Some Mystery Plants in Our Garden

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As I previously mentioned, for the first time in nearly three decades I have planted a vegetable garden on a piece of land behind where I hold my day job. Unlike at our house, this garden gets great sunshine, has a water sprinkler easily accessible and was already tilled by another charity next door that has a much larger plot. Its director generously gave me a 12-foot by 12-foot piece.

So on a Sunday afternoon in early April, when it was obvious freezing weather would not return, I headed to the Big Box Store to purchase vegetables. I bought two varieties of tomatoes — Best Boy and cherry — four plants of each. Of course, one must grow jalapeño peppers, since no meal is complete without several slices. And the habañeros looked health, so I grabbed a couple of those as well. A couple of chili pepper plants completed the capsaicin portion of the garden.

On the next aisle, gardening mania set in. I used the Noah’s Ark approach, grabbing two of everything: squash, zucchini, cucumbers and okra. A packet of organic seed corn went into the buggy as well. I bumped into a high school classmate also perusing the produce. He offered some purple-hull pea seeds he had in his truck, left over from last year.

I had a grand time planting all my future harvest, setting cages on the tomatoes, all the while listening to NPR on the car radio. I placed the plastic triangle plant label by each plant so I would know what I planted.

After finishing, I surveyed the results with satisfaction. Each plant was surrounded with wheat straw to keep down weeds. I watered for about 30 minutes and headed home, somewhat delayed by a dead car battery, ironically caused by listening to “Car Talk” while planting. My Beautiful Mystery Companion had to come jump my vehicle.

Checking on my crop has become a daily routine. It has come along nicely in the past month. There are baby tomatoes growing on the vine, jalapeños slowly starting to ripen, stalks of corn about 18 inches high. We have been blessed with regular rains, so I have not had to water since the initial planting. I haphazardly weed, just enough to keep the plants from being choked out.

Trouble is, I am having a hard time distinguishing weeds from what I planted. A particularly heavy and windy storm scattered the little plastic plant identifiers all over the backyard. Of course, I know what tomato and pepper plants look like. But the large-leafed plants spreading along the ground with yellow flowers could be cucumbers. Or squash. Or zucchini.

In addition, there are several mystery plants growing faster than the corn. A couple of them are nearly four feet tall. They have broad leaves and a pod at top, but no flowers like the other garden plants about to sprout produce. These could possibly be mutant weeds and not vegetable-bearing plants at all. I walk out most mornings and peer at them, wondering what these mystery plants will produce, if anything.

If all that I planted bears fruit — and it looks promising — I will be giving away tomatoes by the tow sack, peppers by the pound, and cucumbers by the carton. And whatever those large mystery plants produce. Pests are chewing on some leaves but I refuse to use chemicals. If I wanted chemically treated produce, I could just go to the grocery store. I’ll cede some territory to the bugs in exchange for chemical-free veggies.

I wait patiently for the blooms on these plants to turn into vegetables, so I can determine what I planted where. This is not the most efficient form of gardening, but certainly adds an air of suspense to the process.

World Naked Gardening Day is Saturday. Its website say this is “an opportunity to pull weeds, plant flowers, and harvest vegetables while getting some sun where it doesn’t usually shine.” I will not be participating. As I said, I am generally opposed to pulling weeds, clothed or not.

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