Seeds to Salad | A Journey of Growing a Garden

I’m here with Katie who is a talented photographer and a newly found gardener. She and her husband have been planting small gardens for a few years, but in January of 2020 they decided to use the tools they had to go big. As we talked about her journey of growing a thriving vegetable garden, I was amazed at the amount of wisdom and lessons that can be gained through this hobby and skill. I hope you enjoy learning from Katie during this interview as much as I have. 

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What made you want to start growing a garden?

My mother has always had a flower garden and indoor plants my whole life, and she's always tried to share that with me but I was never interested. My dad always had a vegetable garden when I was a kid and I hated picking green beans and snapping them. It was always a summer chore we had to do and I hated it. I remember dreading it growing up, so I never had the drive to want to do that.

A couple of years ago my husband, Scott, got a garden bed from a friend of ours that was moving away and I thought, “Why not try to plant something?” I don't remember why exactly we decided to grow our own food. It was just a fun little experiment trying to grow lettuce and other things. I think it was an 8 x 4 garden bed. We grew lettuce and spinach, and we did a couple of tomato plants and some cantaloupe. The tomatoes were crazy. They were so big and they went wild.

It was so fun that I wanted to do something bigger the next year. Each year we added a little more. Last summer, I was pregnant. We would go out in the mornings and go sit in the garden and it was just so peaceful and I really fell in love with watching things grow and learning about how they grow.

The first year we did the garden I remember being pregnant and really falling in love with watching things grow and nurturing things to grow. I was also in a ladies Bible study and one of the women there was a gardener. She was talking about how God is a gardener and I really connected with that. It was just really beautiful to see God as a gardener of people. He plants seeds in our hearts and nurtures them and helps them grow. I thought that was a really good analogy. 

What a beautiful picture to see Him as a gardener. Were there ever times when you wondered why your were doing this, or that it was too difficult or not worth it?

No, I don't think so. I just never expected to get the amount of joy out of it that I did. It brought me so much peace and joy that everything was worth it. There were times in the middle of January this year where we were shoveling hundreds of shovels full of dirt and wood chips into the beds and I thought, “This is crazy!” But I never thought that it wasn’t worth it or questioned why we were doing this. I thought every shovel full is closer to our goal and it was worth it. And doing that kind of manual labor is worthy.

Probably physically, emotionally, and spiritually, it's encouraging to see that your work is going toward something that is productive.

Productive and beautiful. It's not just producing food. Something that I know new gardeners struggle with is the cost of the investment, wondering if it would be worth it. We could just go to the store and buy all of this food at the grocery store instead. I think what they have to think about is it's not just producing food they are also producing joy for themselves. They are growing themselves as people. It just changes you to be able to watch a plant grow that started out with this little tiny seed. The whole process of it changes you. It makes you grateful. It brings you joy. So it's not just about the end product. It's not just about the harvest. It’s about the whole journey along the way.

My girls and I planted a very small garden. We have six black, felt garden bags, and we didn't even start until August. We planted kale and carrots and basil and cilantro and a couple of other things that are not working, but those four things are growing and even if we don't end up being able to eat them it's still amazing to see that process of growth.  

Yes. Its food! And there is an education in that…for your children and for yourself. This is how food grows. My sister-in-law is growing her first garden this year and her tomato plants are growing wild! She said she didn't know they grew this way. So, sometimes you grow something just to see how it grows and to learn. You're not doing this just because you need tomatoes. You’re doing it for education and sometimes it's just cool to plant it and watch and learn how they grow.

Very true. So how did gardening work with having a family? When you started this large garden, you had a young baby and a one-year-old and two younger elementary aged kids. How did you do it all?

There were a lot of nap time or evening shoveling sessions. There was a lot of wearing the baby on my back. Even now, I'll wear the baby on my back through harvest. One of the hard things about gardening with kids is that toddlers don't know the difference between a ripe tomato and an unripe tomato. He thinks if mommy is picking tomatoes, “I want to pick tomatoes too.” Learning patience and grace with my kids in the garden has been a really big thing. One time, some young kids pulled up these beautiful heads of cabbage and tore them up. It was heartbreaking for me. They were so beautiful. But do you know what? They still grew. We still got cabbage. We still got a harvest from them. In the moment it was devastating, and I thought they weren’t going to grow. I was mad and upset, but there was a lesson in that I needed to have grace with them, grace with myself, and grace with the garden. One of my daughters really likes to help me plant things. You know, children don't sow seeds in perfect rows and I've had to just let that go. I've had to get over my tendency to want everything to be perfect.

That’s a great lesson. We can teach our kids to take care of things, but the lesson of having grace with them goes with a lot of things in life…having a clean house, perfectly behaved kids. You just have to let that perfectionism go and give grace. 

So what is the result of your garden at this point? Do you think you will continue to have it? Are you done with it? Are you going to make it bigger?

