Summer Peaches

When I was five, the lady next door passed away. Her relatives took what they wanted from the house, but set her old cast iron cook stove outdoors under an old peach tree and the house set abandoned for years. That ancient stove became a playhouse for me and my six year old neighbor, Betty. The lot was securely fenced and my mother could watch us from our kitchen window.

That year my mother cleaned out her spice cabinets because of pantry moths, and put the tins of herbs and spices outside. I knew many of the spices because of their fragrance and considered these tins of seasonings a rare find for our make believe kitchen in the neighbor’s yard.

I carted the spices next door and arranged them in the warming oven above the cook top. Since both of us children were just beginning to read, it didn’t occur to us to use alphabetic order, but instead, we put them in the order of our favorite smells and the foods we would make believe we were using them in.

I liked cinnamon, so that was first, followed by stick cinnamon, allspice and cloves. Nutmeg followed, then mint leaves, oregano, marjoram and thyme. Parsley had no smell at all, nor did the bay leaf, and neither Betty nor I liked the smells of fennel, fenugreek or celery seed, so those were relegated to the last place on the shelf.

I had watched my mother make pickles that year and Betty and I found an old crock in the left over household items and pushed it up beside the stove. The peach tree over the stove was full of still green, late summer peaches and we began picking them for our pickle crock. We added rainwater to the crock as the peaches filled the space, much like my mother had done when making her delicious seven day sweet cucumber pickles earlier that year.

After what I determined to be enough time for the “pickles” to be ready, Betty and I decided to can the pickles, just as both of our mothers had done with their pickles. Fortunately, the old garden shed not far from the antique stove had boxes of old, blue canning jars and lots of zinc canning lids. We chose pint sized jars, which were easier for our small hands than the quart and half gallon jars were.

On our “canning” day, we put the fruit jars in the oven to sterilize them. Never mind there was no fire in the stove, this was make believe. We “baked” the jars and used big, fuzzy leaves of the mullein plant for our hot pads to remove the jars and set them on the stove. We then filled each jar with our peaches from the old stone crock, adding the make believe brine, as well. Then to each jar I added a pinch of allspice, one of cinnamon, one of cloves, and then, because Betty thought it looked nice, we added a bay leaf and a stick of cinnamon. We screwed on the lids and set them in rows across the top of the cast iron stove.

Mother, who was certainly watching the two busy children out the window came over to investigate. “Look Mother, we’ve made pickled peaches!” I said with excitement. I removed the lid of one jar for her to smell the wonderful, spicy fragrance.

Mother looked over our work and said, “You two have really worked hard. These are beautiful pickles and you’ve filled each jar to the top.” Then she said, “You realize, don’t you, these are not to be eaten?”

Oh, yes, we knew that, we were just playing make believe. We were going to turn our attention from our kitchen to making it a restaurant and serve even more things. Since we were the only children our age in our little town, the restaurant clientele would be our pets and Betty’s dolls.

I think back to that summer and what pleasure we got from Mom’s discarded herb and spice tins. I learned since that cleaning out the spice cabinet is a good thing to do once a year. Herbs like parsley, celery leaves, bay and chives, lose three fourths of their flavor after about nine months. Stronger spices like cinnamon, cloves and allspice, are good for about eighteen months. Refreshing the jars of all those things on a regular basis insures their best flavors. But one summer, with old spices, two small children had a great deal of fun, thanks to my mother’s housecleaning of her spice cabinet.

Readers questions and comments are always welcome at Longcreekherbs@yahoo.com. Visit Jim’s blog to see what he grows: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com.

Fairy Hats, Fairy Corners

My grandfather plowed his garden each spring with a team of horses and a plow. Walking behind the team, he’d guide them as they slowly turned over the sandy soil of his west central Missouri farm.

He had grown up using the moldboard plow and as long as he gardened, he never used anything else to turn the soil. My grandpa was born in a sod house in what became the state of Kansas and lived there with his family until he was about 10 years old.

