I had driven by the home of Doug and Cheryl Perdue on Gook Road literally thousands of time and had no idea the bountiful garden that existed in the back yard. Their 50- by 100-foot plot produces everything from pumpkins and squash to celery and beets. Cheryl says that in its heyday, when the children were growing, they could sit down to four meals a week with everything coming from the garden, meat included.
When asked why she gardened, Cheryl replied, “We’re cheap. If we can grow it why wouldn’t we?”
Both she and Doug grew up with gardens, freezers and cold rooms full of preserves and they have planted a garden themselves everywhere they have lived.
Their philosophy is, “if you can’t get a bounty, it’s a waste of space.” So they try a crop and if it’s successful, keep going, otherwise they buy it at the farmers’ market.
Doug is famous for wanting to try anything different. At one time or another he has grown sugar maples from his grandfather’s farm in Ontario, lemon and orange trees and presently is babying a pomegranate tree. Last season, he grew Tinda, an East Indian squash the size of an apple that everyone loved. They have even grown sweet potatoes which they acquired from Gardner Farms.
They have raspberries and strawberries, Saskatoons and gooseberries, two apple trees and three cherry trees and a couple of plum trees which do not bear fruit as they are out of synch. The fruit is stored in the cold room, turned into preserves, or frozen. They pick blueberries and huckleberries from “Doug’s secret spot near Dunkley’s.”
They have raised meat chickens, turkeys and kept laying hens. One year they got a European wild boar piglet to fatten up and the unique smell drove the neighbours crazy. When the kids were young, Doug, who is a forester with Dunkley, brought home a newborn lamb. The company had been using sheep for vegetation control and when the lamb was born they needed it removed so it wouldn’t attract wolves. Lambert was fed with a nipple on a pop bottle and eventually ended up on the dinner table. Their daughter, when told they were eating Lambert, said, “He’s good.”
They start most of their own seeds, 12 flats of them, which begin life under lights in the shop and then are moved to a basement room with plenty of windows, for hardening off. They like the corn to be eight inches tall before planting out. If they plant seeds, the crows will eat them and if the seedlings are smaller, the blasted crows will pull up the plants to get to the seeds.
They keep saying they’ll downsize, but whenever they look at a possible house, the first question becomes, “Where would the garden go?”
So, for now, they’ll stay where they are. Their children, who saw the garden as a chore while growing up, now grow herbs and veggies on their own apartment balconies.
– submitted by Colleen Gatenby