Moestuin: Rhetoric

Thinking, Teaching, Writing: The vegetable garden: Notes for a rhetoric



The vegetable garden:
Notes for a rhetoric

An assertion (tentative, as always): Every garden is, at its essence, either decorative or utilitarian. It is recommended that gardeners keep straight their priorities.

With the decorative in mind, the flower gardener pays attention to color, shape, texture, fragrance, height in his choice of plant material (with color and height predominant criteria for the novice, other qualities assuming significance only as his aesthetic develops). The vegetable gardener, on the other hand, chooses her crops by first considering issues of productivity (how many bushels will that zucchini plant produce?) and days to maturity (sweet corn by August 1!). It boils down to this: how much? how soon? But after a failed crop or two, she may add worries about hardiness, insect and disease resistance, ability to withstand drought. She'll realize, gradually, that bigger isn't always better (except maybe for that prize pumpkin she hopes to enter in this year's fair), that TASTE is important, too (though, really, all her produce is much superior to the grocery store's styrofoam versions). If she's the sentimental sort, she may insist on those yellow pear tomatoes her grandmother always grew, or give that Moon and Stars watermelon a try, just for the poetry of its name.