My ancestors moved West with the expansion of the country, arriving in the Virginia territory in 1647, from England. As the family grew and sons moved off to start their own farms, each new homestead followed many of the habits and customs of the family. They planted corn and grew gardens, and they passed along the customs of their ancestors. One of those early English customs they brought with them was to leave the corners of the garden untended, for “the wee folks.”

I remember asking my grandfather the year before my grandmother died when I was five, just why he didn’t plow the corners of the garden. Granddad blushed and looked embarrassed. He hesitated, then simply said, “The team can’t turn a square corner and the plow won’t reach there.”

It made sense because I had watched him plow the garden and it was true the horses couldn’t reach the corners. And because the corners were never plowed, certain plants always grew there.

You’d see larkspurs and poppies, hollyhocks, four o’clocks, bachelor’s buttons, coreopsis, winter onion, catnip, horehound and many others. And once I started watching Grandpa & Grandma’s garden corners, I soon realized that most farms in our area had the same kind of corners with the same plants growing in them.

It was only when I moved to southern Missouri as an adult that I learned there was more to the story. One day I was visiting with a pharmacist-apothecary friend about plants and gardens and mentioned how my grandfather used to leave the corners of the garden.

My friend smiled and said, “Yes. Fairy gardens.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He explained that it’s a custom across the Ozarks and used to be common across much of the Midwest. English, Irish, Scottish and other immigrants brought the custom from the old country of leaving the corners of the garden for the fairies. It was believed that the fairies needed a place to live, a place that was safe from the family dog and somewhere to rest in the heat of the day.

People thought that it was the fairies who tended the plants and encouraged them. They were the ones who called in the butterflies and bees when it was time to pollinate the flowers.
The fairies lived on nectar from the flowers, they drank dewdrops from the lady’s mantle “cups” (the leaves, which are bowl shaped and which collect dew in early morning; that dew,because of the reflectiveness of the leaves, looks like diamonds in early morning).
It was the fairies who taught the pole beans which way to twine up the strings, and they were the ones who showed the sunflowers which direction to look each morning before the sun came up. And you know the fairies have been working during the night, because the next morning, you find their little caps, where they forgot them, on top of the perennial onion flowers.

It all made sense to me when my pharmacist friend explained the customs he had grown up with. I realized why my grandfather had looked so embarrassed at my question when I was five. He’d simply been embarrassed to try to explain something he didn’t totally believe, but still practiced because it was family custom. Such “oddities,” as he termed them, always embarrassed him.

What the fairy corners accomplish is providing a place for beneficial insects. Lady bugs, beneficial wasps that attack aphids on tomatoes, praying mantis, which lay their eggs to over-winter on old plant stalks, all of those rely on the fairy corners for space.

I continue to observe this custom that came down to me through our family by leaving fairy corners in my own garden. I no longer plow my garden because I switched to raised beds twenty five years ago and have gravel pathways between them. But I have found that having a fairy corner is helpful for many reasons.

First, it’s attractive. The poppies, larkspur, hollyhocks and other flowers give a continuing splash of color for the first two months of the garden season. The plants reseed themselves, requiring little care and come up each spring at the right time (which is helpful for anyone who has had difficulty getting poppies to grow and bloom).

Next, it is on those perpetual plants where I find the praying mantis nests each year. It’s where the lady bugs hatch out and spread into the garden and where birds and garden spiders hang out, keeping balance in the garden. Tachinid flies, that are parasites on other insects, along with ground beetle, lacewings and other beneficial insects find comfort and safety in the fairy corner, as well.

The fairy corners provide a reliable display of flowers each spring. There’s a balance between the taller and the shorter plants and because they grow where the seeds drop, there is no transplant shock. And the fairy corner also gives a permanent space for the cool season herbs to reseed themselves, always coming up at the right time. It was in these corners that my grandmother grew dill, and it was where the catnip and horehound, both perennials, also grew.
Some of these plants sprout and begin growing in late fall or early winter, while others, such as dill, cilantro and poppies, will emerge from the ground in January or February. And because you won’t be disturbing the soil or the bed where they are growing, will grow on in their natural cycle and bloom better than when planted at your convenience rather than theirs.

