Gardening Dilemma

This year I have decided to skip planting a vegetable garden. By this time, mid-February, I would normally be moving my seedlings out of the back bedroom, where they have been under a grow light since December, and into the greenhouse in the back yard. But the garden was so bountiful last year, all the way into late October, that I am weary from harvesting, watering, fertilizing, and then trying to find a home for my overage. I gave so many peppers away last year, my neighbors began to ran inside when they saw me coming with a grocery sack in my hands. I still have frozen tomatoes in the freezer, Ziplocks full of frozen chopped peppers, and jars of canned peppers and salsa in the pantry. Last year, so many of my seedlings made plants that I took the extras to the feed store. The owner sold them in all within a week and gave me free bird seed and fertilizer in exchange. So this year, I need a break. However, it's kind of bothering me.

In six more weeks, we will be gone on our long-anticipated river cruise up the Danube. I don't want to leave a ready-to-harvest garden for the pet-sitter. And it will be one less thing for me to worry over on our vacation. Instead of wondering if there's been rain or if the weather has turned off hot, or if the auto watering system is still functioning, I can walk the streets of Vienna carefree. Last year while we were in Italy we had some of the hottest weather of the summer in Texas. It was over 100 several days, and when that happens, our west-facing backyard becomes a sauna. I think I can survive one year without a garden.

Besides, the garden also puts a damper on us heading down to the coast house whenever we want. Usually I feel compelled to rush back home after two or three days to check on the garden, to make sure some bug infestation hasn't begun, or that the wind hasn't blown over, or some other disaster hasn't befallen my plants. A garden can really be a pain in the neck to maintain.

But what fun to watch okra seeds sprout and push through the soil, or to spray each delicate tomato blossom in the quiet, dewy morning to help set fruit, and coming inside with a basket full of beans, peas, okra, peppers, and tomatoes really gives my mood a lift. We hardly need any store-bought vegetables when my garden is coming in. Does anything taste better than really fresh vegetables you picked just that morning.

Inevitably, though, no matter how few plants you grow, there comes a time when the harvest overpowers you, when two people cannot possibly eat all the bounty, and there you go, bagging up your overage, trying to find someone willing to do the clean-up required on homegrown produce. Maybe the first time or two, they're appreciative, but all my neighbors are just like us, couples with no kids. We have one bachelor who lives behind us. He never wants more than a handful of any one thing, and by the time I'm in give-away mode I want to get rid of sacks full.

Weeds are growing in my garden, big tall thistles that seem to be Round-up resistant. I pulled up a few this morning, and had to control the urge to toss in a handful of beans seeds. While I was weeding, I found an overlooked onion from the Fall and brought that inside to wash. I have some seed onions left from last year still. Onions are all but bulletproof. I could maybe just stick a few of them in the garden and forget them -- they will grow despite neglect.

It's going to be hard on me not to have a garden this year. I can tell already. I'm already wondering which boring tomato varieties the local garden center will have this year -- nothing like the heirloom varieties I nurse along on my heat mats in the back bedroom. It would be a last resort to buy plants from the garden center, but I might not be able to stand the gloom of looking out onto an empty garden all spring and summer. It's just the 21st of February. Maybe it's not too late!!!

Onward....

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A GARDEN…OH, AND ALSO THE JOY

When we lived in the mountains, I kept trying to grow tomatoes. I grew them in two rolling planters that had cages mounted inside them. I tried that old standby Early Girl, for fast tomatoes, and a slower cherry tomato variety. I had limited luck. For one thing, the growing season begins there around May 20^th and ends about August 31^st – way too short of a season for most tomato varieties. The other problem was the cool (make that cold) nights spanning all the way through the summer. And finally, the air was thin, which made it hard for the plants (and me) to breathe. All of these conditions were not conducive to gardening, and how I missed it.

I have a gardening gene. Maybe it comes from my farmer ancestors. Daddy gardened until the day he died. And I believe that his mother did as well. The crepe myrtles and althea that grew around the house where I lived during my childhood were planted by Daddy’s mother. She had grown them from cuttings she started in coffee cans. She cut out the bottoms of the cans, and planted them, can and all, between the windows in our house. The coffee cans eventually rusted away, giving the plants a good foundation of iron, something most flowering bushes need to flouish. I wonder if she knew this when she planted them that way or if it was a happy accident resulting from her economical, old-fashioned ways. At any rate, those crepe myrtles and the althea were huge by the time we moved away.

When I was a child, I planted a handful of radish seeds in the flower bed next to Granny’s bushes. Daddy had tomatoes, Swiss chard, and banana peppers growing there, too. Every day I went out to check the radish seeds. To my child’s mind, it seemed like forever before they finally sprouted. I took great joy in pulling up the mature radishes. I don’t remember eating them, just growing them, watering them, and scolding my dog when he tried to dig near where they were planted.

