Surprises of Gardening

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Photo by Neslihan Gunaydin on Unsplash

While it’s not something I overyly enjoy myself, I still have a special place in my heart for gardening. When I was younger, we lived in the country and my mom had a large garden. At least I think it was large. I was fairly small at the time so my perspective of reality may be a little distorted. She would spend hours in the Spring preparing the soil and would involve us boys when it was time to plant the seeds. She even had a “kids garden” set up for us to grow whatever we wanted. I learned a lot about gardening from my mom. I will forever remember the depth needed for a carrot seed compared to a bean seed. I also remember her telling me that beans don’t like to be picked when they’re wet. I’m unsure where she learned that but I don’t blame them. I would hate someone picking at me after coming out of the shower.

Beans don’t like to be picked when wet

Now that we live with the power of Google, I can intelligently tell you that you don’t pick beans when wet because doing so can spread “bean bacteria blight”. If you want to know more, you too can tap into the power of “the Google” — or DuckDuckGo if you’re more the cautious type. See how smart Google makes me look? I was able to answer my own question in seconds.

The Zucchini Warning

Every new gardener will at some point make a mistake. While I’m sure my mom had many gardening disasters prior to my memory of her perfect gardens, there will never be one more memorable than the zucchini incident. Where I’m from, there are many things that don’t grow well. We have to be particular about what we plant since our harsh climate prevents us from growing anything too extravagant. Since our climate is so harsh, large quantities are needed for a better chance of getting a harvest. This strategy worked well for my mom but zucchini was the exception. Excited to try out a new crop, she decided to plant an entire long row of zucchini. It started out slow where we had one or two zucchini ready for picking. It was exciting getting to enjoy the fruit of our labours. Then there were more that were ready. Then more, and more, and more. They produced so fast that we couldn’t keep on top of them. If we missed a day we would end up with these large monstrosities that were best suited for baseball practice. We didn’t know what to do with them all so we quickly had to resort to the practice of “zucchini gifting”. This is an art form where you schedule meet-ups with your friends and relatives with the covert purpose of bestowing zucchini upon them. They will then add you to their “blocked caller” list for the remainder of the harvest season.

I remember that being the autumn that I developed a true love for zucchini recipes. We had zucchini loaf, zucchini muffins, fried zucchini, zucchini in our chilli, and zucchini slices for our lunches. We even had enough that we could share with our friends at school. One lesson I took from that experience is zucchini is a great plant for the garden, but only a few seeds are necessary.

Married to a Gardener

My wife loves to garden and spends hours upon hours tending to her plants. In the winter she spends time planning her garden in anticipation of the upcoming growing season. Once the time arrives, she carefully marks out the spots and prepares the soil for planting. Throughout the summer she loves to put on some music and just immerse herself among her plants weeding and working the soil. When she has a few moments before work in the morning she does something called “deadheading” with her flowers. I don’t think that’s actually a thing. I think she’s just looking for excuses to call me names before she heads out to spend time with her true love — her plants. She comes up with endless excuses to spend time in her garden and I encourage her to do it. She seems to get a lot of peace being with her plants. It’s not a passion I share but I don’t need to. It’s a thing just for her.

Tomatoes – the only plant worthwhile

The one plant I don’t mind tending to is tomatoes. I’m part of that crowd that buys a mature tomato plant or two from Costco in the Spring. I select ones that have as many flowers as possible so that I can quickly see progress with their fruit. I love the taste of tomatoes which makes the whole process of looking after them worthwhile.

The Tomato Pig

This year one of the tomatoes we produced had a bit of a defect to it. Close to its stem, it had a thread-like growth coming out of it. As soon as I saw it I knew what it would become. It was a tomato pig. The thread-like growth looked like a curly pig’s tail and once the stem was pulled, its placement looked to be right above a small anus. Of course, the only reasonable action would be to draw a pig face and take some pictures. With the amazing invention of the built-in phone camera, I will forever be able to remember my little tomato pig with joy.

The season comes to a close

The season is now coming to a close and it’s almost time to do the final harvest of our garden. We’re starting to receive regular frost warnings coming through our weather apps meaning it’s time to pick the plants clean and dig up the root vegetables. I’m sure this makes my wife a little sad but, once again, she’s learned a little more about what grows well and will be adjusting her plan in anticipation of next year.

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