Sarah Brown
Of The New Era
On Donnie Lowman’s bucket list is the dream to own a farm, set up some worker bees, and start a hydroponic gardening system.
Until then, he’s settling for growing a garden – in buckets.
Lowman, along with his brother David, moved to a trailer park in Sweet Home from Florida last year, and he already has a thriving garden. What’s unusual about his garden is that it fills up a 5-by-30-foot space and none of it grows in the ground.
“I used to garden at home in the yard, but since me and my twin brother moved here, we have nothing to garden, so I said I wanted to try some five gallon buckets and containers and try growing something out of that, and I was amazed.”
Since his trailer is located right out front at Park Place Mobile Court in the 1900 block of Main Street, his garden attracts a lot of attention from people who walk by and admire it, he said. Even the trailer park management appreciates all the greenery because it livens up the place, he said.
“Being right here at the road, it makes Sweet Home look beautiful driving in or out,” Lowman said.
He started his bucket garden late, in mid-May, because he didn’t know what Sweet Home’s schedule of temperatures would be like, but he’s already growing corn, tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, a cherry tree, green beans, eggplant, green peppers, pumpkin, rhubarb, sunflower seeds, apple trees, carrots, onions, strawberries and more.
Lowman has 30 years experience in landscaping, including owning his own lawn businesses, but he’s been gardening since he was about 10 years old, he said. He learned the skill from his parents and grandparents, and helped them with the work whenever he could.
“You gotta learn from somebody years older than you for experience on the ins and outs, and they’ll teach you the right way. You learn like that when you’re young, because nowadays kids, they just wanna be on videos”
For about 40 years, the Lowman brothers had been living in Florida where it’s 90 degrees year round. They were looking for an opportunity to move elsewhere when they found an ad for marijuana farmers in Brownsville.
The job was short-lived as the market declined due to over-saturation, but they liked the area and decided to stay.
“We loved the weather. It was so nice instead of 90-degree weather, walking out and sweating every time we got out in the morning. So we loved the change of four seasons here.”
This past winter was the first time he’d seen snow in about 20 years, he noted.
Lowman said his garden proves that anyone can grow a garden. Even he didn’t think it would work well, but he found he couldn’t stop filling buckets with plants, and now he has enough food to share.
“A homeowner, if they had one five-gallon bucket with one pepper plant, they’d have enough peppers for six months. If they had just one tomato, that’d keep them all for three or four months.”
Lowman likes to recycle his plant clippings back into the soil, along with worm castings, and chicken, cow and horse manure. So far, he hasn’t had any trouble with pests, but he’s concerned about the low population of bees.
“There’s not really a lot of bees here; that’s the problem. If I get a farm, I’m gonna raise bees, too. I raised the earthworms for the soil, and that’s all natural soil to go back. It makes plants grow better than fertilizer.”
Lowman figures he spends about two hours a day with his plants, a better place for him than in the house.
“My hands has got to be in the soil and the garden,” he said. “Instead of sitting in the house, you might as well be growing something.”