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In the late 1970s, the freedom of rural economy gradually grew. The first thing we noticed was that farmers were given more land for personal use, and adults in the village spontaneously utilized the land next to their houses to build vegetable gardens.
My family's vegetable garden was built on the west side of the house, right next to the eaves of the roof, and it was about two acres in size. This land originally did not belong to our family. My mother used scattered personal land elsewhere and exchanged it several times before gaining the right to use this piece of land. Because this land was located at the edge of the courtyard and was relatively fertile, the amount of land my mother had to give up was more than two acres, especially a piece of land that she had been tending as a "pig feed area" for many years. She had put in a lot of effort every year, applying manure, urine, ash, and other farm fertilizers. This time, in order to create a decent vegetable garden, she had to reluctantly give it up to someone else.
Once the land was acquired, the first task was to plant seasonal vegetables and fruits.
The earliest crop to be planted is sweet potato. In the first winter, my mother would select some large, moist, and undamaged sweet potatoes as seedlings and store them away. As soon as spring arrives, she would move the sweet potato seedlings to a corner near the pig manure pile in the garden, using the nutrients and warmth of the manure pile to sprout tender shoots and leaves. Then, she would plant them in another well-prepared corner of the vegetable garden, and soon a large number of sweet potato vines would grow.
When the spring rains come, these vines are cut and trimmed into small sections of four to five inches, and then inserted into other soil. We only need to remove the grass a couple of times, and by autumn, we can harvest sweet potatoes. Sometimes, if we don't have enough grass or if we're late coming home from school, we can also cut a few vine leaves from the sweet potato field.
The main function of the vegetable garden in the process of planting sweet potatoes is to allow the sweet potatoes to sprout and grow vines that can be inserted. Because sweet potatoes are relatively low-cost, they are usually planted in relatively distant and less fertile land. The sweet potato field farthest from our home is a good two to three miles away.
The second important task undertaken was breeding. At that time, there were no specialized seedlings for sale, so my mother would always select the best-looking portion of the harvest to keep as seeds for the following year. These seeds mainly included pumpkins, winter melons, cucumbers, watermelons, green beans, radishes, carrots, chili peppers, and lettuce. They all needed to occupy a relatively fertile and warm spot in the garden, especially near the pig manure pile, to germinate before being transplanted into the garden or other land.
Seeds for crops like sorghum, wheat, and soybeans, which did not need to go into the vegetable garden, also had to be stored well from the previous year. As time went on and land was allocated to households, there were even more varieties of seeds to store. Nowadays, with specialized vendors selling seedlings, there is no longer a need to keep seeds for oneself; many seedlings can be directly purchased from the market.
With a garden established, another important task was to enclose it. At that time, there weren't enough materials to build a fence, so our vegetable garden went through a yearly transformation around its perimeter.
The first year was the simplest. I went to the forest on the back mountain and used a hook to pull down some branches from the cedar trees. I arranged them evenly around the edge of the garden, utilizing the dense and sharp leaves of the cedar branches to prevent chickens, ducks, and other small animals from entering the garden and damaging the various crops. It also kept children out to avoid trampling on the seedlings, while warning idle passersby not to easily enter and steal the ripe fruits and vegetables.
Since the cedar branches couldn't be piled too high or wide, this barrier could only keep out chickens and ducks. A child like me, around eight or nine years old, could easily leap into the garden after a couple of running steps, not to mention adults who were intent on stealing vegetables. Because of this, my mother always reminded me, "Next year we need to build a new garden."
In the second year, my parents took advantage of their free time to gather several large bundles of bamboo sticks from further away in the mountains. They inserted these bamboo sticks densely around the entire vegetable garden. The bamboo sticks were almost as tall as an adult. Once they were firmly placed, the distance between the larger sticks was no more than an inch. As they went higher, there were more smaller bamboo sticks, and their spacing became even tighter; in many places, not even a small finger could fit through.
After inserting the bamboo branches, my parents would erect a wooden stake every two to three meters, and use ropes to secure the bamboo branches to the wooden stakes and to the thick, long bamboo poles or small tree poles between the stakes. This made our vegetable garden look like it had been upgraded, and the vegetables inside seemed to grow much more vigorously.
In the third year, my parents brought back another material for fencing the garden from the mountains - pipe bamboo. This type of bamboo is not very tall, generally only two meters high and as thick as a finger. It grows densely in the deep mountains, has good flexibility, and straight poles, making it excellent material for building fences. When building the fence, they first dug a shallow trench around the vegetable garden, then placed the bamboo at a thirty-degree angle to the left and right. Every two to three inches, two bamboo poles would cross each other, forming a series of regular rhombuses that were both attractive and practical, making us siblings feel proud in front of the other children in the yard for a long time.
During the process of building the fence, the main task for the children was to help hand the materials to our parents, but our sense of accomplishment grew as the garden changed and expanded year by year.
During that time, there was a kind of fence that always existed in my dreams, which was to surround the entire vegetable garden with green thorny vines or shrubs. Within a radius of about ten kilometers, no family could build such a garden; the only one we could see at the time was the Large Plot Gardening Area with a section of such a fence. But this dream of a fence has never been realized.
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