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Those of us who plant vegetable gardens each year know how fickle Mother Nature can be.

We have good and bad years, and much of it has to do with where you live.

However, this year had this backyard farmer dumbfounded. I went from a beautiful green plot for months to what looks like sagebrush blowing across Death Valley when the 90 degree temps set in.

Back in April, I decided to extend my garden this year and add some new things. For years, I bought seedlings, but last year I decided to use only seeds, and it has made such a difference in terms of yield, hardiness, appearance and taste.

Even though I was brought up in a neighborhood that loved growing fruits, berries, vegetables and flowers, I attempted to garden only on a small scale until I saw the price of veggies sky rocket in the stores.

This year, I questioned the price for something that doesn’t taste fresh or homegrown. A good example of this is a simple tomato grown in the backyard vs. one sold in the stores. If you said the one in the store tastes better, you need to have your tastebuds checked.

I remember my daddy talking about his family gardens and how he had to help tend them while growing up.

I helped my grandmother in the garden because I thought it was fun chopping weeds and staking up the vinelike plants. That experience instilled within me a sense of pride in planting a seed and watching it grow into something nourishing.

My grandparents and my Aunt Ann lived two doors from one another on Underhill when I was a kid, and they both had large gardens.

I don’t recall any tractors in the neighborhood in the ’40s and ’50s, but I do remember men coming through the neighborhood with their horses and wagons looking for plowing jobs.

The same man showed up at my grandparents every spring with his horse and wagon. He’d unhitch his horse from the wagon, hitch the horse to the plow and start turning over soil.

It was fun watching this man prepare the soil using old-fashioned horse power, plows and cultivators.

I know this doesn’t compare to all the fun things that kids have to do today, but back then it was not only fun but educational.

Learning to be self-sufficient using the soil that God made will take you a long way when times are hard, and you finally realize the relationship between fresh vegetables and good health. It has stuck with me.

I don’t have a horse and plow, but I do have a four-horsepower Sears rear-end tiller, which does a decent job.

Years ago, when I first tilled my plot in the backyard, I realized that my four “horses” were no match for that one horse that cut through the earth like it was butter back in the day.

It took me years of plowing in different directions, adding saved grass and garden clippings to get the beautiful rich soil I have today.

That was before the continuous 90-degree heat and very little water that turned my green acre into a desert.

Rather than planting in rows on a flat surface, I now make rows of tall mounds, which trap water and help maintain the moisture content. This year, I even experimented with using newspaper to help maintain moisture around my plants and help control weeds. All of this works for me.

After preparing my soil last spring, I decided to add Swiss chard, lima beans, peas, kohlrabi and corn to my garden for the first time. The other plants were tomatoes (four varieties), cucumbers, squash, green peppers, string beans, kale, and mustard greens.

I got an abundance of everything this year except corn, which never matured.

My experiment with kohlrabi was this year’s biggest success. What looked good on the front of a pack of seeds turned out to be simply delicious. Kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family, which produces a whitish turnip- shaped bulb with green leaves. The leaves will blow your mind because they taste like a mild collard green.

This year I was really impressed with the size, brilliant colors and taste of all of my veggies. My garden was truly blessed with abundance this year, and I shared God’s blessing with my neighbors, relatives and friends throughout High Point. My friend Donald Belton dropped by numerous times to pick up veggies. He even brought his own plastic bags.

If you like various greens, then you know cleaning them can be a big headache. This year I decided to make my own outside cleaning station to clean the garden dirt off my veggies before taking them in the house.

I bought a framed piece of mesh screening, made as a window insert, to create the cleaning station. I placed the vegetables on top of the screen, sprayed them with water and watched the dirt and trash go down the drain. This makes the final cleaning so much easier — plus they looked plum pretty.

I am going to miss homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers on my bologna, salami, roast beef and sardine sandwiches. Not to mention the green salads that will now be replaced with items without that homegrown taste.

The one thing I won’t miss is that diuretic affect that comes along with eating lots of veggies.

Glenn Chavis researches and writes about High Point’s black history. Contact him at Storytime40@aol.com