If you would like to have a fairy garden, here’s how to begin. Find a corner of the garden that can be left alone. No plowing or digging is done after the first planting. I sometimes mulch mine to hold moisture, but even then I use only a light mulch in order that the seeds that fall from the plants can find the soil.

In the fall of the year, after a couple of good frosts, begin scattering seed into lightly raked or loosened soil, then rake the area lightly again after planting so that the seeds are nearly covered. It takes about two years or longer to get a fairy corner established, simply because some plants such as hollyhocks, bloom the second year after planting. But others, like poppies and larkspurs, bloom the spring after a fall planting.

You can simply put seed of all of any or all of the following mixture into a bowl and stir them together before planting. This will give you a better fairy garden then trying to plant individual plants in tight little rows. (Fairies don’t like rows, they like “relaxed” plantings. And if you plant in rows, I promise you, they'll mix them up). Choose from these, or mix them all, for a well rounded fairy corner:
Larkspur, doubles, singles, mixed colors
Poppies, any of the annuals, such as Icelandic, old fashioned bread poppies and others.
Hollyhocks, any of the old fashioned heirloom varieties.
Four o’clocks
Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) which was first grown in England around 1570 and has folk names like “Jack in Prison” and “Love entangle.”
Dill
Bachelor’s buttons
Sweet rocket, Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis), which attracts several beneficial insects including Japanese beetle parasites
Golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) which attracts lacewings, hoverflies, tachinids and others.
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which attracts butterflies
Bee balm (Monarda sp.), which attracts butterflies, beneficial wasps and others

The fairy corner will create a haven for beneficial insects as well as attracting butterflies and birds. By planting your mixture of seeds, some in the fall, some in the spring, you will soon be providing space for the fairies, and the beneficial insects and your garden will thrive. The splash of color will attract your neighbors to look over the fence, and soon your fairy garden will be perpetually taking care of itself. Add a birdbath (the fairies like that, too), and your fairy corner will be following a tradition that’s been passed down through many generations of gardens.

Watch for fairy hats on your onion blossoms, you'll discover the fairies do a great job of tending the garden while you sleep, but they are awfully forgetful where they leave their hats.

Happy gardening!

Fairy Hats, Fairy Corners

My grandfather plowed his garden each spring with a team of horses and a plow. Walking behind the team, he’d guide them as they slowly turned over the sandy soil of his west central Missouri farm.

He had grown up using the moldboard plow and as long as he gardened, he never used anything else to turn the soil. My grandpa was born in a sod house in what became the state of Kansas and lived there with his family until he was about 10 years old.

My ancestors moved West with the expansion of the country, arriving in the Virginia territory in 1647, from England. As the family grew and sons moved off to start their own farms, each new homestead followed many of the habits and customs of the family. They planted corn and grew gardens, and they passed along the customs of their ancestors. One of those early English customs they brought with them was to leave the corners of the garden untended, for “the wee folks.”

I remember asking my grandfather the year before my grandmother died when I was five, just why he didn’t plow the corners of the garden. Granddad blushed and looked embarrassed. He hesitated, then simply said, “The team can’t turn a square corner and the plow won’t reach there.”

It made sense because I had watched him plow the garden and it was true the horses couldn’t reach the corners. And because the corners were never plowed, certain plants always grew there.

You’d see larkspurs and poppies, hollyhocks, four o’clocks, bachelor’s buttons, coreopsis, winter onion, catnip, horehound and many others. And once I started watching Grandpa & Grandma’s garden corners, I soon realized that most farms in our area had the same kind of corners with the same plants growing in them.

It was only when I moved to southern Missouri as an adult that I learned there was more to the story. One day I was visiting with a pharmacist-apothecary friend about plants and gardens and mentioned how my grandfather used to leave the corners of the garden.

My friend smiled and said, “Yes. Fairy gardens.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He explained that it’s a custom across the Ozarks and used to be common across much of the Midwest. English, Irish, Scottish and other immigrants brought the custom from the old country of leaving the corners of the garden for the fairies. It was believed that the fairies needed a place to live, a place that was safe from the family dog and somewhere to rest in the heat of the day.

