In the good old days, you would plant in a field for several years and then you would not plant in that field for at least one growing season to let the ground recover.

That’s one of the reasons why I am not going to plant much if anything in our backyard garden this year.

I like gardening. I like to see plants sprout and grow. I like to harvest fruits and vegetables that I have grown and eat them. There is no healthier produce that what you grow yourself.

Susan will probably plant tomatoes and cucumbers again this year. She always does very well with those two.

I have had trouble the last three years with bugs in my pumpkin patch. I don’t use chemicals on the plants and the pest control tricks I have tried in the past don’t work too well.

You get a sick feeling when you plant pumpkin seeds and the plant takes off. They grow very fast and very big. Pumpkins produce a lot of male blossoms and only a few female flowers. I always pollinate my plants even though we seem to have plenty of bees and other pollinating insects in our backyard. The sick feeling comes when you harvest a beautiful round pumpkin and you notice a little hole in the side where a worm has entered.

I got one usable pumpkin last season. That’s not a lot for four months of work and nurturing. The theory is that if I don’t plant pumpkins this year, the bugs will get the idea that they are not getting a free meal and go elsewhere.

Plus, I have used a little organic fertilizer in the past but the garden patch could use a rest. I could, too.

Susan cooks pumpkins every fall and freezes it to make pumpkin pies and pumpkin bread for the holidays. Once you have tasted homemade pumpkin pie, no substitute will do.

But here’s a little trick I have learned over the years. The week after Halloween, most pumpkins in stores go on sale for half price. It seems that many people buy pumpkins for decorations for Halloween. After October 31, the stores find them hard to sell and offer big discounts.

And as people get more health conscious, groceries have upgraded their produce sections. We don’t usually buy organic vegetables but we like fresh vegetables and fruits and they are readily available.

In the summer, we head to Bixby a time or two to buy fresh fruits and vegetables grown in farms around Tulsa.

A few years ago, I drove down to the Livesay Orchards in Porter and bought a big bag of peaches. They were delicious.  Livesay Orchards also grows sweet corn, summer squash, nectarines, watermelons, cantaloupe, tomatoes, apples and pumpkins.

And it’s a nice drive in the country to drive out to near Porter, home of the Annual Porter Peach Festival.

Stan Bunnel of Stringer Nursery is my go-to expert on backyard gardening. We will go there this spring to pick up the tomato and cucumber plants and Susan will pick some flowers to plant. We might also get some herbs (they tend to be easy to grow.)

Now that we have two pug puppies roaming the backyard, keeping them out of the garden is a concern. They can’t get in our tomato cage (which also keeps out the squirrels) but Susan is planning some box planters this year and these dogs like to dig. We will figure something out.

I used to think that by planting a garden every year, our grown kids would pick that up as a hobby. They are not interested but they might be someday, especially when they buy their first house. My parents and grandparents went through World War II and the Great Depression and they knew how to grow food in the backyard to put on the table for supper.

I think it’s kind of like swimming – not everybody likes to do but we all should know how to do it.

A backyard garden makes you appreciate the farmers who do such a great job of growing our food. Many countries around the world don’t have the abundance that we do.

And I appreciate the efforts of local groups in Tulsa that grow gardens to help poor people and others who teach school children about growing fruits and vegetables. We’d be in a sorry state if we stopped growing what we eat.

I will get back in the garden groove next season. I probably will buy some organic bug repellant for my pumpkin patch and give another go.

But in 2019, you will see me hunting pumpkins in the grocery store a week after Halloween.