t worry about the medical bills, but we did about the cancer.

For about six weeks I drove myself back and forth from Pomona to Covina for radiation treatments. Since it was a rare cancer, the treatment protocol wasn’t exactly tested. Would it work? Apparently, it did, since I’m still here. Although I’ve had two other cancers since then, but that is another story.

At the time I was a 24 year old woman who had only been married a couple years and thought about my husband’s father who had died of cancer at the age of 32. I wondered if my husband would become a young widower, as his mother had become a young widow.   

What I am getting to, I lost interest in the garden. I was preoccupied. Don stepped up as the reluctant gardener, and the only thing that garden produced was tomatoes—a lot of them—that all showed up at the same time. Remember how I said I didn’t understand how many tomatoes one of those little packets of starters might produce?

I knew less about canning than I did about gardening, so I decided to harvest the tomatoes and made a huge batch of spaghetti, and we hosted a party for all our friends, where we ate spaghetti.

Don removed what was left of the garden and covered the area with St. Augustine grass. Over the years, when I’d express an interest in having a vegetable garden again, he was less than enthusiastic, understandably so, since he didn’t want to become the caretaker for another garden, yet mostly because we never lived in a place where a garden might flourish.

I remember my sister and her husband had briefly resided in Grants Pass, Oregon before my marriage. My brother-in-law was on a hot shot crew back then. While I never got to visit them while they lived in Grants Pass, I heard about the house they rented and their vegetable garden. My sister was a novice gardener back then (today she is a Master Gardener) and told me how easily her garden grew in Oregon. 

As the years went by and we eventually moved to back to Havasu, I tried to grow a few things in pots, such as herbs, peppers, and tomatoes. While there are some farms in nearby Parker, and I knew a few people in Havasu who were successful growing vegetables on their patios, I failed. Just as I had failed with my Pomona garden.

When we moved to Oregon in 2021 my husband was no longer skeptical about having a garden. Not only were we living in a green belt, we had the help of my son and daughter-in-law.

I have to credit Scott and SeAnne for our current vegetable garden. Ironically, after moving to Oregon I had a medical condition that prevented me from taking full responsibility for my garden. It wasn’t as scary as cancer, it was a bad knee that required surgery.

Scott and SeAnne assembled and placed my above ground garden beds, filled them with soil, and for the first few years planted most of the vegetables. After watching countless gardening videos on YouTube, SeAnne had become a Master Gardener in her own right, not an official one like my sis, but that girl knows what she is doing.

Last year we decided to add a greenhouse to the Holmestead. It will be a place I can grow lettuce year round, where I can start seedlings, where I might escape from the rain yet still see some sunshine. Our greenhouse arrives in two weeks.

Since we are greenhouse novices—just as we were garden novices some 47 years ago—I wondered if any of my readers might have some tips for us beginners. Maybe suggestions on what we should purchase to get us started. Maybe your favorite brand of seed starter tray, containers or grow lights.

I know I can watch YouTube Videos, and I am, but I was wondering if anyone out there had personal favorites you would like to share.

Thanks!