Veggie Tales

No, this isn't about the cartoon, it's worse than that. I'd like to know why we're importing tomatoes (I guess they are technically not a veggie, but I promise I'll get to the veggies later).

We started a garden this year for the first time. We threaten ourselves with growing a few veggies every year, but this is the first year we actually made the effort. It's even hard for me to call it an effort. We took about two weeks worth of mini-manure and spread it out in a 12 x 10 section of bare dirt inside the pool fence, wrapped some chicken wire around it to keep Hellmo from peeing on the plants, and called it garden.

We went to Home Despot and bought seed packs of lettuce, broccoli and zucchini. We bought 6 honeydew melon plants, 4 cherry tomato plants, a roma tomato, two yellow squash plants, a grape vine, a bean plant, and a spaghetti squash vine. We planted, watered and waited. I planted an 8 foot row of lettuce and a couple of feet of broccoli. I only planted 6 of the zucchini seeds because I figured a couple wouldn't sprout and a couple wouldn't thrive and two zucchini plants would produce plenty for the two zucchini eaters in the family.

Let it be known that today's seed packets have obviously seen some improvement in the last 3 decades. Seeds now sprout very well indeed. Perhaps there are magical properties in mini-manure, but all of those zucchini plants sprouted, as did all of the lettuce seeds and broccoli. They all thrived. All the plants we planted thrived. Our 12 x 10 garden was looking a bit cramped after about a month, but nature has a way of dealing with overcrowding.

The lettuce was almost ready to start picking a bit each day for side salads when the squirrels found them. I went out to water one morning and half the lettuce had been sheared off at ground level. The next morning there was only bare dirt where 8 feet of lettuce should have been. The zucchini, squash and tomatoes were untouched.

The melons had begun blooming and boy were we salivating. Nothing beats chilled honeydew melon. The vines were lush and lovely. Until the squirrels finished up the row of lettuce and discovered the melon vines. 3 entire melon plants gone in one night. 2 the next night, bare earth on the third day. The zucchini plants were untouched. I started contemplating rodenticide.

I forgot to mention the 6 strawberry plants I put in pots with potting soil. These strawberry plants grew, blossomed and started producing little berries. I'd placed them toward the front of the garage where they'd be protected from the lethal effects of the Aridzona sun. They got about 6 hours of morning sun but were protected from the worst. The berries started getting big and fat and pink. I was salivating again. The berries went from big and fat and pink to gone and mostly gone. Damned squirrels had found them IN THE GARAGE. The zucchinis were still untouched. I went to town and came back armed with 3 boxes of D-Con and a high powered pellet rifle. I was ticked off.

After 2 months, our garden contained 6 gigantic zucchini plants, 2 gigantic yellow squash plants, 5 gigantic tomato plants, a grape vine that is still fighting the good fight amid the choking tomatoes and zucchinis. The bean plant never did much. One bean per week is hardly a harvest. Then the rabbits discovered it and left nothing but the stalk. Rabbits don't eat zucchini either.

I'm getting about 12-15 zucchinis per week. We've only just now started getting decent yellow squash even though the plants are huge and lush. And our tomatoes are ripening. The tomato situation is about to become as frightening as the zucchini problem. We have hundreds of tiny green maters and probably 15 romas ripening. None of the tomato plants show any inclination to stop blooming so there are more coming after these. There's going to be a lot of fresh salsa, spaghetti sauce and salad fixins around here.

The zucchini wars are quite frightening really. I get on my hands and knees, pull back leaves, and search diligently for new zucchini every other day. Zucchini, however, is evil. There will always be 3 or 4 that manage to hide in the bermuda grass (when watered, mini-manure produces a better, more hearty, patch of bermuda grass than any landscape artist can install) until they weigh about 10 lbs and are bigger than Elmo. I have made two 10 lb zucchini casseroles, I've steamed it, I've baked it, I've cut it up raw on salads, I've grilled it and I have two 1 gallon freezer bags stuffed full of it in the freezer with 8 more fresh ones on the kitchen counter staring at me. I also haven't checked the plants since yesterday and I know there are more out there lurking. I can feel them watching the house, and growing. My neighbors avoid me. I'm considering mailing them to friends across the nation.

What I am forced to wonder here amid the salmonella epidemic from imported tomatoes, is why in heaven's name are we importing veggies? I have 5 tomato plants that are producing enough to handle the average tomato consumption of 3 families each week. I'm doing this with nothing more than water and magical mini-manure so it's certainly not a high cost crop. If I discover we're importing zucchini I'm going find out who is to blame and take one of these two foot long club shaped veggies and beat the fool over the head with it. I can feed 3 families DAILY with the zucchini I get out of 6 zucchini plants, more than that if one of those 10 lb casseroles is involved. I mean really. If I can supply this many veggies from a garden that is now only 3-4 feet wide and 12 feet long why are we paying for salmonella imported from Mexico?