People thought that it was the fairies who tended the plants and encouraged them. They were the ones who called in the butterflies and bees when it was time to pollinate the flowers.
The fairies lived on nectar from the flowers, they drank dewdrops from the lady’s mantle “cups” (the leaves, which are bowl shaped and which collect dew in early morning; that dew,because of the reflectiveness of the leaves, looks like diamonds in early morning).
It was the fairies who taught the pole beans which way to twine up the strings, and they were the ones who showed the sunflowers which direction to look each morning before the sun came up. And you know the fairies have been working during the night, because the next morning, you find their little caps, where they forgot them, on top of the perennial onion flowers.

It all made sense to me when my pharmacist friend explained the customs he had grown up with. I realized why my grandfather had looked so embarrassed at my question when I was five. He’d simply been embarrassed to try to explain something he didn’t totally believe, but still practiced because it was family custom. Such “oddities,” as he termed them, always embarrassed him.

What the fairy corners accomplish is providing a place for beneficial insects. Lady bugs, beneficial wasps that attack aphids on tomatoes, praying mantis, which lay their eggs to over-winter on old plant stalks, all of those rely on the fairy corners for space.

I continue to observe this custom that came down to me through our family by leaving fairy corners in my own garden. I no longer plow my garden because I switched to raised beds twenty five years ago and have gravel pathways between them. But I have found that having a fairy corner is helpful for many reasons.

First, it’s attractive. The poppies, larkspur, hollyhocks and other flowers give a continuing splash of color for the first two months of the garden season. The plants reseed themselves, requiring little care and come up each spring at the right time (which is helpful for anyone who has had difficulty getting poppies to grow and bloom).

Next, it is on those perpetual plants where I find the praying mantis nests each year. It’s where the lady bugs hatch out and spread into the garden and where birds and garden spiders hang out, keeping balance in the garden. Tachinid flies, that are parasites on other insects, along with ground beetle, lacewings and other beneficial insects find comfort and safety in the fairy corner, as well.

The fairy corners provide a reliable display of flowers each spring. There’s a balance between the taller and the shorter plants and because they grow where the seeds drop, there is no transplant shock. And the fairy corner also gives a permanent space for the cool season herbs to reseed themselves, always coming up at the right time. It was in these corners that my grandmother grew dill, and it was where the catnip and horehound, both perennials, also grew.
Some of these plants sprout and begin growing in late fall or early winter, while others, such as dill, cilantro and poppies, will emerge from the ground in January or February. And because you won’t be disturbing the soil or the bed where they are growing, will grow on in their natural cycle and bloom better than when planted at your convenience rather than theirs.

If you would like to have a fairy garden, here’s how to begin. Find a corner of the garden that can be left alone. No plowing or digging is done after the first planting. I sometimes mulch mine to hold moisture, but even then I use only a light mulch in order that the seeds that fall from the plants can find the soil.

In the fall of the year, after a couple of good frosts, begin scattering seed into lightly raked or loosened soil, then rake the area lightly again after planting so that the seeds are nearly covered. It takes about two years or longer to get a fairy corner established, simply because some plants such as hollyhocks, bloom the second year after planting. But others, like poppies and larkspurs, bloom the spring after a fall planting.

You can simply put seed of all of any or all of the following mixture into a bowl and stir them together before planting. This will give you a better fairy garden then trying to plant individual plants in tight little rows. (Fairies don’t like rows, they like “relaxed” plantings. And if you plant in rows, I promise you, they'll mix them up). Choose from these, or mix them all, for a well rounded fairy corner:
Larkspur, doubles, singles, mixed colors
Poppies, any of the annuals, such as Icelandic, old fashioned bread poppies and others.
Hollyhocks, any of the old fashioned heirloom varieties.
Four o’clocks
Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) which was first grown in England around 1570 and has folk names like “Jack in Prison” and “Love entangle.”
Dill
Bachelor’s buttons
Sweet rocket, Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis), which attracts several beneficial insects including Japanese beetle parasites
Golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) which attracts lacewings, hoverflies, tachinids and others.
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which attracts butterflies
Bee balm (Monarda sp.), which attracts butterflies, beneficial wasps and others

The fairy corner will create a haven for beneficial insects as well as attracting butterflies and birds. By planting your mixture of seeds, some in the fall, some in the spring, you will soon be providing space for the fairies, and the beneficial insects and your garden will thrive. The splash of color will attract your neighbors to look over the fence, and soon your fairy garden will be perpetually taking care of itself. Add a birdbath (the fairies like that, too), and your fairy corner will be following a tradition that’s been passed down through many generations of gardens.

