Garden Mania

gone, and the grass had always grown twice as high in that area as anywhere else around. This spot was perfect, then, because it was more convenient than the location farther out in the pasture and because the grass there was a nuisance to control. To create the new garden there, Moroney bought a fivefoot tiller for his tractor, tilled up the ground, and that year grew four different varieties of corn, pickling cucumbers, tomatoes, all sorts of peppers, squash, zucchini, kale, burgundy okra, cabbage, cantaloupes, and watermelons. Today, the garden is ninety feet by forty feet with eight rows where, Moroney explained, “This year we are growing only one variety of corn. We have added sunflowers, because they are so pretty, okra, cucumbers, peppers, squash, zucchini several types of tomatoes, lettuce, trying strawberries again this year, and cabbage. The watermelons will be moved to another site for this year’s garden.” Professionally, Moroney is an IT Consultant and works his garden as an important part of his active lifestyle. He is an avid cyclist; spends hundreds of hours volunteering and serving many organizations throughout the community all year long; and shares his garden bounty with friends, family and clients. He will be trying salsa this year with his garden’s all “meat” tomatoes, perfect for making sauces and salsa; and he will begin the process of raising one of his favorites, cantaloupes. They are easy to grow, spreading out onto the garden fabric he uses to prevent weeds. Easy to harvest, cantaloupes pop off the vine when the fruit is ripe. One tip Moroney offered is about putting up okra. Because okra is a prolific grower and has to be picked daily, he cannot eat enough or deliver enough to keep up with its productivity. Consequently, he preps the okra to keep for another day: He slices the okra thin, soaks it in buttermilk, dredges it in a spiced up cornmeal mixture of choice, places the coated slices individually on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and slides the baking sheet into the freezer overnight. The next day, he drops the Smoot’s Grocery frozen, coated okra slices in a Ziploc bag and freezes them until he is ready to fry them. They will taste as if they are right out of the garden.

Another tip: Using the black garden fabric saves time and creates a clean look for the garden. This fabric is easily accessible at local hardware stores.

Moroney also advises installing a fence around your garden to keep out the deer and raccoons. He gets black quarter-inch PBC mesh that comes in a roll one-hundred feet long and five feet wide, and then He Curtis Mororney uses T-posts and zip ties to secure the mesh to the T-posts. He flares out the bottom of the mesh about six inches to the outside of the fence; so if a raccoon approaches the fence, it cannot enter because it is standing on the mesh. The deer have not jumped over this fence.

Curtis Moroney works his garden most evenings when he is not out bike riding several times a week. Gardening is about timing and about having all of the needed elements in place. It continues to be a learning process, engendered by a devotion to his father’s memory and fueled by his energy and passion for this challenging hobby. As long as gardening is fun and he is able to share his bounty with friends, family, and clients, then he will continue.