The Realistic Gardener
By Rance and Debbie Denzler
Homespun Press, 231 pp. $12.95
Planting flowers and vegetables can be frustrating for the casual backyard gardener. Not everyone has the time, skill or patience to grow like the pros. But homey how-to-ers Rance and Debbie Denzler, authors of THE REALISTIC GARDENER, have found a new approach to gardening that doesn’t require that proverbial green thumb. Finally there’s a modern gardening guide for today’s homeowner!
For example, want to grow a lush flower bed that’s a feast for the eyes, a treat for the nostrils and a joy to the soul? Here’s how THE REALISTIC GARDENER makes it doable:
HOW TO GROW IMPATIENS
- Check for the last frost date in your area. Plan to plant after this date. Later, after you’ve forgotten that you planned to do this, plant them anyway. It’s Spring or you wouldn’t even be outside, so it’s probably close enough. The only person who would possibly object is busy bingeing “Grace and Frankie” episodes. (And—get this– she says you should create the garden, and write the book, because “you’re retired and I’m still on duty as the wife.”) Choose a spot that gets 5 or more hours of direct sunlight per day. This will probably be right about where the kids next door kick their soccer ball and hop over your fence to get it, so don’t plant there. Plant somewhere else. If the fucking plants can’t grow with a couple hours of sun, they don’t deserve to live.
- Prepare the soil by clearing the area of existing growth. Be sure to pull up the weeds by their roots to avoid regrowth. Turn the soil and rake the area flat, or just make rake-y marks in the dirt with your fingers so it looks like you raked when Frau Fuhrer deigns to come outside and check up on you. If (i.e., when) she tells you to pick out all those rocks from the flower bed before you plant, do so in a tight-lipped fury, being sure to set the rocks aside for later use in a decorative planter or for throwing at the neighbor’s dog or children. Gently remove the impatiens flowers from their containers and place them into holes at least as deep and wide as the rootball. This will be difficult, as your hands are cramping up from all that weeding so just shove down hard on the rootball to make it fit, taking care not to break the delicate flower stalks and gently cursing when you do. The common name for impatiens is the “Touch-Me-Not.” Interestingly, however, it isn’t the “Shove-Me-Not,” so fuck it.
- Impatiens are best when planted quite close together, so you will not have bought nearly enough to fill the area designated for the lush flower bed you had in mind. You will be reminded of this regularly over the next several hours and, if you do nothing to address this issue, months. So it’s your call: pretend you like this “spacious” arrangement and endure the constant bitching, or go back and get more. By the way, some Home Depots have a little McDonald’s attached to them. Go ahead, order whatever you want. Yes, you’ll be courting a heart attack, but at this point, who cares? No, literally. Who?
- Once your impatiens are in the ground, they will need at least 2 inches of water a week. If the temperatures rise above 85 F. (29 C.) they will need at least 4 inches per week. If the area where they are planted does not receive that much rainfall, you will need to water them yourself. As you can tell, they are very needy plants, so this is a good time to wonder how much you really care about flowers anyway. Seriously. They’re fucking plants. Grow or don’t grow, you fucking pansies. Actually, pansies are hardier. Ha ha, isn’t that ironic? Never mind.
- These lovely flowers bloom profusely all year long in a rich variety of bright vibrant colors. You will be able to tell this from looking at the ones in your neighbor’s yard. Not the people with the soccer brats (between their dog and the kids, their lawn looks like the south bank after the Battle of the Somme). No, the know-it-all, tight-ass woman on the other side, with the yappy dog and the 20 year-old Hyundai, who never goes out. She’s had ample time to learn gardening. So would you, if you’d spent years living on the pension of a pussy-whipped, walking-dead husband.
- Recheck your impatiens bed regularly to see if those weeds you didn’t actually pull all the way out have started growing back. Because of course they have. Dandelions are justifiably famous for their lovely yellow blooms, as well as their delightfully delicate puffball seeds, which are perfect for the traditional outdoor pastime known as “dandelion puffball seed blowing toward your neighbors’ lawn(s).” To encourage the growth of this hardy perennial, carefully dig up the dead impatiens plants–or, for a more emotionally satisfying alternative, simply stomp on what’s left of them until their dead stalks are flat. Rotting impatiens plants make a fine compost for dandelions or whatever other weeds happen to sprout up.
