Not Your Garden-Variety Garden

The Knupp garden needs rain, but even so, Alda Knupp doesn't want rain, yet. A bushel or two of bush beans are in dire need of picking, and tromping through a wet garden will compact and harden the soil, which won't do at all. And so, with thunderclouds gathering to the west, Knupp is out racing against time, working her way down the long, long rows of beans, with a small stool to sit on and a five-gallon bucket to fill - probably a couple times.

The garden surrounding her is absolutely enormous by backyard garden standards, roughly 100 feet by 100 feet (nearly a quarter-acre) that she and her husband, Charles, plant each year in long, straight rows. The "'tater patch," filling the garden's western half, is probably its most jaw-dropping feature; last year, they harvested 50 bushels of 'taters (if that means nothing to you, try this: a bushel of potatoes weighs, on average, a little more than 50 pounds, meaning the Knupps dug more than a ton of potatoes from their backyard).

Then there's the pumpkin patch, where Charles once grew a gourd so large he had to cart it out with a wheelbarrow. They also grow LOTS of peppers, cabbage, zucchini, squash, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and enough beans to possibly rival the 'taters.

"We live out of the garden in the summer," says Alda, pausing for a moment beneath the morning sun, growing hotter by the minute, while Charles wanders the rows of squash, on a ruthless weed seek-and-destroy.

Between the root cellar, canning and freezing, the Knupps live out of their garden year-round, too. Though they eat potatoes at least once a day, they have yet to finish off what they kept of last year's bumper crop, even after giving most of it away. Alda estimates the couple spends about $40 a week on groceries to supplement their backyard sustenance.

"I just never stop and think about [the garden] being so big," said Alda, nearing the end of one row of beans, the five-gallon bucket a few gallons full.

Pretty much everyone else does, though.

"Everybody in the area has just been so fascinated by that garden because it's so gorgeous," says Arlene Reid, owner of Glenhaven Greenhouses, where the Knupps buy starts for the vegetables they don't grow from seed. "[Their garden] is so clean and weed-free. They really do a lovely job."

Alda grew up in Runions Creek, west of Broadway, where her family and just about everyone else had a big garden, and she remains the expert when it comes to the nuances of planting and tending the couple's garden. Charles was raised mostly in Harrisonburg, where there wasn't space for a big garden, but has a developed a respectable green thumb of his own, Alda says. Rooting around by the beets, within earshot, Charles sort of grunts at the compliment; his specialty is soil improvement and weed/insect control.

Though they both are retired, Alda still does some sewing on the side and Charles helps out at an auction house in Broadway. They spend hours and hours in the garden, too, and even still, are presented with the various mysteries and afflictions that confound novice and expert gardeners alike. Take this year's bush beans (Alda's at the end of the first row now), which seem stunted - as do the beloved 'taters. Charles blames it on the three truckloads of manure he spread earlier in the spring. There were a lot of wood shavings mixed in, and maybe they aren't allowing the soil to drain properly, or acidified it a little too much, he says, in a commonsense, non-scientific sort of way.

The Knupps have gardened behind their small, one-story house on Springbrook Road in Broadway ever since they bought the place 32 years ago (the garden was in production for decades, at least, before that even). They were mostly surrounded by farm fields then, since replaced by a few dozen new homes and, about a decade ago, the new high school building almost directly across the street. In the meantime, old-fashioned vegetable gardens like the Knupps' - and old-fashioned vegetable garden wisdom like the Knupps' - has become a rarer and rarer thing.

And then, backyard gardening came roaring back in the past year or two, transforming the Knupps' backyard from a relic to a role model.

"People like [the Knupps] are certainly an asset, because they've learned over the years what works and what doesn't," says Shannon Showalter, owner of Showalter's Orchard and Greenhouse in Timberville.

Motivated by his customers' massive enthusiasm (often far outweighing their expertise) for backyard vegetables, Showalter planted a demonstration vegetable garden this spring at his greenhouse, and sponsored gardening classes attended by a few dozen people. While books can be handy, Showalter continued, they can't beat decades of hands-on knowledge Alda and Charles Knupp carry around in their heads.

"I don't think the Knupps, and other gardeners like them, realize what an inspiration they are," said Reid, who recommended that beginning gardeners look to an experienced mentor for advice.

As always, there's an exception to the Knupp-garden-is-inspirational rule:

"I dreaded the garden," said Curtis Knupp, one of Charles and Alda's sons who now runs a used car dealership in Timberville. "[Dad] would make me get up early in the morning and pick beans."

When Curtis left home, he swore off gardening forever. He lives down the street from his parents, now, and when he drives by he almost always sees one of them out tinkering in it. He waves, and they wave back, and later they bring down a mess of whatever's ripe. He's made peace with the forced labor in the beans, by now, and is proud of the almost-farm in his parents' yard, the one that customers just won't quit remarking on when they stop by.

"[My parents] love that garden," he said.