NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic and I have three areas in which we grow fruits and vegetables: here and there throughout the entire backyard, a strip along the sidewalk in the front yard and a strip at the side of the driveway.

When we moved to our present house in 1988, the side strip was growing evergreens. It had an Italian cypress and several low-spreading junipers. At least, I think that’s what they were. I don’t know much about ornamental evergreens, other than they’re drought tolerant.

As I became increasingly frustrated with my vegetable gardening attempts in the backyard due to lack of sun, Vic began to eye the evergreen strip as a place to grow vegetables. The evergreens had grown way too big for the spot and looked worse each year after we attempted to hack them back into submission. And so it came to pass that one year, we removed all the evergreens and began our attempts to grow vegetables there. Thus was born the garden of perpetual responsibility.

It seems that in an effort to promote drainage, some genius dumped a load of gravel there. A really big load. Every spring, the surface sprouts a new crop of stones that must be removed just to see the soil. And each year, we dig in compost and manure to improve the soil. Or at least get it to the point where we can call it soil. It’s really just dirt. Minerals and clay and stones. Our soil has no tilth.

Tilth is a good word that you won’t see used outside of conversations about farms and gardens. Tilth is the physical condition of the soil. A soil with good tilth will be loose, friable and rich in organic content, like crumbled chocolate cake. Our side garden has the tilth of a concrete rubble pile.

I can’t say that nothing grows there. It grows weeds just fine. And one year, I just let them all go to seed. Big mistake. Now we have a huge seed bank of weed seeds in addition to the gravel. Hence our name for the spot, the garden of perpetual responsibility.

Vic chose this sunny site for a summer vegetable garden. When we looked at it one June and made our plans, it looked perfect. Lots of sun. I had planned on gardening there year-round, forgetting that the sun goes south for the winter. And as it sinks lower and lower on the horizon as winter sets in, the trees in the yard of our neighbor to the south shade it more and more. And each year, their trees grow bigger and shade it more. Nothing grows there in winter. Except weeds.

The sun has moved far enough north by now that the garden is getting adequate sun. I should buy a couple of tomato plants to replace the unplanted ones that were stolen a few weeks ago. (I’m still trying to figure out who would be low enough to steal an old lady’s tomato plants.) But I just can’t face those weeds and rocks. Every time I put shovel to soil, I’m blocked with a resounding CLANK. So first I will need to hand-pick the rocks from the surface, as I do every spring. It’s like gardening in New England.

We’ve had some spectacular crop failures in that garden. I tried growing a pumpkin there one year. The vine was impressive and coiled all along the driveway. The plant produced male and female flowers galore, but none set fruit. I tried hand-fertilizing the female flowers, and even that didn’t work.

Last year, I didn’t get around to planting my summer garden there until too late in the year, and we got almost nothing from that plot. No tomatoes, no eggplants, no cabbage. Nice plants, but nothing to harvest.

It isn’t that the side garden grows nothing. We’ve harvested summer squash, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions and lettuce there in the past. It’s also the site of my perennial artichokes, which give us a few chokes each summer. I have flowers there too, and loads of cilantro. The butterflies and bees love that little garden. But root crops like beets, carrots and turnips are out of the question because of all the rocks.

Frustrated by the need to dig up that horrid “soil” each spring, I planted thornless blackberries in a portion of the plot last summer. I planted the berries in large nursery pots buried in the soil to prevent them from spreading and taking over the whole plot, and also to give them some decent dirt. They’re blooming now with beautiful pink blossoms, and the first berries have formed. We’re looking forward to blackberries on cereal and ice cream soon.

But the plot could be growing so much more. The leeks that I started from seed in January really need to go into the ground. I want to replace the yellow pear and Roma tomato plants that were stolen, along with the Black Beauty eggplant that disappeared with them.

I’d like to grow heirloom moon and stars watermelons this year, and that’s probably the best space for them. Or perhaps I’ll plant some Queensland Blue pumpkins there.

I have not yet successfully grown one, despite trying.

Gardeners must be the world’s greatest optimists. Despite the failures of the past, they face each spring with renewed enthusiasm and hope.

So it’s time to buy more bags of manure and compost, pick this year’s crop of stones from the surface, add some organic fertilizer, and once again attempt to wrest nutritious produce from the good earth. Or, in our case, the bad earth.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.