Reba's Tomatoes and Peppers
Planted my little garden a couple of weeks ago and it got me to thinking about gardening through my life. The first one I can remember was my Great-Uncle Joe’s in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a jungle to a four or five year old. Whenever I watch ‘The Godfather’ and see Brando as an old man in the garden where he dies, that is the garden I remember from my uncle and aunt’s house. Towering plants taller than my uncle took up the entire back yard of their small frame house in town, with a tall fence, gate, paths and trellises throughout, filled with leaves and blossoms. Combined with the butterscotch Lifesavers he always had on hand, no wonder it’s such a sweet memory of what a garden is.
The next garden I remember is my Granny McCain’s garden in Coushatta, Louisiana, probably six twenty-foot rows, again fenced with a tall fence and gated, mostly against meandering cows. I was sent to live with grannies every summer, and I remember being in that garden every morning before it turned hot, and especially discovering the prickly texture of okra when she made me pick it. Granny grew all of her vegetables, including purple-hull peas (like black-eyes) which were my job to shell, turning my thumb purple as I pushed it up the inside of the pod to shoot all the plump peas into a big bowl in my lap. You start with a big bowl of long purple pea pods and put the shelled peas in the same bowl, so it gradually changes from a bowl of pods to a bowl of peas. I always loved to run my fingers through them when I was done–it was such a physical glory, a wealth: “Look how much work I’ve done!”
I know there was a lot of acid in that soil because Granny had huge hydrangea bushes around her house and garden that had blue blossom bouquets as big as basketballs. If you don’t have acid soil, the blossoms are pink. Hers were as blue as the sky.
Next was Grandma Saxon’s orchard in Georgia. Grandma didn’t do too much with vegetables, but she was hell on wheels when it came to “putting up”: canning, freezing to fill the big chest freezer, jelly making, even made blackberry wine that she made me drink when I was coming down with anything. Stuff near killed me. Serious peach eating was done there, with the nearly red juice running down your chin, down your arm and dripping from your elbow. Fig preserves were one of her specialties. One plump fig mashed on a piece of toast was all you could fit. Although she was too busy putting up fruit to garden vegetables, she bought them by the bushel when they were in season and she did plant a patch of tomatoes every year and canned most of them. She taught me to eat a tomato like an apple, just holding it in one hand and taking huge juicy bites, with the salt & pepper handy to season each bite, and how to make a tomato sandwich: bread+mayo+tomato=heaven on a back porch.
My own gardening started with about a 6’ X 8’ patch of my mother’s suburban back lawn in Shreveport. It was in the area you couldn’t see from the house (by command), back behind the fence on the side with no gate, between the air conditioning unit and the side fence. I had limited success, then got too busy with teenager business for gardening –daily hair rolling on orange juice cans, phone chatting, shopping at the shopping center (this was pre-mall!) and car riding. The only thing I used that corner of the yard for any more was to stand beside that AC unit, turn my head upside down, and brush my wet hair in the hot fanned air to blow dry it straight when that was the fashion. It was such a huge blast of hot air it was like standing behind a plane engine. Only took three or four minutes that way.
As an adult or near-bout one, I have had gardening ‘eras’. Some places I have lived coincided with times in my life when I had the place, the time, and the inclination to start a garden, but I’ve never been true to it year after year. When we lived in New Mexico would have been a great time, but I had a neighbor who had a huge garden and shared everything with us. He was a grandfather to my kids, who ran back and forth between our acre yards, through his apple orchard on a beeline for the raspberry bush he had planted just so he could sit and watch the boy ‘pick raspberries’, popping every one into his mouth as he picked them. I might have received a half cup to make a cobbler with. Bob lived alone, in an old trailer, and had a huge shop next to it where he worked on his assortment of VWs and his old Willys jeep. Gardening took up most of his time spring to fall, though. He was out most mornings opening rows to irrigation water from the ditch, the acequia, that ran behind our houses. Open a row, lean on the hoe watching it fill for ten minutes, then open the next one and close the first, gently moving the dirt back into place. He was so happy to have someone who wanted all that produce, and I was so happy to have him in our lives. He put his feet under my table every night and we raved about his tomatoes, Silver Queen corn, peas peas and more fat green peas, giant heads of cabbage and rhubarb pies. So I didn’t garden much there, but I did get a canner and learn what my Grandma did when I was little, putting up what we couldn’t eat from Bob’s garden.
When we moved to Texas, we lived in a suburb in Round Rock for ten years. I did a good bit of landscaping there but no food gardening. Just never had enough time with teaching and then starting the real estate business. So now I’m trying to simmer down and at least have me a patch of tomatoes and peppers, raise my own lettuce and greens, at our place in the hill country. I’m using raised beds that my husband made for me last year, “square-foot” intensive gardening, with little fences just around those boxes to protect from the deer and rabbits we have out here. I started a little orchard, too, just a couple each of apples, pears, peaches, plums and figs. The drought won and everything I planted bare-root last year died, so I just replanted a few of those. It’ll be years before I see anything from them, but I have high hopes for the vegetables this year. I moved one from the west side of the house with no shade up close to a picture window with late day shade, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the new spot this year. I had terrible luck last year, almost no production. I got started too late and after struggling to keep even the little beds watered through the drought, I found out from seasoned gardeners that they just quit through the heat, and plant a second fall garden in September or so. Duh.
I gave up on raising things from seed at this point, buying good-sized plants to jump ahead of the game and move harvest sooner so I can stop in the heat and won’t feel like I just have to keep watering because the poor plants haven’t even had a chance to flower. I was worried about bees or lack of them last year, but I was buzzed by one as I was planting. A good sign. And the heat and drought just can’t be so bad two years in a row, can it? I’m hoping the rains keep coming, don’t know how long El Niños last. So wish me luck, pass on any wisdom, and if you have a surfeit of something good, I would sure be happy to take some and hopefully have something to trade!
Love it, Reba! You are so inspiring.