Local couple share vegetable garden
* First in a five-part series
Atoah – After retiring from a sales career, Tom Christenson and his wife, Wanda, moved to a property on Garland Knowles Road in Atoah.
After five years of hard work, the pair have turned their property into a gardener’s dream, with an approximately 4,000 square-foot vegetable garden, greenhouse and a flower-lined path linking the garden with their home elsewhere on the property.
The property, which they have named “Misty Mountain Meadows,” also includes a zipline and other activities for the couple’s grandchildren when they are visiting.
A gardener since his early childhood, Tom discussed the process of creating his dream garden over the past five years.
“We started off with a little thing that was maybe a couple hundred square feet,” Tom Christenson said. “We fenced the whole thing in basically to keep the dogs out, and it also keeps out the occasional deer and most of the bunny rabbits.”
At its current size, the Christensons’ vegetable garden grows more than 20 different vegetables and fruits, ranging from rhubarb and alpine strawberries to pumpkins and three different types of sweet corn.
Wanda said she will can produce to be eaten through the garden’s offseason. Both Christensons encouraged novice gardens to start out small and to take advantage of local resources as they started gardening.
“A lot of people are doing container gardening now,” Tom pointed out. “It’s easy to do tomatoes and some vegetables on your patio if you want.”
However, he also said that tomatoes were among the most difficult vegetables to grow. He listed radishes and green beans as among the most forgiving plants for beginners.
“Just about anybody can grow a radish,” Tom said. “If you can’t grow a radish, you’re probably in the wrong business.”
Wanda also emphasized that the garden was organic, grown with few, if any pesticides.
“I have no problem pinching bugs every morning,” she chuckled.