Might I Have a Bit of Earth To Douse With Purple Rain?

The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog came the other day and I licked the cover.  NO, not really.  (I only smooched it and rubbed it over my torso.)  (NO!  Not really.)

What I'm trying to say is that it came and I was very, very happy and immediately set about reading it and stroking it and calling it George.   And once I had looked at it twice over, I got down to the nitty gritty and began picking out my seeds for next year.

My yearly "gonna plant a garden and it'll be goooooood" resolutions have been...uh...disappointing the last couple of years.  A wilt destroyed my tomatoes the year before last and we were fricking infested with brown widows last year.  I mean...it was creepy.  And, yes, I know they don't bite often and their bites aren't fatal and pretty much everybody should run out and get a few for pets like those people who wind up being eaten by their "pet" tigers.

What?

I DON'T LIKE THOSE THINGS.

Anyway, this year, Will is trying so hard to be supportive and is actually evincing eagerness to plant a big garden and get the kids involved and that helps, like, a bunch.  It is also very romantic, because my husband would live on beer sausages and cheese in a can if he could.  He'd be gouty, but he'd be happy.  So when he says, "Oh, yeah, I definitely think you should plant four or five types of tomatoes," I pretty much want to jump him right then and there.  I'm just being honest.  You call it "planning out the garden."  I call it "foreplay."  (Have I said too much?)

I went through the catalog looking for varieties specifically suited for the South, or--even better--traditionally grown in Georgia.  "Cherokee Trail of Tears" beans and "Cherokee Purple" tomatoes will join a squash called "Candy Roster-North Georgia" (I'm going to try this winter squash with a certain trepidation, as the acorn and butternut squash Heath gave me that he grew had a texture that made me want to cut out my own teeth and mail them to him, demanding a refund on the dry, thready, barforoodley squash) and a watermelon called--wait for it--"Stone Mountain!"  (How cool is that?)  Of course, I'm also going to be growing French varieties of melon (grown by one T. Jefferson at Monticello...if T.J. thinks it's groovy, so do I...well, except for slavery...I'm not okay with that) and carrots and cucumbers and some Chinese long beans.  I also seem to be growing a lot of purple stuff.

There's the tomato, aforementioned, and also a variety of cauliflower, a tomatillo, some popcorn, and, of course, the beloved (by Southerners, y'all) purple-hulled, pink-eyed pea.  It's like I'm trying to grow a garden to lure Prince down here.  Which...isn't the WORST idea I've ever had.  Nothing like chilling out  in the backyard after a long day of pulling weeds with a cold beer and a serenade by a sexy MF playing his purple guitar.  I assume.

Why, you might be asking, is it necessary to plant THIRTY-FIVE varieties of fruits and vegetables?  Well, it's not NECESSARY.  I suppose.  I mean, I guess that we could continue whittling down our vegetable choices to a few hardy, easy-to-ship, less than tasty specimens, but...why?  If I have the time and the will and the money and the land to do it, why wouldn't I encourage my children and friemily to enjoy as many of the wonderful tastes that Mother Nature has thoughtfully provided us?

Oh.  Yeah.  Land.  See, here's the thing:  I don't really have the square footage to grow all of this stuff.  I have a nice-sized garden off my back patio that grows all the herbs and greens and tomatoes and green beans and onions that my family can eat during the week.  BUT things like corn and popcorn and lima beans and field peas require a lot of space to produce enough...er...produce to store for the winter.  A stalk of corn yields one--two if you're really lucky--ears of corn, which is enough for one serving per person.  If you plan on eating a lot of corn (a reliable vegetable/starch in our house), you need to plant a lot of corn.  The variety of lima I'm planning on getting (Dixie Speckled Butterpea, in case you were wondering) has a high yield BUT you only get four or five beans (butterpeas, whathaveyou) per pod, so one plant yields enough for one serving at a time (generally.)  Ergo, you need to plant a lot of them.  The tomato varieties I'm growing are all fairly high yield (Cherokee purple isn't, actually, but I MUST have it), and so one or two in the house garden are fine, but if I want to can tomatoes as sauces and stews and salsas, I need to grow at LEAST ten or fifteen plants to make it worth my time and money.

This isn't possible in the backyard, as we want to keep it as a recreational haven for friemily, butI have an idea that if I can find some pictures of pretty vegetable gardens, I might convince Will to let me turn some of our (mostly unused and probably 1/4 of an acre) front yard into a tomato patch.  (In fact, I'm totally pinning some on my "How My Garden Should Grow" board at Pinterest right now!)  Of course, there's a lot to be done prior to that:  the brown widows that LURV the front yard and porch must be dealt with.  I'm getting an organic spray today when I do my errands.  (It smells like lemons and mothballs at the same time, but it kills the spiders, so...yay!)  And we'd have to rearrange our walkway and put in paths and then there would be tilling and rooting and manuring and composting and....) But I think it could be doable.

However, I'm concerned that this STILL wouldn't yield enough of the food we actually eat.  My kids (and hubs) don't eat things like eggplant (at all) or peppers (except when diced so fine they're practically mush), so while I could move some things like tomatoes and herbs to the front for prettiness' sake, I'd still need room for corn and peas and beans (and squash and melons, which need room to roam if they're going to produce.)  So I'm thinking about sharecropping.  I am totally serious.  Nothing in Dingleberry is more than five miles away from itself and surely to goodness there must be SOMEBODY out there willing to give a girl a bit of earth in which she can grow some corn.  (Ten points AND a jar of cream-style corn if you know where that quote comes from.)  So, Dingleberrians, if you know anybody with some yard or land they're willing to share for a cut of the produce, I'm looking to sharecrop.  It needs to have sun and access to water.  I'll take care of the rest.  Just shoot me an email, mkay?  Mkay.

And now, lovies, I must go and ship some picture CDs to folks.  (Those seeds don't pay for themselves...yet.)  Local peeps, don't forget the Valentine's special going on at Heather Ray Photography (not local peeps, don't forget it either...heh).   Have good Tuesdays!