Unlike earlier generations of my family, I don’t have to depend on my home garden to feed us through the winter.
If I did we’d be looking at a hard season ahead.
We typically end the summer with several shelves of green beans in pint jars and more bags of frozen sweet corn than we can eat all winter. Not this year.
Early plantings of green beans simply drowned or failed to mature after too many weeks with wet feet. My first planting didn’t even germinate, and successive plantings produced less than stellar results — nothing like the bounty I usually enjoy.
My best-looking beans fooled me with rank greenery and few beans.
My luck with corn was no better. My first planting saw no more than 20 percent germination in my swampy soil, and subsequent plantings didn’t fare much better.
By the time my garden had dried enough to allow tilling, weeds that flourished under ample rain towered over what beans and corn had survived. Hence the moniker for this season’s “feral garden.” I know the term is generally reserved for domestic animals that have gone wild, but it’s just as fitting for flora as for fauna.
Beans and corn weren’t a total bust. We did have several messes of beans for the dinner table, but never enough to get the canner out.
As for the corn, we enjoyed what nubbins the ear worms left us, then put farmers market corn in the freezer. I can generally count on a late harvest of short season (60-65 days) corn, but drought on the heels of too much rain nixed that plan.
Other reliable crops, like Irish potatoes and onions, also came in lacking. Sweet potatoes were probably my best crop, but inconsistent in size and shape.
True to it feral nature, though, my garden provided us a half-dozen pumpkins from last year’s discarded pumpkin, and our cucumber vines and zucchini outdid all expectations (and necessity).
Perhaps the most successful of my experimental garden ventures were two varieties of purple pole beans. I planted them as novelties, but found one variety perfect for boiling with bacon ends and new potatoes. I put that in the category of “rediscovery” of vegetables our grandparents grew.
I’ve had years like this before — seasons when Mother Nature reminded me a good harvest is more up to her than my gardening wisdom.
Fortunately, in today’s world I don’t have to rely on my own garden for fresh or canned vegetables. Farmers markets and our corner grocery store can fill the gaps in our winter stores.
But they can’t replace the satisfaction of growing and eating our own food. I reckon its a matter of pride when everything on our dinner plate is raised and prepared by our own hands.
That’s who we of country stock are. I know there’s no shame in opening a can of store-bought beans, but no amount of bacon grease can make them quite the same as those my grandma and mother made — or my own in a better season.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
