Our Gardens and Orchard

Since we counted on our gardens and orchard to supply a big portion of our food in the 1930s, we Baird kids learned to plant and weed and pick at an early age. Working in the garden was a family affair.

The Vegetable Garden Our big vegetable garden was just south of the garage and measured about 100 feet by 70 feet. It was fenced all around to keep the chickens out. It was fertilized with a generous coating of chicken manure before it was plowed each spring and it produced abundant crops.

In the spring of 1931 Mother wrote in her diary that we had received 700 plants from a Texas nursery and that we had finished planting them by lantern light. The plants in the order were: 200 cabbages, 200 tomatoes, 200 onions, 50 cauliflower and 50 peppers. In addition to these purchased plants and big permanent asparagus and rhubarb beds, we always planted lots of other vegetables from seed each year--lettuce, radishes, carrots, beets, peas, green beans, wax beans, turnips, parsnips, salsify, etc. Many years later Mother said that we didn’t know about zucchinis back then or we would have planted them.

In addition to the vegetables, we always planted some annual flowers, particularly zinnias and marigolds, and a few basic herb plants, such as sage and peppermint. And in one section there were always some “volunteer” (seeds that sprouted from last year’s crop) little yellow pear tomatoes that Mother made into wonderful yellow tomato preserves.

Just beyond the west garden fence was a nice row of old-fashioned rose bushes that Aunt Nannie said--in her great book--that she planted when she still lived there. And just outside the south garden fence—along the lane-- were dozens of gaily-colored hollyhocks that re-seeded themselves each year.

The “Truck Patch” This was our second garden. Mother supervised the vegetable garden, with major help from us kids, but Dad handled the truck patch--again with help from the kids.

The main feature of the truck patch was the three long rows of raspberry bushes: there were black raspberries along the west fence, red raspberries in a strip down the middle and yellow raspberries along the east fence. Between the permanent raspberry rows there were two sections, each about thirty feet wide, that were plowed up each year and planted to mostly “viney” things, like cantaloupe, watermelons, squash, cucumbers, and things like that. Dad raised great cantaloupes and often had some pretty good success with watermelons-- a feat that I was never able to duplicate. I’ve had a number of gardens that I was proud of--but I’ve never had any success at all with watermelons, so I gave up on them years ago. (On the other hand, I usually raise much bigger, better onions than we grew on the farm.)

The “Cow Patch” This is another example of Dad’s “fanciful” names--it is really a contraction for “the truck patch out by the cow barn.” Dad converted a former hog lot into a third garden where he raised potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and winter squash.

One year he decided to raise strawberries when he found a bargain on 500 “Everbearing” strawberry plants. He set them out in five long rows and then assigned a particular row to each of his five children to weed and take care of. (Mary Grace was only about four years old at the time, so Dad promised to “help her” with her assigned row.) We started off with quite a bit of enthusiasm and dreams of a bumper crop of delicious strawberries, but our zeal wavered after a short time. It was a particularly dry spring and tending our row involved carrying buckets of water from the windmill and pouring a cup of water on each plant. This helped the weeds grow like crazy, but didn’t seem to do much for the rather sad-looking strawberry plants. We got a few strawberries--mostly from Donald’s row and mine--but it was hardly worth the effort. We tried again the next year, on a much smaller scale, with straw around each plant to help hold the moisture and keep down the weeds, but with only limited success--and that was the last year we tried raising strawberries.

Although we had three big gardens, we never raised any sweet corn. Dad believed that if you took ears of regular field corn at exactly the right stage of development they would taste just a good as sweet corn. And Dad was very good at picking just the right “milk stage”, so we enjoyed lots of good fresh corn in season and always canned corn to enjoy the rest of the year.

Mother’s Flower Garden Wrapped around the north and west sides of the kitchen was a really nice flower garden that was Mother’s pride and joy. It was literally a garden of solace for her; when she felt weary and overwhelmed she often took a minute to gaze out the window at her flowers or to take five minutes for a short walk among her beloved plants. She said these short breaks always “pepped me up.”

Most of Mother’s plants were perennials along with some favorite annuals, planned so that there were lots of blossoms from early spring to late fall. Back in those days essentially all perennials came from sharing bulbs or cuttings from relatives and neighbors, rather buying from a catalogue or garden center. I can still hear Mother saying something like, “That yellow iris is from Mina Pasley and these lovely blue ones are from Nell Snapp.”

Mother was especially proud of her bleeding-heart plant with its delicate pink, heart-shaped blossoms, which she considered rare. Every fall she assigned one of us the job of putting a burlap bag (with the bottom cut out) around the plant and carefully filling it with leaves for mulch to protect the plant from freezing weather.

The Orchard We had a big orchard of almost an acre filled with lots of apple trees, a few peach and cherry trees and a mulberry tree in the north corner along the road. How the Baird boys (and the birds) loved those mulberries—partly because this was the first fruit to ripen in the spring. I haven’t had a rhubarb-mulberry pie in over fifty years, but I sure remember how good they tasted when I was a boy.

Many of the apple varieties we had are no longer available. The one I remember most was the Yellow Transparent. These apples ripened early—by mid-July, about the time for threshing oats—so we really enjoyed those first apples. Other now “forgotten” varieties include Roman Beauty, Winesap, Maiden’s Blush and Northern Spy.