Fading Green Thumb

As a kid, my parents had to deal with a peculiar interest of mine: gardening. It was so rare for a 7-year-old to be an expert in gardening, it baffled the garden center employees. "Are you lost, young man?" Would infrequently come up. One such place, the local True Value Hardware store in Union, West Virginia, that we simply called Kittle's, was an exception. The folks running the store loved me and would help me learn to garden. By age 9, I was growing sunflowers that towered over me like skyscrapers, pumpkins heavier than me, and the juiciest of tomatoes anyone could ask for. Hell, I could even grow any old moldly lump-of-a-bulb Michigan Bulb could send me in the mail. Gurney's seed became a staple. In fact, ordering from catalogs was normal for me, I was far away from any meaningful garden center, Walmart was 40 minutes away, with the nearest Lowe's a whopping 2 hour trek. 

One time, I found an old book from the 1970s at the Union Public Library that discussed hybridizing garden breeds. In the back was a resource section for hundreds of specialty garden catalogs. I licked no less than 60 stamps and sent off my requests for the catalogs. What we got back was of mixed result in the 1990s. Most were unable to forward and were returned to me, rejected. Others wrote back stating that they no longer had a nursery. A couple sent me a catalog of one of the bigger-market nurseries like Spring Hill, which had acquired their assets many moons ago. I managed to plead and beg my Dad to purchase something from the catalogues, which without fail he usually, eventually, submitted a check off for the plants and they'd arrive later in the spring. 

And then magic would happen. 

If you're at all familiar with Gurney's, Michigan Bulb, Burgess, Spring Hill Nurseries and any number of "mainstream" nursey catalog companies you will know that what you get is... um. Pedestrian? At best. These bulbs are usually tiny, if not moldy and wilty, and you get to play push back with them on the items you got in a mad attempt to get something that is actually still alive when it arrives in the mail. 

Not me as a kid. 

No sir. Even the moldy tulip bulbs I could muster into a blooming April joy. Don't ask me how, I have no idea. I was able to grow anything like a champ as a kid. My Maw-Maw would often say it was because I spent so much time with the plants. 

Probably. 

Cucumbers are another crop I struggle to get to produce nowadays. As a kid, I would regularly munch on one while tending the crops. 

Because that's truly what I did. I'd spend hours in the gardens, not a weed in sight. I saw a bug, I squished it between my fingers. Gone. History. The result was something extraordinary. Be it a Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkin, squash that would deserving of a trophy, the most delicious corn, tomatoes the size of my fists, peppers the size of both fists. Flowers falling to the ground slain in blossom. Truly, a gifted child destined to grow some incredible plants. 

Then I grew up. And the plants got more difficult. 

Maybe they're ornery. Maybe I am. Whatever the case may be, the plants struggle to get to the vigor as they did back when I was a kid. This is not to say I haven't grown things of notoriety, I have, in fact, in 2021, I won the Victor Tessaro Award in vegetables at the State Fair of West Virginia. This award stands in a sea of blue, red, white and other lesser-ranked ribbons on my mantle that is quickly filling. It's just much more difficult to grow things now. In fact, the last time I grew a pumpkin worthy of carving for Halloween was when I was sixteen - born from seeds I didn't even sow directly. No sir, these vines emerged from the lattice of our patio deck the following spring after cascading to the earth below from in-between the deck treads while carving pumpkins the previous fall. 

That was the last time. 

So, what gives? It seems that this unintentional pumpkin patch that invaded our yard those many years ago was a pure outlier. I have had gardens every year and grew pumpkin plants - some reached as long at 20 feet long - but the pumpkins were always small, 8" across at maximum, and usually smaller than that. Why then, I wondered, was I able to grow them so effortlessly as a child? Maybe my memory is foggy and those pumpkins I were growing were actually smaller but whereas I was smaller, they felt amicable to a large pumpkin in my fledgling hands. 

But there's pictures. They were of "normal" size. 

I think the issue is truly, the weeds, pests, and otherwise neglect the adult life leaves on my hands in the summer. As a kid, I had most of June (and we wouldn't set the garden until early June), all of July and August to grow and nurture gardens. Today, I have 12 days of the summer, roughly, dedicated to not working or at the gym or doing family functions, where I can tend to a garden. Fading green thumb? Perhaps is just Fading Time to Hobby.