No Eggplant for You! - Faux Real Story Week

This week, as we approach the longest night of the year, I thought we could all gather around the virtual fire each day and I would tell you all a story.  

Well, not just a story.  A Faux Real Story!  These stories aren't fictional, but I've been told they are, nonetheless, somewhat entertaining.  So, sip on some hot chocolate, reach your hands out to warm them by the fire... and enjoy.

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Tammy's mother, Sue, is fond of growing nice, big, purple eggplants. These fruits are often the key ingredient for Eggplant Parmesan, one of her favorite dishes. But, as is so often the case, Mom's dish of choice was NOT appreciated by all members of the family.

 

Tammy likes vegetables. It was actually Rob who was deficient in that department and it was Tammy who had to encourage Rob to eat more veggies.  Cheese on the broccoli comes to mind as one of the things that needed to happen until I learned how much better broccoli from our own garden tasted.

 

So, who was sad during the years when the eggplant crop at the Genuine Faux Farm was poor? 

 

It wasn't Tammy! 

 

The mere suggestion that we grow some eggplants was enough to make her question someone's sanity (guess who?).  In fact, my winning argument for growing eggplant in the garden several years ago went something like this:

 

"Hey, we won't have to feel bad about selling all of the eggplant we grow since we won't want to eat them anyway!"

 

Even more amazing than this is the fact that Rob found out he kind of liked eggplant - much to Tammy's horror!

 

We tell you all of this as a prelude to this GFF story:
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Some years ago in the Zenk garden, Mom and Dad, with their two lovely daughters, worked to plant their vegetable garden for the year. The asparagus was already sending up spears and the mulch had been tilled in. They would plant a little bit of everything, just as they did most years. There would be beans and tomatoes, oregano and garlic, onions and ... eggplant.

When you are kid, there may be no greater injustice than to have to care for a plant that produces something you do NOT want to eat.  It is one thing to have to weed the garden, or pick the beans or dig the potatoes and yet another to have anything to do with one of the banes of your existence. 

 

In Tammy's case, that bane came in the form of the eggplant.

 

The garden grew. The plants in the garden were, in general, healthy. The crops were being harvested and consumed. The eggplants grew tall, with green, healthy foliage.  In fact, it was noted by the rest of the family that these might have been the biggest, lushest eggplants they'd ever had in the garden.

 

But, for some strange reason that year, the eggplants were not blooming. And, without a bloom, there would be no fruit.

And Tammy rejoiced.

 

What could the problem be? Too much water? Too little water? Was there some sort of disease that needed to be diagnosed? There was discussion about this, of course. And, some amount of disappointment that there would be no Eggplant Parmesan. 

 

But, in the end, the crop failure was attributed to either bad seed or just a strange year.  After all, the rest of the garden did well.  There was no shortage of fresh food for the family.

Yet - it was a year without Eggplant Parmesan.  Again, Tammy rejoiced.

It wasn't until many years later that the blight that caused the crop failure was discovered. And now that we've had a number of years experience growing crops on the farm, we can attest to a long list of possible causes for production failures.  If someone would have described this situation to me now, I might have been tempted to ask questions about how much fertilizer they had put on their garden.  Often a crop that grows bigger and greener than usual without fruit has too much nitrogen.  But, in the end, all of my answers would have been guesses and they would have been wrong.

In any event, we mentioned that the reason for the crop failure was discovered years later.  Or should we say, the culprit confessed? 

A plant that has its flowers pruned diligently will tend to continue to grow bigger and produce more leaves.  We also know if a child is aware of this - they will be a motivated child that is willing to act based on this logic:

1. flowers on an eggplant plant will turn into fruit
2. eggplant fruit will become Eggplant Parmesan
3. removing flowers will result in no Eggplant Parmesan

We also now know that a kid can be successful in making sure that every flower is picked off of an eggplant plant before they turn to fruit.  And Tammy was that successful child.

But, Tammy forgot something.  Other people grow eggplant.  And Mom can always buy an eggplant from them.  Oops. 

 

I guess there was some Eggplant Parmesan that year after all.