The less you know, the better in gardening

Star Beacon

May 20, 2009 03:52 pm

— It’s funny how family traditions can become ingrained, even when you don't expect them to .
As kids, we all rebel against our parents. We will do things differently. We vow we will garner our own interests, our own beliefs independent of our parents.
Which naturally brings me to my topic: Gardening. Of course you already knew that.
OK, maybe not.
But when I grew up on Lakeview Avenue in Conneaut, we always had a garden next to the garage . For a typical neighborhood, we had a good-sized yard, which is important with a family of four hellions, er, boys.
Looking back through the murky decades, I don't really think of gardening as a major influence on my life.
We weren't forced into hours of backbreaking work tilling cotton, although I do remember us raising some in my fifth-grade class and then transplanting it in the spring to our summer garden. (I was horrified when my mother suggested we invited my teacher over to see how it was doing.)
But on occasion, my mother pulled me outside after deciding I was getting too much summer television and ordered to pull weeds. I hated pulling weeds.
I don’t remember consciously vowing when I grew up and had my own family, that I would never plant a garden. But maybe I did subconsciously.
Yet after earning our degrees, both wife Louise and I landed jobs in Conneaut. The first place we rented we were told we could have a garden. Without knowing what we were doing, we had the most abundant vegetable garden we will probably ever have.
We hauled water from a pond (until neighbors took pity and said we could use their outdoor faucet.) Huge tomatoes, broccoli (complete with bugs), potatoes, beans, corn, we had it all. And I wasn't yet a vegetarian.
Best off, with a wife who is a teacher, she had summers to pull weeds (I was just too busy) and she learned the art of canning.
Eventually we started looking for our first home to buy. Homes were relatively cheap, although interest rates were high. These were the waning days of the Carter administration.
A couple of prerequisites: No handyman specials. I'm no handyman. Also, we wanted at least somewhat of a yard, partially for a family, the other for a garden.
The home we settled on had room for a garden, although it was often in the shade, behind our garage. We had so-so luck.
So a decade later, while searching for house No. 2, our goal was an even bigger yard for a sunny, more vast garden.
We ended up with multiple acreage, although with clay soil. Our first year, we chose a low-lying area for our garden. We discovered clay soil holds water, which is why pottery is made from clay.
The following year, we chose a higher level of garden, at least land-wise. It only took a decade to learn corn is a bust and green beans are iffy, especially with our rabbit population, but each year we at least try to garden, just as my dad, now 80, still gardens.
As a journalist, I am also the Video Viper and don't mind telling you I usually start the planting season with a movie. Just as the local high school football team may watch “Friday Night Lights” or the amateur boxer may take in “Rocky,” I put in my copy of “Jean de Florette.”
It's a French film starring Gerard Depardieu as a hunchback city guy who decides to farm in rural France with his wife and daughter. He has ideas. He has enthusiasm. But a resident of the village works to thwart his ambitions to take over his land.
Anyway, there are beautiful images of Depardieu's character planting and lovingly watering his little creations. Ultimately, he is doomed to failure.
It gives me the kick in the pants to get out and start planting those tomatoes and peppers and green beans, all the time knowing the results will be mediocre at best.
All I hope for is a decent crop of cherry tomatoes, which next to a nice, hot radish, is the best food in the world. And cherry tomatoes need to be eaten properly.
I get on my tractor to mow and as I pass by the garden on a sunny August day, I swoop down and grab a handful of those sweet tomatoes and pop them in my mouth. Now that's high-style delicacy.
Sadly, last year I failed to find anyone who could plow my garden, short of mortgaging the house. But his year, I am in luck and am ready to plant with Memorial Day here and the chance for frost lessens.
If we figured all of the costs to gardening, our efforts, like Depardieu's, would be doomed to failure. But like everything else, the journey is everything.
And we garden without French subtitles.
Lebzelter is special sections editor. E-mail him at bobleb@starbeacon.com. It may be awhile for him to get back to you if he is out in the garden.

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