Plant Gardens and Eat What They Produce

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce."
Jeremiah 29:5 NIV

Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes

My grandfather's garden was the first garden I remember. It grew in long, lush rows and produced many things, I'm sure, but I only recall the tomatoes and pole beans. North Georgia soil must have the perfect blend of nutrients for tomatoes because no other tomatoes have ever matched them in taste. They were brightly flavored with firm flesh that held up well in sandwiches, cooking, and canning. He produced so many, he always sent us back home to Tampa with jars of tomato juice and canned tomatoes, which my mother used to make homemade spaghetti sauce and Grandmama's Swiss steak. I can still recall the aroma of those simmering sauces.

It's no surprise that I always wanted a tomato garden of my own. My husband, whose own grandparents had vegetable gardens and citrus groves, got 5 gallon buckets and put them in our sandy soiled backyard. He filled them with nutrient enriched soil and planted young plants from The Home Depot. We had moderate success, but the tomatoes were small and the plants didn't produce as many as I would have liked. After a couple of tries, we gave up on tomatoes and he moved on to peppers and I moved along to herb gardening.

Louisiana Garden 2012

Then came our move in 2008 to north-central Louisiana where a thin layer of top soil sits upon the hardest clay we've ever encountered. If we get storms with high winds and lots of rain, entire trees topple over because their root systems can't get a grip. However, our new backyard was huge compared to our old one, and it cried out for a garden. With determination, my husband, Randy, bought lumber and built three raised beds, then he bought soil from a nearby nursery and filled them up. Finally, we hit Lowe's and bought tomatoes, of course, green peppers, squash, pole beans and cucumbers and stuck those puppies in that dirt...in February. So...after a couple of late February/early March freezes, we replanted those beds one more time. By mid summer we began to harvest our crops - a few cucumbers here, a few peppers and tomatoes there. Unfortunately, we didn't plant enough of anything to do more than get a small basketful of produce at any given time. The fruit that season wasn't of the eating kind but rather of the learning kind. We gained knowledge about what to grow and when to grow it. We determined which plants needed more sun and which needed more water each day. We planned for the next spring while the lessons were fresh in our heads, and waited patiently until the time came to plant again and apply our new strategies.

Over the past three years of gardening, we've determined several things:  squash grows poorly, okra grows well. Purple hull peas produce in abundance, while pole bean plants are stingy in their offerings. Collards flourish, lettuce really can grow when you plant it in the correct season, and harvesting potatoes is as joyful as finding brightly colored eggs at an Easter hunt. And tomatoes? Well, let's just say I won't be canning them and sending them back home with my children when they come to visit. I can send home pickled beets and a variety of pickles, and I can serve up a mean salad, complete with banana peppers and chocolate cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden.

Pickled Beets










                                              Mustard Pickles

I love God's instruction to plant gardens and eat what they produce! Maybe my future grandchildren will cherish memories of their grandfather and grandmother's garden and try their hands at growing gardens of their own.