The Minnesota Farm Woman

Once again, it is time for my semi-annual thought provoking column about the joys and sorrows of gardening in the north.  I think about this garden all winter.  I plan where each vegetable will be planted.  I sketch it out on paper in front of a crackling fire each January, afghan over my lap to keep me warm and Chihuahua under the afghan.  I wait patiently for spring.  This year, I had to wait a little longer than usual, as Mother nature played a cruel trick on us and dumped two feet of snow on the ground in late April.  When it finally melted, my favorite garden tiller (the man, not the machine) was suffering from a bad case of the gout, so he hired a bigger stronger garden tiller (both man and machine) to get ‘er done.   There is nothing at all like putting tiny little seeds into the ground on your hands and knees, then watching the plants emerge from the soil.  Inch by inch they grow, nourished by the warm sun and gentle summer rain. Can’t you just hear the chirping of the birds overhead and the buzz of the bees?  Now for the real story:  I had a couple of busy weekends, and the weeds got away from me.  They are everywhere, and are growing like….weeds!  I can’t find my zucchini plants, and the Canadian thistle is overtaking the raspberry bed.  The mosquitoes are terrible this year, and I have lots of itchy bites to prove it. Some nasty little woodland creature ate my strawberries.  These are the same strawberries that I carefully planted and  nurtured last year and have been weeding carefully this year, noting the dozens of green berries only the week before. I am also wondering how a Farm Woman, and a full-blooded Scandinavian one at that, cannot grow a rutabaga.  Mine are always pitiful looking and this year, something is chewing on the leaves.  They look even worse than the beets, which are tiny and stunted, and I can’t even find the Swiss chard. I decided to grow only a few potatoes this year, as last year’s crop wasn’t that great and had potato bugs.  This year, they are thriving, and not a bug in sight.  There are even some “volunteer” potatoes coming up from where I had them planted last year, and they are overtaking the Brussels sprouts.  All around the garden are volunteer tomato plants, which have so far survived a 30 below winter, three feet of snow, a late spring, a tiller, and a weed-pulling rutabaga-impaired Farm Woman.  Direct-seeded tomato plants usually don’t produce anything due to the short growing season here, but I couldn’t bear to pull them up. They are small, but look like healthy plants and are blossoming already.  It will be interesting to see what kind of fruit these strong little plants will bear.