Fried taters and sliced maters

So, it goes with most vegetable gardens, it’s either feast or famine. Some years are lean while other years you feel like you hit the jackpot.

This year I planted five gardens. I can’t seem to get the idea out of my head that I don’t still sell at the Farmer’s Market. One of the main reasons I planted so much this year was because of the deer, coons, moles, voles and squirrels that want to get their part.

This year I’ve even had to run the cats out of my garden. Yes, I said cats! Seems for years I’ve gone crappie fishing in the early spring and when I clean them, I save the heads and guts to put under my tomato plants. You see the Native Americans did this to fertilize their crops as well.

This year I had several freezer bags full of discarded fish parts. As I planted my seventy-five young tomato plants, I dropped a fish into the hole first, then Miracle Grow, then gently placed the plant in and covered the roots.

What I didn’t see was that my five cats were watching every move I was making. You guessed it, for as soon I got through planting and went into my house those cats decided they were going fishing.

I had gone to the house to get some water but as soon as I got back to the side door, I spotted my old momma cat and four of her half- grown kittens each had a fish head in their mouth.

I tried scolding them cats for three days, but they still went to the garden, dug up my plants, and ate the fish. Still, I managed to save all the plants except one and they all grew into maturity.

Seems this year I was a little late in planting my Irish taters. I usually have a few red Potomac left over from the year before but this year I decided to buy a few more seed potatoes. Being late in the tater planting season I could only find part of a bag of white Kennebec, probably about fifteen pounds to finish out my two rows. I have found that if you plant two rows of anything it seems to do better.

Well, I got right to cutting the eyes off them taters. I placed them in the dry, allowing them to heal for about four days before I planted them.

Won’t but about two weeks and them taters started breaking through the ground.

I waited till all the taters were up good to put side dressing on each side of the two rows of potatoes. Taking my Super A Farmall I just about covered all them taters with fresh dirt.

In about a week it started raining and I mean raining. As the sun came out you could just about hear them taters growing. Why in two weeks they were waist high.

I waited till the taters started blooming to throw another round of fertilizer to them. I’ve always heard that if your tater vines get too big, there won’t be many taters under them but I was having so much excitement over high big they were getting I didn’t really care.

Well, several more weeks passed, and I thought that I would take my hands and gravel around one of the large vines. To my surprise I rolled a white tater out over six inches long. I could hardly wait for the vines to die back so I could dig some more big taters.

It took a while, but it seemed like them taters were still getting bigger. Finally, I took my potato rake out and I be John Brown if’en I won’t getting ten to twelve taters from each hill, and they were huge. I mean I dug a five-gallon bucket full out from under four or five plants. That many large taters under each vine is really above average for this sandhill land.

The Good Lord blessed me with a beautiful garden this year. My wife and I have canned over eighty quarts of string beans, froze twenty quarts of field peas, butter peas, twenty quarts of soup, twenty pints of chow chow and I don’t know how many wheelbarrow loads of squash and cucumbers I’ve given away.

You know there is just something about raising your own food that makes it taste better and its better for you because of all the chemical sprayed on commercial veggies.

It don’t take a tractor or a lot of land to raise a garden, no-sir. Why you can raise a garden in your yard, raised beds, containers, or around the borders of your house. Just make sure your garden spot gets at least six hours of direct sunlight per day.

I won’t say gardening is for everyone because it takes a lot of hard work and sweat to work a garden. For me I reckon I’ve got sand in my shoes and farming in my blood for my ancestors have been doing it ever since they came to this country.

In closing I want to thank God for all he has blessed me with and a special shout out to all our hard working farmers all over the world.