Gardener Anderson enjoys sharing, caring

Wayne Anderson's sister sometimes tells him he's the victim of obsessive-compulsive disorder, at least when he's doing his gardening.

Anderson always chuckles when she says that; he admits there's a grain of truth to it.

OCD might explain why he has to plant three different-colored marigolds between his long rows of tomatoes, each precisely 18 inches from the next, and the colors must absolutely not be mixed, row to row. The marigolds, by the way, repel the pesky Japanese beetles.

OCD might explain why Anderson spent many hours thinking about how to come up with a perfect cucumber trellis frame with a slanted top, so the cucumbers dangle down for easy picking. And OCD might explain why Anderson plants his onions "just so" in rows of mounded dirt, so they can grow to their fullest extent.

But more than any possible OCD reasons, the overwhelming impetus behind Anderson's love for gardening is the sense of peace it gives him.

"It's kind of a meditation thing," he said. "Especially in the very early morning, to be in the garden when the birds start singing."

Anderson's huge garden is in his large yard on a bluff above the Mississippi River west of the "River Road" (CR 1) between Sartell and Rice. Anderson, who recently retired from his long-time job as manager of the Sauk Rapids Municipal Liquor Store, now has plenty of time to spend on his life-long hobby, growing thousands of vegetables in his 9,200-square-foot garden and giving them away at harvest time.

A lot of them he brings to his church, Shepherd of the Pines Church in Rice. There, fellow parishioners are invited by Anderson to take whatever they like from the many boxes of veggies from his truck. Up for grabs are boxes of plump ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, green peppers, kohlrabi, acorn squash and butternut squash, watermelon and lots of onions, including two of Anderson's favorite varieties ? huge sweet onions known as Walla Walla and Ailsa Craig.

"I guess you could say onions are my thing," he said. "This year I planted 2,756 of them. Seven different varieties. The Ailsa Craig onions get close to six inches wide. They are so sweet you can eat them like an apple. And they are so good grilled in foil with butter on them."

Anderson plants the Aisla Craig onions in rows of mounded-up soil. The onions send down their roots, and in the meantime, gradually, rains wash away the soil in the mounds, leaving the onion bulb above the soil where it can grow large, unhampered by any surrounding and constrictive soil.

Other favorites are Anderson's beets. Recently, he and his wife, Judy, canned 49 jars of pickled beets. Not to mention 37 jars of tomato-based salsa. And soon they will can lots and lots of tomatoes: stewed tomatoes, tomato chunks, spaghetti sauce and tomato juice.

Anderson has grown just about every variety of tomato imaginable, but his current favorite is known as Champion II. It's an "indeterminate" type of tomato plant, which means blossoms keep growing all season, producing from 50 to 70 plump tomatoes each summer. "Determinate" tomato plants are those that quit blossoming after awhile, producing only about 30 or 40 tomatoes per plant.

Anderson's Champion II tomatoes are so prolific one recent day Anderson picked enough to fill 48 cardboard boxes in his garage.

"Those tomatoes make a lot of people happy when I give them away," he said.

Next, it will be time to make sauerkraut from the cabbages big as basketballs, bursting out of their huge leaves on one side of the garden.

Anderson has loved gardening ever since he was 5 years old, growing up not far from where he lives now.

"We had a large garden on the home place near the River Road," he said. "Mom put up a lot of produce, stored in the root cellar. I still store carrots in sand, the way she did. You put sand in a plastic bucket, then put a layer of carrots on the sand, making sure none are touching, then another layer of sand and more carrots and so on. They stay so nice and crisp that way for a long time."

Like many gardeners, Anderson begins to daydream about gardening in January when it's difficult for many shivering in a snowy, cold world to even imagine a blooming summer garden.

"I start planning every January, deciding what I will buy," he said. "I pre-order the vegetables from Janski's Grocery in Rice. All except the onions, which I order from a place in Texas. This year, I have 146 tomato plants."

"Those Champion II tomatoes make for the best BLTs (bacon-lettuce-tomato) sandwiches," he said. "Another way I love to eat them is just sliced on a plate with a bit of sugar on them."

A few times, Anderson thought about cutting back a bit on his huge garden, but every time he would change his mind and make the garden a bit bigger, not smaller, year after year. The only thing that stops the garden these days from getting yet bigger is the road on one side, and the children's and grandchildren's pet cemetery beneath the apple trees on another side ? the resting place of beloved creatures like Brownie, Teddy, Lola, so many cats and dogs, and even some pet rabbits.

"Yes, a garden this big can get to be a bit overwhelming," Anderson said. "But I can't give it up. I told the good Lord as long as I can keep gardening, I'll keep giving vegetables away to people."

One day recently, Anderson and his 15-year-old grandson, Donovan, were talking about taking a load of onions and tomatoes to their church on Sunday.

And Donovan said, "Grandpa, sharing is caring."

Anderson marveled at that homegrown wisdom from his grandson. Gardening, after all, is good for the heart.

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Dennis Dalman

Dalman was born and raised in South St. Cloud, graduated from St. Cloud Tech High School, then graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in English (emphasis on American and British literature) and mass communications (emphasis on print journalism). He studied in London, England for a year (1980-81) where he concentrated on British literature, political science, the history of Great Britain and wrote a book-length study of the British writer V.S. Naipaul. Dalman has been a reporter and weekly columnist for more than 30 years and worked for 16 of those years for the Alexandria Echo Press.

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