Pruning Season Is Still Upon Us All (And I’m Not Just Talking Tomatoes and Melons)

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This is more than a garden story. And it’s going to take me a few (or maybe many) paragraphs more than some people might like to get to the Godly point. But, dear reader, I pray you’ll just bear with me long enough to see how this little tale of a common sense lesson the Lord has taught me (and which, perhaps, I should have learned long ago) is roughly the same as the one He is teaching us all through our world’s current “crisis” regarding COVID-19.

The lush leaves of our heathiest-looking tomato plant (shown on the left on April 4) had produced exactly zero buds by about April 15 , the end of about its sixth week in our backyard. Since then, I’ve given it — and each of our 14 plants — several trim jobs, and, as of the picture taken today (right), it has 12 buds eagerly awaiting a glorious future as delectable tomatoes. After I began regularly pruning long, unproductive branches from the plants (approximately twice a week), our crop went from a total of eight buds and three baby tomatoes on April 19 to eighty-seven buds and 12 babies today. Thank you, God, for lessons learned!

Let me start with this exceedingly relevant word from God.

“Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.” John 15:6-8 (NLT)

And now, the story:

Cheryl and I have tried our hand at gardening, in one way or another, in at least 10-15 of the 17 years of our marriage.

But we’re definitely still beginners. Our preference, I guess, is for winging it. We usually just plant whatever strikes our fancy, whenever we get striken and then go from there. When we have problems, as we did last year with, let’s see, our potatoes, lettuce, corn, watermelon and cantaloupe and beans (among other things) we do a little checking around online and then maybe see what our more experienced friends typically do, and, I suppose that’s how we learn.

We tend to just think of our gardening style as God teaching us in His patient way. It’s fun just going with His flow. And I believe that “fun” is what Jesus is getting at when he says above: “if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted.”

And, praise the Lord, we get a little better every year. He is as great a teacher as there is.

I am particularly thankful these days for an astounding (well, actually common sense) lesson He has taught us of late via some wise friends.

As I explain this lesson, I’m sure you’ll come to understand the importance of this next little disclaimer.

Dear reader, please do not mistake this Garden Stories section of my little website as some sort “gardening expert” blog. As I say, Cheryl and I are but veteran beginners, and we certainly know very little of what we do. For whatever it’s worth, I envision these stories amounting to just a humble catalog of lessons God has for Cheryl and me (and, perhaps, all of us) through gardening.

Indeed, this current lesson has so much common sense in it, I’m confident some readers will marvel , perhaps in amazement even, that it was necessary for me.

Alas, here I go.

It all started with our disappointing crop of cantaloupe and watermelons last summer. Things began very nicely with the melons in late spring, but frustration had fully taken over by August. We saw plenty of babies pop up on our vines during those months — and one or two we tasted after finding them pulled from their vines by some animal were incredibly sweet. But, in the end, every single one of the little guys dried up and rotted away before they were the size of a tennis ball. (Most of them were gone before ping-pong ball stage. A few even stunted at marble size.)

Why won’t these things grow as large as advertised on the seed packages? we asked our several exceedingly knowledgeable friends.

Oh, that’s just how melons are, the friends said (almost always with a chuckle). It’s just a fact of life down here on the Texas Gulf Coast, they went on: watermelons and cantaloupe just don’t grow (to a usable size, at least) in normal back yards around these parts. Successful melons are only grown on farms, they said. For backyard folks, the vines require an impractical amount of sandy soil and an even crazier amount of water each day.

Well, since so many fine nurseries around here are happy to sell cantaloupe and watermelon seeds to non-farm-operator like me, I figured we just needed to keep asking around. But at least a couple of the nursery folks I consulted confirmed what everyone else said. One man said he usually makes it a practice to “really warn” customers buying melon seeds they’ll need a lot of sandy soil — and a lot of water.

“A lot of people like to try them, and that’s why I sell them. But they’re just very hard to grow,” he said. “Most people just don’t have a lot of luck with them.”

Focusing on those words “most people,” I told Cheryl throughout the fall I definitely want to try watermelon and cantaloupe again in our 2020 garden, and, as usual, she did not object to my craziness. Accordingly, I brought the topic up during a little session led in October by our local library’s garden expert-in-residence.

Mike surprised me.

“Oh, you can get good watermelon here. Cantaloupe, too. Definitely,” he said. “You just can’t get greedy.”

Turns out, Mike said, the secret to growing full size melons in regular ole’ soil and a large-but-reasonable amount of water is simple, really: pruning.

“For every four (babies), you see, you just cut off three. That’s all there is too it,” Mike assured me.

Common sense! Geez!

Of course! Fewer melons competing for limited water makes for bigger melons.

Our vines sprouted a LOT of baby melons last year! If we’d been happy to bring just 25 percent of those to harvest, we’d still have probably ended up with a dozen huge melons.

But we were greedy.

So we got nothing — except those few teaser tastes from the golf ball size melons we salvaged from our local rodents. (Oh, God has given me a great idea for keeping the animals off our vines this year, but I’ll save that for another post after the vines have started sprouting.)

Thanks be to God for Mike’s ridiculously simple tip. This year, mean as it sort of sounds, I can’t wait to turn me a few baby melons into garden scrap (maybe even compost. Hmmmm. I’ll have to check on that). Mike is the only guy I know in Brazoria County who didn’t laugh (okay, give me a friendly chuckle) when I asked how to grow full-size melons, and I am excited about proving him right on this!

Thanks be to our Lord, our garden now includes watermelon and cantaloupe seeds planted in two 4″-10″ beds, and they’re waiting for all this late season coolness we’ve been having around here to finally end. Once the soil remains boiling hot for couple of straight weeks, I expect we’ll see sprouts. And I’ll report back on the pruning as it happens.

