Ageless gardening

Hi neighbors. While at a store the other day I noticed vegetable and flower seeds for sale. It startled me for a moment because I thought it too early for thinking too much about planting corn or green beans. Then I realized that it wasn't too early at all.

People plant gardens for many reasons. My grandmother planted a large garden to can food for the winter. Her garden included carrots, potatoes, green beans, turnips, parsnips, radishes, sweet corn, tomatoes, lettuce and cabbage. There were always cucumbers, zucchini, and green onions as well. She also planted some flowers that were known for keeping bugs out.

I remember her biggest problem wasn't the bugs, but the chickens that kept flying over the fence to eat the bugs and dig up newly planted seeds. When the cows came home for milking, they weren't opposed to taking a bite out of an ear of sweet corn (but usually only the picked ones already shucked.)

Deer came into the yard at night, and Granny's fence did little to stop them. She relied on her faithful farm collie "Pedro" to scare off deer and raccoon intruders.

After harvesting, there was plenty more work to do with canning. There were two or three mulberry trees in her yard and although the chickens got most of them when they fell, there were plenty of mulberries on the trees to make jam or jelly with.

She had black walnut trees by the hen house, brooding house and harness and smoking houses. We grandkids were always recruited for pulling the husks off the nuts and bringing what we didn't eat back to the house for the family's use.

We would put the husks and the hulls on the tender pile for the wood cook stove and the heating stove, which wasn't usually set back up yet from being stored in the harness house for the summer.

About a mile up the road was a Jonathan Apple orchard that belonged to the extended family for any of them to pick. A team of horses would be hitched to a small wagon filled with several bushel baskets for the apples. My grandmother made the best apple butter in the world I think, and we grandkids ate all that she made! Nothing better for an afternoon snack than left over breakfast biscuits spread with apple butter!

Granny had a farm and a large family to feed and her garden supplied all their needs for vegetables for the winter.

When we lived in Wichita, my father planted a pretty large garden one year I recall. Mom canned day and night that year and told him to forget the big garden ideas. After that we only had onions, tomatoes, radishes and lettuce. He would sometimes plant a watermelon hill or two and cucumbers and zucchini. We had fresh salad all season and no canning to do -- Mom liked that!

My grandfather planted watermelon as a cash crop and sold watermelons by the wagonload. He even sold watermelons here in Nevada in the mid 1930s and in Cedar County during the 1940s. He also sold ham and other meats in both counties.

Each Saturday, my grandmother would take several dozen eggs to town to barter with the local grocer for money or needed staples like coffee, salt, etc.

Gardening was a necessity for my grandparent's generation and a usable addition to the grocery list for my parents.

I tried my hand at gardening and after canning almost 100 quarts of tomatoes one year along with 50 quarts of green beans, decided I was not the stocking-up kind of gardener.

Now I will have one or two tomato plants when the mood hits me in spring. I do enjoy mint, winter-mint or spearmint plants. They make good tea and they smell great in a gentle breeze.

Until the next time friends, remember that as nice as planting feels in the spring, mid-summer can get mighty hot for hoeing!