Watch for fairy hats on your onion blossoms, you'll discover the fairies do a great job of tending the garden while you sleep, but they are awfully forgetful where they leave their hats.

Happy gardening!

Don't Mow Bulb Foliage

Ozarks Gardening May 15, 2009
Jim Long

Don’t Mow the Bulb Foliage!

I’ve noticed as I get older I like mowing the lawn more than I did just a few years ago. Evidently getting older causes me to find the lawnmower increasingly appealing. Over the past thirty years on my farm I have pushed the boundaries of mowing farther and farther into the woods. I blaze trails between the walnut trees with the mower, I’ve opened up little meadows where new stands of wildflowers have sprung up. And over the years I’ve also noticed in local retirement areas, when men retire from a lifetime of corporate work, they turn to the lawnmower for something they can still control. Apparently no longer responsible for lots of employees, no longer looking after the day to day working structure, it is to the lawn the retirees turn. It’s their new territory, their new domain and they can totally dominate the greenery with a powerful lawnmower. That’s just my observation and I think I may be fitting into that category myself.

One of the pitfalls of being lord over a patch of green lawn is an inclination to mow everything down that doesn’t seem essential. Recently I’ve been noticing lots of retirement age men on riding lawnmowers, mowing down the irises, the yellowing daffodil leaves and the aging tulip tops. To someone who is used to overseeing the structure of a business, it probably seems logical that since the flowers have bloomed on those plants, then it’s time to get rid of the leftovers and move on to other things.

The fact is, those yellowing tulip leaves, the frazzled and not very attractive daffodil foliage, actually serve an important purpose. Think of it this way - spring bulbs have just one chance to have a meal. The foliage after blooming is there because the bulbs need to store up enough strength for ten months until it’s time to bloom again. If the foliage is cut back shortly after blooming, year after year, the bulbs will quit producing flowers. Leave the foliage alone until it turns brown and shrivels up. Once the foliage is dead, the bulbs have stored up enough energy for next year and you can mow down whatever is left of the tops. But avoid the urge to mow the foliage while it is still partly green and give the bulbs a chance to have their last meal of the year.

Right now, while you can still see where your bulbs are, and as they leaves die down, is a great time to divide the bulbs. Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and similar spring bulbs, all benefit greatly by being dug up and divided every three or four years. Mix in some bone meal or bulb fertilizer in the soil and spread the bulbs farther apart. You’ll have considerably more blooms in the coming years by doing so.

Iris, on the other hand, should be dug and divided in late August or September. You can tie a ribbon on the colors you want to move, but let the foliage grow all summer long. Then divide the clumps, laying them shallowly in the soil, adding bone meal, late in the summer. But don’t mow iris leaves now, it practically ensures sparse blooming next season.
Readers have asked so here’s the formula once again for stopping the bothersome bugs that riddle the leaves on hollyhocks and keep them from blooming well. Start spraying now, repeating weekly as the hollyhocks put up shoots and begin to bloom. Don’t spray in the heat of the day (which is true of most any kind of spraying).

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 Tablespoon canola oil or horticultural oil
1/2 teaspoon of dish soap
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 gallon water

Mix the ingredients, pour into a sprayer, shake thoroughly, and spray the tops and bottoms of the hollyhock leaves.
Check what’s happening in my garden this week at http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com/. Happy gardening!

