by Nita Frazier

Created on: August 19, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

The farm girl should know more about gardening than the city boy does. That statement sounds true, but it isn't always true.

During the first summer of their marriage, Nita and Dale bought a home located on two city blocks at the edge of town.

Nita had visions of children and home grown vegetables dancing in her head. Dale simply was pleased to be a homeowner.

Nita, the farm girl, set about laying out a garden behind the house. She planted everything: okra, squash, corn, green beans, peas, a few onions and radishes, to please Dale. She even planted a strip of carrots.

Her parents had never grown carrots on the farm. She was curious as to how carrots grew and excited by the challenge of growing something her parents had not.

She planted everything except tomatoes. Nita did not like tomatoes. Any fool, she thought, can grow tomatoes.
The seeds sprouted and soon became a proper vegetable garden.

Dale came home one afternoon from his job at the supermarket holding a flat of sorry looking tomato seedlings in his arms.
"They're dying," he said. "We can't sell them. The manager said I could have them."
Nita looked again at the plants, shook her head and hesitantly said, "I suppose we could plant them, but they're pretty far gone."

Dale beamed.He loved tomatoes.
suddenly suspicious of the joy in her new husband's eyes, Nita asked, "Is this all, one flat?'

Dale beamed again.
"Oh no," he crowed. "There's 150 plants in the back of the pickup."

"All tomatoes?" Nita dared ask.

"Yes!"

The tomato seedlings were quickly planted in an effort to save their lives, not with any intention of actually eating tomatoes.

Nita refused to cater to the tomatoes; refused to place cages around the plants. If the tomatoes thrived, they would do so with no help from her.

"Should we put some kind of wire traps over them, you know, protect them and give them support?"
Nita shot down that idea. "I've never supported a tomato in my life," she said.

The garden was watered and weeded on an as-needed basis. Even the tomatoes.

other than that, the tomatoes got no special care. No compost or fertilizer. The plants did have plenty of fresh air and hot Texas sunlight.

in due time the various vegetables were redy for harvesting.The okra, squash, corn, and green beans wee delicious and abundant, allowing Nita extra harvestings for canning and freezing.

The carrots did well, though did not produce as many carrots as Nita would have liked.

Dale nejoyed the onions and radishes.

The young couple were drowned in tomatoes. They gave tomatoes to all their friends in such abundance that they soon had no friends.

Nita hauled bucket after bucket of tomatoes to hogs being raised by a neighbor down the road.
The hog farmer thanked her profusely. The hogs greedily chomped down on the tomatoes. Clearly, the hogs liked tomatoes.

When cooler weather set in and the garden lost its fresh look Nita announced, "No more tomatoes! I will never plant another tomato in my life."

She broke that vow thirty years later when she planted a back yard garden.This garden, much smaller than that first, long ago garden, contained only Bell peppers, onions, radishes and two lonely tomato plants.
Nita has since learned to like tomatoes, though she doesn't eat many of them, averaging one tomato per year.

The god of vegetable gardens has a wicked sense of humor: Jade, two-year-old granddaughter of Nita and Dale, loves tomatoes and will ask for a tomato at every meal.

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