The Minnesota Farm Woman

I don’t really understand how it happens. Oh, I sort of understand it. You plant the seed, it germinates with sunshine, warm soil and water, and a tiny plant emerges. With tomatoes, I start with plants, as our Minnesota Zone 3 growing season isn’t that long. When it comes to zucchini, I plant seeds. I watch and water them carefully, waiting for the first two leaves to emerge. Through June and July, I just wait. The tomato plants, healthy and robust, reached the gutters and I tied jute to their cages, attached to an S-hook on the gutter. The zucchini grew slowly but surely, with yellow flowers as big as my hand. Suddenly, and nothing short of a miracle in my humble opinion, the flowers turned to fruit. Some are dark green and smooth, while another Italian variety I tried for the first time is green with ridges and yellow stripes. I like my zucchini small, tender, and succulent, so I watched them carefully. I watched the tomatoes, also, and they are not doing as well. After their initial vigor, they have settled into what appears to be a rather mediocre year. I hear the same from other gardeners around here, too. I remember years with BUCKETS of tomatoes sitting in the breezeway and any with the slightest blemish unceremoneously tossed to the chickens, so I am hoping for a miracle. The zucchini were slow and steady, though, until last week. All of a sudden, the small tender zukes turned into monsters overnight. That’s what I don’t understand. How in the diggidy dang dickens do they grow so fast, and why don’t tomatoes do the same? Yesterday, in the cold drizzling rain that lasted all day, I checked on my plants and picked. By evening, I couldn’t help but look again and found two more of huge proportions that I SWEAR weren’t there earlier. Since the chickens are molting and don’t much care for cold drizzling rainy days, I actually got more zucchini than I did eggs yesterday, and I have 17 hens. Seventeen unproductive hens, at the moment. One tends to get a little philosophical while staring at a dozen rather large zucchini and figuring out just what in the heck to do with them. I quickly decided in that philosophical moment that I shouldn’t compare life with zucchini. Only a Crazy Woman would do that. Even though we all know that I talk to chickens and perhaps even tomatoes, I’m not there yet. By the way, the chickens told me they prefer their zucchini cooked with a bit of onion, so I’d better start chopping.