I thought having a vegetable garden would be relaxing. Growing our own food would not only be thrifty, but environmentally conscientious and a learning opportunity — a chance for my daughter to experience the transformation from seed to sprouting plant to device for delivering salt and ranch dressing.
I thought working in the sun and the dirt would be good exercise.
It was exercise, all right. In futility.
We planted our first garden not long after moving into our South Charleston home. It was just a few tomato plants that first year, and when those few plants failed to thrive, we blamed the location. Not enough morning sun. We noted what part of the yard was sunnier so that we might fare better the following year.
The next year, we plotted our garden and bought a good bit of dirt, which we mixed with our own. We spent hours sifting rocks and roots from the dirt, breaking down clumps with bare hands. We read what plants should be on inside rows and which should be out, and we followed the Farmer’s Almanac’s advice on when we should plant.
We even bought well-established starter plants rather than gamble on starting from seed. We watered with Miracle Gro and plucked weeds, and for our efforts were rewarded with tall, gorgeous plants. Not one of which produced more than a few pea-sized tomatoes. Our cucumber plants didn’t yield a single baby gerkin. Not even a preemie.
A wise-sounding neighbor said our oak trees were to blame. Said they made our soil acidic. Said we needed to heavily lime the ground before winter then again in the spring. We followed his advice to the letter. We watered regularly, weeded faithfully, debugged and derabbited. And for our efforts, we have a garden filled with lush, healthy-looking plants, thick vines and stalks.
And no produce.
With all the money we’ve invested attempting to grow our own, we could’ve bought a truckload of veggies.
Lest anyone believe my black thumbs are inherited, my parents decided not to put in a garden this year, but one grew anyway. Planted itself from seed from last year’s plants. They’re calling it their volunteer garden. Every one of the plants is heavy with fruit.
I understand, though clearly not from personal experience, that having too successful of a garden can be a burden.
In the late 1960s, my husband’s parents moved to West Virginia from Los Angeles, caught up with the charming notion of getting back to the land. Both city kids, they had only the vaguest idea of gardening, and absolutely no concept of how much each plant would produce or that each would continue producing for weeks on end. They tilled a large garden in the yard of their rental farmhouse and put in tomato plants.
One hundred of them.
And about half as many zucchini.
Their crash course in farming resulted in a crash course in canning. They had enough canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato paste, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce and homemade ketchup to serve them for years, with enough left over to require every visitor to their home to take away bags filled with their bounty.
The zucchini were more of a problem, as people seemed to respond to offers of zucchini with the same enthusiasm normally reserved for chain letters.
As for me, I decided to cut my losses and put in a rock garden. It’s hard to tell how successful it’ll be. It’s only been a few days, and no rocks have died. But there’s no new gravel either.
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