"I can still hear her saying, 'Young man, you'll be sorry!'" he said. "I know of an acre near here that sold not too long ago for $180,000, but I was never sorry. I have everything I need here."

Most customers who shop at the store have no idea that a picture-perfect garden is tucked away behind it. Zamzow returns from his winter home in Arizona when the soil is warm enough to work - he's been known to bring plant starts home with him in a suitcase - and spends virtually every day tending his garden, eschewing power equipment for hand tools and the exotic for the tried and true.

"I've tried some of those fancy tomatoes, but I don't like them," he said during a break in one of his daily hoeing sessions. "I plant the Early Girls and others I like. If you don't like it, why plant it?" Manicured rows of vegetables fill a space behind and larger than his back lawn. Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, radishes beets and other irrigated crops all but spring from the soil. Berry bushes and fruit trees line the yard. A fence separates the yard from what he calls "the back 40," land that belongs to his neighbors but he uses to grow a second garden: corn, squash, beans, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, melons

He figures he gives away about 90 percent of what he grows. "If I don't have anybody who wants it, I take it over to the store," he said. "There's always a customer who'll take it." His tips for growing a successful garden: Add compost every year and balance it with organic fertilizer. Irrigate rather than sprinkling. Keep insects at bay with a mixture of vinegar and water. "And a hoe doesn't hurt."

Lean and tan in jeans, a T-shirt and a Zamzows ball cap, he looks younger than his years. When it's too wet to work in the garden, he trims bushes or trees or works around the house. At 92, he thinks nothing of climbing onto the roof to fix a shingle or scaling a tree trunk to saw off a limb.

"Guys have asked to mow the lawn, and I tell them if they did it what would I have to do? I don't need anybody to do my work for me." His work gloves are so worn they have holes in the knuckles. Charlotte Eller, a friend, says he "owes his longevity to exercise. He rides his bike everywhere. He still goes dancing. He works hard, and he plays hard." Playing hard would include gold, silver and bronze horseshoe-pitching medals in the Senior Olympics.

Jim Zamzow, who, with his brother Rick owns and operates 10 Zamzows stores, credits his father with saving the family business: "We make a big fuss about grandmother and grandfather and what we're doing now, but the one who held it all together was Dad. Without him, we wouldn't have the business. It was failing when he came back from World War II. He salvaged it with hard work and the business experience he got as an Army supply officer." Even in the Army, he had a garden. One of Jim Zamzow's favorite stories is of his father "sitting in a chair with a shotgun, waiting for a gopher that was eating his carrots. He waited all day. When the carrots started wiggling, he started blasting."

Moral: Don't get between a gardener and his vegetables. "I guess I'm just a farmer at heart," he said. "Gardening is fun for me. I like to grow things, and I like fruits and vegetables. "To me it's invigorating to plant things and see them come up, grow, mature and produce edible food. I never get tired of it."