The other night Mountville gardener Sim Blitch grilled three kinds of squash - green zucchini, golden zucchini and yellow crook-neck squash. He wanted to see which one he liked best. He liked them all, but admitted that his favorite is still the classic yellow crook-neck squash.

Blitch has been gardening on about an acre of land for the past seven years. He does have three farmhands - siblings Hannah Rose and Tad Duraski, and LaGrange College student Kandace Cook.

“They are outstanding. They’re all smart and hard-working. You tell them what to do and they do it,” he said.

As for the produce, he gives a little away to neighbors and sells a lot at local markets. Of course, he keeps quite a bit for his own dinner table.

He’s an adventurous eater and an adventurous gardener as well.

Over the years, Blitch, 75, made the decision to raise his produce without chemicals that fertilize or keep away the bugs.

“I do use organically approved pesticides. I use Neem oil - an oil from a tree in India - that is a natural fungicide, miticide and pesticide,” he said.

He uses mushroom compost and poultry manure to fertilize the ground.

“It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort,” he said.

In a few weeks, Blitch will be doing a little more taste-testing. He expects his five varieties of tomatoes to be ripening about then and he’ll be trying out the Amish Paste, Yellow Pear, Red Pear, German Johnson Pink and Cherokee Purples.

A few are new, a few are old favorites. He’s looking forward to picking a favorite, but he does wish there was one thing he could change in the garden.

“I just wish I could get a lettuce that would grow here at the same time as the tomatoes,” he said.

Sherri Brown can be reached at sbrown@ lagrangenews.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 240.

Where to buy

Hogansville Handmade-Homegrown is held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today and every other Saturday throughout the summer in downtown Hogansville.

Sim Blitch also sells his produce from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at his Mountville garden, Sim’s Garden Patch at 301 College St., and from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Suzanne’s Greenhouse in LaGrange every other Friday. The next date there is June 18.