The Curmudgeonly Professor grew up on a farm in northwestern Wyoming and, in fact, was Wyoming state president of the Future Farmers of America. However much he may have wanted to become a farmer, which wasn't much, seeing how hard my dad worked for so little, he never made it that far. Instead, he got a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the University of Wyoming where he started college living in a room in the hayloft of the sheep barn. After studying sugar beet production, livestock production, chicken production, and a healthy dose of two years of chemistry, zoo, and a bunch of other science stuff, he opted out for economics since he never wanted to milk another ornery cow again in his life and was tired of shoveling manure. Not that shoveling manure is a demeaning occupation, someone has to do it, but the Professor deemed as how he had shoveled his fair quota and someone else could shovel the rest. As needed.
Now to the current situation. My next-door neighbor bought these expensive little tent-watering gizmos with the tomato plants inside and regularly fertilizes, tends, and nourishes his tomato plants. I stuck mine in the hard clay soil with a shot of potting soil in each. And, voila, thanks to my bachelor's degree in agriculture, mine look just as dang good as my neighbors'. At latest count, I have about 4 dozen green tomatoes, with one nearly pink, and if the robins and the rest of our feathered friends don't decimate them when they turn red, we will be having tomatoes the rest of the summer. My one zuke has about a dozen little zukes and I will leave them on your doorstep if the production is prolific. Last year my zuke only produced one little bitty one and one watermelon-sized one. My cuke is finally blossoming and may produce a cucumber before the summer is over. I have paid zero attention to my agricultural pursuits. If they can't make it on their own, that's their problem. But I feel my gardening success has to do with having earned a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the Universty of Wyoming, about which I remember little, except I memorized the names of the stomachs of a cow which I will be happy to recite to you if you so request. Oh, by the way, my sister Ann tried to promote some fancy-schmancy system called foot-square or four-foot-square gardening early in the spring, and my sister Liz built fancy four-foot square wooden boxes in which her super-duper garden is now growing in abundance. But I pooh-poohed such showy efforts since, to me, gardening isn't gardening unless you just stick stuff in the hard clay soil and see what happens.
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