When I was a kid, my grandpa had a huge garden in the back yard with vegetables ranging from the tender, spring asparagus ( which of course is a perennial ) to the abundant, bright green zucchini. Being a grandpa’s girl, I was with him all the time in the garden from start to finish and hard as I tried to be a grandma’s girl when it was time to weed, that didn’t fly.
After the very last spring snowfall, which was generally a wet one, he’d be out that garden with the rototiller, tilling that snow into the ground. He called it poor mans fertilizer, but to a garden, it’s a magic potion. He’d till it a couple of times, a day or two apart carefully checking to make sure it wasn’t to wet for planting.
Next was my favorite part of planting and a trick I still use to this day when I ” put in ” a garden…..the snap line! He’d stick his markers ( little wooden stakes ) at the end of the row and then he would pull the line to other end and eyeball that string until it was straight. Then it was time for my important job, I got to walk the row and ” snap ” the line. Seeing that blue chalk make a perfect mark in that rich black soil promised the beginning of beautiful and bountiful harvest.
Then the seeds would come out of his garden shed. Some, like radishes, beans, peas, zucchini and yellow neck squash, he would have bought at the hardware store. Others such as pumpkins, acorn squash and corn, he would have had seeds from the year before. Potatoes, he would have a bag in the basement that he would let the “eyes” grow long and scary looking, he’d cut them in quarters and in the ground they’d go.
Planting seeds was a tedious job and of course as a kid, I grew bored easily, but grandpa wouldn’t let me off the hook, we had the garden to plant! I was in charge of the beans, corn, melons and any of the bigger seeds, only 3 and you had to be able to get the hand hoe in between each hill of seeds, already he was planning the weeding process, sheesh! Gramp’s would be in charge of the teen tiny carrot and radish and the like. apparently I put in too many at one time.
Now we wait, and wait, and wait some more. Every day I would go over to grandma and grandpa’s and search the soil for the first sprouts to come up. I loved the asparagus patch where I could search around for the green shoots hidden among the rhubarb and strawberries. They could be picked when they were just the perfect height and thickness. If the heads started to ” flower ” out, we’d leave them be so they could go to seed to keep the patch producing for years to come. At a certain point in the early summer, when they started getting ” woody ” we’d quit picking and watched at they grew, sometimes as tall as me.
When the main garden started to get a beautiful green hue to it, I knew the plants were shooting up out of their sleep and stretching towards the sun and would now grow by leaps and bounds, this of course also meant it was time to weed. In the beginning grandpa would do it because the sprouts were so young and delicate, he didn’t want me pulling any of them out accidently when I pulled the weeds around them.
By this time we’d already had the tomatoes and peppers that had been started in the greenhouse, planted and were being supported by the wire cages allowing them to entwine their vines around the metal and keep their fruit up and off the ground.
The rest of the summer was busy with weeding, thinning out the rows so the strong plants could thrive and produce their yummy goodness, weeding, picking the peas was great if we could get enough of them into the kitchen for dinner, weeding, running through the rows of corn and weeding some more.
Suddenly the crops were coming in faster than we could eat so we began to can and freeze. Canning is one of my favorite things to do in the late summer and early fall. I love the look of those clear jars filled with their glistening colors and ready to be enjoyed all winter long.
The squashes always seemed to never end, grandma made them every which way, up an down, then mom would come up with another way to make them. We had them fried, sautéed, stewed, in soups and casseroles, breads and cakes. I’ve found myself making new and different things with them as well and this SUMMER SQUASH SPAGHETTI is one of our favorites.
This is simple to make and served up with some well buttered garlic bread and fresh green salad you’ve got a wonderful delicious dinner.
SUMMER SQUASH SPAGHETTI
