MAR-GLOBES

BY DON DOUCETTE

A phone conversation with my older brother this week who is retired from the United States Air Force in Virginia led to a conversation about our father’s one acre vegetable garden once cultivated here in Attleboro.

Gene was just concluding a family Fourth Of July picnic and was describing how good the local sweet corn has been in Virginia and also praised the goodness of the fresh local summer squash grown by his daughter.

And so, we got on the subject of our Dad’s great garden and the bounty it once produced for our large blue collar family. I had forgotten the names of the tomatoes he grew and Gene being older than myself, was able to refresh my memory. “Dad grew RUTGERS and MAR-GLOBE,” was his reply.

Dad’s garden was at the remote south end of the Thurber Farm beyond Thurber Farm Brook tucked into the inner elbow of East Junction. East Junction being the large curve in the main rail line in Hebronville headed south bound toward Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The garden was east of Smith’s Pond and west of the rail line before the curve.

Dad fed his soil with organic composted hen manure obtained as a by-product from local chicken farms. He had no means of irrigation as we experienced some dry summers in my memory and he got by without water by “dry mulching” the surface of the garden soil with a simple onion hoe. His oft repeated shallow cultivation method insulated the lower layers of soil, thus naturally retaining soil moisture. 

A crash course today on the internet revealed that RUTGERS was once the most popular heirloom tomato in the world developed by Rutgers University intended for use by our national canning industry, mainly Campbell Soup Company of Camden, New Jersey. RUTGERS is said to be a beefsteak variant.

I also enjoyed as a kid the taste of sun-warm MAR-GLOBES as we are presently container cultivating four plants here at home and I once again look forward to that childhood taste experience.

My life experience associated with Dad’s garden is where I personally learned to value the Ten Mile River Watershed as Dad’s garden was surrounded by wetlands and brooks feeding to Hebron Pond, a primary local impoundment of the Ten Mile River.

Yes indeed, gardening and watersheds are vitally linked and related natural resources and all well worth attention and cultivation.

Don Doucette

“Ten Mile River Rambles”