A Gardener's Loss - Update

Update on my gardening friend, Ester, 12-6-08. She's holding up pretty well, missing lots of things from the house, of course. She lost all her houseplants including a very elegant aloe plant she'd had for 20 years. A few fans of this blog have sent contributions to the account (listed below). Any help, especially contributions of checks, going for building materials, are all greatly appreciated by the family. Thank you for thinking of them during this cold winter season. Jim

Ester Shouse is a lifelong friend and an avid gardener. Her late husband, Roy, took me fishing, taught me how to hunt for ducks, and many other outdoor things, when my father didn't have the time when I was a kid. I grew up with Ester and Roy's 9 children, we swam together, fished and hunted together. The kids, 7 of them still living, are all grown, some with children of their own. But Ester's house has remained the central part of this large family's world. Three of the boys, Richard, the oldest, Roy Jr. and Fred, the youngest, all lived at home and drove back and forth to Lees Summit, MO to work.

Ester, now 80, told me last year she had to slow down somewhat with her gardening. She had planted 500 cabbage plants and 200 tomato plants each spring for the past 50 years but this past year she had cut back to only 200 cabbages and 100 tomato plants. "I just can't do that much any more," she said. And nearly all of the produce, plus corn, beans, peas and other things, was all canned, or frozen for their 5 large deep freezes. That, plus the several deer, fish, squirrels and ducks the boys got, was a major part of their food.

I spent a great deal of time in my growing up years at the Shouse's house. When I turned 16 and bought my first 1950 Chevy car (bought with the $75 I'd made raising pigs when I was 13), I would often stop by Ester's house late at night before heading home from a date. There was always something cooking in a pot on the stove and I knew I was welcome to have some. It was Ester who taught me to eat hot peppers and it is to her I give credit to my love for those. My own mother made great chili, but it was Ester's chili that brought tears to my eyes and sweat to my brow. Whatever their household had, it was happily shared and I was always treated like one of the family.

A few days before Thanksgiving in the middle of the night, Ester's house burned. She was upstairs in her bedroom. A grandson, Byron (just back from Iraq) and his wife, Vickie were in another bedroom and Ester's sons, Richard, and Fred were sleeping in their bedroom. Roy Jr. was downstairs sleeping on the couch and it was he who yelled out the alarm that the house was burning.

All got out alive, thankfully. Roy escaped with his billfold and jeans, but suffered serious smoke inhalation and he was airlifted to a hospital in Kansas City. Byron and Vickie didn't even have time to get their clothes, nor did Fred or Richard. Car keys, false teeth, glasses, clothes, all were left behind because the house went up in just mere seconds. Ester's hair was singed, but suffered no physical injuries.

I'm posting some photos here, of Ester and son, Richard, in front of what was left of their old and very modest house. There's a photo of some of the boys sifting through the debris to find anything like car keys or coins. I took a photo of the canning - Ester had canned 157 quarts of tomatoes during the summer and I have no idea how much sauerkraut. The canning sets eerily on some newly built metal shelves that Fred had installed last year in the basement.

If anyone reading this post feels moved to help, the address follows at the bottom of this posting. They don't need clothes or household items, neighbors have been bringing those. Co-w0rkers where Richard, Roy and Fred work took up a collection and bought boots, jeans, etc. What they will need most is cash, to try and rebuild a house for Ester. It won't be the old two story place where everyone congregated, but it also won't have stairs where Ester might fall (she's fallen twice in the past year and broken the same arm, falling down some rickety old stairs from the kitchen). A new house will be built. Pete is a carpenter and cabinet maker; Roy and Fred are welders; all of the boys are hard working and so labor will not be a problem. But buying the materials will be a challenge. There was no insurance on the house.

Somehow out of the ashes another house will arise. This is an amazing family, a family I have been a part of for my lifetime. Not just connected by gardening, but in so many other ways, too. If you want to help, there's an account set up in Ester Shouse's name at the Security Bank of Rich Hill, at Rockville (MO), 320 West Osage Ave., Rockville, MO 64780. (You can barely find Rockville on a map of Missouri; it's in West Central Missouri, near Nevada, Appleton City and Clinton, Missouri. It's a tiny village of about 200 people, a very poor area. Once a thriving town with a railroad and a farming economy, there's not much left any more).

Thank you for any help you can give. Know that your gift is a welcome and badly needed donation to a gardening family who have lost everything and have to start over from scratch.

