The tall corn stalks visible from Garrison Street seem an unlikely sight in the heart of East Waco. But for Leon Brown, it’s a natural part of life.

“This is what I’ve been doing all my life, growing food,” he said.

Brown started his own garden on a 3.5-acre tract at the corner of Waco Drive and Garrison Street. For nearly two years, he has grown a myriad of crops on the land, including corn, okra, tomatoes, onions, peppers, watermelon, grapes and greens.

Leon Brown walks through his okra plants at his garden at the corner of Waco Drive and Garrison Street.
Jerry Larson/Tribune-Herald

He sells his produce in the fall on Saturdays at an auto shop lot on Clifton Street.

Brown grew up in a family where gardening was essential to survival. He had 11 siblings, and with a large brood to feed, his grandmother took to growing food in the backyard.

“When we were coming up, if you didn’t grow your own food, then you didn’t have anything to eat, so we had to garden,” said Brown, 62. “We raised our own potatoes, greens, onions — whatever we needed we grew ourselves.”

His grandmother sowed a gardening seed in Brown and by the time he was 12 years old, he was learning how to grow vegetables.

The garden sits behind his home on Kings Highway — the street where he has lived most of his life.

Brown leases the tract of land from a local business owner for $100 a year, making the garden a lucrative enterprise. He said he earns as much as $1,000 a weekend from selling his produce during the winter holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Brown’s garden started as a grassy lot dotted by tall trees. He uprooted the trees and plowed the land to reveal fresh soil. Then it was ready for planting.

“The first thing we put in was the greens,” Brown said. “It was in the fall, and so anything else would have been destroyed by the winter frost.”

Keeping it simple

Brown’s routine is simple. He plows the soil daily, either with a hoe or with one of his three tractors. Once a week, he waters the crops, moving four 60-foot water pipes to different parts of the garden each time.

“You just let nature do its thing,” Brown said. “Nature knows the best way to grow things if you just sit back and allow it to work.”

Occasionally, he will gently work leaves into the soil as a natural fertilizer. But he does not use pesticides or chemicals.

“We are selling this food to the people and I don’t want to put any chemicals on it that they can’t eat,” Brown said. “The women will buy tomatoes and give them right to their babies, and I don’t want the babies to get sick from eating something from my garden.”

The downside to not using pesticides is that bugs are more likely to snack on the vegetables. But just like the early birds on the hunt for breakfast, Brown said he rises at daybreak and patrols the garden to catch hairy worms and other pests before they nibble on the produce.

Brown said he decides what to plant based on what people most want to see on their plates.

Greens, by far the most requested crop, have flourished best in the garden, yielding full bunches of leafy collard, mustard and turnip varieties.

He’s even found good fortune with Chinese cabbage. But not every vegetable grows successfully. Brown said he has had trouble growing sweet potatoes, which thrive better in a more sand-based soil.

A yellow squash in Brown’s garden sheds its flower.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

Healthy soil

Brown said it is important to mind the health of the soil. At the end of each harvest, he rotates the crops to different areas of the land to stretch its livelihood.

“Different crops take different things from the ground, and so you don’t want to leave them in one place to take out all of a certain nutrient,” Brown said.

Brown has some help with the garden from his wife, Jeanie Benson. The couple rise early each day to collect ripe produce, plow the soil and carefully track the progress of the plants.

Area residents turn to him for suggestions after seeing the progress of his garden. Brown advises that gardening is hard work and crops require hours of attention daily.

He usually spends four or five hours each morning maintaining the garden, then sets out for jobs through his plumbing business. He often returns to the garden in the evening hours for more upkeep.

“You have to do this because you love it, because it is work,” Brown said. “If we are not out here every day with this, we’ll easily get behind, and there’s already enough work to do.”

rdennis@wacotrib.com

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