Joy of gardening

The Wagner Farm Arboretum’s gardening plots stretched out before Rich Thomasey on a drizzly Friday morning. As he walked between them, he explained to a visitor the daily goings-on there during the growing season.

A renowned former Summit High School track coach, Thomasey won multiple New Jersey AAU decathlon titles as an athlete. He still occasionally officiates at meets. But it’s clear his new passion involves trying to make vegetables grow.

Thomasey admits that – in his first growing season at least – he was not the most successful gardener. A combination of insects and beginner errors hindered some of the vegetables he attempted last year. He did have a good lettuce harvest and ample cherry tomatoes.

He’s back for a second year at this Warren Township farm, armed with the lessons of 2023 and advice from friends he made along the way. Thomasey planted onions – his first 2024 crop – last week.

A longtime Middlesex Borough resident, Thomasey said the yard of he and wife Laura’s home, doesn’t have enough sun to allow for successful vegetable growing. Last year, he considered instead establishing a garden at this son’s Warren yard.

Rather than endure the work of constructing fencing and other deer-prevention measures, Thomasey’s son suggested obtaining a plot at nearby Wagner Farm. Warren Township obtained the farm in years past to save it from development. The municipality later began renting fenced-in plots to the public.

Along with the fee, Thomasey explains, Wagner Farm gardeners are required to do a set amount of community service hours. His were spent last year weeding and cutting the grass in common areas.

Arboretum long-timers soon found what Middlesex residents have known for years – that Thomasey is dedicated to volunteer causes. He’s been appointed to the facility’s garden committee.

Gardening at Wagner Farm has some of the same qualities that Thomasey became familiar with as a coach. Track athletes perform in various events on an individual basis. There’s also a teamwork aspect as his high school squads vied to win meets as a group.

Likewise, at the arboretum, gardeners have their own plots. Some plant vegetables, others plant flowers and a few plant both. There’s room for individuality, but growers are expected to perform community service tasks and adhere to certain rules for the good of all.

Thomasey was exposed to farming during the late 1960s while attending Iowa Wesleyan University. Rather than travel home for breaks and long weekends, he would stay in Iowa at the family farm owned by the parents of two teammates.

The two track colleagues and their siblings would good-naturedly stick Thomasey with the less glamorous farm chores such as cleaning chicken coops and feeding the cows. In adulthood, one of his ex-teammates now leases a rather large farm of his own.

During the pandemic, that teammate expanded the amount of crop growing he does for personal use. He advised Thomasey to attempt the same, and that became the impetus for his foray to Wagner Farm last year.

Despite the insect battles and a small animal getting through the fence to his peas, last year’s growing season educated Thomasey.

“I planted the tomatoes too close together,” he said. “I didn’t really get a lot of them. This year, I’m going to space them out.”

The beets, Thomasey surmises, were allowed to grow too large. “One woman said to me, ‘Rich, you should have picked them three weeks ago.’ “

And, there are tactics to thwart the insects. “Now, I know that you plant sacrificial plants,” Thomasey said. Bugs will attack those as a decoy and tend to leave the desired crops alone. He also knows to use row covers and sprinkle swimming pool filter DE around his plants.

Asked about gardening’s benefits, Thomasey acknowledges his interests have changed as he’s gotten older.

“I spent 43 years as a track coach, that was pretty much all I thought about,” he said. “In 2011, I stopped coaching and got into officiating.”

“To tell you the truth,” Thomasey added, “this year I want to see if I can conquer the bugs.”

He’ll have help. His grandkids sometimes come along to help him weed and his son drops by. Occasionally, he runs into someone at the arboretum from his coaching days. He’s also assembled a home library, which includes “The Joy of Gardening.”

Asked if he wrote that book, Thomasey replies jokingly, “I’ve yet to experience the joy of gardening,” an apparent references to last year’s learning curve.

He quickly adds he’s comfortable with the solitary times of working at his Wagner plots by himself.

“I’m sort of a loner, I’m a track guy,” Thomasey notes. “In cross country, you know, you run by yourself. The decathlon? How many people train for the decathlon?  I don’t mind being by myself.”

As Thomasey says that, he walks by another gardener’s plot where a crop has already taken hold. “Look at all the onions there already,” he said. “They’re going to have a bumper crop.”

It’s clear that for Rich Thomasey, the joy of gardening has already been found.

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