My Life in the Little Brown House, part 23: Vegetable Garden

To the west of the playhouse and south of the barn was the vegetable garden, a rather large area. It was large enough in area to warrant it being plowed by Uncle Carl, using a team of horses and a walking plow. I suppose he would do the plowing on the same trip as when he plowed the garden Grandmother’s house sometime in the spring of the year. After we had moved to the farm I remember a trip into town to Grandmother’s, taking in the walking plow on the spring wagon behind Barney and Birdie. After I had arrived Uncle Carl drove in from his work on the farm to do the plowing. The walking plow, as its name implies, is a plow that is operated by the user walking behind it — he doesn’t ride as on a sulky plow. The plow has two long handles extending back from the plowshare that are grasped by the operator, both for directing the plow and to a lesser degree for keeping it in the ground. The latter is mostly generated by the characteristic of the shape of the plow slade and the moldboard. The reins from the horses loop back and around the user, who will release his grip on the handles to pull on the reins as needed to direct the horses. Plowing, either with the walking plow or with the tractor is something I never did; I believe Vincent did however on occasion. I always had the feeling that Uncle Carl somewhat doubted my capability for doing some work, such as plowing.











Walking plow














Walking plow in use

The two main food items grown in the garden from the standpoint of the area occupied were potatoes and sweet corn. Potatoes were usually planted early, and the “new” succulent potatoes would be available by, say, the end of June. Often they would coincide with the ripening peas, and one of the seasonal delights was creamed new potatoes and peas. The potatoes would be relatively small so they would not be halved, but whole little ellipsoids. Sweet corn was planted later but would also come mid-summer and would last for some time; typically there would be several plantings to stretch out the time of availability. Other vegetables which were grown were radishes, lettuce, carrots, peas, string beans, acorn squash, pumpkins. Perhaps cabbage but I’m not sure. My grandmother included spinach in her garden — it was one of her favorites — but I can’t recall my mother ever growing it. After the sweet corn ears had been harvested my father would cut down the stalks, which were still green and juicy at that stage and feed them to the cow, who ate them with gusto.

The one perennial in the garden was rhubarb which, at least for me, was a favorite fruit (or vegetable, depending on the definition). For awhile my parents had a few gooseberry bushes but I guess they weren’t too productive, or too troublesome to prepare so they disappeared after while. There may also have been strawberries but I’m not at all sure about them.

There were several cherry trees, at various places in the yard west of the house and some apple trees along the north side of the driveway. The cherries were supplemented by those from Grandmother’s garden which seemed to be more productive. I really don’t remember how well the apple trees produced. I remember on at least one occasion the family making a visit to an orchard near Fort Dodge having U-pick apples. Both cherries and apples (at either our home, Grandmother’s, or for that matter, on the Peterson farm after the move there) were never pruned; I think with some attention along that line they might have been more productive. Along the east fence of the pasture there was a volunteer mulberry tree and the berries were picked sometimes; mulberries were never one of my favorites as there is no way of conveniently detaching the stems from them — you either ate them, stems and all, or not at all. There may have been a few blackberry bushes somewhere but they were a minor addition to the fruits at most.



















Mulberries