John Wooten was nine when he planted his first garden.
It was 1958, and Wooten, under the encouragement of his grandfather, took a packet of seeds and some simple gardening tools to the vacant half-acre lot behind his family’s home in Ventura County, Calif. Without quite knowing what he was doing, he emptied the contents of the seed packet into a hole in the soil. Vigilantly, he waited for something edible to sprout.
