Garden firmly rooted through generations
Tallulah – Vicki Walsh was surprised when she got a call asking her to be featured in The Graham Star for its weekly Green Thumbs series.
Her garden isn’t a big deal and she hadn’t been doing it all that long, she said.
She was, of course, wrong.
Walsh’s garden – at her home on Lower Mill Creek Road – is divided between several decorative patches scattered across her property, the expansive cultivated crops behind her house, and a little farther back, a garden just for plants with vines that she likes to keep separate.
In some parts, her garden would be called a farm.
As for how long she’s been doing it, it depends on how you define “long.”
True, the gardens on her property have been nurtured for just the three years since she retired after 30 years as an educator — teacher, principal and consultant, mostly in eastern North Carolina.
But she grew up helping her father tend this same land, from gardening to tobacco to livestock.
“I grew up right here on this property,” she said.
You may have heard of her father – Modeal Walsh, former teacher, coach, principal and Graham County Schools superintendent; there’s a stadium named after him, home of the Black Knights of Robbinsville High School where he taught, coached and was principal.
Mr. Walsh died in 1984, at the too-young age of 54. The land was passed on to Vicki, who followed in her father’s footsteps both in education and, now, in gardening.
The soil where Vicki gardens was once used to pasture horses, cows and goats, so by now it is rich and well suited for crops.
“I haven’t needed fertilizer,” she said.
The list is her crops is long: celery, broccoli, banana peppers, bell peppers, Jalapeño peppers, sunflowers, potatoes, cabbage, three types of onions, lettuce, spinach, two types of corn, okra, three types of beans, and lots and lots of tomatoes.
That’s just in one garden.
The back garden is bursting with squash, cucumbers, zucchini and cantaloupe.
If it seems like a lot for just her nearby relatives, it is, but she spends a lot of time canning and freezing, baking and pickling, and, yes, sharing – “I give away a lot,” she said.
She likes to plant something new each year. This year it was celery; last year it was eggplant.
She spends three to four hours each day tending her gardens, more on cooler days.
That doesn’t count the time she spends preserving her produce.
She had trouble with critters eating her cabbage and broccoli. She seems to have solved it by placing solar-powered lights.
“Right now a lot of it’s about to come in at the same time,” she said. “My favorite part is when it starts to come out of the ground.”
* Gardener’s tip: Keep the weeds out, which can be dirty and unpleasant, but is necessary. “You just need to get down and dirty sometimes,” she said.