Returning to Her Roots: An Organic Food and Flower Garden in Minnesota
On a northern Minnesota farm, a young mother passes down the love of gardening, native plants and time-honored growing methods her own mother instilled in her.
March/April 2009
By Margaret A. Haapoja
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Jennifer fills her yard with birdhouses and flowers that attract and nourish bees and hummingbees.
Photography By Steve Foss
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Gardening is in Jennifer Behm’s genes, which becomes evident touring her 1⁄2-acre garden, overflowing with prize-winning pumpkins, multi-colored tomatoes and waves of native blooms. After returning to the northern Minnesota farm where she grew up, Jennifer is re-creating the gardens her mother once tended and raising her children close to nature, much like she was raised.
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In keeping with these roots, Jennifer’s garden today is a family affair. Her husband, Dave Owens, built the sturdy trellis of landscape timbers that’s covered with gourd vines. Huge ‘Dill’s Atlantic Giant’ pumpkins ripen in her 6-year-old son Dylan’s pumpkin patch—his 206-pounder won second place in the children’s division at a local pumpkin festival last year. Pink, trumpet-shaped ‘Zebrina’ malva flowers remind Jennifer of her mother, as does a grove of black walnut trees that began bearing fruit two years ago, 20-some years after Sigrid Behm planted them. “I’m so grateful she gave me such a beautiful landscape,” says Jennifer, who credits her late mother with instilling a love of gardening in her.
Jennifer began growing her own vegetables and making organic baby food after Dylan was born six years ago. She quit working when her second child, 4-year-old Emma, came along. “Gardening is a very inexpensive hobby, a good family project, and it’s great for stay-at-home moms,” Jennifer says.
My big, fat chemical-free garden
Jennifer, who became a Minnesota Master Gardener last year, gardens organically, using a number of natural methods and the supplies available in her neighborhood. She fertilizes with aged cow manure she gets from a neighbor and hauls compost from the community compost site. She mulches heavily with grass clippings, packing at least 4 inches around each plant to suppress weeds and reduce evaporation in her vegetable garden. “By fall the mulch is nearly gone, and I can till everything in so there’s nothing to clean up,” she says. “It’s all organic food for the soil.”
Most of Jennifer’s flowerbeds are filled with native, drought-resistant plants that spread rapidly. She seldom waters. “If they can’t make it on their own, I’m not going to baby them,” she says. A Minnesota history buff, Jennifer loves native plants’ connection with history. “I grew up with the brown-eyed Susans and the ox-eye daisies—all the plants that are native to this area are the ones I remember as a kid, so I want them around now,” she says. “I remember smelling common milkweed when I was young. Living in the same place, I want to keep it just like it was when I was a child.”
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