today on the show I want to take you back to my garden roots and share with you some of the inspiration that got me interested in gardening and I grew up in vanan over in Eastern Oklahoma so we've come over here today to look at the person who got me started gardening that is my dad Mr Les Owens we're going to take a look at his vegetable garden today hey Dad welcome to the show Good to be here Steve all right well Dad we we always grew these vegetables here and uh uh just just growing up we wer
e always out here you had uh John Mark and I working in the garden but uh when when you were growing up you guys used to grow a lot of uh vegetables down in the southern part of town down south of Ian yeah we did we were raised on a farm dad was a sharecropper and uh we raised a variety of different plants we had green beans uh corn of course the corn we raised for our own team of horses because that's what we used to farm with back in the late 40s and early 50s and uh we raised cotton purple Hu
ll peas hired the neighbors from the neighborhood to come around to pick when the Harvest was ready and uh haul the Proto to a caner and steel well or Alma depending on which one was buying whatever was in season at that time Alma over in Arkansas across the border yeah so it was really a an exciting time growing up on a farm like that and and uh we uh certainly had a large garden then because there was four of us boys at home and mother did a lot of canning raised their own meat had a Smokehous
e that we put it in and and the smell of Morton sugar cure is one of my Fondest Memories of growing up on a farm I knew we had meat in the house when you could smell that well how many how many acres uh did you guys crop down there uh we I think probably 80 to 100 acres usually was an average size that we farmed back then uh having a team of horses to work as you know you can imagine that would limit you to how much you you could raise sure that help out a little bit yeah I remember the first ye
ar dad got a tractor I think it was 1954 and he was really proud of that tractor but I think the Mars was a lot more prouder than he was okay well Dad here in uh the garden that uh we have here we of course used to have the the old old house here that we moved into when I was 3 years old and uh we had a garden out front but uh years later we we took the old house out and we built the other house and now we got a a bigger garden and I'll have to say this this Garden's a little bit bigger than I'v
e seen you put in in the last few years yeah since I've retired in November I've had a little more time to spend in the garden so I decided I would go ahead and and just completely fill up between the fences here and and of course my wife and I don't use all of it but as you can see later on I have quite a few pinto beans which we shell out in the roasting air stage and you kids and the grandkids all love them so much last year because of the drought I ran out before this crop was ready so I lik
e to have a little extra instead of running out every year all right so you got you got a lot of I've got quite a few these are uh Taylor improved horiculture dwarf horic cultures I think okay the name of them and these are just now starting to star produce when they're that size they're delicious as snap beans but and we ate them while they are small like that as snap beans and then when they do mature to the roasting year stage they'll turn a pink and striped Hull on them and then we can shell
them out and put them in the freezer and oh they're so good okay well right back here you've got some tomato plants and uh this looks like kind of an odd place to put the tomatoes did you plant these here Dad no these were volunteers uh came up we would toss our old rotten tomatoes out and this would usually what would happen I think this is a Rutgers that's coming up here oh the larger ones okay the larger one this one over here with the ones that are starting to get ripe I had the yellow par
tomaters last year but you can see undoubtedly they were a hybrid so I've getting some kind of a little red cherry tomato coming there okay there something that happens when we have some open pollination out here you you never know what uh true what you're going to get uh in the Gard Garden well right up here Dad I see you've got some uh I guess some Swiss chard yeah when didd you plant this well we planted that pretty early in the spring uh we use it just like mix it with lettuce in a salad it'
s delicious like that uh you can see a little bit of a seed in that goes a long way so I'll have to start visiting with the neighbors with a sack of that soon see who wants some Swiss chart uhuh we right up here see Dad you got uh some some young uh beans planted here and a kind of a tub of potatoes what's what's the story here this is where I had my potato crop I had three rows these are kacks and because of the late freeze they froze they had gotten up about 4 in tall and they had Frozen down
