This spring I'm involved in making a garden on the spot where I first began to learn gardening, some seventy years ago. It isn't that I haven't been making garden through the years, but this is making garden on a greater scale than I have done previously. As usual, I'm thinking about how it was to make garden way back then, and noting differences as we make garden this time around. This is a joint venture with my daughter on our home farm north of Pea Ridge.
The old garden spot is itself far different from the way it was back in the 1940s. The spot we are cultivating is about half of the plot which in those years ago was devoted to our sweet corn patch.
Early on, we always had about eight rows of sweet corn, occupying the full length of the garden along the west side of the barn. Obviously the plot we are working with now is considerably smaller than the big garden of years ago. Over time, the old garden spot has been whittled down bit by bit, as the farm building projects and changes of use have taken place. Very early, in the 1940s, my Dad built a hen house on part of the old garden spot. In about 1950, we doubled its size, to accommodate a larger flock of laying hens. Then, in 1954, we built the new milk barn in a corner of the garden, and began to expand our dairy business and to sell Grade A milk on the market. Access lanes to bring the cows to the milking barn took up still more of the old garden space. After we kids grew up and left the farm, my Dad expanded the dairy herd still more, adding pole barn sheds to shelter the cows, all of which further diminished the space available for gardening. Eventually the dairy took so much of his time and effort that gardening became a small part of the farm. But Dad never gave up gardening entirely. I think seeing a garden grow was just part of enjoying life for him. The garden always supplied kind of an assurance that things are going good, and we should be OK.
This year we'll probably be putting out a much smaller variety of garden plants. We're thinking tomatoes, cantaloupes, cabbages, green and yellow peppers, potatoes and sweet corn. Maybe we can also try come carrots, onions, beets and cucumbers. We may even put up some poles for Kentucky Wonder beans. In the old days, our garden included a large potato patch, a large bean patch, a large patch of sweet corn, beds of lettuce, rows of onions, carrots, beets, cabbages and even peanuts in some years. In the upper part of the garden near the road, we used to have raspberries and huckleberries. Our garden this year will not be on that larger scale, we'll be more subdued in our ambitions.
In the early days, our team of horses was very much a part of our gardening. We would always start the gardening season by plowing or breaking the garden. That meant plowing with a moldboard plow pulled by our two horses, Old Pat and Mike. These days, we don't very often see moldboard plows. They have pretty much gone out of fashion for gardening and for farming in general. But, back then, plowing a garden, or a field, nearly always meant turning the soil with the moldboard plow. We sometimes called them turning plows or breaking plows. The idea back then was to turn under the surface debris and old plant growth, along with whatever plant cover was growing on the soil, and to turn up clean "new" soil for our garden plants to grow in. Then, once the soil was turned over, we would go over it several times with a disk or a harrow to break up the clods and form a neat, nice seedbed. As the science of soil management has developed, the old practice of burying the roughage under a 6- or 8-inch layer of topsoil has fallen out of favor. In its place has come the practice of mixing the roughage into the upper layer of the soil in a way that mimics Mother Nature's natural patterns. Enter the engine-powered roto-tiller, which will be part of my story.
Through the years, during which we lived in other parts of Arkansas and out of state, I have normally worked tiny gardens. I have been a spader, and have usually not relied on powered equipment. I have worn out a few trusty spades as the years have passed, and at times have been somewhat proud of my spade work. However, coming back to work the soil on our farm at Pea Ridge has meant getting reacquainted with rocky ground and gravelly soil. I have rediscovered that rocks and spades don't go at all well together. Trying to work the soil with a spade brings one often to resort to the old ditching pick and its sharp point to break up the ground enough to let the spade penetrate. This led me to go buy a pretty nice engine-powered rear-tine tiller. That was an investment of a few hundred, but so far it appears to be well worth the money. There are just a few downsides. For instance, when the tines hit a big rock, the unit bucks like a bronco trying to dump his rider.
I think Old Pat and my handy dandy 1940s double-shovel garden plow were easier to handle than my new tiller. Old Pat's "engine" never died under load, he could pull through anything, rocks or roots or tough grass. Normally garden tillers have about five or six horsepower -- but that doesn't mean they can do as much as five horses. A horse can work steadily at about one horsepower, but when needed, he can put out much, much more. I'm happy with my new garden tiller, but I kind of miss Old Pat and that old double-shovel.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols may be contacted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 479-621-1621.
Editorial on 04/13/2016