"Strarbries"

I'm a friend , fellow worshipper at St. Stephen the First Martyr Orthodox Church, and gardening buddy. Maria has invited me to write on this blog about my gardening. I hope you can "glean" something from it. I'm Dianne Combs, and I can't wait for the snow and ice to melt here in west central Indiana. My nails have been clean way too long...
My gardening roots go way back to the patch of garden behind my granddad's row house in King's Lynn, England. These roots also extend out into the fields my nana worked before, during, and after WWII in the Norfolk countryside. Having a garden was not a choice then, it was dig, plant, weed, pick, or starve. I remember visiting there and helping to dig up potatoes and boiling them up with new peas, served with fresh mint. I wonder if Granddad thought of our visit when he was digging and planting those potatoes. I have heard numerous stories throughout my life about the hard life my grandparents lived, as working class people in England. They worked the fields, picking "strarbries" for chits, or tokens, which were then changed into coin. The Norfolk soil is so dark and fresh, ripe for two or three crops a year, one crop of greens, followed by another. I'm sure she picked broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, brussel sprouts, and strawberries until her fingers bled and her back ached, but yet she picked until she could take home enough money to feed the electric meter inside the front door, to put wood in the fire, and to feed her children. I'm sure that every time we ate "strarbries" as children, my mother told us these stories, to make us appreciate what we had as American children. I remember my mother taking us to a strawberry patch on County Line Road, east of Greenwood, IN, to pick until the bowls, and we, were full. I don't remember, but I'm sure my mother's eyes were full of tears, remembering her home, and her mother, and that other garden, so far away.
I'm sure she also had no idea that she was passing along a genetic predisposition to garden as she dug up the small patch behind the garage on Pleasant Run Dr. She was so pleased to start her own garden, with all the seeds and fertilizer she bought. She wished later that she had read the label on the bag better, as she spread what she thought was ferilizer onto her newly tilled ground. She found out after the first rain that she had spread a bag of cement, not useful for the cultivation of lettuce, 'taters, and strawberries.
I was given a small spot next to the back door for my gardening bit. My sister had the other spot. Guess which one had actual flowers growing in it. To this day, my sister can barely put fingers into a pot of dirt, while I don't think I'm done for the day unless the water in the shower runs brown.
I knew I had full blown gardener genes when we moved to the country right after our marriage, and I had Bill out digging up a garden before we had moved in. I remember asking my mother to help me weed the strawberries when I was newly pregnant with my oldest two years later. It was bend over, weed, puke, bend over, weed, puke. But we ate strawberries that year!
This child was to come to me three years later with lettuce in one hand and broccoli in the other, proclaiming proudly, "Look , mommy , salad!"
We have moved from that place, back into town. I made sure that we had enough space for a garden. I have been building the soil with leaves, compost, neighbor's garden and yard detritus, buckets of manure from the in-town horse stables, and my own piles of garden and kitchen waste. I dug up perennials from my 16 year-old garden and moved them by the shovelful to my new yard, not yet turned for garden space. I worked around them, and now have a huge front garden, full of iris, daylilies, lavender, hydrangeas, loads of other stuff. Come by and see it, bring a shovel , some stuff already needs dividing.
The first summer we lived here, I planted tomatoes in amongst the flowers in the front. My neighbor threw a fit--"nobody plants veggies in the front yard!" Well, she changed her tune after I started feeding her those tomatoes. I also grow strawberries(see the theme here? I LOVE them), potatoes, onions, and sweet potatoes in the front yard. Most people don't even see them. Unfortunately, the groundhog from the barn cellar knows where they are.
In the backyard, which is shadier, and clay-ier because of foundation soil dumping, I have successfully grown perennials like concord grapes, thornless black raspberries, asparagus, black and red currants, gooseberries, and , of course, strawberries. Last year I attempted red raspberries, but the lack of rain killed them. Apple trees are still a fight between me and the deer. I think I'm losing that one.
This year, my husband has already smirked at me when he caught me looking at the Gurney's catalog, while ice and snow piled up in the yard. I'm sure I'll grow potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, radishes, sweet potatoes, maybe some snowpeas, (peas are very labor intensive, so grow snowpeas, no shelling), and spinach. Spinach is good for growing in the flower garden, along with lettuce, as they grow fast, and are not easily lost in weeds in an accessible flowerbed.
Gardening is just a way of life for me and my family. I can already see that Robbie, my 16 year-old, has the bug. He came to us as a 6 year-old from Kazakhstan, and the spring before he came for a 6 week visit in the summer of 2001, I planted beets for whatever child was coming to stay with us. The first week here, he had picked them all and was so proud to have a Little Tykes wheelbarrow full of beets! Now I can get him to dig up potatoes, pick berries, haul loads of "stuff" out of the van and onto the compost heap. My children help to pick the flowers that fill the vases at church, and they help to tend the church garden. They know that they can contribute with hard work, not just money to the upkeep and beauty of God's temple.
If you are contemplating starting a garden this year, and you have never done it before, talk to your neighbors, your family, friends, ask the old guys at the market stalls what they do for bugs, how they water, whatever. I have learned so much just by asking people. Call me, I'll show you how to dig up a garden, I might even let you run the tiller. I also have a fence you can paint...
Dianne, dirt and all.