by Terese Goodson

My very earliest garden memories encompassed a love/hate relationship.  I LOVED eating the fresh fruits and vegetables, but I remember, from a child’s point of view, that a garden was tons of work.  I HATED that.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, one of the sixteen children in my family.  (Picture sharing one bathroom in the house with this crowd!)  Our property was a sprawling 5 ½ acres, so there was always plenty of room for a garden.  Late in the spring, my dad would pull out the old 8N Ford tractor and begin plowing a garden area – always a massive plot.  It seemed he plowed the rich, black earth one day, disked it the next day, and then it was ready to plant.  He would have rows of our favorite vegetables – always room for Silver Queen and Illini Extra Sweet corn, plus rows of baby limas, string beans, etc.  Potatoes were usually ready to start hilling by then and Dad assigned each of the older kids several long rows to mound additional soil around each established plant  I hated the job.  It never seemed to end and I always thought my rows were longer than any of the others.  At our house, it never paid to complain.  If you dared to do so, Dad added several more rows to your work load.

When rhubarb was ripe, Mom was famous for her rhubarb custard and strawberry rhubarb pies.  She had to make several for dessert and each one disappeared in minutes.  There were MANY times I harvested rhubarb crowns in Chicago and planted them in Montgomery, always willing them to grow in the heat of summer.  SIGH!  They never did.

Fast forward to the bounty of summer and my favorite memory was corn and watermelon parties with just our family!  When corn was ripe, my dad gave the word and gathered a bunch of the siblings to pick the huge ears.  Mom started boiling the water in a huge pot and then another group started shucking the corn.  The goal was to have the corn ready to immerse in boiling water at the perfect time.  Watermelons were sliced into what seemed like a zillion pieces and we ate slices in our hands, spitting out seeds at each other until someone complained.  When the corn was ready, we were allowed to eat as much as we wanted – a rarity for any mealtime.  The corn was drenched in butter and disappeared quickly.  What a treat!

In early spring, the asparagus plot yielded beautiful, green stalks of bounty and a new rule was established.  Instead of “Eat it or wear it.”, only those who liked asparagus had it on their plates.  Scrambled eggs and asparagus, steamed asparagus stalks – it didn’t matter – the aficionados were grateful to have larger portions of this precious commodity.

The work crew (the older family members) was called out in force all summer long to harvest string beans, lima beans, tomatoes, and all the other fresh bounty.  We would sit at ping pong tables in the kitchen, after bending down in the rows to pick the produce, and snip beans, and shuck limas – mountains of each, for each meal.  Leftovers were a rarity. 

I’ve learned that Montgomery’s prairie gumbo soil takes months to plow, disk, and prepare for a garden; it truly was a shock when I moved south and tried to prep the ground in two days for the very first time.  Where was that rich black earth I remembered from my childhood?  I’ve learned a lot about gardening over the years.  There is always room to tuck in a tomato or pepper plant in one of my flower beds.  There is also room to add one more fruit tree in the back yard.  And now, I simply have just a LOVE relationship with gardening. 

Hope you can pick something fresh from your yard and enjoy!

Terese Goodson, a Master Gardener, class of 2012, lives in Montgomery.  For more information on becoming a master gardener, visit www.capcitymga.org or email capcitymga@gmail.com