Whenever we drew up the plan for this garden, we knew it was going to be a permanent feature. It’s not something that we can just be done with. We killed the grass by laying down cardboard and tree mulch. We plan to take the whole side yard and turn it into a garden. We are definitely going to continue to grow our garden. 

We are also going to try to grow things through the winter and try to figure out a way to save the food we’ve planted that isn’t ready to harvest.

If you were to give advice to someone starting a garden for the first time, what would you say to them?

Start small. The way you have started in your garden bags is perfect because you’re getting to see on a very small scale what growing looks like and what you are capable of devoting to it.

The second is to pick things you know you will eat. If you don’t like kale don’t grow kale. If you don’t like tomatoes don’t grow them. Pick something you and your family are going to want to eat. It will be a much more pleasant experience. 

A third is to pick something fun that you have never heard of before, just to see if and how it grows. 

Starting small is the biggest thing I tell everyone that asks me. Start with one bed and go from there. You may find that you love it and that it was worth the time and investment. Or you may find that you don’t like it and you aren’t really in over your head trying to keep up with it. 

A goal of Journey One Eighty is to encourage people to do things they have always wanted to do but for some reason they never have. What would you tell that person that is wanting to try something new, but maybe they’re afraid, or maybe they don’t have the knowledge to begin?

I think one thing I learned through my journey of photography and my journey with the garden is that there is no time like the present. In a year or in a month or in however long, are you going to look back and wish that you would have done it? Or are you going to look back and be glad that you did it? If you start something, you can always stop doing it or step back and stop pursuing that thing. But if you are not pursuing it, then you don’t know what you could be missing out on. You don’t know what it would have been like and so you are sitting there saying, “I wish I would have,” and then all of this time has gone by.

For photography, I was given a camera as a Christmas present from my in-laws and I just wanted to take pictures of my kids. I found that I really enjoyed it. I started really small with just taking pictures of my children and then it eventually become a full fledged business. I have a studio and I have clients every week that I take pictures of.

With the garden, it was just an interest I found that became a part of who I am.

That’s great advice. Just take a step at a time. You are also an amazing photographer. How has photography fit in with your gardening?

I think it’s an art. I’m not an artist in the sense that I can sit down and sketch something, but I’ve always had some sort of creative part in me. So the creativity and artistry really come together with photography and gardening; seeing beauty in places I never looked for them before.

I’ve seen the beautiful photos you’ve taken of your garden. What a gift to bring those two talents…hobbies…together. Is there anything else you would want to share about this gardening journey?

I would love to be able to one day have a garden that sustains my family for the year. If I could have a garden that could grow enough food for our family for a year, that would be so incredible. But I don’t know if it’s something we will ever have the space to do. I’ve learned a lot about gardening and photography on YouTube. We stumbled upon YouTube channel called “Roots and Refuge”. This couple, Jessica and Jeremiah, live on a homestead farm in Arkansas. She does a vlog and every couple of days she will post. In finding her, she has really encouraged me to be content in the place I am in. 

Last year we actually sought out land to purchase to help us pursue our dreams. We were going to buy this land and we had all these plans and God said to wait. I don’t know why we are in this waiting period but He is teaching me contentment; being happy with where you are and with what you have and not feel the need for more space, more this, more, whatever; learning to live in and work with what you have. After God gave me that revelation, I found “Roots and Refuge”. She talks about turning your waiting room into a classroom. So I decided that this is our waiting room, our classroom. I began thinking about what we can do here to eventually be ready for what God might have in store for our future. So we are growing a garden as big as we can with what we have and then learning to put away the food that we have. Learning to preserve the harvest is a big thing. Those are skills that you have to know. Canning is not easy and its something that has to be learned. So we have been focusing on finding recipes that we really like for putting away all this extra food we have and using it well and storing it.

That’s a big thing I would want people to know. If you can’t achieve your goals now, ask yourself what you can achieve to make your goals better in the long run.

You are doing really well with your classroom during this waiting period!

Yeah. Waiting and being content is hard! It’s hard to be content, especially in this society when you are constantly shown new things and bigger and better all the time. There is never a time when we are not seeing or wanting something that is better. To just wait and be content and to use what you have already been given is important. This house that we’ve lived in for eight and a half years is a blessing from God. I think God is saying, “Be content with what I have given you. There is a reason you are still here.”

So, my final thoughts to others are to be content with what God has given you and use it to grow and learn for what He may have in store for the future.

Also, don’t be afraid to plant a vegetable garden in your front yard. It’s been worth it for us! 

It was so great talking with and learning from Katie. Her garden is beautiful and it’s amazing to think about the fact that the fruit of her and her husband’s labor started with a desire to learn, a desire to use what God had given to them, and a few packs of seeds. Taking a step toward a new goal might be daunting at first, but the lessons we learn through the journey and the growth we gain as people is worth it. 

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” - John 15:1 (ESV)

The photos in this post were taken by and belong to Katie Lew Photography.
Please do not use these photos without permission.
Katie is a Northern Oklahoma birth photographer, specializing in birth, newborn, maternity, and family photography.
katielewphotography.com