“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.” — Gertrude Jekyll
Do you have a vegetable garden? Or have you ever had one? When I was a kid, I assumed everyone had a garden. Out where I lived in the country, everybody did, and conversations at this time of the year between neighbors circled around to how ripe the tomatoes were looking or how many beans they picked.
We’ve had a garden every year since we married. Well, the first few years, my parents shared their garden with us. We helped plant and weed and pick. It put food on the table and gave my mother and me lots of together time as we worked in the garden and preparing the food for canning or freezing. I would have had a lot harder time doing those chores without her help after I had two little ones. But somehow we managed to get the beans picked and ready for canning and the tomatoes peeled and squeezed into juice or whatever else needed doing to add to our food supply.
After we moved and finally had land to grow our own garden, I filled up dozens of jars with beans and tomatoes and apples and pears and pickles and jam. Then there were the things that went in the freezer like corn and blackberries. We had a family to feed. Of course, when the kids got old enough, they had to pitch in with the planting, weeding annd picking. Not a favorite chore. Some years I had more beans than I could use and I sold bushels of them. The kids helped me pick them and then we used that money to go to the pool once a week.
My kids grew up and went off to have families of their own to feed. The older two moved into other states and never had a place for a real vegetable garden although one of my grandsons liked planting a tomato plant or two. My daughter has a yard full of beautiful flowers. She and my son-in-law have a few pepper and tomato plants. She has a blueberry bush and has to fight the squirrels and birds to have a chance to eat a ripe blueberry.
But my youngest son stayed closer to home and the same as my mother shared much of her garden with me, we have given over most of the garden to my son and his family. It is a family affair. The kids have been helping to plant and pick since they were small. In the picture up top, my granddaughter is helping to push the seeder to plant some corn. That was back when gardening was still fun. This year they helped plant the tomatoes, beans, and all the other vegetables. They put up panels for the tomatoes and tyed them up off the ground.
This afternoon, my son came out, without the grandkids, to plow up some weeds and do some hoeing. So we took a picture after chopping out the weeds work. It looks good after all the rains, and in due time we’re hoping for a bountiful crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zuchinni, and beans. Over in a side row, I even have some zinnias and sunflowers. The zinnias are just beginning to bloom. Soon the butterflies will be fluttering around between the blooms.
Growing your own food is like printing your own money. ~Ron Finley
If you have a garden and a library, you have evrything you need. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
A Summer Library Tour?
In my book, When the Meadow Blooms, Calla helps Lincoln plant beens in the garden. A little romance goes on between the rows. 🙂 I’ll be talking about that book and my new release, In the Shadow of the River, at the Spencer County Public Library this Saturday, July 15th at 10:30 a.m. I’m looking forward to meeing readers there and share about my writing. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you there. Then the next Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 1 p.m. I’ll be having my Hometown Book Party at the Anderson County Public Library. I’m so happy to be able to go back out to talk about my books. I seem to be doing something like a library tour this summer and fall. You can check my News & Events Page to see if I’m going to be in your area this summer. I would have fun talking to you.
Have you ever grown your own vegetables? If so, what was your favorite thing to carry in from your garden?
Comments 18
Nothing tastes better than home-grown goodies.
Author
You are so right. Love a bacon and tomato sandwich in the summer time.
Love my garden and canning. I’ve done it since helping my mom as a child. Nothing better than eating a tomato right off the vine.
Author
That’s what Josephine said too, Lucy. I used to like eating a cucumber off the vine too when I was a kid. Such a treat to be able to go out to the garden and pick a treat to eat. I grew up helping my mother with breaking beans or shelling peas or lima beans and helping peel, dice, shuch or whatever was needed to get the vegetables ready to can or freeze. Then after I got married, I kept at it. Still like to can beans and freeze corn and tomatoes.
Yes, we had a vegetable and flower garden. But nothing like my father in law’s. He had a couple of acres and grew everything! He would often load up bushel baskets of corn and green beans and travel a couple hours to our house to share the bounty!! Of course that meant shucking, blanching, cutting corn off the cob for freezing immediately, same with the beans, snapping, blanching and freezing. But oh how wonderful to pull those veggies out of the freezer on a winters night….a taste of summer!!!!!My favorite summer meal is fresh sliced tomatoes, fresh green beans and corn on the cob!!!😋
Author
I’m with you, Bonnie. That is a delicious meal. We used to grow peas and potatoes and I always loved them with new potatoes. It’s work preserving those vegetables, but it’s nice that your father-in-law grew it, picked it and delivered it. That’s really nice.
Tomatoes, still warm from the sun.
Author
A homegrown tomato picked off the vine is the best, Josephine.
Your garden is so pretty. We have had a garden every year for several years now.I buy my corn but grow beets, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers , lettuce , radishes and tomatoes. We always have sunflowers alongside, so much so that this year we had several volunteer sunflower plants come up.
I pickled some beets last week and will pickle more soon.
We both love the garden,
Author
We never get our garden out early enough for beets, Lisa, but one of my granddaughters love beets. I always have a row of flowers and sunflowers. But this year my sunflower plants are struggling. They didn’t come up the first timne I planted them. I think a chipmunk ate the seed. Enjoy your vegetables.
While I’m a city girl (suburbs really), my husband and I enjoy planting a patio garden in pots. We have delicious cherry and medium-sized tomatoes, sweet peppers, and okra this summer. Other years we also grew eggplant, carrots, beets, and green beans. I tried cucumbers, squash, and cantaloupes in the past, but bugs got into them and ruined them. Even though we don’t have the space in our yard to plant a larger garden, we delight in harvesting in small numbers and eating the veggies that we do grow.
Author
That’s fun, Suzanne. You can grow veggies in whatever space you have. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone grow green beans in a pot, but why not? I’m surprised you couldn’t grow cucumbers. They are pretty hardy. But I think it’s extra neat that you don’t have room for a plowed up garden but still enjoy your homegrown vegetables anyway.
Gardening has been inter generational in our family as well. One of my fondest memories is picking raspberries in my grandmother’s yard and helping her turn them into jam. Oh! I can taste it just with the thought of it. My husband is the big gardener now. There is nothing like the taste of a freshly harvested home grown tomato or ear of corn . If our corn doesn’t do well, I’m loathe to buy it in the store. It just never reaches the peak flavorful enjoyment we get from our own. We like to share the abundance with others. Many Blessings on your garden!
Author
I think gardening with family is the best, Cindy Sue. I love raspberries. So, I can practically taste that jam too. I always try to freeze some of the wild raspberries I pick to mix with some blackberries when I make jam. Those few raspberries give the blackberry jam a special flavor.
We have about given up trying to grow corn. The raccoons think we’re raising it for them. They wait until we’re almost ready to pick it and then they invite all their friends to have a corn party and destroy it all in one night. But last year I bought a sack of corn from an orchard and it was good.
Your Garden is Beautiful Yes and my daughter and I just canned green beans from our garden! We Love all the fresh vegetables to eat and too can! They are so yummy
Author
We didn’t get our garden out very early and then it was so dry for weeks that we felt fortunate the beans even came up, Sarah. But now they are looking good. My son’s bunch beans will be ready to pick soon, but the pole beans are always later. But those homegrown beans are better than the ones you buy at the store.
Tried, but never been successful.
Author
That’s too bad, Lisa. It’s more fun when you can successfully pick that produce and eat it.