I’ve grown food for a long time. I learned a lot about home gardening from my mother who gardened because she had to, as we had little money. I also learned a lot from the neighbor next to us who was a vegetable gardener extraordinaire. Mrs. Martin came from her house in inner Detroit almost daily in growing season to garden a quarter acre plot next to our house in Warren, which borders Detroit on its north side.
Rose Martin took a bus route that required several transfers to get to Nine Mile Road and Ryan Road. Then it was a three-quarter mile walk north on Ryan to her plot. Her two sons sometimes drove her to and from her home, and they often helped on weekends. They had day jobs and families, so she did most of the work herself. My two brothers and I helped occasionally. Our house supplied any needed water as she did not have water on her plot. Most of the food Mrs. Martin grew went to her sons and families. Of course, it fed her. We got a good bit of the abundance, too.
She planted in rows and used only hand operated tools. She used either a wheel hoe, or a five-tined cultivating hoe on a long handle as her main tools for both soil prep and in her fight against weeds. She knew way back when (1950’s), that weeds were not an enemy, but they had to be managed.
A piece of advice she gave to my mother was, “Don’t worry about whether it’s too late to start a garden. I could start my garden on the Fourth of July and still harvest lots of different vegetables before winter came.
