Renaissance Redneck: Another foray into gardening

By DAVID KITTREDGE
By David Kittredge

As the pandemic closes in, it’s probably time to circle the wagons and plan a vegetable garden for the upcoming summer.

The only hitch in my get along is that I’m one of the worst gardeners of all times. A plant lover would probably consider me to be a mass murderer considering the amount of vegetation I have destroyed, maimed or weeded accidentally during my gardening incursions.

I mean, when visitors notice the flowers growing around my property, they sometimes try to compliment me about their loveliness and I have to tell them that, “It’s not my fault, I had nothing to do with it, those flowers were here when I moved in.” My main goal since then, at times unsuccessful, was to try not to mow them down inadvertently while trying to quell my inner plant murdering tendencies. I don’t actually hate plants, it’s that I’m just a landscaping lummox, a hunchback of horticulture, lumbering to and fro weed whacking indiscriminately regardless of a plant’s breeding or social standing. But in my defense, we all know that certain plants are poisonous, thorny, or can cause severe rashes if handled improperly or eaten, so one can never be too careful.

One of the bravest men to ever have lived was Colonel Robert Johnson who publicly ate a basket of tomatoes in full view of horrified onlookers in 1820 Salem, N.J., just to prove that they weren’t poisonous. Before this, in America and norther Europe the tomato was cultivated merely for ornamental use because it is related to belladonna and nightshade, both highly poisonous plants. Here I must apologize, I have wandered into the proverbial weeds a bit, so I’ll veer back to my designated swath of good healthy vegetable gardening.

I do like to see a beautiful garden or landscape as I drive the back roads and I even slow down to gawk in admiration when I notice a particularly lush garden scape. But the thought that runs through my mind is that the people living there must spend most of their waking hours tending to the greenery. Or perhaps, the owners are raising a covey of children who are willing to help with the chores and the weeding. There may be need of the whole family working together for the common good for the next few years.

I have always been a “survival of the fittest” type rather than the “helicopter parent” type when it came to gardening, but I need to change my errant ways. I’ve always somehow found more important things to do rather than tending my weed patch, such as working for a living, fishing for hours on end, laying back in a lawn chair looking at cloud formations to discern tomorrow’s weather or just sitting idly by, twiddling my thoughts. But, being retired now I am out of good excuses, so I’m going to turn over a new layer of sod, sod it!

I do have a couple of useful gardening tips to pass on, though. My grandfather, Glenn Gardiner, that was his actual name and naturally he was a very good gardener, had a little trick to keep the deer away from his crops. Each evening he would slide a freshly used pair of work socks over a couple of stakes, one on each end of his garden. The critters steered clear of the area. This of course was a big joke in our family, as if his were the only feet that could produce socks to drive the dead from their plots. I have tried this with great success and with much pride to myself and hopefully to my forebears.

Another good trick to keep the wildlife at bay is dangling a couple of aluminum pie plates at each end of the garden. The best plates I have found to use are former holders of frozen Key lime pies, which reminds me, I need to purchase a couple of these, so that I’ll be ready and able to foil all incoming animal perpetrators. Even a mild breeze will cause the aluminum plates to move and flash the reflecting Sun or cause them to clang loudly when hitting the mounting post. Yes, they seem to work rather well I have found, or it could be that discerning animals just aren’t all that interested in munching on my weeds.