Many years of veggies and flowers

My mother made me do it!

Rather, she really didn't make me, she actually taught me how to do it through lots of hard work and all the time I spent in her garden as a kid.

I have and never did regret it, though, because of what followed in my life to date in the hobby of gardening.

The thought of this came to mind following the story carried in this paper a couple weeks ago featuring the Community Garden Project currently underway in the city.

It all started, as I remember, that Dad and I were the rototillers of Mom's special vegetable and flower garden at home while growing up. She had a rather small area, with room for some veggies, flowers and strawberries.

Dad and I would hand-spade that plot every year in Mom's preparation to plant various veggie seeds. The flowers, for the most part, came up every year. We just kept the weeds out.

So, I learned from Mom about gardening and flowers and about canning some of the veggies and how to prepare the area for the winter months. All of which led me, later after leaving home, to try it on my own. . .this hobby of gardening.

For the most part, it all started here in Carrington some 45 years ago, after moving here from Fessenden. I had a few flowers at our home in Fessenden, but no veggies due to lack of space. Moving here and into our home of today, there was space, lots of space and it really took off.

Starting with a small plot in our back yard, I planted many kinds of veggies and we had lots of good meals from what grew in that small space. My wife, Pat, also canned a few of the veggies, mainly string beans, a few carrots, some beets while enjoying fresh radishes, peas and onions.

Things were going along pretty well until one day our neighbor to the west, Cliff Hale, called me over and said he was going to quit gardening and asked if I wanted his plot along with my space which was only about four feet away from his garden spot.

I accepted his offer and soon had a big, big garden with the two combined. I would call a friend with a small tractor to come in every year and rototill the area. Then, I built a mechanism to pull through the garden area to create straight rows (no sticks and twine needed to make straight rows) and I was in business.

With both garden areas, I planted everything under the sun in the two spots: corn, potatoes, pumpkins, watermelons, squash and cucumber along with the other small veggies. There were a lot of small ones which resulted in a lot of work including most nights after supper and weekends, too. We had a giant garden and lots of things were growing.

Planting corn and spuds, I checked them while planting so I could run my small rototiller through them for weed control. Same went for the smaller veggies, too, until they grew out in size.

Lots of foods, lots of work and a lot of canning by my wife, Pat, who in those hot days in August was kept busy in her kitchen canning the "fruits of our labor." We did that for many years.

So with veggies growing in Cliff's old garden, I used our old garden space to feature strawberries (I could never find any like Mom had and I don't know where she got hers. Mine were never like those at home.) There were lots of raspberries also featured, so with the two and a trial of grapes, we had a very good feeding station for all kinds of birds in the area. I did that a few years, birds won!

So, now what? Let's try flowers and we did. That turned out to be even more work than the veggie garden (which also kept growing.)

I basically started with marigolds. They were cheap to buy, grew well and were easy to maintain. Marigolds were all over the garden and each fall I would harvest the seed from the plants and save in ice cream pails. My guess is that I had eight or ten pails each year to choose from with seed to plant even more marigolds. I did that for years, using the garden space and other areas from around our house to make floral borders out of the marigold plants. There were lots of gold and yellow plants!

Then the thought hit me. I should have a rose garden.

So, I purchased rose bushes from various stores and had maybe 20 or 30 different varieties in the floral garden. If one does it right, roses are a lot of work, especially in the fall when they get cut down and covered with leaves and grass for the winter. I did that a few years, had nice roses and then one year I didn't cover them. Bingo . . . most of them didn't come back the following year.

But there was one rose, a pretty, flesh-colored rose that came and kept coming every year for over ten years. We would clip the blooms, place in rose bowls and give to favorite friends when possible.

Strange thing: Some of those rose bushes were expensive, but this diehard single plant that kept producing was the least expensive of all. I paid 50 cents for the plant, a bit less than the 15 or 20 bucks I spent for others. That plant and bloom were nice!

So now we're into flowers, too. All kinds of flowers and all over our yard as well. Hanging baskets, pots sitting all over, planters here and there along with a garden full of many kinds and styles of blooming plants.

It's hard to believe, but true, here's a list of the many varieties we had growing around our house and in the plot:

Along with marigolds and roses, there were petunias (they were and are still easy to grow), day lilies, tulips, crocuses, Black-Eyed Susans, gladiolas, irises, peonies, daisies, hollyhocks, pansies, poppies, zinnias, begonias, fuchsia, geraniums, castor beans, asters, dianthus and impatience, just a few that we tried.

There were times when the daisies grew wild and we would have a sea of white flowers in the plot. I don't know how many hundred I dug up and gave to people who wanted to start growing them.

It took time to grow and care for the many flowers we had around the house. I do know that at one time there were over 70 hanging baskets and planters placed all around the house. It took well over an hour or more just to water them every other day!

But, it was a hobby. One Mom taught me and it was fun while it lasted.

Until one day my wife said, "I quit."

She had her fill of canning veggies during the hot summer August and it all came to a close. No more veggie garden, but we did keep on with the flowers and raspberries.

Today, there are only a few whiskey barrels of petunias and a few hanging baskets of petunias.

Just enough for 10 or 15 minutes of watering.

Gardening . . . a great hobby, but a lot of work!