Small Space Gardening

Photo by Jerry Apps.

Don’t have enough room for a vegetable garden? Too old to garden? I’ve heard these comments many times over the years. Let me begin by saying, you are never too old to garden. My father was gardening when he was 92, and never once did I hear him say he was too old to do it. And you don’t need a lot of space for a garden.

An example that I have in my backyard is pictured above and it is four feet, by eight feet. It is also a raised garden so I don’t have to bend over to tend it and harvest the vegetables. My son-in-law, Paul built it. It’s about four feet high, with a three-foot fence on top to keep out the pesky rabbits. Once the framework was up, we put a layer of gravel on the bottom and then filled the space with soil from my compost pile, along with a few bags of topsoil.

So far this spring, I have planted radishes, lettuce, and peas. When it warms up, I’ll plant beans close to the fence so they can climb it, and likewise, I’ll plant cucumbers that can climb the fence. I may even sneak in a couple of zucchini plants, plant a few beets, and a few onions. There are no rows, although I tend to keep the various vegetables separated from each other. I’ll keep you posted as to how my little garden does this summer.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Remember the Victory gardens from WWII? A garden need not take up much space.

UPCOMING EVENTS;

April 30, 11:45-12:30, Larry Meiller Show, Wisconsin Public Radio.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS AND DVDS.
Read about my gardening adventures in GARDEN WISDOM, (Wisconsin Historical Society Press).
It is available from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby and visit Dregne’s.. They have a great selection of my books for sale, or order a book by calling them at 1-877-634-4414. Or visit your local bookstore.

Remembering Earth Day: April 22

This book by Sheila Terman Cohen is a brief biography of Gaylord Nelson.

With all the bad news, I remember what happened 50 years ago that for me was uplifting and forward-looking. The year was 1970. The previous fall I had written my first book, THE LAND STILL LIVES, and my publisher and I asked Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin U.S. Senator at the time, to write a foreword to my book, which he graciously did. (The LAND STILL LIVES has recently been re-published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.)

I was teaching at the UW-Madison at the time. I was in the audience on the evening of April 21. 1970 when Senator Nelson introduced the idea of Earth Day, which would be celebrated on April 22. The gathering was at the Stock Pavilion on the Ag. Campus—and it was packed with people.

Here is a bit of what he wrote in the introduction to my book: “Today, the crisis of our environment is the biggest challenge facing mankind. To meet it will call for reshaping our values, to quality on a par with quantity as a goal of American Life.

“It will require sweeping changes in our institutions, national standards for goods we produce, a humanizing of our technology, and close attention to the problem of our expanding population.

“Most of all it will require that people assert their right to a decent environment that they evolve an ecological ethic of understanding and respect for the bonds between people and their planet.

This is what Senator Nelson said 50 years ago, and can be said today.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:. Sometimes it’s important to be reminded of something that happened a long time ago, which is still vitally important today.

Both THE LAND STILL LIVES and GAYLORD NELSON: CHAMPION FOR OUR EARTH are available from your local booksellers.

Gardening, A Happier Thought

My 2019 garden in mid-season. Photo by Jerry Apps

As the bad news continues and the number of those captured by the COVID-19 virus goes up and the number employed goes down, it’s easy to feel nothing but gloom and doom.
I’m switching to happier thoughts and our family garden quickly comes to mind. I remember helping my mother in our big farm garden back when I was maybe four or five years old and I have worked in a garden almost every year since. About the only time when I missed gardening was the time when I was in the army. We’ve grown a vegetable garden at Roshara, our Waushara County farm for more than 50 years—never missing a year.

A couple of years ago, my kids gave me a special folding lawn chair, with the words on the back “Senior Supervisor.” Steve and Natasha have taken on most of the work, enlisting Sue and Paul on occasion, especially during the times when the weeds seem to be winning.

I planted tomato seeds a couple of weeks ago and they are up and thriving under my grow-light. I ordered seeds back in February, and yesterday I spread them out on the dining room table—radishes, peas, rutabagas, lettuce, kale, sweet corn, zucchini, beets, winter squash, pumpkins, carrots, bush beans. Natasha has been rounding up seed potatoes, both white and red, plus onion sets. I will buy cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprout plants for setting out.

So we are ready for another gardening season with all of its challenges and surprises—every garden season is different, which is one of the joys of growing a garden.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Not only does a garden provide fresh vegetables for the table, but it also nourishes the soul.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

April 15, 10:00 a.m. I will be reading from my book TENTS, TIGERS AND THE RINGLING BROTHERS live on the Wisconsin Historical Society Press’s Facebook page. Tune in.
You can also go to the Wisconsin Historical Society Press’s Facebook page and see me reading my children’s picture book EAT RUTABAGAS, which was aired on March 25.

.WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS AND DVDS.

Read about my gardening adventures in GARDEN WISDOM, (Wisconsin Historical Society Press).

It is available from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby and visit Dregne’s.. They have a great selection of my books for sale, or order a book by calling them at 1-877-634-4414. Or call your local bookstore.

Remembering Good Times

Remembering the good times. Photo by Jerry Apps

During these difficult times, when companies and people are divided into essential and nonessential, when we are ordered to stay home, except for grocery runs, when the TV news is bad news, from beginning to end, when some dairy farmers are asked to dump their milk, it is easy to fall into a deep funk.

What I’ve been doing lately is keep up with the news, but then I try to think brighter thoughts. On these warming days in April, my mind goes back to when I was 14 or 15 years old, sitting on our Farmall H tractor pulling a tandem disk and smoothing a 20-field that will become our oat field. I can smell the newly turned soil, I see birds flitting in the fence rows, and even scare up a rabbit or two as I make my way back and forth across the field, the warm sun on my back and a feeling of accomplishment as the winter-weary field is once more brought alive.

I think of my family and the good times we have together, especially when we gather for a week each year at a lake near Waupaca. Not different from many families these days, one grandson is in San Diego, another in Gunnison, Colorado, one in Boulder, Colorado, one in Denver. A son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Avon Colorado, great grandboys and their parents in Minneapolis, two kids, and their spouses live in Madison. What a wonderful time we have when we are all together.

These are some of my thoughts today—they help me keep going when the road ahead is foggy and more than a little frightening.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: During cloudy days, think of those that were sunny.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

April 15, 10:00 a.m. I will be reading from my book TENTS, TIGERS AND THE RINGLING BROTHERS live on the Wisconsin Historical Society Press’s Facebook page. Tune in.
You can also go to the Wisconsin Historical Society Press’s Facebook page and see me reading my children’s picture book EAT RUTABAGAS, which was aired on March 25.

.WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS AND DVDS.
Read about life on the farm in my book EVERY FARM TELLS A STORY..(Wisconsin Historical Society Press).
It is available from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby and visit Dregne’s.. They have a great selection of my books for sale, or order a book by calling them at 1-877-634-4414. Or visit your local bookstore.