And God Said Plant Gardens and Eat

Growing gardens by God's design.

Sometimes, quite often actually, I feel like a captive in the city. It can be difficult to be content and at peace here when it is not a peaceful place to live. And yet, there is peace in the garden. One of my greatest desires is to move to the countryside, where we are free to grow and raise animals without the constraints of local government. But here is where we are planted, and here is where we are to grow. As much as I think I want to leave the city, my current plan is to plan on staying right where we are.

That may sound strange to some, but it makes perfect sense to me. We will leave when God makes a way, not before. We have made the mistake of stepping ahead of Him and finding out the hard way that our way is not the best way. So we will wait for His way. And in the meantime, we will grow gardens, eat and share the food we grow and pray for the peace of this city that holds us captive.

Which brings me to today's point - we need to grow more food. Specifically, we need to grow more of the foods that we eat on a regular basis. We didn't come close last year to planting enough carrots, celery, garlic, onions or potatoes. Those are just a few of the crops we need more of. And then there are the plants that I want to add.

Cranberries. I want to grow cranberries. I know, you may be thinking you can't grow cranberries there. Never tell a gardener she can't, because she will be bent on proving you wrong, but that is for another post. I want apple trees, pears, coffee beans, and the list goes on.

We don't have a lot of land here. Less than a quarter acre, and not all of it is dedicated to growing. Garden space has been a concern for years, but what I am starting to discover is that we have more space than we ever realized. Space that in the past has been wasted. And space that has never been put to use. Consequently, the challenge has shifted from looking for more space in the garden to looking for more foods to grow to efficiently use what we already have. There's that phrase again. Use what you have.

As we learn to grow according to God's design, we are learning that conventional, modern gardening so limits a garden. In fact, if you think about, gardening has become a fight against nature rather than a cooperative effort with it. But when you do things the way nature was designed to work, and let nature do its thing, the possibilities are amazing. Nature doesn't grow in rows, it doesn't plant in monoculture, it doesn't perfectly space plants out and it doesn't thin out the carrot, lettuce or beet seedlings. It grows a variety of plants all together, and they do just fine, thank you. And when the seasons change, the plants change accordingly. It just works that way because that is how it is designed. If we can just keep our hands out of it and stop messing it up, we will see that our land has huge potential.

We are planting Brussels sprouts over the potatoes, we have onions growing up through the lettuce beds, we have potatoes behind the banana tree and garlic in the strawberries. We are putting every last inch of what we have to use. Then, when our current gardens are planted, we will add more spots throughout the yard. At this rate, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to fill it all and take care of the food it produces. But then, we will also have more to share. God is amazing like that.

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce."

Jeremiah 29:5 NIV