The Garden
My father always had a garden. I can
never remember a year that he didn’t. He always seemed to
find a plot even when we lived in the house with someone
else. They always appreciated the vegetables he provided in
exchange for his use of the garden plot. The vegetables
were very important to our food supply but he probably
would have had a garden anyway. He was from a large family
with 11 brothers and sisters who had learned to depend on a
garden for adequate food.
Each year in early spring he would hire someone with a mule
to plow up the available plot. Then he used a small push
plow to prepare the soil for the plants and seeds. He
always had tomatoes, okra, peppers, watermelons,
cantaloupes, bush beans, and pole beans. He had a method of
staking the pole beans which was somewhat unique. He ran
wire down the row from a post about five feet high to a
post at the other end of the row. Then he ran twine up and
down from boards on the ground around the wire from one end
of the row to the other. The pole beans had runners that
would climb up the twine. The end result was he could pick
them from a standing position.
One summer watermelons came up from where we had discarded
the rinds and seeds. The vines ran up a fence and started
making melons, He built a shelf for the melons to rest on
while they grew very large. This became the conversation of
the neighborhood.
In the fall Dad would remove all of the dead plants and sow
turnip seeds over the whole plot that would provide turnip
greens and turnips for most of the winter months.
In later years when we had our own home he added a flower
garden. He planted several types but his prize flowers were
dahlias which he entered in the Fayette County Fair each
year.