Plant Growing Medicine

by Hakim Archuletta

I'm working on my garden again today, at getting the irrigation more effective.Several years ago, in Abiquiu, I felt badly that I had not planted a garden of any kind for several years. The usual conspiracy of schedule and time seemed to not allow me to do that. I was determined, however, and purchased thirty five small tomato plants. My son and I spent about half an hour using a pick as the ground was so hard a shovel could do nothing and there were so many rocks embedded in the ground as well. We took turns, one swinging into the dry, rock hard earth with the pick, the other pouring in some water and placing a plant as deeply as possible.This of course is not the way it's usually done. No soil prep no compost no double digging. It looked like those plants might have a hard time even surviving. We managed to water them most days and missed some.

A few months later we had yellow tomatoes, roma tomatoes, giant beefsteak, cherry tomatoes others I didn't know the names of. We ate fresh tomatoes, we gave tomatoes away, we piled up huge metal platters of them for visitors, we ate them fried and green we pickled some, we used them in meats and with other veggies, ate them fresh from the plant. That rock hard seemingly dead ground poured forth so many tomatoes we could hardly handle it! Ma'sha'Allah.

Not only is this sort of thing a healing, a connecting to the earth, but also such a metaphor. All genuine engagement with Allah's Creation is such. In short, I reccomend this, wherever you are; find even such a short time as we did to plant something, even if it be in a pot on your windowsill or as my daughter did some years past, in pots on her roof in the city.

It's not too late in the season and the rewards in terms of barakah are greater than the countable nutriments in the food and that's where real nourishment is! Even a small piece of nurturing as with a plant that produces food nurtures oneself more than the food.