Plant a row of toothbrushes

It’s probably a crazy idea, but wouldn’t it be nice if toothbrushes grew  on trees, or in the ground, like potatoes and peanuts?

I’ve come up with that wacky idea because some right-thinking people have come up another idea called, “Adopt A Platoon.� To get the ball rolling they sent me an envelope bulging with a fancy toothbrush mounted on a card emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes.

Seems our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are short of toothbrushes and would I send the toothbrush back with a donation for more toothbrushes? Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there isn’t a PX in every village in Iraq or behind every outcropping in every village in the Swat Valley.

So I sent the toothbrush back with a donation. And lo, another toothbrush came — with another request for money, and then another toothbrush.

I’m of the World War II vintage and I remember bond drives and victory bond drives and drives to donate old cooking pans to melt down into metal for firearms and, of course, victory gardens. But I don’t ever recall an appeal from a remote Pacific Island or from a foxhole in the Argonne Forest for toothbrushes.

So will some old veteran explain how 12,000,000 American men and women in uniform during that cataclysmic war brushed their teeth without asking the folks back home to send them brushes?

    u    u    u

I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs waiting for some wiseacre answer. But it is time to revive the bountiful victory gardens of the Second World War that made it possible for us to enjoy healthy diets whilst releasing farm-grown food for the troops who were training in military camps that dotted the country.

While Mr. Bush only called on us once during his unfortunate two terms to make sacrifices to lessen the cost of the two wars he got us embroiled in — “Shop, shop, shop, go out and buy,� he railed — I’m hoping President Barack Obama will order us to plant victory gardens.

What with droughts dangerously reducing the output from the farms in California, whence cometh most of our edible crops, the military is going to get first dibs on what they can grow. Prices in the grocery stores are going to skyrocket. Everyone is going to complain.

So while I jest about growing toothbrushes, we can start planning our home gardens now.

    u    u    u

We all have our own special tastes, often a legacy of our families. Start with the Italians. After hot dogs, pizza is the food of choice of Americans. Italian restaurants are trendy and serve the best food. Some of our most famous chefs are Italian. One of the top Italian chefs presents an image that doesn’t exactly conjure up the runways of Naples. He has a big round face, red hair and an enormous protruding belly, wears short pants when he cooks and colored clogs on his feet. You know who you are, Mario, don’t hide behind your favorite pizza peel (a paddle used to insert pizza into a hot oven).

Now that we have morphed into Italian food, let’s grow it. No point in trying to grow anything endemic to my ancestors. Ever heard of anyone growing gefilte fish in a garden? But garlic, ay, that’s the rub, a clove or two on crusty bread to produce garlic bread. Yummo!

So let’s start with tomatoes, aah, red, juicy ripe tomatoes. Anyone can grow tomatoes, either by seed if you fancy a variety of tomatoes, or from seedlings, by far the easiest and most likely to succeed method.

For a well-balanced tomato crop, however, you do want at least three main varieties: the big tomato to slice and grace a hamburger, cherry tomatoes for salads and the firm-fleshed Roma for cooking up a storm of tomato sauce for spaghetti, pizza or even your own tomato soup.

The increasingly popular Mediterranean diet also focuses on greens, and Italians are major consumers of lettuces and every member of the cabbage family.

Last year I planted them late but managed to harvest a nice crop of shallots and leeks. They can last all winter if you store them deep in bushel baskets of damp sand. They make a wonderful addition to split pea soup.

    u    u    u

I’m running out of space. Go online and order five or six good garden catalogs. I like Parks Seeds the best. Harts of Wethersfield have the least expensive seeds — and they grow just as well as those with the hyped-up prices.

Freelance writer Barnett Laschever has been tending gardens for nigh on half a century and has a  wall festooned with ribbons to prove it.  He’s also the author of five children’s books and co-author of “Connecticut, An Explorer’s Guide.â€