Prologue
I never really took up gardening. It’s rather that I’ve always gardened and haven’t quit yet. Gardening was never an option. Sowing seeds to raise vegetables to eat was simply what folk did. No one stopped to ask whether they wanted to or not. If it’s Good Friday, it’s time to plant potatoes.
Part of this cultural enthusiasm for home gardening was the result of the government encouraging citizens to plant Victory Gardens to help lower the prices of produce needed by the US War Department to feed the troops during World War II. The effort was hugely successful and by May of 1943 there were over 18 million Victory Gardens growing fruits and vegetables across the land. It’s estimated that around one third of the vegetables produced by the United States during WWII came from victory gardens thus saving millions of dollars that could be spent elsewhere on the military.
Dad swore by Burpee’s quality. When the new catalog arrived he studied it cover to cover noting new offerings and scoffing new prices. He would exhume a tattered corrugated box from the attic and examined his stock of leftover seed making a list of what he had versus what was needed. Then he scrutinized the catalog again.
The seed order arrived about the time crocus and daffodils were emerging. As soon as the frost was out of the ground and the soil was dry enough to turn and crumble and not clot and stick to the spade, pea, lettuce and radish seed were sown.
Dad’s Burpee order rarely changed. Nor should it have. It was a masterful list honed by trial and error over multiple gardening seasons. His order almost always included: tender pod bush beans, Fordhook limas, Detroit dark red beets, golden cross bantam sweetcorn, black seeded Simpson lettuce, Alaska and little marvel peas, white icicle and cherry belle radishes, big boy tomato, hollow crown parsnip, and purple top white globe turnip.
For a several years part of the seed Dad purchased was from me. For 6 decades hundreds of thousands of boys and girls supplemented their allowances and earned prizes by selling seed packets door to door in their neighborhoods. For many kids this was their first entrepreneurial experience. I was one of those kids that responded to an ad found on the back of a comic book. Once the eagerly anticipated package of seeds arrived, It was my responsibility to pay for them in a timely fashion. The going rate in those days was $6.60 for 44 seed packets. Revenue over $6.60 was my profit. The packets contained popular varieties of flowers and vegetables. I remember Beefsteak, Rutgers, and Marglobe were among the tomato varieties.
Sadly, in 1981 the American Seed Company of Lancaster PA went out of business. Closing their doors meant another rite-of-passage of American childhood was lost. Some cynical media reported the closing was due to kids pocketing all the receipts and not sending American Seed Company its share. I seriously think that some other adverse economic force was to blame. I don’t think it just coincidental that the US economy had crashed the year before.
