Confession here - I'm no green thumb. Gardening doesn't hold a lot of appeal to me - I don't like being outside in the summer heat and there are other ways I prefer to fill my time. Happily though, I've become an accidental farmer.
Several years ago I bought a house that came with a grape vine and a pear tree. I've done virtually nothing to either - I tried to prune the grapes with little success but that's about it. This is my kind of farming!
The other pleasant surprise garden-wise is a tomato vine that's grown outside my two-family two years in a row. We never planted it and can only guess that somehow a pizza tomato on its way to the trash barrels ended up aside the house.
There's something very satisfying about eating from your own land - especially when so little work is entailed.
Everything has come out at once - my grape vines are dripping with clusters of grapes, the pear tree - practically barren the last few years - is covered with pears (and so is the ground beneath unfortunately), and we're at a loss as to how so many tomatoes can come off of one plant. Sauce, anyone?
i'm eating as fast as I can and trying to find takers for the grapes and tomatoes. The jury is still out on the pears - my experience with pears is pretty much limited to the canned variety in that sweet syrup and truthfully I always enjoyed the canned peaches more. Picking up fallen pears had been on my to-do list and now the ground is covered with pears, half eaten by squirrels, that are now swarming with bees. Ugh! My neighbor tells me the squirrels regularly drop pears in her yard that her pot bellied pig is delighted to find when he's out for his morning constitutional.
The trend toward backyard gardens makes more and more sense to me as I munch on my harvest. The amount of fruits and vegetables that can be produced in a city garden is amazing. Our dear family friends (and blog readers!), June and Roland Despres, sent the photo you see here of Roland's plot. Roland is clearly a purposeful gardener and has the bounty to prove it. Two apple trees result in a year's worth of applesauce and they've got bumper crops of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and corn.
Outdoor exercise, money savings, and food as local as you can get - backyard gardening might just be the next big thing.
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