Chris was a recent student in the garden program that I run each year.

She had the common problem where she put tons of work into the food garden beds around her home, and nothing seemed to grow like the photos in the seed catalogs. She toiled away weeding all the time, fighting the tough, colorado soil and fickle weather each year, only to find weak, spindly plants in late summer--Hardly worth the effort. She was tired of harvesting baby-sized carrots and beets that were the size of average radishes and having to explain to neighbors that they weren't radishes. They were just really small beets... pretty frustrating.

So Chris decided to enroll in the online class in late winter to get a jump on a different approach to growing food in the spring. She implemented only a handful of the methods from the program, enhancing the "Soil Food Web" in the beds, using compost, and she started a small worm bin out back, used the new planting methods to increase yields and reduce weeds, installed a small drip system to automate the watering using a couple AA batteries, did simple mulching, etc...

I hadn't recieved any communication from her in mid summer, but then she gave me a call in late July... She was in a totally different mood. She was giddy about what her garden was doing. She said she now looked forward to summer outings away for a few days of camping or outside activities, because the garden took care of itself, first of all, and it was growing so well that she was now excited to get back home and see all the growth that took place while she was out of town.

She was now walking out to the garden daily to pick all kinds of greens and veggies that she used in meals throughout the week. By autumn she was harvesting full sized carrots (which she had never experienced) and finally, full-sized, beautiful beets! She had found the same feeling of contentment that, I think everyone has, once they finally 'get it" and understand how to grow food well. It's hard to describe, but when it happens to you, you'll understand that it feels 'as right as rain".