Chili Suppers at a One Room School

The Ozarks Herbalist
for The Ozarks Mountaineer
Jim Long

Chili Suppers

It’s funny how the smell of something can bring back a memory long forgotten. You can pass by a person while walking down the street and catch a whiff of perfume or cologne and immediately flash back to the memory of your first date in high school, long ago.

The smell of chili powder does that for me, not remind me of a date, but of an event and a time in my life. One whiff and I’m reminded of the chili suppers at Taberville School. The P.T.A., an acronym for the Parents and Teachers Association, which predates the P.T.O., would hold chili suppers in the winter months to raise money for the school. Profits went to buy maintenance items like chalk, toilet tissue, floor sweep for the wood floors and coal or wood for the stove.

In my memory, chili suppers were always on Friday nights. We kids would have to finish our lessons and homework early in order to clean the room before we left for home. The blackboards had to be washed, floors swept and trash cans emptied and their contents burned behind the school house.

The envied job to get on that afternoon was dusting the blackboard erasers. There was always a race to see who could get their hand up first to volunteer for dusting the erasers, and everyone else wanted to go along to help. For some reason it was always a two person job, which was strange because we only had about ten erasers. First, you’d have to wash the blackboards with water from the well outside. Then you’d work on the erasers.

The job of dusting the erasers consisted of carrying them out in a bucket, then spending several minutes on each eraser, pounding two against each other, then one by one on the back of the school house. It was a dusty job, but made more pleasant because you were out of sight of the teacher, and you were outdoors.

The teacher was usually so occupied with overseeing the floor cleaning and straightening up, she would forget about the eraser cleaners and you could count on being outdoors, goofing off for a half hour or more.

After the kids went home at 3:00 p.m., the teacher checked over the room one more time. She’d put away all of her desk supplies and check to see each student had not left anything out on their desk. By that time, the first of the P.T.A. ladies would be arriving and start putting out the tables for cooking and serving.

The school owned a double burner hot plate and the ladies got to work making the chili. Other women unloaded the pies and cakes from their cars and placed them on a cloth covered table.
First, coarsely ground meat, ordered from Motts Locker in Rockville was started browning in big kettles. Just as soon as the meat began to brown, packages of chili seasoning went in, along with lots of chopped onions. The ladies stirred with big wooden spoons as the meat browned, the smells quickly filling the building.

Another pot of vegetable soup would begin to simmer. Most of the ingredients for that had been prepared ahead of time. Celery, onions and potatoes would be added, along with well water and the whole thing brought to a slow simmer to be ready for serving for those who didn’t want chili.

All afternoon people stopped by with donations of pies and cakes. Big bowls of crackers were laid out and a block of cheese cut up. Onions were sliced in thin slices, bottles of catsup and vinegar were placed on the serving line.

I loved the chili suppers because it was always fun for me to see how the school house had been transformed from the everyday drab smells of coal, floor sweep, white paste and children, into a makeshift kitchen of interesting smells.

When people began arriving about 6:00, the first smells they encountered before even entering the school house would be the coffee, freshly brewed, and the spicy chili. Then as you walked in the door of cloakroom, you’d notice cigar smoke, a pipe or two and whiffs of after shave and perfume. But above it all, the smell of freshly made chili predominated.

Chili suppers always included entertainment of some sort. Small children recited poems or stories they’d written. One of the parents would play the piano while the children performed a musical number, usually a song memorized from one of the old song books in the library cabinet. Sometimes a local fiddle or guitar player would play or sing.

But the real reason for being there was to make a donation to the P.T.A. by buying a bowl of chili and a piece of pie or cake. Soft drinks or coffee were sold for 5¢ and the adults visited with each other while they ate.

Kids, of course, ate fast, then went outdoors to play. The one outdoor light was a hundred watt light bulb above the building’s only door. Under that light, kids played games on the old concrete porch. The older men, after eating, went outside to sit on the porch, or lean on their cars and smoke.

