Learning as We Grow Vegetables: Vegetables Only Grow Well When They Stand Up Straight

Text and photos / Zeng Xiaomei

Growing vegetables is really not something a weakling like me can do. Honestly.

But at least this gives me a good reason to start hanging around Dad and Mom's vegetable garden, spending more time circling around them. I do not know what I will observe in the days to come, or what I will experience. Farming is hard work. I am an office worker, a white-feathered chicken who sits at a desk moving a mouse and tapping a keyboard. Mom always says I cannot lift anything with my hands or carry anything on my shoulders, the most useless youngest daughter in the family.

But I really did go out into the field. Not as a farmer, though, just tagging along to plant vegetables.

Because it was my first time, and it happened to coincide with a batch of vegetables that needed sowing, Dad arranged three tasks for me: planting, watering and weeding. Of course I brought along my left and right guardians: my fiance, my little brother, and Mom, who was not reassured and came down to the field too. 

Dad first set out the seedlings in roughly the right positions, and Mom taught us how to sow, otherwise these five hundred seedlings would all be ruined in my hands, since I am better at the fully destructive style of weeding XD. Sowing, in this case, actually means "transplanting": moving the seedlings bought on the propagation tray into the vegetable field.

Mom very carefully broke the action down into steps to teach me how to plant. First, estimate the approximate position by eye, then push the "dibber" into the soil, then push it sideways a little to make some room in the soil, then hold the seedling in your left hand with your thumb and index finger gripping the base of the seedling and your little finger steadying the base, and gently place it into the space you just made. Pull out the "dibber", smooth the soil back in along the way, and that counts as planting one seedling. The above is the record of the method that only an educated person like me would write down. Mom's explanation of the broken-down steps was: like this, like this, and like this.

By the time I had spent three minutes planting my first seedling, Mom smiled and said, "Stand up straight and you will be loved," teaching me that I had to plant the seedlings upright for the vegetables to grow well. After seeing that I was no longer murdering her precious seedlings, Mom nimbly went whizz-whizz-whizz planting her own vegetables. So fast. The distance between professional and amateur showed itself right there ><".

After the seedlings were planted came watering. Dad channeled the water into the field, and it slid and slid and filled the water channels. We stood at the channel scooping water and watered the plants one by one. At the same time, the setting sun quietly prepared to clock off.

Taking advantage of the last bit of light, Mom led us to seize the time and pull some more weeds. It had gotten a little dark, so we did not keep taking photos to document it, otherwise the swarming of countless insects while weeding would have been spectacular. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but at the moment the soil was loosened while weeding, at least a dozen insects came running out, and I have no idea what class or family they belonged to. Maybe I will photograph them carefully next time and share then!

A weakling like me ultimately completed the first experience safely, but my legs were sore for two days. In the field, planting one seedling means bending once or standing up and squatting down once, unavoidable. Planting five hundred seedlings means bending five hundred times, or standing up and squatting down five hundred times. I cannot help thinking: "Dad and Mom, in their fifties and sixties, can their legs still stand being worked like this?" Whenever I see Dad and Mom sweating away so hard, I always ask: "Should we just stop planting?" Mom always retorts: "Then what about little brother's tuition?" Finally, after enduring and enduring, little brother graduated, and Mom said: "You still have to get married! Little brother will have to take a wife someday too!"

Dad and Mom, who were farmers' children to begin with, only went back to growing vegetables after the economic downturn, taking up an industry that would not collapse, accumulating income ten yuan and twenty yuan at a time from a bunch of vegetables. Mom said: "Farming, of course it is hard, but bit by bit, it is also solid."

As for me, I think farming is too hard, but there are so many plain truths in it. That saying Mom let slip without thinking, "Stand up straight and you will be loved," vegetables have to be planted this way, and it seems people should live this way too. But only after googling it did I learn that this is actually a saying for new brides. My broken Taiwanese improved a little. Mom, perhaps, also hopes that I can be loved!