Backyard Gardener

For a professional landscape designer -- say that guy on PBS, P. Allen Smith -- choosing the site for a vegetable garden on a small property or urban lot is a carefully calculated decision. Enough sunlight is weighed against traffic patterns, buildings and existing trees, water and utility lines, drainage and other aspects of the landscape. We took a different route.

Here in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1987 – long before every outdoorsman owned a personal GPS, we calculated latitude, longitude and elevation to find sun angle, but not for a garden plot. Using this information blueprints were drawn for the optimum location of a passive solar home.

Most gardeners will tell you that N, P and K are the initials of three plant nutrients or simply, “fertilizer.” They are much more than that; they are three elements on the periodic table (PT). How many can list the rest?

For those like me, who may have passed his tenth-grade PT pop-quiz but would now fail miserably, you can find hundreds of examples on the internet. I downloaded a small free program from Custom Fit Software. Find one if your memory is as bad as mine.

Henry James Byron was a prolific author of drama, burlesque and pantomime at Cambridge Theatre in the late 1800s. He wrote, “When young sow wild oats but when old, grow sage.”

As I get older and perhaps a bit wiser, I look for plants that can take care of themselves occasionally. Sage is such a plant.

I enjoy passing by the herb beds during my spring gardening chores. Along with other kitchen herbs, three velvety, grayish sage plants are just growing there, not demanding a thing from me until the vegetable plots are prepared and planted.

Our small homestead is between two small towns -- one where I grew up next door to the last working farm in the borough, the other where my wife went to school. In the heart of ‘her town’ was also a dairy farm. Both farmers had the same last name -- though according to one, “We may be related, so far back nobody recalls.”

I was too young to really get to know my neighbor. My family did buy milk from him and I remember when it was my turn to walk over with an empty jug and fifty cents I would enter the milk house and stand on tip-toes to peer through the window into the parlor. I would see the farmer busy with the cows and rather than bother him I’d fill my jug and leave the money on the bulk tank.

Attitudes toward wildlife vary greatly. I enjoy watching Mother Nature's pets and try to keep my bird feeders and suet sacks full. I grow enough extra vegetables to fatten an occasional rabbit lucky enough to slip through my defense -- 'da fence' is an eight-foot high, chain-link barricade resting on a short stone wall with a strip of chicken wire along the bottom, installed the year I lost everything to a family of hungry whitetails.

There are of course, cheaper, easier ways to deter uninvited guests from helping themselves to your homegrown food. A hunter may say, "Bullets are cheap," but it doesn't have to be a deadly game.

As backyard gardeners we try to get our families interested in our pastime but how do you compete with video games?

I asked a nephew what he wanted for Christmas and the list was long, starting with the latest game console and several video games -- none with titles relating to plants and animals unless you count dragons and dark forests.

I can somewhat understand the attraction; many years ago I followed Bilbo Baggins as the hobbit wandered middle earth. When our neighbors bought their kids an Atari with PONG my brothers and sisters would be at their house more often than ours, arguing over who gets to play next.

“Bundle up real good and go with Grandpa. You can carry the basket for him.”

It was the middle of January and although suppertime was still hours away, darkness had already fallen. Grandma wrapped a hand-knitted scarf around my neck and passed me a wicker basket. I followed Grandpa out into the night.

My grandfather shuffled his feet to break through the drifted snow and I stepped high, trying to stay in his tracks. A dim view of a rustic door soon appeared; I watched as the old man tugged it open and disappeared inside. “Come on in lad, let’s find us some grub.”

Keith's Tools
Photo Credit: Keith Bellinger

Homesteaders (those with small farms or large gardens) rely on tools more than anyone but professional tradesmen. Like the pros, we buy the best we can afford, maybe not top of the line but good solid tools built to last. Unlike the pros we can’t afford to throw them away and buy replacements when they break; we usually fix them ourselves. It is rare to find a tool in the trash of a homesteader; “It just needs a new handle/bolt and nut/wrap of duct tape.”

Floating row covers serve several purposes. They’re an important tool for the family gardener. Row Cover Technology explains the different kinds of row covers and how to use them. Gardeners have a lot of options available. We can purchase row covers or raid the linen closet. Row covers will keep heat in and insects out. They protect soil and our plants and give us extra time at the beginning and end of the growing season.

Bob is in his eighties and planted a small patch of asparagus, “… over twenty years ago.” Earlier this year he asked if I wanted some spears. I told him that I didn’t care for the vegetable but admitted I was a third grader when it was forced on me. He laughed and proceeded to tell me how delicious it is. I accepted a handful of spears reluctantly, “Maybe they can be pickled. Anything is good pickled.”

Being a poor country boy, I didn’t know that pickled asparagus is gourmet food and a spear is often used as a swizzle stick in a Bloody Mary. I learned that I liked them (asparagus, not vodka in tomato juice) enough to want a patch of my own and asked my friend for some seeds. Bob said, “Please, take them all!”