Remember how in WWII we all had to have victory gardens? What am I saying, of course you remember it. They sound neat (and patriotic to boot) but they were just vegetable gardens you used so grocery produce could go to the soldiers. Like liberty cabbage and freedom fries. They were useless and ineffectual, just like real gardens.
I’m here to tell you gardens are bullshit. Don’t try to grow one. Not even a little indoor hydroponic herb garden. They aren’t worth it. Not for all the work you got to put in and the crappy results you get. Leave it to the farmers to grow your vegetables and fruit — they know what they’re doing.
You aren’t going to get nice uniformed carrots and peppers. You’re going to get weird misshapen ones with three different points and gorby slants. You might say “ooh, but that’s part of their charm” until you try to use them. How are you supposed to peel and cut a carrot that’s got three legs and is wider than it is long?
And everything is the wrong size. You get a huge beet next to a tiny one. None of the onions get to a normal size because the rain’s washed away the dirt from the tops. The zucchini has to be picked on just the right day or it balloons up and becomes 50% seeds. The pumpkins and squash do well, but that’s because they spread and take over the whole garden. They grow through the fence, they stop other plants from getting sun. If you touch one of the leaves you get a rash. Then half of them rot anyway and now you’ve got to pick up a gross smelly mushy pumpkin full of grubs and throw it away.
And everything becomes ready at one time. You spend months on your tomatoes, feeding and watering them and keeping the rabbits away and the stems off the ground. Then they all ripen at once and you’ve got three barrels of tomatoes you’ve got to do something with immediately or they become wasted.
Same with the apple tree. It’s got so many apples it’s now at a 45-degree angle (so we’re going to have to get rid of that too — it’s the second time we had to get rid of a fruit tree because it fell over). Now we’ve got so many apples we’re giving them away. Apple pies, apple crumbles, apple crisps, applesauce. It’s not that I’m sick of apples, it’s that I now hate them.
And fresher doesn’t mean better. The carrots are harder and aren’t as sweet. The lettuce is bitter as hell — not even worth putting in a hamburger. The peppers are long and thin, not stout and thick. The tomatoes keep breaking or get rotty on the bottom. Beans, if they’re left too long, get woody. None of it tastes as good as store-bought.
And the weather! Don’t get me started on weather and gardens. You can’t plant anything at the right time because ground’s too cold in Minnesota. So that limits you to about five things. Then every summer is a drought. And if it’s not a drought you live somewhere where everywhere gets rain except you. And if the problem’s not enough water, it’s too much water. The tomatoes get so ripe they break and go bad. How did we ever get out of the agricultural age without tearing our hair out?
And the pests. We’ve had to deal with burrowing hornets, wasps, rabbits, deer. Not to mention the weeds. They spread everywhere so it looks like your garden’s been taken over by plant zombies. And these aren’t normal stick-up weeds either. I’d be happy for that kind, but these glue to the ground and spread in a circle. So you got to pinch them out, and they break anyway.
To stop the animal kingdom from eating our harvest, we had to put up a fence. Only that fence was too low, and the bunnies just hopped over it. So we had to tear that out and put up a higher fence. Only that one, the holes were too big and the bunnies slipped through. So we had to build a third fence around the second fence. Now to get into the garden you’ve got to kick higher than the Rockettes or you’ll trip.
It’s bad enough every year, for Mother’s Day, I have to till. What this means is that I get my shovel and break my back digging up the entire garden, then refilling it with… itself. Over and over. And it seems to do jack shit for results.
Now I know what you’re all about to tell me. You’re about to give me tips and advice and instructions on how to fix all these problems. Let me stop you right there. I’m going to tell you why nothing you say will help. It’s because anything–ANYTHING–you tell me is going to equate to one thing and one thing only: more work. I am already putting forth the maximum amount of effort that I’m willing to for this garden. Anything above that falls under the category of “not worth it”.
My dog doesn’t need this much maintenance and it’s much more complex a being. The dog just needs a bowl of water, a bowl of food, and then being let outdoors to get rid of the excess water and food. A plant is like “I do nothing. But leave me alone for two days and I’ll go haywire.”
Besides there’s nothing in my garden that’s better than what I can buy at the grocery store. If the produce I produce can’t outshine the grocery store, then my time is better spent elsewhere. I’m glad we’re getting rid of it this year, filling it in with grass. It’ll be a hell of a lot easier to mow around.
