An inauspicious beginning, a bountiful end

"Plastic trash, weeds, and old tires greeted us at our garden plot," our essayist writes. "Sweat and nature would prevail."

“What plot number are we?” I asked my wife, Nikea, as we wove our way through the maze of the community garden.

“Twenty-eight, I think,” she replied, looking down at the cardboard numbers leaning against the wooden slats rimming each 14-by-14-foot patch.

Then we saw it.

We didn’t see the number, but somehow the repurposed tires and assorted plastic trash had a gravity that pulled us toward our randomly assigned plot. Nikea lifted a tattered length of landscaping fabric to reveal a magenta 2 and 8.

“Maybe we can ask for another plot,” Nikea offered, picking up a pink plastic shovel caked in dirt thawing from the recent Montana winter.

We spent hours filling trash bags with detritus: cracked garden trays used to cart plant starts from the garden store, empty water bottles and milk jugs, broken toys and tools, and even tennis balls. All made their way into the recycling and trash bins.

“I really don’t want to deal with those tires,” I said as we finished the last load.

When we reached out to the organizers for a different plot, we were told every garden in the city was spoken for. The pandemic was a boon for gardens. We could get a refund, but that meant no garden. If we removed the tires, though, they’d waive our application fee. Fair enough. 

The previous gardener (two seasons ago) had laid landscaping fabric across the entire plot, hoping to block the tenacious, strangling bindweed.

The 26 tires had also been purposely placed for weed control. With the sidewalls cut away and the tires filled with dirt, they served as raised beds. But the failure of this experiment became apparent as I began tearing up the landscape cloth and lifting tires, uncovering the white tentacles of bindweed roots woven through the dirt.

How quickly nature takes over a forgotten stretch of ground! As we cut through the fabric and tossed tires, we were also pulling against grass roots that had deeply taken hold. We weren’t only fighting trash – we were also fighting the plants that had already begun to grow.

After two days of work, 21 tires were hauled away and the ground weeded, raked, and prepared for planting. It was strenuous work. Nikea proposed we keep a row of tires in which to grow strawberries, dill, and beans. They’d also remind us of what the patch had been. 

“How could we forget?” I said.

We did put strawberries, dill, and beans in the tires. And in the main patch, we planted yellow squash, onions, shallots, carrots, kale, three varieties of lettuce, Sun Sugar and beefsteak tomatoes, and sunflowers.

The garden looked anemic at first. Bare ground hid the buried seeds and the starts looked thin and fragile. In short, it looked the way all the gardens I’ve ever planted look in the spring. 

But still, I was skeptical.

We battled dandelions and bindweed that sprouted beneath the straw we’d spread around the vegetables to conserve moisture. The weeds were doing great, but the onions were, too. And the lettuce.

As the long summer days stretched on, the plants filled in. But where were the carrots?

Suddenly, we were drowning in lettuce. Every flat surface in our apartment was covered with a towel and washed greens. The squash burst out from among its leaves like bright yellow canaries taking flight. The onions broke through the soil in massive bulbs. The tomatoes had to be retied every week so the heavy fruit wouldn’t sag to the ground. One sunflower grew to be 10 feet tall! And now we couldn’t thin the carrots fast enough. We had just enough strawberries for a shortcake.

All this bounty came from a patch of ground I’d wanted to run from when I saw the garbage and tires. And now I can’t imagine a summer without it. 

Our plot’s two-year hiatus must’ve recharged the soil, and we reaped the benefits. Nikea and I harvested a copious amount of food during a year when we needed as much good fortune as possible.

When we arrived at the community garden to water, weed, and pick, we felt the gravity of the plot’s fecundity pulling us there, as it had at first – except without so many tires.