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Own garden grown always tastes better
By Bob Ede
It’s hard to believe we are on the verge of a turn of seasons. You can feel it in the morning and see it in the trees.
This summer will go down as being hot and smoky.
Our garden has done well; other gardeners’ reports are split, some good some bad. In the District of Invermere, water restrictions make it difficult to keep even a small vegetable garden. This year has been a challenge keeping moisture on the garden.
The heat started ripening tomatoes at the end of July and has been producing at least a few every day since. Folk singer John Prine, always a master of the truth, said it right, “There is only two things money can’t buy; true love and homegrown tomatoes!”
They have been delicious, once done it will be a long time before we buy a tomato in the store. Usually February we will break down and buy one for a salad and be disappointed.
The spuds are as big as dinner plates. Baked, boiled, grilled, pit cooked or fried they can’t be beat!
The peppers are turning red. No doubt they will be hotter than Grace Kelly and Lauren Bacall scissoring in a steam room (notice my pop-culture references are as old as my unfiltered sexist innuendo).
The cabbage is filling out with its best days yet to come in the fall sunshine. I planted extra this year, because everybody likes a little head (oops, there I go again).
The carrots are raging. My son, years ago, remarked how a garden carrot, not only looks different but tastes totally different from a store bought carrot. I agreed, same as the onions and garlic, I said.
My young daughter used to help me with the garden. In exchange for her help she could pick and sell vegetables on the roadside beside our house. Sometimes I had to remind her to save some vegetables for us. She would come back with fists full of dollars. Way more than the kids selling lemonade up the street, she’d say!
There is nothing like having a home garden. It has fed us for over 30 years. Each spring only a handful of seeds and a few truckloads of manure is all it asks.
Now the kids have moved on, the garden is too big for my wife and I. But I can’t make it smaller. Now we give most of the vegetables away to old-timers and newcomers, whoever will take them.
So far we haven’t been stuck with too many.
The season is close to change. It feels good. Time to preserve and put some down, I suppose, before the frost hits.
Lead image: Willow guards the bounty. Photos courtesy Bob Ede
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– Bob has plenty of beets left to turn his pee red well into November; extra special when writing his name in the snow. He can be reached at [email protected]
