Posted on: April 14, 2018 | Written By: Friends of EG |
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright missed the 2011 season after having Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow, but during his rehab he developed a green thumb.
With plenty of time on his hands, the MLB star started doing some container gardening. And like some vegetables, his interest grew and grew.
“I just got completely enthralled with it,” Wainwright said during Monday’s Cardinals-Brewers broadcast.
In 2014, he showed off his modest harvest on Twitter:
And, here’s my final harvest from the garden this year. And we’re carving that pumpkin! Pablanos,jalapeños, bells pic.twitter.com/QJ4bKo3d0r
— Adam Wainwright (@UncleCharlie50) October 25, 2014
Now he’s up to a 100-foot by 100-foot garden at his home in Georgia and a 16×20 plot in St. Louis. All told, he has about 1,500 acres of crops like corn and soybeans, along with pecans and fruit orchards. (And that sounds more like a farmer than a gardener.)
“If you can name it,” he said on the broadcast, “we grow it.”
He got more specific in an interview with the St. Louis Dispatch last year.
“Any kind of tomatoes you can think of. Zucchini. Yellow squash. Apples. Pears. Blueberries. Blackberries. Watermelon. Corn. Peas. Carrots. Literally everything,” Wainwright said. “It’s something I can do until I’m old and gray. … Gardening somewhat changed my life. It gives me a way to complete when I’m done playing baseball. Feeding people, something I always wanted to do, just fits. Like where God’s leading me.”
Wainwright says he loves to talk about gardening, and ideas for improvements keep him up at night.
“I go to sleep at night trying to think … how I can rearrange my garden strategically so that these roots will work with these roots, this plant will give them some nitrogen and this plant will add some sugar.”
Wainwright grows his own cucumbers and dill to make his own pickles, which have become a hit in the team’s clubhouse.
See also, Raised Bed Gardening Secrets Revealed By CobraHead Inventor.
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