College kids are notorious for packing too much for college. The rug. The futon. The mini fridge/microwave.
I remember stuffing a shoe rack and 10 pairs of shoes into the trunk of the family car. By the time I went home for Thanksgiving freshman year, I was wearing only fringed moccasins.
OK. You had to be there.
But a garden? Packing a garden to take to college?
That's what Matt Lehman had stuffed in the back of the family car for the 14-hour drive from his home in Ohio to college in Kansas.
"I don't know," said Lehman by phone, after taking a film class essay test. "I was looking for something creative to do with my down time."
Lehman is the son of Galen Lehman, owner of Lehman's, a hardware store and catalog company founded to supply the Amish and others without electricity with old-fashioned merchandise.
Charged as a kid with garden chores to earn his allowance, Lehman was not a big fan of either the outdoors or gardens until he spent a summer working at an outdoor camp followed by this summer working in the family's store in Kidron, Ohio.
"Inside all that time. It drove me crazy," said the 19-year-old Hesston College sophomore. "So when I got home, I would go outside and I would stay outside, mulching or doing whatever in my mother's garden. "I guess it got into my blood at that point."
Lehman also discovered a book on the family bookshelf titled "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew, and he started to think about what he could do with the square foot underneath his dorm room window.
"It provides a really good outlet," said the youth ministry student. "I can prune my tomatoes or add a little fertilizer and watch them grow. It is a good release, with the added incentive of fresh produce year-round for free."
Right now, he has two tomato plants, beans and a cucumber plant doing quite nicely under the artificial lamps he has installed above the 1-by-3-foot wooden box he built.
"I have a Rubbermaid container underneath. I drilled holes in the bottom for drainage," he said. He added some gravel and compost and soil.
Lehman is a resident assistant and has his own room, so his garden doesn't take up space a roommate might need. And the reaction of his dormitory neighbors has been positive - sort of.
"After we get past the part where they ask me if I am growing marijuana, they say either, 'Wow. Cool.' Or 'You're a nut.' "
Lehman has taken dorm room gardening to a new level - beyond spider plants and philodendrons.
He is already eating tomatoes. The beans have blossoms. And the cucumber seedling sprouted during the drive from Ohio to Kansas. It must have liked the warm light from the car window.
Which brings us to the next possibility.
Automobile gardening?
