Ramble On

Monday, August 1, 2011

Mary's Truck Patch

I was awakened at 7am Saturday to the squeak-squeak-squeak of Mary turning the spigot to water her truck patch.  I usually don't hear this sound - I get up earlier to walk the dog, and by the time this watering chore gets going on most days I am down in the basement faithfully posting here.

This morning, Mary was quite chipper as she came back in the house.  She'd worked over the cherry tomatoes and proclaimed that she might set up over at the farmers market today.  I've got a photo of much of the take from her truck patch - this is all since Thursday night.

Here's also a look at the patch.  I'm guessing it takes up a spot that is 6x15 feet along the western fence of the Alexandria yard.  As you can see, there's yellow squash, eggplant, cherry and traditional tomatoes, peppers...and the okra there, which was a late addition, a gift from Herb. 

Herb also gave her about three dozen perfect, baseball sized tomatoes from his garden, which she ended up sharing with our neighbors.  Although on Thursday night, Mary sliced one up and we enjoyed it as a featured item on a BLT.

The patch is still going strong, although the heat and drought it taking its toll on the plants...I'll post again with progress.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Jim, it's Christine. Can you explain the origin of "truck patch." Because, until the photo, I was imagining that Mary had her garden in a truck. Guess I'm a city girl.

Unknown said...

Technically, Mary's garden is not a truck patch. The term refers to a small garden (but usually much larger than the one we have) where the grower produces produce crops for the market. The families usually had a personal garden for their own vegetables. In essence, I have promoted Mary from personal or hobby farming to direct market farming by calling her vegetable plot a truck patch.