All a pleasure

Santeetlah – Lorna Sellers and her husband, Joe Sellers both grew up gardening in the area.

Now the two combine their horticultural upbringings, maintaining a large vegetable garden, fruit trees and berries at their Cross Creek Road home. 

Lorna said that she and her husband shared the two plots, but enjoyed growing different things, with him enjoying growing succulent plants and introducing her to kohlrabi in this year’s garden. 

She said much of the way she gardened came from her parents and her childhood.

“My late husband and I raised a garden, but Joe kind of raises different things,” she said. “He raises kohlrabi, which I’d never raised before. They remind me of a cabbage and a turnip. It’s very different. We actually raised some purple ones this year.”

She said they started planning their garden in April, with planting beginning later in the season. 

In total, the Sellers’ till approximately an acre for planting.

“We work as a team,” Lorna noted.

She said they had approximately 400 tomato plants, as well as okra, beans, corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbages, squash, peppers and a myriad of other plants. 

Not all of the garden is devoted to food plants, with birdhouse gourds and loofah sponges among the plants growing.

“He usually lays it off and I’ll plant, and then we’ll both cover up,” Lorna explained.

She advised anyone new to gardening to find an older, more experienced gardener willing to teach them.

“There are a lot of people that are a wealth of knowledge who would love to share what they know with younger people,” Lorna said.

She also said that – as a whole – the younger generation had not picked up as much gardening knowledge.

“There’s not a lot of young people who know how to do it,” Lorna pointed out. “They’re really not interested in doing it, but I think that once you get the bug that you continue for as long as you live. My mother gardened until she was 88 and became unable to garden. 

“It’s something that you just love doing and it’s wonderful exercise too, and you get a really good tan there. You don’t have to go to the tanning bed.”

In addition to growing the produce, the Sellers’ also preserve much of what they grow through canning, freezing and other processes. 

However, she said that she didn’t plan on canning quite as much this year, since they had an ample amount of canned produce left over from last year’s garden.

“We have beets we’re going to try to can in the morning,” she said. “We raised beets this year and we didn’t have those last year. We try to alternate some things.”

She also planned to make rhubarb jelly, can tomatoes and freeze most of their corn crop to be eaten after the corn season ended. She said some of the beans would also be dried into leather britches, a classic Appalachian dried green bean preparation.

In addition to preserving the garden’s bounty, the couple also shares much of the produce with friends, family and neighbors.

“We always have more than we can use, and I think it’s good to be able to do that with friends and neighbors and family,” Lorna said.

She said much of their garden was also planted with seeds saved from prior years.

“We have an heirloom bean seed that we got from a friend that’s about 40 years old,” she said. “We’ve raised those for the last couple of years and a lot of things are passed down. I actually planted some seeds my mother put in the freezer in 1996 and they came up.”

She said her favorite part of gardening was being able to reap the literal fruits of their labor.

“From beginning to end, it’s all a pleasure, but I think the harvesting is probably the most exciting for me,” Lorna said.