Oliver: Backyard garden proved antidote during last time inflation soared

My mother was a gardener by necessity.

We lived on a 2-acre property outside McHenry during the last time inflation seemed to be the topic of the day. That was during the 1970s, when prices strained family budgets.

I remember my parents being very worried about money. My mother was always looking for ways to make her dollars stretch.

That meant growing as many vegetables as she could. It also helped that we had fruit trees on our property as well. How I remember enjoying the cherry pies she would make from the cherries I would help pick from those trees.

The vegetable garden, however, is where my mother went a little overboard. Or at least that’s how I saw it as a youngster who often was impressed into service in weeding and planting and harvesting from the nearly acre plot she cultivated.

Each spring, my father would rototill the garden so my mother would have a clean slate. She would then go out and plant row after row of seeds: corn, peas, beans, kohlrabi, lettuce, peppers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, radishes, eggplant. I can’t remember if she ever started anything from plants, although I do remember her also having fresh tomatoes. She’d even grow different varieties of potatoes.

In addition, she had a strawberry patch right next to a patch of rhubarb that would come back year after year. The pies she would make with them remain my favorite.

In the area between our lot and the cornfields behind us were wild raspberries. It took a bit of effort to get them, but Mom would send my brother and me there to harvest what we could. I still remember how hot it would be but how sweet and wonderful those berries tasted.

I still chuckle at my mother’s foray into growing kohlrabi. She didn’t know how to pronounce it, and I’m very sure that she didn’t know how to cook it either. However, my mother was always ready to try. Years later I asked a local master gardener about what part of the plant could be used and how it should be prepared. Mom didn’t get it quite right, but I now appreciate that she was willing to try. After all, she didn’t have the ability to look things up on the internet.

When it was harvest season, my brother and I often were called upon to shuck corn, shell peas and snap the ends off the beans she would bring in. In addition to weeding chores, we’d have to look for potato bugs and check under leaves to see how big the zucchini were getting to be.

As any backyard gardener knows, plants in the garden always produce more than is needed. Mom would load up the back of the station wagon with bushels of extras to give away. This was before farmers markets in the area. She probably could have done all right trying to sell what she had.

Mom also was extremely resourceful when it came to freezing, canning and otherwise trying to preserve all that bounty. We had jams and jellies, and pickled vegetables. If you could preserve it, my mother was on it.

Little did I realize then that I should have been paying more attention. To me, though, it was a chore to be endured until I had the rest of the day to myself to read a book, climb a tree or go exploring.

What a blessing it was to have so many fresh vegetables. How spoiled we were to have them fresh all season long.

I suppose that’s why I’ve never turned down someone who was willing to give me their leftover tomatoes, zucchini and squash. I know a good tomato when I taste one. I have my mother to thank for that.

No doubt, Mom would chuckle a little bit at my toe-into-the-water efforts to finally grow vegetables. I have a single tomato plant in a container and some herbs in some pots. However, I’ve already used the cilantro and varieties of basil in some recipes.

I have plans to grow more next year. Though it might take a lifetime to equal my mother’s feats of gardening.

Better late than never.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.