By KAREN MADORIN
Growing vegetables and flowers in Western Kansas requires hope comparable to a child’s faith in Santa Claus. Those who believe harvest scores of succulent vegetables and fruits. Each spring gardeners across this region devour seed catalogues and visit garden stores to build a gambler’s hope that this year will deliver untold riches.
Nearly two decades ago, eleven years after relocating to a limestone hilltop, my best tomato payday arrived. Yes, Virginia, the garden produced a bonanza. A combination of beneficent rains and aged chicken poop produced 2008’s dream harvest--despite hail that totaled our roof and left tender tomato plants shattered. Ignoring that set back, our vines moved into overdrive by the end of July, a few weeks later than they would have without Mother Nature’s taunts. Produce is an understatement. Our plants burgeoned with softball-size, sunbeam-flavored fruits.
The dilemma--we had a small raised-bed to compensate for thin topsoil. Considering previous harvests, I thought I left ample room between seedlings, permitting them to reach maximum capacity and still leave room for a picker to harvest ripe tomatoes. That year’s substantial rains and cured chicken droppings induced unbelievable growth. I couldn’t move through my garden without contorting into pretzel-like forms.
That year’s plants topped four and half high by four and a half feet wide--a minimal estimate since huge orbs weighed down thick stems. I couldn’t tell when one plant’s branches left off and another’s began because they’d intertwined like ivy.
When my mother visited, her very short form permitted her to discover scores of ready-to-pick tomatoes close to the ground. Other than digging potato hills, I don’t think Mom loved anything more than finding every last ripe tomato on eight crowded, over-grown plants. She manifested as a tomato General Patton standing straight-backed outside the garden fence, directing placement of my feet and hands until I had plucked every ripe trophy.
“More to the left, down a few more inches--don’t step too hard with your right foot—stretch--can you see it-- look--there’s a great big one on the other side of that plant--watch out, you’re bending that branch--can you get all four of those and pass them to me?” I was performing garden “Twister.” I maneuvered until I barely kept my balance. At least in real Twister, you don’t have to worry about destroying a healthy tomato plant. The worst you can do is bruise a fellow player.
Afraid to move for fear I would shear a fruit-loaded branch or dislodge tomatoes too green to ripen on their own; nervous perspiration dripped from my forehead onto my glasses. Enough moisture fell, it obscured my vision, adding to my tortured misery.
By the time I followed Mom’s directions to find every ready-to-pick fruit, we filled a five-gallon bucket two days in a row. Lugging our plunder into the house, we rinsed, blanched, peeled, and quartered until I’d stuffed six one-gallon baggies full of ready-to-turn-into-salsa treasure.
It took time to recover from that spine-twisting garden game, but I love remembering the heft of repeatedly lifting the jar-filled canner from a hot stove. Though a burden, I’d do it in a heartbeat if Mother Nature saw fit to deliver another premier tomato harvest, and Mom could come back to life to direct the action.