During the 1970’s and 80’s, Crockett’s Victory Garden was a popular program on IPTV. Broadcast, I think, on Sunday afternoons, we watched it nearly every week and learned a lot of valuable things about gardening. One of those facts was that it wasn’t safe to plant certain things until all threats of frosty nights were safely behind us. Gardening centers and those temporary greenhouses that popped up in supermarket parking lots always appeared long before that mid-May date, tempting optimists and those who didn’t watch Crockett’s program to take home tomato and pepper plants and put them in the ground in time to be stricken by a “late” frost. The seedling suppliers were always there, generously eager to provide replacements, at a higher price because of their larger size and vigor.

Having been sheltered in tents and greenhouses, the young plants were seldom up to dry winds, chilly nights, hot afternoons and too much or too little rain. The determined novice gardener learned from experience, advice from more successful peers or experts such as Crockett, whose wisdom was available in book form as well as on TV. A certain amount of helpful information could be coaxed out of the salespeople at the garden centers – if you were a valued customer (one who bought a lot of stuff.)

Composting seemed like a sensible and economical way of providing good garden soil without buying a lot of fertilizers or investing in kits and chemicals to test your soil for necessary nutrients. The garden center offered attractive composting barrels and helpful additives to insure the best composting results, but it seemed an elaborate method for what was essentially a very basic process of nature. Our chicken wire cage, located near the garden and close enough to the garden hose, worked just fine after the first few weeks got things started.

Then, there were always fertilizers intended for specific plants, pellets to bury near the newly-transplanted tomato plants and powders to make liquid fertilizers for application at specific intervals. Even Crockett advocated giving those young transplants a boost of plant food to get them started and continuing their enriched “diet” for maximum vigor and abundant harvests. Those things work, of course, but they also cost money, and at a certain point the thriftiness of raising your own vegetables is lost to the cost of convenience and labor-saving shortcuts.

Weeds, naturally, are always a problem. One can’t kill them with chemicals without endangering the very plants we are trying to protect. Weeds pop up overnight, especially after a nice rain. The soil in our part of the county contains a high percentage of sticky clay. It seems to be rich enough for gardening and holds moisture well in dry spells but retains its stickiness for too long after a rainstorm, giving the fast-growing weeds more than ample time to take over the territory before it is possible to get into the gooey mush to deal with them.

Several years ago, while I was waiting out one of those wasted days after a good soaking rain, hoping the radishes wouldn’t split from too much water, wondering if the pea blossoms had all their pollen washed away, and hoping my baby pepper plants hadn’t drowned, I wrote the following:

GARDENING

Starting in springtime, my vegetable garden is always the place that I work very hardin.

For tilling and raking and hoeing like madish essential for planting the lettuce and radish.

Soil is pristine when I’m putting the peas in. Weeds will show up very soon in the seasin,

slurping up plant food so costly provided while most of the vegetables lay down and dieded.

Weeds all surviving with leaves lush and flourished.

Beets, beans and carrots are all undernourished.

I water and weed and, by fall, I will reelize tomatoes will never be bigger than peasize.

I go to the fair where they’re giving out prizes for sweet corn and cabbage of ponderous sizes.

While waiting, I dream of the judges’ decision. I’ve taken f irst place – in the Crabgrass Division!