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GOALS

by Larry Tucker

In Pursuit of the Perfect Planter 

    Green acres is the place to be,

    farm living is the life for me . . .

    Been there, done that. Recent acquisitions, however, have me wondering if our garden décor is harking back to Hooterville.

    There are distinct limits to a suburban patio lot after being accustomed to a generous city spread, which was minuscule compared to the five acres Shari and I “farmed” in Minnesota.

    Thirty-some years ago, we went country when country was cool. As city slickers with a growing family, a love for antiques led us  to our biggest treasure – a 16-room Victorian mansion. This century-old home was within reach of my job and my newsman’s budget. Most important, it was the key to a life of self-confidence and self-sufficiency. Restoring the rural residence to its Civil War-era grandeur was a do-it-yourself challenge, but living off the land was an equally enduring education.

    With daughters involved in 4-H, gardening was inevitable and invaluable. Though flowers were important (hostas were a mere speck on our horizon), vegetable plots (from asparagus to zucchini) were essential. As a family, we plowed, planted, picked and put up more than enough to feed us for a year. Excess harvest was traded for fruit, meat and milk. We even bartered with friends who owned the nearby drive-in: a bag of beans for a jug of root beer.

    In those days, we learned out of necessity. Poverty was a great teacher and hard work on our hobby farm guaranteed a bumper harvest. That’s because our fertile vegetable patch was the old pig lot. Also, the barn floor was a foot deep in aged manure just waiting to be mined.

     So, when Shari saw a planter last summer in an American Hosta Society tour garden, it jogged her memory and I knew my goose was cooked (oops, I shouldn’t suggest that because our girls raised pet geese, Snoopy and Lucy, who weeded the gardens and slurped slugs).

     Last month, we unearthed an antique pig trough, which Shari pronounced perfect for miniature hostas, ferns, succulents, sedums and grasses. Just hoisting it was enough make us grunt like pigs. The 5-foot-long trough must have been made of pig iron (oink, oink).

     Had we satisfied our search? Not in a pig’s eye! To display minis properly, the trough had to be elevated, ideally on a heavy-duty iron pedestal. After we described the height to a garden shop clerk, she exclaimed: “You must have a big pig!” Spring came before we could find the perfect prop, so our weightlifter is a rustic bench – bench-pressing 190 pounds.

     Having added the trough to a mish-mash of planters (a 6-gallon crock, an antique tin sitz bath, dueling ammo boxes and Shari’s flock of flamingos), we’re once again the talk of the neighborhood. Now inquisitive on-lookers are asking the new gurus what we use as planting medium for our minis. It’s a simple recipe:

     3 gallons of indoor/outdoor potting mix

     1 gallon of mushroom compost

     ½ cup greensand

     Pour this mixture to a 4-inch depth over polystyrene packing peanuts, which help fill and drain the container. (But beware, my friends: This container concoction encourages swine dining. Pigs like mushroom-flavored peanuts.)

     Hosta la vista!

(Published April 1, 2007, in the Hosta Hotline newsletter)