- Congratulations! Your new all-native wildflower garden is complete. Does your wife not care for it? Tough titty! Point out to her that the low-maintenance, totally natural, drought-resistant flora on display in your yard will be the envy of the neighborhood. Or don’t, and trust that she’ll be as “busy” and “distracted” from examining the garden as she is about reading the galleys of this very book.
Now that’s some straight talk about home horticulture! But it doesn’t stop there. THE REALISTIC GARDENER has more than tips for making your garden prettier. With giant agribusiness concerns providing food of questionable provenance, going local with homegrown produce has never been more important. Let Rance (and, ostensibly, Debbie) advise you:
GROWING TOMATOES
By following these step-by-step instructions, you should be enjoying plump, juicy, delicious tomatoes from your very own garden within 6 weeks. You should be, but you won’t. There’s no good reason why; you followed all the directions, or most of them, but they just never grow right. But don’t worry. The woman next door will (as always) have fantastic tomatoes that grow (conveniently) higher than your fence. Still, for the record, and to shut your wife up, do this:
- Select a site with full sun and well-drained soil. The sun you can easily identify by its being that big, bright, hot thing in the sky. As to whether or not your soil is “well-drained,” just pick a spot. In the sun.
- Mix into the soil a 20 – 30% ratio of aged manure, compost, or fertilizer. Some beginners think that aged manure means the half-a-bag of shit you’ve had in your basement since July, but it doesn’t; it means manure that’s been scientifically leached of bacterial pathogens and blah blah biochemistry blah. Just use the stuff in the basement. At least you won’t have to smell it anymore when you go down there to do what your wife calls, with audible sarcasm and scare quotes, “your woodworking projects.” You know that she knows that you know that she thinks that you’re not really woodworking down there at all, but instead looking at your old “Maxim” collection. Then, after days of power-tool noise and wood-shaving smell, you show her a pair of handsome mahogany bookends and say, “Where do you think these came from, genius?” But that discussion isn’t really relevant to the growing of tomatoes, so let’s save it for THE REALISTIC WOODWORKER. Back to gardening. Here’s a handy way to accurately gauge the proper ratio of fertilizer to soil: add one inch of fertilizer for each square foot of planting area, plus whatever fell into your gardening gloves or got stuck on your shoes that you supposedly “always” track into the house.
- Plant seedlings two feet apart. Or plant however many you bought in whatever space you have. Divide the number of square feet allotted by the number of plants minus 2, since one will have fallen over in the backseat and spilled dirt everywhere and one will have been flung against the side of the fucking carport. Probably by that neighbor kid. No, seriously, we saw him hanging around earlier, remember? Little jerk. You kept those rocks handy, right?
- Fourteen days after planting, place a circular metal tomato cage at least 48 inches tall around each seedling to support the tomato vine and help squirrels climb up and eat the fruit if it ever grows, which it won’t. Old tomato cages fit comfortably in most municipal trash cans if you push down hard on the lid so Mrs. Mussolini can’t see it, or they can make a handy deterrent to neighbor kids when nailed atop your fence with the rusted, pointy ends sticking up.
- Harvest time! Wait until the tomatoes are slightly firm and heavy, with a smooth texture and shiny appearance. Twist the fruit gently at the stem while removing it from the vine, then jump off your overturned bucket and run back into your house before that bitch next door sees you. Some gardeners like to sprinkle bits of nutshells around the fence to make it look like those pesky squirrels have been there, but we think that’s a bit obvious and “on the nose.” Instead, take a tiny bite out of a tomato and leave it on the vine. If/when Mrs. Thing is near it when you are, glance at it and mutter, “Huh. Critters.” And leave it at that.
Or if you prefer to enjoy your own homegrown produce, here’s a link you may find helpful: www.therealisticchef.com/recipes/tomatolessspaghettisauce.
THE REALISTIC GARDENER has money-saving tips as well as gardening expertise to offer. If you don’t have a green thumb, at least your wallet can be a little greener. Here’s an example of how The Denzlers do it, or at least write about it:
CARROTS
Anyone can grow carrots! Especially carrot farmers! And just compare the cost of growing your own with what you’d pay at your local supermarket! Down there, one of those little bags of carrots is like $1.80. Less if they’re on sale or you have a coupon. And they’re already peeled and washed, so they’re a whole lot less trouble, especially considering that the carrots from your garden are going to be really dirty and take like five bucks worth of water to scrub clean. So what’s the point really? While at the supermarket, pick up some beautiful roses—or, if you’re sick to death of Nature, a jumbo bottle of vodka. Everyone loves vodka way more than carrots!
