John and Patty Fitzurka's vegetable garden earns special award

For at least 50 years, someone in Patty Fitzurka's family has grown fruit and vegetables behind this house in Robinson.

Her father and uncle worked a bigger garden than the one she and her husband, John, now tend. But they couldn't have worked it any better. One year, when the garden was still 100 by 60 feet, the Fitzurkas put up 700 jars of tomato sauce, sauerkraut, dried beans, pickles, hot cauliflower and zucchini, "cherry bombs" -- and the list goes on.

Though the PG's Great Gardens Contest mainly honors well-designed flower gardens, each year, a few vegetable gardens are entered. Usually laid out in neat rows, they don't show much design and there's rarely much thought given to color or scale. But when judges from the Post-Gazette and the contest's co-sponsor, the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, saw the Fitzurkas' photos and read their essay, they agreed it was a garden worthy of an award, and a second look.

So the Fitzurkas were given an honorable mention in the eighth annual contest. And the couple, who have more time to garden now that they've retired as custodians at Montour High School, were pleased to be honored for something they both love to do.

"We're a little crazy," she says, laughing.

"I just love this garden," he says. "And I love to eat good."

The yields are so great from the now 60- by 50-foot garden that their friends and family eat pretty well, too.

"It's too much for the two of us. Everybody wants some," he says.

Each season, they grow lettuce, onions, garlic, carrots, yellow, green and Italian beans, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, corn, zucchini, bell and hot peppers, and more.

Red peppers are the basis of the snack the Fitzurkas call cherry bombs and zucchinis cut lengthwise are the hulls of their zucchini boats. (For these recipes and others, see Thursday's Food section.) They believe these treats have long been popular in the western suburbs and aren't connected to a particular ethnic group (He's Russian and Slovak and she's Polish.). But there is something special about the delight these people take in homegrown produce. One friend used to impress by casually eating very hot peppers raw.

"Mr. Miller used to eat hot peppers straight from the jar or fry 'em in olive oil and put 'em on Mancini's bread. He didn't show any pain," Mr. Fitzurka marvels. "I couldn't do that."

The couple also end up feeding four-legged neighbors -- the local deer and other critters. In hopes of saving their crop of cherries, apples and yellow pears, the couple make piles of hard green pears along the deer's favorite path. Sometimes it works; other times, the deer nibble at the pile, then move on to the good stuff. And birds often get most of the cherries.

"They still trim the trees for us," Mr. Fitzurka says.

The birds seem to appreciate the birdhouses he makes and hangs on the side of a shed; they're rarely vacant. But the occupants apparently forget their hosts' hospitality when the sunflowers set seed. The couple has begun netting the 10-foot-tall flowers to keep cardinals and others from ripping them apart.

When the couple started working the land 20 years ago, they tried various seed catalogs. Now everything is grown from Gurney's Seed, chosen over the winter. Some seeds are started in the small greenhouse Mr. Fitzurka built 20 years ago; others are direct-sowed. Each spring, he brings home at least eight trailer loads of compost from Robinson's maintenance garage, where residents can get as much as they want. Too hot to go directly on the beds at first, it's piled upon an open lot next to the fenced field for two or three weeks. Then, once the seedlings are planted out, it's banked high -- as much as 8 inches deep -- around them. When there is little rain, the couple runs sprinklers in their garden, sometimes for a total of five hours, every few days.

Their devotion to their garden means they never take summer vacations, just a weekend here or there at their camp in Tionesta in Forest County. About eight years ago, they decided to downsize the garden to its current size because they were getting older and because they wanted time for other activities, like playing with grandchildren.

"I run the tiller and we're both 65," Mr. Fitzurka explains.

But neither can imagine giving up the garden altogether.

"We like working in it," Mrs. Fitzurka says. "Just to sit and watch it grow, it's a miracle. It's wonderful."