At the time about 50% of the commercial vegetable production was in California. Florida came in second at 7%. I found this disturbing given the ongoing drought in California and knew it would have impacts in the grocery store. It was the first time that I recognized that a weather/climate event was having an impact on me. I approached the management of WLTX-TV in Columbia, SC about doing a garden segment to show viewers how to address the rising costs of vegetables.
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| Heidi Cullen tweeted this in early 2014 showing how many vegetables and nuts we hit depend on California. Image Credit: Mother Jones/Heidi Cullen. |
The station was all for it and did a survey of the market. They found that about 35% of the viewers were interested in gardening, but the survey also found that gardening was skipping a generation. Young people were talking about their grandparents having a garden, but not their parents. I was concerned that some of the generational expertise was being lost.
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| We decided to call it Gandy's Garden since I was the driving force behind this. Our first planting was on June 2, 2014. |
Thus, Gandy’s Garden was born. We partnered with Jackie Jordan of the Clemson Extension Service in Richland County. We initially set up 8 raised beds and planted them on June 2. This seemed late to be planting a spring garden, but it turned out that you could plant a spring/summer garden up to late July and still get a harvest before the first frost. My thanks to my wife, Ann, and a friend, Cathy Connelly, as well as Jackie Jordan for helping plant the first garden.
And the garden took off. Fortunately, we designed the garden with the next drought in mind. We put in a drip irrigation system to make sure that the plants would be adequately watered. However, we failed to install shutoff values for each bed so that if it were not in use, it would not use water. The irrigation system was a big benefit as I would be out of town for an extended period in late June.
The initial soil was composed of dirt and mushroom compost. It was rich in nutrients and the plants loved it. It did not take long for the first harvest to occur. We started harvesting some of the plants just over a month later.
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| This was the garden 19 days later on June 21, 2014. |
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| This was the garden 39 days later on July 11, 2014. |
I was doing segments from the garden each week to educate everyone on what to do in the garden. But as the harvests came in, we said let's show people how to prepare the vegetables for meals. We were doing a chef segment on Friends at Five each week. The different chefs were asked to use something from the garden, and they came up with some simple, but delicious recipes.
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| Gandy's Garden was officially certified SC Grown. This was the garden in late November as we were finishing planting the fall/winter garden. |
We explored what to do as we moved into the fall season. Looking at the temperature records for Columbia, I was confident that we could find something to grow year-round in the garden. Thus, we planned for a spring/summer garden and a fall/winter garden. In cold weather we learned to use row covers to protect some of our plants and discovered that some of the plants could take very cold temperatures in Columbia without protection.
The first year was educational, informative, delicious and a lot of work. What I found was that it interested a lot of people. I made a presentation before the American Meteorological Society in Raleigh, NC the next year. I closed saying "I didn't want the perfect garden, because I wanted something to talk about. As it turned out I didn't have the perfect garden, so I had plenty to talk about." Soon I was frequently asked “how’s the garden” whenever I was out. I am a meteorologist, but gardening is something that everyone can do.