completely to the ground I thought about tilling them up but some people said leave them there they'll come out and sure enough they did and and I off the three short rows here I've got probably five bushels of KAG this is a sample of them right here okay well those are those are some nice nice looking potatoes from uh some that froze back right yeah I was afraid because of all the rain and everything that they may not keep as well but we'll see how it goes okay and on the fence here you've got
uh several buckets what what are those for d That's My Harvest buckets there I always looking for something to pick the crop in and all right I keep them handy on the fence there that's pretty convenient got some broccoli there still producing a few uh little heads and you got a lot of harvest off of that so far yes that was really good crop this year off of this packman broccoli and you can see it's about reached the end of its life so I'll move that and prepare to plant something else a little
later on okay so you're always always adding adding something else to the Garden I try to keep the spaces filled okay and you've got a few different types of onions here that you planted this year right these onions just came from right off of Walmart shelf out the little packages I've got the yellow Bermudas and some red ones or purple ones some people call them and then I had some white ones which I think we've eaten most of them I didn't get a real good stand of these sets sets is what I pla
nted this year instead of the plants I don't know if they were too dry or what but U making pretty good onions now okay they look they look great Y and as I uh look over here right before we get to the corn I see you've uh dumped some uh just some grass clippings here in the garden right and that was something I remember we weed to do quite a bit just kind of uh snuffing out the weeds and building up the soil right it builds the soil up and I use it for mulch around the tomato plants and pepper
plants too it really works good all right sure does well what kind of corn is this Dad it sure sure is looking healthy and I think it's about as high as an elephant's eye that's true this is candy corn uh you can see there's two ears on nearly all stalks and and usually it makes two good ears some I've even started three ears but two good ears is great for a crop of corn okay well I certainly remember being out in the garden Garden a lot and hoing around the the the corn and always trying to be
careful not to H down one of the one of the young plants right and Dad how come you got the the corn in a in a block instead of long rows well it gets better pollination that way um my garden is about 45 ft long here and I can plant five or six rows of corn and it's going to block out real good where I'll get good pollination and you can see down through the middle there it's got pretty good pollination all the way through sure sure those ears look like they're develop really well of course the
the male flowers up here where the the tassels drop the pollen and each grain of pollen has to uh land on a a silk on the ear here those are the female flowers to create a a kernel of corn so we need one grain of pollen for every every kernel and uh you got a nice nice stand of corn here Dad well as we we move on through the garden here we've got some more of these these beans that uh we we like so well oh yeah these are the first ones that I planted and they're getting on into a mature stage yo
u can see the rain is covered in with dirt but you can see the size of them they're Plumping up and once they start drying turning a different color pink and striped while then I'll know that they're ready to Shell out and put in the freezer and hopefully this year I'll have enough to uh last until next harvest season next year okay well Dad you've got a fence around the place to keep the rabbits out and I see you're you're even U utilizing the fence we got some some beans back here some uh some
Kentucky uh Kentucky Wonder pole bean Kentucky Wonder pole bean and we got we got cucumbers we got cantaloupes growing on the fence and just want to real quick also point out on the on the barn here you've got your your tools kind of up under the uh the overhang of the barn keeping them out of the out of the rain there and you got that that Scythe uh what do you use that for well that comes in real handy when your corn is finished and you can take that and Swang it along and just cut these stal
ks off and and same way with the bean plants the broccoli anything you know if you're going to cut it down and put it in your compost bin well that works real well okay well Dad you've uh done a really good job this year and uh got lots of picking to do and I'm sure I may get in on uh helping helping you do this a little bit do it well Dad thanks for showing us the garden and thanks for teaching me how to how to garden glad I did we hope you've enjoyed this classic from the Oklahoma gardening Va
ult remember even though these tips and techniques are Timeless there's always something new to learn in the world of gardening by subscribing to both Oklahoma gardening and okay gardening Classics you'll have access to a wealth of gardening knowledge both classic and contemporary
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