By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
I hope you are all ready to go to the East Texas Artists and Sculpture Garden Tour this Saturday and Sunday. If you are reading this Thursday afternoon or Friday, it is not too late to get your tickets at the early bird price of $25. But if you are reading this Saturday morning, you can just show up at the James and Barbara Stewart Residence in Bridgepointe or Malakoff Community Center, the Bartlett House, or Joe Surls Memorial Garden and buy your ticket at the gate. It will cost you $35, but will certainly be worth every cent.
I’ve think by now everybody knows the details, but if somehow you’ve missed it, go to www.malakofftexas.com, or call me at 903-681-2880 and I’ll tell you all about it.
I’ve finally been working in my garden, I’m happy to say. I have planted tomatoes, squash, eggplants, onions, peppers. And I’ve made a little herb garden outside my back door.
I went to the seminar on square foot gardening, and bought all the stuff it takes to do that, then decided that my garden dirt isn’t too bad, and I certainly have a lot of it, so if I just mixed all that good stuff I bought with it, I could stretch my good stuff a whole lot further, and if it had a box around it, I could keep track of things better. So I got some help and now have one big long box in my garden, containing most of the vegetables I just told you about, though some onions and most of the tomatoes are out on their own. Some of the tomatoes are doing wonderful. I got some help with some post hole diggers, and was able to plant some of them the way Donald Hughes plants his. He digs a really deep hole, puts some fertilizer in the bottom, covers it with some dirt, then plants the tomato, nearly up to its neck in that hole. Those I did that way are looking fantastic.
Now I want another box to plant more stuff in it, but I don’t know where to put it. I don’t want to disturb the lambsquarters. Mama told me some people eat that stuff, but we never did. Then I read how healthy it is—it is one of the most nutrient-filled green there is. One year I ordered seeds and tried to grow it, but with almost no luck. Last year it came up in the garden, and while I used some of it in my green smoothies, I never got serious about using it. But since I knew it was nutritious and I ought to be using it, I kept letting it grow. It took over the garden, choking out other plants. Some monstrous sized bushes of it grew, with roots too deep for me to pull up.
Finally we got it up in the fall and tilled the garden. Again this spring we tilled. And then it started coming up again, millions and millions of tiny lambsquarters. And it grows quick. It wants to take over.
But this year I’m welcoming and using it. I just go weed my onions and I have greens for supper or for my green smoothies. It tastes great. Donna Rinn comes and gets it, and so does my daughter Liz when she gets around to it. Luckily, I’ve got the best blender for veggie smoothies.
I never have been able to grow spinach, but this weed is every bit as good, there it is, a garden full of it. I’ve got to not let it take over everything, but I also need to let some of it make seed for next year. I’ve finally found something I can really grow. I’ll bet Donald Hughes couldn’t grow better lambsquarters than mine. I’ve got to hang on to this stuff.
Let me know if you’d like to try some, of if you’d like me to save you some seed.