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Once, when we lived in Floyd, we had ideal garden soil, a rich loam that crumbled easily. This soil grew plump cabbages, huge potatoes and shriveling, dead-on-the-vine tomatoes. This soil, rich in so much, also happened to be rich in tomato blight.

After months of laboring over these babies grown from seed, we waited for redness. Then around July Fourth, a moist air mass always brought rain, and this humid air smothered our plants with blight. Within two days, all our tomato plants turned from vibrant green to dull yellow, and then finally, to brittle brown. The leaves flaked in my hands like dried tobacco. Our dream of canned quarts went up in blighty smoke.

Enter John, our neighbor who always loved to give advice, who scoffed at our organic practices, and who grew splendid tomatoes.

After decades of tending fields of strawberries, John retired from the berries but not his garden. When I visited, he still had his quick wit but not the quickness of body. He pulled himself out of his recliner and led me to his garden.

"Can't grow berries anymore with this many deer," he said as he leaned on a fence post. "But they won't touch my garden," he said with a grin as we approached the gate. "Watch yourself now. Don't touch that wire."

He rigged an electric fence around his large plot -- and not a typical electric fence with a safe charger. Instead, he strung a line from his house and wired it directly into his breaker box. So this thin strand of metal was charged with enough juice to jolt a man to the ground.

"Don't you ever get shocked?" I watched as he gingerly opened the flimsy gate.

"Oh, just once," he said with a grin. He liked the danger, liked to know the deer that ran him out of business touch this wire and jump 20 feet, scared for a while from his garden.

The productivity of this patch was impressive. He already picked beans and turnip greens covered a wide swath. "You come back in a few weeks and I'll give you some seed," he said as he pointed to the greens. "Best eating in the world. Plant them once and never plant them again."

I admired the frilly leaves. "How do you cook them?"

"Oh, throw a hunk of fatback in the skillet, and let that get good and hot. Then throw in as many greens as the pan will hold. Cook it down and eat it up."

He knew we ate little meat and no fatback. "A little pork fat every now and then won't hurt you, Jim. Look at me," he said as he patted his round belly. "Coming up on 80 and still plugging." I just shook my head.

John got off the farm only once a month for groceries. The previous week, I watched his red car zip by the house. He always honked and waved, but he never stopped. He feared he'd stay too long and "talk both your ears off." But he did slow enough to peer into the garden. And I knew he saw our blighted and pathetic tomatoes. I waited for some comment.

We circled his garden, inspected all. Finally we turned to the center with its long row of staked tomatoes, bushy with heavy growth. At least a dozen plants, each tied to a stake with strips of cloth. When we stopped by the first I sensed John had orchestrated this tour, saved his robust plants for last.

"Look at that tomato!" He leaned over and parted the leaves. Under the mass of greenery, sure enough, a ripe and huge love apple sat.

He parted another bush and another as we walked down the row, each time naming the variety. At the end of the row, he spat out his tobacco. "I saw your tomatoes the other day," he looked away. "Got the blight, didn't they?"

I only nodded when he looked back at me, his blue eyes twinkling.

And here it came. "You know, Jim, you can't grow tomatoes without spraying. That blight'll just kill them all. I spray these once a week and after every rain. Got to if you want to eat." He spat again, paused.

"You just want to farm like my grandmother. But that won't work today, oh no. There ain't no way you can grow a garden without a sprayer. Looks to me you either spray or pray. Spray or pray, Jim, spray or pray."

I knew too well this argument, knew John would harangue into the night if I engaged, so I only laughed at his wordplay and said little.

After a while, when he winded, he pulled out two grocery bags. "Now get you some of these," he pointed to the tomatoes.

"Oh, I can't, John. You've already given us a mess of beans."

But he insisted, "There's more here than I'll ever eat, so you better take some so they don't go to waste."

I did. I parted the leaves, even though they had a film of white from the spray of poison, and I picked this red fruit. John leaned on his hoe and waited but said little. He could have gloated, could have said like in the past, "I thought you were strictly organic?" But he was quiet, just watching and pointing at any I missed.

When we walked back to the house, he hobbled side to side, and I stayed beside him, even though my arms burned with weight of his gift.

As I readied to leave, John said to come back in a week to pick more, and, "Next year, you come and borrow my sprayer."

But we both knew I wouldn't.

Jim Minick lives in Wythe County and teaches at Radford University. You can e-mail him at jminick@radford.edu.