Simple vegetable patch turns into a bumper crop

Over the span of 30 years, Pinky and Irma Schroeder had their share of disagreements over his "back 80."

It's not that she minds her husband's hobby, in fact, she believes it keeps the retired gravel truck driver active, healthy and happy. But there's a limit to her tolerance.

His voluminous garden started out as just a simple vegetable patch.

Then Pinky would say something like: "If I plowed under another swipe of weeds on the border, I could plant potatoes." Or squash. Or cabbage.

You get the picture.

It continued until the "patch" verged on about 15,000 square feet. Then Irma put her foot down.

"The divorce papers are all drawn up. I've already talked to our lawyer. When I say 'now,' it means he took another swipe," she jokes.

For many years, the garden supported the East Dundee couple and their children. Irma canned prolifically. With their own children grown and raising families of their own, now, it's still keeping the Schroeder family fed -- as well as many others.

Their own offspring pop by for veggies whenever needed and the Schroeders deliver several hundred pounds of fresh vegetables weekly to the FISH food pantry in Carpentersville.

The FISH pantry is one of 54 different agencies participating in the Daily Herald's Giving Garden program, which encourages gardeners to grow produce and donate it to area food pantries.

"You back up there in the morning with the truck, and you ask the kids to get the basket, and they're so excited," Pinky said.

Even if the family considered reducing the size of the garden, which they don't, the grateful response of the clients puts a quick end to that, Irma said.

"Just to see the changes in their faces when we round the corner …," she said.

Grasping the scope of their garden is difficult. It takes three to four hours at a stretch to pick the four, 50-foot-long trellises of beans. And that needs to be done about every other day.

Then there are the plastic coffee cans Pinky placed in the ground next to each of his 125 tomato plants so they'd get a slow, draining dose of water. They need to be filled a few times a week.

Um, did Pinky ever consider that perhaps that's a lot of tomatoes?

"Well, they're not all the same," he said, as if that explained away the seemingly endless rows of grape, Celebrity, plum, Early Girl and Early Boy tomatoes.

Has he at least considered growing a few less plants?

Truthfully? Only when it's 90 degrees outside and the food needs to be harvested.

Luckily this year rain hasn't been much of an issue.

"The Lord's been taking care of it so far," he said.

When it hasn't rained, he hitches his tractor to a trailer carrying two tanks totaling 675 gallons of water he gleans from the now-filled adjacent former stone quarry. He parks the trailer at the top of a small incline, hooks up a complicated series of soaker hoses, then lets the water drain out slowly.

It worked for 14 rows of potatoes, which looked healthy and were about ready to be unearthed from their dirt mounds.

And for a seemingly endless patch of pumpkins.

"I tell everybody if you want to see what heaven is like," Pinky said, "come on over."