For the third year in a row, I have attempted a garden.

See how well I’m doing?

What a beautiful stand of Bermuda grass in each raised bed, along with a purely ornamental Brussels sprout that volunteered from last year’s failed Brussels sprout experiment.

I’ve not eaten a single Brussels sprout off a plant I grew, although last year I did chop up the greens of one of the plants, boiled them, and ate them. 

Frugal and resourceful and not wasteful.

That might be the only gardening traits I’ve inherited from my parents, my grandparents, and a long line of ancestors with a knack for growing things.

I remember my Pawpaw and Grandma’s neat and tidy garden: no weeds, straight rows, immaculate—a truly Pinterest-worthy garden with a cottage-core vibe—except today’s wannabe gardeners would take one look at the size of the thing and immediately load up all their brand new tools, seed, and plants and dump them at the entrance to the nearest farmers’ co-op.

I remember my Nanny and Granddaddy planting eight rows of corn, each around forty yards long.

That’s a lot of corn.

And they debated whether that would be enough.

No wonder Nanny refused to go to Six Flags with the family. Canning corn was the excuse to stay put. No Scream Machine for Nanny.

Thinking of processing all that corn is enough of a Scream Machine for me.

Sweet Husband has a better story: one year, his family grew an entire acre of pickling cucumbers for truck farming purposes. 

He’s not forbidden me from growing cucumbers, but I’ve never planted one. I love him, so I think I’ll spare him from having to look at one more. 

For the old timers, gardening was no hobby. It was a lifestyle. If they didn’t grow it, they probably weren’t going to eat it.

Families had large gardens with long rows, and it took all hands on deck to get the job done. The kids would hoe weeds, pick beans, shuck corn, and dig potatoes. 

Parents and grandparents worked alongside and hollered orders: “Don’t step on that plant! Don’t pull up that plant! Don’t hack the potatoes to pieces!”

Or maybe that was just my experience. Horticulture class with my parents as teachers was a tedious assignment, but to hear them talk about what they endured with their folks, it’s no wonder they were hard taskmasters.

A large garden meant everyone in the family had to help, for sitting under the shade tree shucking a truck bed full of Silver Queen corn took more than a single person’s effort. After the shucking would be the silking, which even the smallest children could do, and then the processing would begin. 

Women would can vegetables and then brag at Sunday morning church services about how many jars they’d put up the day before:

“I did sixty-three quarts of green beans!” Miss Ethel might say.

Then Maude would pipe up: “Well I’ve got forty-nine quarts and twenty-two pints!”

And off they’d go, trying to one-up each other, Mawmaw-style.

They had to produce for the entire family, however many mouths to feed that might be. 

The mindset was green thumb, or die. But that’s what it took to keep families of ten or more kids going. 

And well after the time when survival depended on the amount of food produced and preserved, they continued the habit.

Those are my people, and their ways don’t die easy.

I’ll not let it end with me.

My raised beds are clear once again, and I’m pleasantly surprised at the bounty of produce from plants I’d forgotten about:

I’ve got a handful of fresh green beans off two accidental plants, the seed of which was mixed in with the green peas, which are now rattling around in dried husks. I will save the pea seed for next year.

There are a few yellow cherry tomatoes, all of which sprouted from last year’s leftovers. I’ve got them trellised now.

I’ve got three pitiful pepper plants, but two of the plants had one pepper each.

My lettuce bed, which was rather overgrown, is now no more, but I’m proud that there was still some lettuce that didn’t taste the least bit bitter, as usually happens to lettuce with the intense heat and humidity of late June. I harvested the last of it and will enjoy some homegrown salads.

I’ve got some kind of a mystery plant. It had sprouted underneath the bluebird house earlier in the spring, and I had moved it to the raised bed. It is still living.

I hope it’s not a cucumber.

I’ve got my herbs. The oregano had more or less taken over, but what a beautiful plant to see in its full maturity, with its lavender-colored flowers that have kept the bees happy. After knocking back the oregano, I rediscovered my thyme, sage, and basil.

All plants got a dose of fresh soil at their base: Foxfarm Ocean Forest Potting Soil, a gift from my father that has sat beside my raised beds, a child’s playpen of a garden, for two months.

He says it’s the best, and he would know. It took me long enough to get around to using it.

Frugal and resourceful. Not wasteful.

I hope my grandparents would be proud.