Goodbye, Green Thumb: My Unexpected Breakup with Backyard Gardening

A tale of how $1.49/lb. persimmons ruined a relationship. But don’t despair. I landed on my feet and swiped right for a new lover.

It’s true, I broke up with gardening. I no longer entertain spring visions of deep red tomatoes ripening on the vine or crispy cucumbers dangling, just begging to be picked. And if I do, I head to my local fruit stand, hand over green bills, and take home the ruby red and forest green. Call me an old fart realist, but I've got my reasons.

You can blame it on $1.49 persimmons.

15 years ago, I was a mega gardener. I spent serious money turning a 400 square foot part of my yard into a garden, including a red brick raised bed, a Spanish-style 20-foot-long thick-beamed pergola covered with authentic Mexican tiles. Next to this I built two brick 4-foot by 4- foot compost bins which, as I write this, have 10,000 worms turning my kitchen scraps into black humus gold. I even built a giant frame around the entire garden to support a sunshade cloth to provide relief from the intense Southern California sun.

But that all changed about ten years ago after nursing a couple persimmon trees through the summer. That year they yielded enough fruit to fill a five-gallon bucket. The globules were small and sunburned, but sweet and tasty.

When I sat back and thought about the effort they took, the 72-hour slow soaks, the reflective tape battle with the birds, and the jalapeno spray to keep the squirrels at bay, I was exhausted. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except instead of a time loop, I was stuck in a round-the-clock cycle of sun-filtering, squirrel-warfare, and bird espionage.

After placing the last small, blemished persimmon on the kitchen sill to ripen, I thought, Do NOT mess with me, I squeezed juicy fruit out of parched earth.

Then I went to the grocery store. I turned the corner in the produce section and saw people crowded around a large wooden fruit box, picking out shiny orange globules of deliciousness called persimmons. They casually placed them in bags, lightly squeezing each one to see if it met with their expectations. I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and scream, 'Do you know what it takes to create that?!? The love…the attention…the piece of your soul they extract.' But I restrained myself, remembering that not everyone appreciates a good fruit-induced breakdown."

And back to those stupid persimmons. They were twice the size of mine. Their skin was so shiny you could shave in their reflection. They were firm. Unblemished. They looked like they'd been grown in the Garden of Eden, hand-polished by Gabriel. And worst of all, they were $1.49 a pound.

Are you kidding me? I shouted to myself. You have GOT to be kidding me! For the time I spent, the water is used, the love I gave, the battle with the sun, the war with the varmint terrorists. A buck forty-nine? A buck forty-nine?!?

I spun away from those fruit ingrates so I could catch my breath. Near the cabbage section I rested on my shopping cart, licking my wounds.

Then I had an epiphany. These store-bought balls of plastic would most certainly be mealy and bland. They wouldn’t even be on the same plane as mine. Theirs were Hollywood. Mine were Des Moines.

I bought a ripe one and sped home. Sprinting into my kitchen, my nerves ablaze, paring knife in hand, I was ready to perform my taste test. I skinned the fruit, quartered it, and sunk my teeth into its flesh, ready for mealy and bland and astringent.

What I got was sweet and rich and tangy, with a hint of Saigon cinnamon and Medjool date. I hated that $1.49 persimmon.

It pains me to write this, but I cut my persimmon trees down that winter. I did. We broke up. Not by text, but by chainsaw.

But all this pain led me to my new gardening philosophy: if growing it isn’t 25% better than I can buy at the store, I don’t grow it. I know, I know, so unsexy, so grossly practical, and so not I-moved-out-of-the-city-onto-a-farm. But that’s my approach and I’m sticking with it.

So, what has passed my 25% test, you may ask? Pomegranates have (just because they do so well in my climate), figs for sure (grown just outside my kitchen where I can see when they ripen, because nothing, absolutely nothing beats an early morning-picked fig, the fig-milk sticky on my hands, sliced horizontally, and placed gingerly on my tongue…ah, nothing beats it!), basil (giant leaves curling, and placed into a tomato, cucumber, red onion salad), oregano (added by Joyce to her out-of-this-world spaghetti), and citrus (Mexican limes, with their hint of sweetness, make everything taste better).

I don’t want to do something just because I’m in love with the idea of doing it. I want to do what I love and know what I actually love.

I still enjoy growing things—there is something primal and redemptive about connecting with the soil. I’m on a constant search for my 25%. I have fun lower-case ‘g’ gardening. And I’m glad that ten years ago I was honest with myself and admitted when I’d gone down a path that was no longer serving me.