Country Gardening Lessons

Since moving from Denver to the Indiana countryside, I have started writing about all I am learning about living the country life that so many folks desire. This is a recent excerpt from those writings.

May 3, 2008
The sun is shining and the fields are finally drying out from the recent rains, so it is time to plant stuff! Ah, yes, that is one of the reasons for moving to the country, to plant stuff and be self-sufficient and, of course, grow healthy food.

Last year we had our first summer season in our new home. I was so revved up to show my gardening skills and experiment with growing techniques that I could hardly wait for each new day to warm up so I could run outside and dig in the dirt. Plant, plant, plant.

The first lesson I learned was, you CAN plant too much. For example, you do not need to have one of each type of tomato plant available, especially when there are only two people living in your household. Probably a couple of tomato plants would be plenty. Last year, rather than be wasteful at harvest time, I did freeze a few (ok, a few dozen) containers of tomatoes. (Those saved Cool Whip containers come in handy sometimes.) I tried giving the excess tomatoes away to all the relatives and neighbors, but (and here is another country lesson) if folks want tomatoes, they grow their own. That made it impossible to pawn off mine on unsuspecting friends last year.

The second lesson I learned last year was when your garden is on the ground that used to be a horse coral, your plants are going to grow to be quite large! No need for any extra fertilizer. Forget the wire tomato cages that only stand three feet tall, those might support the bottom half of the tomato plants, but you probably are going to need some kind of metal scaffolding for the rest of the vine. Each plant is going to have tomatoes on it that weigh a pound each, and there will be at least three tomatoes that size on each stem of the plant! If someone does a re-make of  the movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” they can come see me for some great props.

Our property is surrounded by a one hundred acre field that will be planted with corn this year. So while I am doing my plowing with my little two blade roto-tiller today, I will be working next to gigantic, million dollar tractors and plows and planters. Kind of puts a different perspective on those tomato plants in my little garden. They are really only a speck of dust in the agricultural world. Nevertheless, I’m quite sure they will be my babies all summer long and while I tend to them, I will be learning another summer’s worth of country gardening lessons.