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Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Jardine: Garden goals collapse in horse manure

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Piles of vine-ripened tomatoes that weren't picked green a month ago in Chile or Mexico.

Round, yellow cucumbers. White nectarines, juicy and sweet. Stockton red onions that bring tears to your eyes. (No, really.)

Over the years, I've come to appreciate the bounty at the local farmers markets and the farmers who grow the stuff. This year, my appreciation is even greater.

Why? Because after procrastinating for, oh, 15 years, I finally decided to plant my own garden last spring. It looked so easy. After all, I've grown basil in wine barrels for years, turning it into enough frozen sauce to make pesto all winter.

A garden? A cinch. Just prep the soil, plant the seeds or starter plants, give 'em water and get ready to harvest. I was absolutely certain I'd grow enough veggies and melons to feed the family and give some to the Gospel Mission as well.

I referred to this agricultural endeavor in a June column, and pardon my vanity for quoting myself:

"Remember the Victory Garden of World War II? I planted the Pay-Cut Garden of 2009."

The perfect spot, it seemed, was a 16-by-16-foot patch of ground near the back of our property that once served as a horse corral.

I cut down a pair of trees that blocked the afternoon sun (I had planned to get rid of them anyway) and bought some railroad ties to use as a border.

I commandeered an old Montgomery Ward rototiller my grandfather bought back in the 1960s. It is heavy, hard to maneuver and hadn't been started in two or three years. The starter cord broke on the first attempt. But once I replaced the cord, that wonderful dinosaur of American ingenuity belched to life on the fifth pull. Together, we tore the soil apart with the ferocity of tag team wrestlers pounding on their opponents' manager.

A few evenings later, my wife and I planted two rows of corn and six tomato plants. We added yellow squash, zucchini, some red peppers and an eggplant.

An acquaintance gave me some Persian melon seeds, promising they would produce the greatest fruit I'd ever eaten. They went in the ground along with some watermelon seeds.

But my pride and joy was going to be a prize-winning pumpkin. I couldn't resist the temptation of going for a world record with an Atlantic Giant — the type that grow up to 600 pounds and win the contest every year at Half Moon Bay.

It seemed plausible. The garden soil probably was 40 percent horse manure, 20 percent sand with some topsoil and decomposed pine shavings mixed in. No plant would lack for protein.

Fast forward to today.

The squash ran their course, producing about 20 good ones.

The eggplants never grew to be much bigger than baseballs. The corn? The dried-up stalks will make a good harvest display at Halloween, but that's about it. The ears had few kernels, and a raccoon feasted on most of them.

The six tomato plants combined produced about seven tomatoes, none of which looked very appetizing.

We did pick a number of red peppers, which we'll dry and use at some point.

The watermelon and Persian melons had blossoms, but bore nary a melon between them. They've died.

And my giant pumpkin? The vine was massive and took over much of the garden. One pumpkin grew quickly, reaching 10 pounds in a week or so. Then it stopped growing. It was flat on one side and the stem shriveled and dried up like the remnants of a baby's umbilical cord.

No other pumpkin grew beyond the size of a softball before dying, rotting and turning to mush.

My only success came by pure fluke. Last summer, someone must have eaten a slice of watermelon and spit a seed into a bed of decorative pea gravel. This was near the house and at least 35 yards away from the garden.