That smell, of chili powder, reminds me of all of that, every time I open a package of chili seasoning. I can see the faces of the P.T.A. ladies as they stirred the pots of browning meat. I remember the smell of the school room, of the pies and cigar smoke. That’s what comfort food is, I suppose, a dish that evokes not just the smell and taste of the ingredients, but a time and place when that smell predominated, when you were happy and comfortable. One whiff of chili seasoning and I’m back in the third grade, excited about going to the chili supper at our school.

Tomato Diseases

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Tomato Problems and Some Solutions

It’s been a banner year for diseases on everything from tomatoes and roses to peppers and fruit. All of the excess moisture has cultivated fungal problems in the soil, on the leaves and on fruit such as plums and peaches. Readers who normally don’t have such problems on these crops in a normal year, say they have had lots of problems this season.

On tomatoes, as I’ve written before, tomato verticillium wilt begins in early spring, but is spread rapidly by aphids. I’ve described in this column and on my garden blog how I control the aphids, which slows down or stops the progression of this most common tomato disease.

Verticillium wilt causes the leaves to turn yellow and dry up, starting at the bottom of the plant and working upward. It’s caused by a soil-bourne fungus and can affect many different vegetables, and can stay in the soil for many years. It’s why crop rotation is important, meaning not growing tomatoes and peppers in the same soil bed for more than four or five years. Verticillium wilt inhibits the plants ability to take in water and nutrients, which eventually kills the plant.

There are some treatments that seem to help tomatoes, at the same time helping other soil borne fungal problems. This treatment is reported to help black spot on roses as well as damping off of plant seedlings early in the year and is beneficial for some kinds of lawn grass fungal problems, as well. What’s the magic formula? Just good old cornmeal.

Researchers at Texas A & M Research Station in Stephenville, Texas noticed that a peanut crop planted following a crop of corn didn’t suffer the expected fungal diseases they usually encounter with that crop. Additional research showed that cornmeal contains beneficial organisms that are as effective, possibly more, as are chemical fungicides. Evidently cornmeal attracts a member of the Trichoderma fungus family, which is a beneficial fungus that kills off disease causing fungi in the soil.

According to their research, and others who have used this method, you should work 2 pounds of cornmeal into the soil for every 10 ft. by 10 ft. area, then water well (or, in the Ozarks, wait two days before it rains again). There’s considerable discussion on the web about whether you should use horticultural cornmeal or food grade cornmeal from the grocery store.

The differences are these: Food grade cornmeal from the grocery store is only the interior, starchy part of the corn kernel, without the hard, outer shell. It’s slightly more expensive and some sources say it just doesn’t work as well as horticultural cornmeal.

Horticultural cornmeal is cheaper to buy, can be found in feed stores and any other stores that sell soil amendments and garden supplies, and includes the entire corn kernel. People who have used this say the addition of one or two pounds of dry molasses (available at feed stores) per 100 square feet area works even better.

So here’s what I plan to do in my tomato and pepper beds this fall and winter. After frost and after I’ve removed all the dead plant debris, I’m plan to scatter horticultural cornmeal and some dry molasses on the soil and till it in. Then during the winter, I’m going to use Alden Hembree’s tomato disease control method (which I believe came from garden guru, Jerry Baker): Mix 1 tablespoon of shampoo and 1 tablespoon of Clorox into 1 gallon of water. Mix and spray the soil of your tomato bed monthly until spring planting time.

Next spring, when I’m ready to till up the tomato beds once more before planting, I plan to spread more horticultural cornmeal and dry molasses on the soil just before turning it over. I’m also going to use that method around my roses that suffer from fungal diseases and see if it helps. If Texas A & M says it works as good or better than chemical controls, I’m all for it. (Most sources say one application per year is enough, but that a second application isn’t harmful).

Both methods hold great promise and lots of people swear they work, so I’m going to use both and see what happens. One benefit of the cornmeal addition is that it adds a bit of nutrients to the so, as does the addition of dry molasses.

Cornmeal also works to eliminate algae in water and speeds up the decomposition in compost piles. Just don’t confuse horticultural cornmeal with corn gluten meal. Corn gluten meal is used as a weed control and prevents weed seeds from germinating and is a different product altogether.