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WALT TRIZNA: GARDENING IN NEWARK

October 11, 2025 at 12:40 pm Leave a comment

                                                      GARDENING

Have you ever stopped for a red light while driving, and gazed over at the concrete median and there, against all odds, growing through a tiny flaw in the concrete is a plant.  I am amazed to see how life persists even under the most adverse conditions.  As a child in Newark, I simulated those exact conditions, although I called it gardening.

The yard we had on Christie Street was quite large.  Large enough to have kickball and baseball games, but then again, we were quite small.  Once I was older, we would have barbecues on our charcoal grill, summer nights spent sitting on beach chairs on the hard-packed soil, enjoying burgers and hot dogs and listening to the sound of the city as night closed the day. 

Next to our house was the landlord’s house, which was a small two story one family dwelling with and alley running between the two houses.  Behind the landlord’s house was a garden, fenced in.  On the opposite side of this small house was a driveway, which was actually quite long, and when I was old enough to shovel snow, it seemed to become longer still.  Behind the two houses was our yard, large enough to hold a couple of cars, with some scraggly patches of grass growing defiantly close to the fences where the cars could not maneuver.  To the rear of our yard was a three-car garage, one of which my father rented, and this was the reason I was given the opportunity to shovel the driveway.  Next to the garages, and beyond the area of the yard where we were permitted to play, was another fenced area, which was also part of the yard, but an area where the kids were not allowed.  There was an old glider swing back there but nothing much more.  This fenced area was quite large, making up one third of the playable area of the yard.  At the edge of this restricted area was another small, fenced space, about six feet by six feet, and this was fence sheltered a small garden belonging to the old woman across the hall.  She had mostly zinnias and marigolds, and it was a great place to catch whatever butterflies found their way into our yard.  I admired her garden.  She was always out there tending her flowers, pulling weeds, tying up plants with wooden stake and old stockings, which was the traditional way of supporting tall plants back then.

Then one day the fence bordering the back of the yard came down and the restricted area of the yard was no longer restricted.  I’m not sure why the fence came down, but it seems that the glider swing came down about the same time.  Now a whole new area of the yard was available, an area where cars would not park or drive, an area perfect for a garden.  So with our landlady’s permission, my sisters and I started small gardens. 

The ground was as hard as concrete; there was a total lack of anything that resembled topsoil.  So off we went in the old Chevy for some rich topsoil.  We traveled a short distance to where my grandparents lived in Hillside. There was a little-used park along a stream not far from where they lived, and that is where we headed for some our soil.  We parked as close as we could and, armed with a shovel and several large containers, started digging up the bank of the stream. 

Once our topsoil was obtained, my sisters and I framed out small areas, one next to the other, in the newly freed-up back area of our yard.  We each had an area about twenty to twenty-five square feet backing up to the fence separating our yard from the neighbor’s yard.  We made a feeble attempt to turn the soil before adding the topsoil, but the product of our digging was only reddish soil and rock, so we dumped our topsoil on top of our little garden areas and started planting.

I was rather ambitious when I planted my garden.  I bought tomato and pepper plants, planted carrot, beet and parsley seeds all in neat little rows.  These poor plants and seeds did less than thrive in my garden for I seemed to grow everything in miniature.  My beefsteak tomatoes were more like their cherry cousins, the plants barely needing any support at all.  My peppers were the size of plums.  And my carrots – I grew those tiny carrots that they feature in seed catalogs, ones as big as your pinky, but I in fact was going for the full-sized edition.  Why I attempted to grow root crops in my concrete soil is a mystery to me now.  But I was proud of my little garden, and as my sisters lost interest, the size of my garden grew.  I watered and weeded the few limp weeds that dare take up residence amongst my crops and generally enjoyed the little area of green I had created out back.

Then one summer it happened, a true sign that I had truly established a growing zone in Newark, I was infested with insects.  The leaves on my plants were full of holes.  This phenomenon amazes me to this day.  How you can grow a plant that is unknown to the area where it is being grown, an area that may have never seen that plant before, yet an insect that specifically attacks that plant will find and destroy it.  And so it went for my little plot in Newark.  I purchased a powder that I thought might remedy the situation, and after a heavy dusting that left my plants white under the strong midafternoon sun I read the directions.  This pesticide was to be applied lightly and only during the cool of the evening, always avoiding exposing the plants to this killer during the heat of the afternoon.  By nightfall, my whole garden was withered and dead.  I eliminated my insect infestation and in the process eliminated my garden.

The next year I planted again with a new knowledge of pesticide use.  I branched out to flowers, planting some morning glories in a corner of my yard near my garden, another small square of the yard taken over for horticulture.  I have my own yard now, much larger than the yard of my youth.  I enjoy my vegetable garden, and the flowers planted around the property, but there are days when I think back to my little plot in Newark where I teased life from the concrete soil.

Entry filed under: BIO, memoir, OBSERVATIONS & OPINIONS, REMEMBERANCES, Walt Trizna, Walt Trizna's Stories, WALT'S OBSERVATIONS. Tags: garden, gardening, homesteading, memoie, nature, Newark New Jersey, Newarl, vegetables, Walt Trizna.