~by Bob Gustin
Peggy Kelp has always lived within a few miles of what is now her nursery and pumpkin patch on Indiana 46 between Gnaw Bone and Columbus. As a young girl, she remembers riding her horse from her home on Mount Liberty Road, just south of the nursery, to visit her grandparents in the century-old farmhouse where she now lives. She even remembers watching that house being moved on big rolling logs to make way for the new highway. Her grandparents had a general store and gas station there, and her parents grew Indian corn and other crops to wholesale.
Though that spot had been a store, nursery, pumpkin patch, and sorghum mill for decades before Kelp took over, under her watch it has grown into the greenhouse and garden center it is now.
“The business gets a little better every year,” she said, with most of the advertising being word-of-mouth from satisfied customers. “It’s important to treat customers well. We want them to leave happy.”
Even as a child, she was working with nature, creating wreaths, bouquets, and arrangements and selling them to Michael’s Flowers in Nashville. Eventually, she got a job there when she was 13 years old, and her time at Michael’s is what inspired her to build the greenhouse portion of the business.
Kelp’s Greenhouse and Pumpkin Patch is very much a family business. The current version was started as a roadside pumpkin stand by Peggy in the early 1990s, and greenhouses were added in about 2000.
Almost everyone who works there is related to Peggy. Her parents, Emmett and Karen Smith, still do lots of work around the business. So does her brother-in-law Bob, her husband Roger, and son Cannon. Only one or two non-family members are hired to help when things get really busy. Even the three resident cats, Roscoe, Frannie, and Gracie, do their part in keeping the mice under control in the greenhouses.
The first greenhouse, made from hoops that once covered a swimming pool at a Nashville hotel, was 17 by 20 feet. Now there are five greenhouses, each approximately 30 by 100 feet.
It’s a year-round operation: growing flowers, herbs, and vegetables from seed in greenhouses beginning in February; busy spring days selling plant starts and hanging baskets into the summer; and fall, with pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn, chrysanthemums, and autumn decorations. Between busy seasons, there are supplies to be ordered, seeds to be planted, greenhouses to be cleaned, repairs to be made, and crops to harvest.
“We work a lot,” she said. That has cut into any free time she has, and one of the things she misses most is being able to hunt wild mushrooms in early spring.
In previous years, the fall season included a festival with family activities available and the making of sorghum syrup. Some of those activities ended in 2020 with the coronavirus epidemic. But the pumpkin patch always remained and will be much the same this year as it was in previous years.
When the garden center is unmanned, there are money boxes customers can use after browsing what’s available. And though she knows there are times when things have disappeared without being paid for, she trusts people to be honest.
One of the biggest challenges for the pumpkin patch is keeping deer from taking a bite or two out of a pumpkin then moving on to the next one. Lately, groundhogs have caused similar problems. Peggy says she has found no good solution to keeping the wildlife from claiming a share of the crop. And as with any farming endeavor, weather plays a big part in the annual success.
But Peggy doesn’t feel a competition with other greenhouses in the area.
“I have my customers and they have theirs,” she said. “I don’t try to be in competition with anyone. I’m just trying to have my own business.”
Both the Kelp and the Smith families have lived in Brown County for generations. And Peggy doesn’t like change, so the pumpkin patch and the home by Indiana 46 continue to hold a place in her heart.
“We’ll never sell this place,” she said. “Brown County is quiet. It’s a place you feel safe and you want to call home.”
Kelp’s Greenhouse and Pumpkin Patch at 6573 Indiana 46 is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day in September and October. The greenhouses are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day during the spring and summer seasons. For more information, call 812-988-4804 or visit its Facebook page.
