How Does Your Garden Grow?

These are my grape (cherry) tomatoes. I did not plant them this year. Twenty plants popped up in my garden so I have been weeding around them and tending to them.

Usually I plant Marigolds around my tomato plants to help keep the tomato worms away. Since I didn't plant the tomatoes, I didn't plant Marigolds either. The heat, humidity and thunderstorms make the plants grow like crazy. Unfortunately, the tomato worms are growing and increasing in number, too.

Where do tomato worms come from? I go over my plants carefully every morning, removing the damn little creatures and smooshing the living crap out of them. By evening, there are more... bigger and did I mention, more?
This is a smooshed tomato worm, so I know they are not coming back to life and sneaking back into the tomato vines. I have no qualms about slamming my foot down on 'em, squirking their green, oozy lifeforce out on to the ground. Of course, years ago when I planted my first garden, it was a different story. Remember I was a suburbia girl transplanted to the country. Country as in where the cows graze until milking time, manure is spread thick and heavy over the fields (inevitably on the days I hung the laundry on the line), where when a car passed the house... you ran to look to see who it was and wave. So I did what all the other country gals were doing. I planted a garden.

My Man plows up a patch of ground, adds some black dirt (which in reality is cowshit which has aged), plows it again and then tells me to rake it out evenly and... get the rocks out. So I raked... and raked ... and raked. When he got home from work, I was sitting in a chair exhausted, sweaty and sore from raking. We walked out to the garden together. He stood there, scratched his head and said, "What the hell is that?" pointing to the 2 foot mound of rocks and stones lining the length of the garden. "What do you mean, what is it? You told me to rake out the rocks and stones, so I did." He began to laugh and laugh and I got mad and madder. He said, "I just meant to surface rake it to get the big ones from the top." "Well, why didn't you say that?" So the next day I planted in my garden...everything. And anything. No matter if I liked it or not. If it was a vegetable, I planted it. I found out that year that I hate... no, loathe... parsnips. Yeck!

I lovingly tended my garden. I hoed. I weeded. I watered. But my tomato plants looked funny. The leaves were disappearing. I told My Man this. He walked out to the garden with me and then asked, "Did you check for tomato worms?" "Uh...umm. What do they look like?" He bent over a tomato plant and pointed at one of the ugliest, most humungus, greenest creatures I had ever seen. I sheepishly said, "Obviously not." At least he had the decency to hide his smirk and muffle his snickering. Then he told me the most disgusting thing. He wanted me to pick them off the plants, drop them to the ground and step on them. Ugh! I wasn't about to touch them things. He got me a pair of gloves and a pair of needle nose pliers to pick them off. He picked one off, dropped it to the ground and stomped on it, squirking icky, oozy green crud all over... including my feet and legs! I said, "No I don't think so!" He suggested I put them in a paper sack and then put them in the burn barrel. Okay. I could do that. Well, I used a lunch sack and after it got almost full of about 50 of those green monsters, I was getting more and more pissed. How dare those little suckers invade my garden! Sucking out the life juice from my tomato plants! I ripped them little buggers of the vines, threw 'em down on the ground and smashed them. "Take that you little sonabitches!" It wasn't until years later that I learned if you plant Marigolds around the tomato plants, it keeps the tomato worm population down.

That first garden was truly a learning experience. I learned I don't like cleaning, cooking and pickling beets (cause what else is there to do with them). Planting 8 zucchini plants is not a good idea. Over the years I have learned that 1 or 2 zucchini plants is enough... to feed the family, your neighbor's family and all your relatives. More than 2 plants... you should be shot! The amount of zucchini I got that first year was enough to feed a starving nation for a year! And you have to pick them every hour or they grow to the size of large watermelon! Although my boys had a lot of fun with them. When the season was over, they went out and played war with the 'left-over' veggies, using them as bombs and torpedoes. Which came in handy the next year when I couldn't plant a garden. Plants popped up all over... tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and squash.

Gardening is a love/hate relationship. I love planting the seedlings and seeds, watching them grow but hate the weeding and bug demolitian. I love picking (no, picking falls under hate) and cooking and eating fresh vegetables. By the way, I have many recipes for cooking with zucchini. I hate picking, cleaning, and blanching them to freeze them. But I love pulling out a package of veggies in the middle of the winter that came from my garden. Store bought just don't taste as good!

We already have a garden area at the new house. Should be able to get some fertilizer real cheap from our neighbor's. Next year I'll be back to planting a full garden: green beans, full size tomatoes, grape tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, cabbage, green peppers and whatever else my little heart fancies.