Planting Time
I planted my garden today. Well, I call it my garden. It’s 5 buckets with tomato plants. I’ve downsized from 12. That was too much. Five is just right. I was a farmer for several years as a young man. I have a degree in agricultural economics and I loved farming. The economy and the Russian grain embargo of the early 1980s forced me out. But every spring I still get the urge to plant something. When I drive by a freshly plowed field and smell the earth, it stirs something in my soul. So I plant tomatoes. I don’t do it on the scale my grandfather did. He would grow hundreds of plants from seed in a “hotbed”. He’d start them in late February or early March and transplant them in April. He usually had close to an acre of tomatoes. He ate several every day but his greatest pleasure was giving them away. Pretty much anyone who came in his store left with a bag of tomatoes. When Daddy would go to New Orleans on tru...