What came to mind when you read the headline above? I’m guessing it was either a picture of a farmer aboard a tractor dragging a cultivator across his fields, or a gardener using a rototiller or hoe to remove weeds and fluff up the soil between plants.
Here is how Merriam-Webster defines cultivate:
1. to prepare for and use for the raising of crops; to loosen or break up the soil about growing plants. 2. to foster the growth of. 3. to improve by labor, care, or study: refine. 4. to further, encourage. 5. to seek the society of: make friends with.
The first two definitions are, of course, the obvious in the mind of a gardener. But even the latter definitions can be applied to gardening activities,
As for the third definition above, we are continually laboring to improve our gardens, our soils, and our landscapes and we do it because we care about the plants themselves, the beauty of our surroundings or to provide food for our families. Sometimes, it takes some study to figure out what to do next, whether it be learning a new technique or discovering new plants. This might take place in a classroom; from books, magazines or the internet; or by talking with other gardeners.
Definition #4, to further or encourage – aren’t we constantly trying to encourage our plants to grow by finding out what they need as far as sunlight, soil, water and fertilizer and providing for those needs? We help them to grow taller, or wider, or to produce the flowers or fruit they were meant to generate.
Finally, definition #5, to seek the society of or to make friends with. Personally, I find that when going through difficult times or even just the odd bad day, my garden provides the only society I want to seek. I remember walking through my grape arbor the afternoon of September 11, 2001 feeling the shock and fear that all Americans felt, but then noticing the grapes beginning to blush with purple and the green leaves moving just slightly in the breeze. I took solace from the fact that even though something so horrible had occurred, these grapes were growing just the same as they were on September 10 and as they would be on September 12.
The “to make friends with” part of definition #5 suggests a gentle give and take like the best friendships have. We hear of the “war on weeds” or the “battle against bugs” but these violent words have no place in the peacefulness of a friendship with a garden. To truly be friends with a garden is to cultivate it as you would a frienship, with kindness, attentiveness and support, providing for its health with water, compost or other organic soil amendments, weeding, and judicious pruning.
Every time you walk through your garden, whether you stoop to pull a weed, harvest a tomato for dinner, snip a flower for a vase, check the progress of a transplanted perennial or just admire a rose in bloom, you are cultivating your garden.
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