Found a lost disk of photos showing Demetrius in his 25x25 foot vegetable garden, summer of 2004. He built bean trellises eight feet tall (he was 6'3"), and those are cantaloupe vines around his feet, and he planted marigolds around the cold frames he built because they are a natural insecticide and cheerful to see. His best tip: Plant clover in between the vegetable rows, and the bunnies will eat the clover, not your vegetables. Landlord told us to stop gardening in 2006. Demetrius grew beans, kale, turnips, tomatoes, red potatoes, squashes (including pattypans because I thought they were cute), eggplant (because I liked it), cantaloupes, bok choy, chard, okra, cabbage, exotic lettuces, gourds, five kinds of basil, carrots (voles ate them from beneath before we got any), you name it, and he ate it all raw, even the potatoes. A great vegetable gardener he was: old enough to remember his mother's victory garden, which she kept up until the record-setting-heat summer of 1956; always reading about organic gardening (the magazine
Organic Gardening was not organic enough for him), really happy only when he gardened.
2 comments:
How wonderful to find those photos. I love the sound of the garden and all the things he grew. I like the tips about marigolds and clover. I have pumpkins, cantaloupes and watermelons growing and I think the clover would look pretty growing with them. Weird about your landlord saying not to garden. That's very sad.
I was somewhere near your neck of the woods recently. I was in Cuba and Steelville for the Crawford County Fair and I floated on the Huzzah. I need to blog about it, although I neglected to take any photos while there.
Property is technically a site for wildlife biologists and they believe vegetable plants change its ecology. It is okay though to have container plants so I do. I respect their rules so I can stay here, but for Demetrius "no gardening" was crushing and he moved back to the city.
Post a Comment