Truman Birdwhistell, Gardening God
Aug 30, 2026 · 12 min · 6 segments
My Uncle Truman could grow vegetables on concrete. I want to be like Uncle Truman.
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Aug 30, 2026 · 12 min · 6 segments
My Uncle Truman could grow vegetables on concrete. I want to be like Uncle Truman.
We bought our first house and our only house.
And now I had a piece of property that I could garden on.
I have about two acres and it's really not usable.
It's a pretty good size plot, but it's not really usable property because I would say about 75% of my plot is wooded, hilly, and it's got a stream running through the middle of it.
But there is one section of my yard that is probably about 200 yards long, 100 yards wide, and that's where I started my first vegetable garden.
Now, I was a young man then, or a younger man, so I did it the old school way.
I bought a tiller, and I would go out there, and for hours and hours and hours, I would till up that clay soil and add soil amendments.
And I did that for years, and I got pretty good at growing things.
I grew a ton more than I could ever use, so a lot of it ended up at work, giving away produce to my nursing friends.
And we also took care of our neighbors quite a bit, but I got really good at growing things like tomatoes and peppers and squash and eggplant.
I also grew some things that weren't very common.
I started an asparagus bed.
I would grow Jerusalem artichokes.
I grew ground cherries.
I grew Virginia peanuts.
Lots and lots of things that I just stumbled upon because I thought they were interesting.
Then what happened to me was I kind of got away from gardening.
I mean, I got away from it for a good 15 to 20 years because I moved into healthcare administration.
I got into nursing leadership, not something I really pined to do, but I just kind of got pulled into it.
And when I had those jobs, I really didn't have a lot of spare time.
They were kind of jobs where you were on 24-7 and I just didn't have the time or the energy to focus on you know activities outside of work so I got away from it and my garden area the trees grew up around it the weeds took it over blackberry bushes took it over and so I didn't garden for a couple of decades not in any real way Well, as some of you know, I recently retired and that was one of my, that was one of the things I decided when I was retiring is that I'm going to get back into doing things that I love.
We bought our first house and our only house.
And now I had a piece of property that I could garden on.
I have about two acres and it's really not usable.
It's a pretty good size plot, but it's not really usable property because I would say about 75% of my plot is wooded, hilly, and it's got a stream running through the middle of it.
But there is one section of my yard that is probably about 200 yards long, 100 yards wide, and that's where I started my first vegetable garden.
Now, I was a young man then, or a younger man, so I did it the old school way.
I bought a tiller, and I would go out there, and for hours and hours and hours, I would till up that clay soil and add soil amendments.
And I did that for years, and I got pretty good at growing things.
I grew a ton more than I could ever use, so a lot of it ended up at work, giving away produce to my nursing friends.
And we also took care of our neighbors quite a bit, but I got really good at growing things like tomatoes and peppers and squash and eggplant.
I also grew some things that weren't very common.
I started an asparagus bed.
I would grow Jerusalem artichokes.
I grew ground cherries.
I grew Virginia peanuts.
Lots and lots of things that I just stumbled upon because I thought they were interesting.
Then what happened to me was I kind of got away from gardening.
I mean, I got away from it for a good 15 to 20 years because I moved into healthcare administration.
I got into nursing leadership, not something I really pined to do, but I just kind of got pulled into it.
And when I had those jobs, I really didn't have a lot of spare time.
They were kind of jobs where you were on 24-7 and I just didn't have the time or the energy to focus on you know activities outside of work so I got away from it and my garden area the trees grew up around it the weeds took it over blackberry bushes took it over and so I didn't garden for a couple of decades not in any real way Well, as some of you know, I recently retired and that was one of my, that was one of the things I decided when I was retiring is that I'm going to get back into doing things that I love.
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