Zen, gardening and the amazing tomatillo plant

When it comes to growing things, other than the grass in the yard, it’s usually a hit-or-miss proposition for me. A plant either grows and produces something wonderful —or it curls up, looks at me accusingly and withers into something brownish.

So far this summer (and it is, indeed summer now) the container garden Kim and I started is doing fairly well. One of our cherry tomato plants already has two tiny tomatoes formed and lots of blossoms are on their way to growing into salad fixings. Our jalapeno plant is doing much better than the bell pepper plants (red, orange and yellow peppers), which seem on the cusp of being in that second category above, although they’re staying green and trying to survive.

Most surprising is the tomatillo plant we got just for giggles, and salsa verde if it makes. It’s definitely on the way to making, too. After we transplanted it to a container, it just started growing like crazy, producing the first blooms of any of the plants, which are in the process of becoming the husks of the tomatillos.

Now that I’ve committed this to written form, it dawns on me that our container garden is a salsa garden —tomatoes, peppers, tomatilloes. Just need onion, cilantro and some lime juice.

Kim and I have tried our hand at gardening a couple of times before with varying degrees of success. After we first got married, we planted a small garden in the back yard. Fortunately, there was soil in the back yard at that location, so it could be tilled up and planted. We had the usual garden veggies then —such as tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, some beans and radishes. (I’ve loved radishes since I was knee high to a jackalope, and have discovered that eating them French-style —sliced on a small piece of buttered bread with a touch of salt —actually tastes better than it sounds.)

Where we live now, the back yard has about an inch of top soil, maybe an inch and a half, on top of the shelf rock that dominates the area. We tried a raised bed that Eli made for Kim one Mother’s Day, and that worked for a couple of years. However, we got away from planting our little garden for a while, until the urge to grow something finally became overwhelming this year.

Dad always had a garden. As far back as I can remember, Dad planted a garden each year. His thumb was so green he almost could poke a stick into the ground and it would start growing. He’d plant all the usual garden goodies and sometimes experimented with something new.

I think it was after I’d moved to Mountain Home that Dad started an asparagus bed back home, and when it began producing it went wild. Now, I’d never known Dad, or Mom, to eat asparagus until then, and they fixed it any way they could. Asparagus with cheese sauce was their favorite.

One thing about Dad’s gardens is they not only grew in terms of producing vegetables, but in size as well. When I was in college, Mom and Dad lived outside DeKalb at what was known as the Bewley Place. Dad started his garden on the east side of the house one spring, and he expanded it a bit through the season. The next year, the garden got a little bigger, and he tilled up a spot across the fence in the neighboring field to plant some cantaloupes and watermelons.

That spot grew to include additional corn, okra, beans, peas and other veggies in addition to the ones in the garden. Dad liked variety and, as noted, would try different types of vegetables. Before long, the small family garden grew into a truck patch with so much in it that even after Mom and Dad had all they wanted to eat and preserve, and after he’d shared as much as others in our family and friends wanted, there still was enough that he could put a sign out by the road welcoming folks to stop and pick what they wanted.

I didn’t get Dad’s green thumb (although Eli did) but I do understand why he enjoyed working the garden so much, even when he got home at night from working the swing shift.

Just piddling with our potted plants is quite relaxing, with a zen-like quality. Dad may not have known what zen was, but he sure could practice it in the garden.

We may not have enough in our containers to share with dozens of folks, but we will have the contentment they offer and the satisfaction of knowing we can grow our own salsa.