Now, that we are back in Texas, with the long, warm growing seasons, I plant my seeds inside in December. I take great pleasure in thumbing through all the seed catalogs that fill up the mailbox every Fall. The first year we were back, I bought way too many seeds, and nearly every one sprouted and grew into a plants. I mostly wanted tomatoes and they came up generously in the egg carton halves I use to hold my seedling mix. I was so delighted with this success, I could barely bring myself to thin the baby plants. I nursed them inside until they were big enough to re-pot and plant in the greenhouse outside. Finally in March, I moved them into the raised garden beds Wayne built for me in the sunshine.

They thrived through the nice wet spring, bloomed and dropped blooms, until I started spraying them with blossom set, tending to each fragile yellow bloom that appeared. It worked. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes that first year. And then the birds discovered that ripening tomatoes tasted like candy. The mockingbirds were the worst of the bunch, and the sneakiest. We put up bird netting, which worked until the plants began to grow through the tiny holes, then mattied underneath it. Pretty soon my tomato patch was a hopelessly tangled mess. But by then, I had okra to tend, and those plants soon became trees, towering over the garden. I needed a ladder to harvest all the okra hidden in the branches.

Year Two brought more of the same, except I chose to pick the tomatoes at first blush and ripen them inside, rather than fight with the birds. However,  Mother Nature sent me something new to contend with, a Tropical Storm named Bob. He blew over most of the tomatoes and broke the pepper plants in half. This year we are dealing with insufferable heat, indices in the 105 to 115 degree range. We’ve had so many tomatoes, we’re plain sick of eating them. I have given bags and bags away, and now they’re rotting in the fridge. I have peas and blackberries and figs in the freezer. And so many green beans, we turned green ourselves just thinking about them. Last night I microwaved a bag of Brussel sprouts from the grocery store, the first time we haven’t eaten from this garden since March. I miss the mountain summers.

When it’s 100 degrees outside, the garden is too much work. Yesterday I found myself looking out the den windows with binoculars to see if the okra really needs to be picked, or if it can stand one more brutal day. Stepping out the door is like entering a sauna. Watering every day is drudgery. I think I’m done with gardening. But of course when Fall arrives, I know I'll once again thumb through catalogs and buy too many seeds for next year. I can’t help myself. It’s in my blood.

Onward….

A Newborn Screenplay and Vegetable Gardening

Installed Final Draft onto my laptop yesterday, and just played around with it for a while. Before I knew it, I had 8 pages of a draft. It's my third novel I'm interested in adapting. More than likely nothing will ever come of it, besides being a writing exercise, but that's OK with me. For a few hours yesterday I had fun with writing, and it's been ages since I could say that. I'm going to take time out every day, starting today, to work a little on this. If nothing else, I'm sure I'll learn some new things.

Meanwhile, we're both getting past our recovery from the road trip. Funny how much a trip like that will take out of you. I don't remember having this trouble when I was younger. For a whole day after we got home, I just moled around, watching TV or reading magazines that had come in the mail. Today, I'm finally feeling really rested and ready to take on housekeeping again.

Vegetables are beginning to come in from the garden. I'm already overloaded on zucchini. I have made zucchini bread, a chicken/zucchini casserole, and a veggie medley featuring, yes, zucchini and it still continues to pour in. I think zucchini must be the most prolific squash type of all. Still waiting for enough scalloped squash to do something. I've got two small ones so far, and have had two yellow squash also. We did pick a mess of green beans when we got home and ate those last night. They were super good. Tomato plants are so loaded down some of them are drooping, but the tomatoes are all still green. Like years past, they're going to all come ripe at the same time -- I already see it -- and I will be desperately hunting for things to do with them or people to give them to, sigh. I wait all year for good tomatoes and this always happens. We even planted them in stages but it doesn't seem to matter. They ripen when they want to, and it seems they all want to at the same moment. I have so far picked only two that were beginning to blush and brought them in to ripen on the counter.

Bugs, bugs, bugs! I've never seen so many caterpillars as I've seen this year, and grasshoppers. My god, you walk through the yard and they're like fleas. Mosquitos are so bad we're keeping spray in the wellhouse, and it's the first thing we do if we're going to spend more than a few moments outside. And even still, they're buzzing around you and making a fuss. I moved some of the plants back out to their stands, and on the way, a big toad hopped out of one. I told him to go forth and procreate! We need lots of toads, lizards, and birds to help us thin down this bug crop we have this year. Rain is wonderful, but rain also brings out the pests.

And to think, I was only worried about armadillos before. Seems like years ago.

Onward ....