Now, if you paid attention to my title and the pictures above, I assume you’ve noticed I’ve gotten track a bit. Sorry. This lesson I’m describing is, mostly, about our tomatoes this year. It turns out Mike’s tip applies to those too. (In fact, it applies to many plants. I’m starting to realize it’s a whole gardening concept that I’ve always understood intellectually, but, thanks to that crazy ole’ human greed that lurks in me, never considered might actually be a vital practice. Ahhhhh. Is this a foreshadowing of the God-lesson that’s coming? Please stay with me, dear reader!)

Regarding our tomatoes, I am thankful to still another couple of great friends who stopped by a few days ago to get a first-hand look at the new, 2020 garden we’ve been bragging about so much of late.

As Cheryl and I introduced them to our biggest-ever collection of tomato plants (seven beef steak and seven cherry), I mentioned my nervousness at seeing only half-a-dozen or so blooms among the bunch of otherwise great looking plants.

And that’s when I suddenly learned (duh!) that pruning long, unproductive tomato branches is as important as scrapping 75 percent of baby melons.

“You’ll have to clip off the branches that are pretty long but haven’t done anything yet,” one of our patient friends advised. “That way, the plant doesn’t have to waste its energy on them.”

Yep. Duh!

Such a simple lesson. It’s crazy I’d never learned it before.

As you see in my before-and-after pictures above, I took the sage advice and gave each tomato plant a haircut. The results speak for themselves.

Before: eight blooms total among the 14 plants which had been in place for at least six weeks.

After: Eighty-seven blooms one week later. We are going to have a lot of tomatoes this year.

So, now, finally… the God lesson in all of this:

Turns out, the little lesson I’ve learned here about the importance of pruning “a useless branch” for the sake of bearing more fruit can be a good guide for knowing if we are yet ready to return to “normalcy” after our wild ride on this COVID-19 shutdown. (For clarity’s sake, please take a quick peak back at the scripture way at back up at the top of this post. Whew, how I’ve ramble since I typed that. But, thanks be to God, His message is, finally, coming to a full circle. I am excited you’ve stayed with me, dear reader.)

Friends, it’s understandable for all of us to be excited at the thought of “re-opening” our world.

But, then, it was also understandable for me to be excited at all the melon babies Cheryl and I found growing in our garden last year. And all the lush green, healthy -looking leaves on this year’s tomato plants.

Great things in store, indeed!

Or not.

An understandable feeling can also be foolish, I’m learning.

Is it not yet clear, believers, that the historic shutdown we’ve experienced could only have been arranged by the Lord? Who else has the power to turn off all major economies on all continents?

And is it not yet also clear, that, through this astounding shutdown, our Lord is calling His people — loudly– to worldwide repentance. (I’ll link you to my own post about that here, but, I pray you have already noticed that I am far from alone with that message. It’s the central point of every last one of the online sermon’s I’ve heard these weeks.)

And is it not yet clear that repentance is still elusive for many?

I just heard a radio DJ gab over a song intro that he’s seen statistics showing alcohol sales across the world reaching record numbers in recent weeks.

Oh, Lord, please help me here. Please don’t let me ramble self righteously about last sentence (as, You know, was my intent just seconds ago).

Oh, Lord, please give me the strength and courage to hit “publish” on this post after I type these next revelations (which, I realize, are not at all revelations for You).

Lord, you know that my own refrigerator currently holds at least 15 beers, and that’s much more than its seen in some time. Lord, you know I have no need for that alcohol — which I purchased on the false premise that staying ready with at least a drink or two on hand to offer guests is always a loving thing to do. You know, Lord, that I am one of the participants in the gluttony still rampant in our world, the sin of which I was about to point out bitterly in others. You saw me, in the midst of this glorious New Thing You are doing in our world, decide to stockpile those drinks a few days ago while I was out in search of allergy medicine. You saw me return home with the beer, but without the medicine!

Oh Lord, please help me. Please prune my heart of its useless branches (lest I be pruned entirely in the end). Lord, let me bear your Glorious Fruit forever.

Oh, Lord, you know that the DJ I mentioned above was on WCBS, my long-favorite New York City old-school pop station that I turn to occasionally when I find myself bored — or annoyed — by Christian music. Lord, you’ve seen me rocking to WCBS’s jams a lot in recent days!

Oh, God, let me yearn for Your music always!

And, Lord, I know You realize it’s been at least two days since I opened my Bible! (It was two days ago that I found the verse I quote above. That’s how long I’ve been working on this post. Ha! My first inclination was to type “praying over” instead of “working on” in the previous sentence. But, Lord, You know, I did not pray one syllable over these words until I, inexplicably, began typing these confessions just now.) Lord, let me long for Your Word each day!

And, Lord, I think I waited for Cheryl to pray over our breakfast this morning. But, really, I can’t be sure. Lord, you know, there is still too much “duty” in my prayers. Dear God, help me pray!

Oh, God, I now see You are not nearly done with your Holy Pruning of my spirit. I ask You Lord — no, I beg you, Dear God — please finish that Glorious Work in me. I desire nothing more than to bear Your Holy Fruit Victoriously as part of the New Thing You are doing in me — and in the world.

Lord, it’s clear that your pruning season is still in progress for me (and all of us), and I pray our world will never return to “normalcy.”

Lord, may You — and your Holy words– remain strong in me (and in our world) so that I, and all of us, may forever be Your true disciples, bearing Your Holy Fruit eternally.

Please let me remember this prayer, Dear Lord, with every tomato, and every melon, Your Victorious Pruning brings forth in my backyard this year.