truck garden
- noun
- /trʌk ˈɡɑrdən/
- Specialized
:
huerto
- The local farmers sell fresh vegetables from their truck garden at the weekend market.
Examples
-
I used to spend my spare time down on those little islands... ...working truck gardens so my outfit could have fresh tomatoes... ...and green corn and all that.
-
Within a matter of days, the freeway settlers organized recycling, waste disposal, latrines, truck gardens, and live television coverage—all under a tent of black smoke created by the freeway fires.
Academic text (2016) -
You 3 girls, weed the truck garden.
-
She ought to concentrate on the truck garden.
Fiction book (2000) -
An interesting development in this regard was the emergence of a truck garden zone in the vicinity of the city of Sao Paulo.
Academic text (1992) -
In the sexual division of labor, women maintained households on urban lots with truck gardens, worked informally at activities such as washing clothes and cooking for others, or maintained small storefront businesses in town.
Academic text (1990) -
Hedrick wrote that in the three decades before the Civil War, "orchards, nurseries, greenhouses, and truck gardens dotted the landscape near all cities and towns" in the North Atlantic states.
Academic text (2015) -
Those responsibilities consisted mainly of watching over his brother and sisters, especially little Anne, tending the truck garden and the fig trees, hunting, and bartering produce or cash from Eugene's meager pension for fish and seafood at the island dock.
Fiction book (2002) -
The road was narrow and curvy, bordered by fields of corn, a truck garden, a small apple orchard, and some abandoned cherry trees that were gnarly and beautiful, alive with birds eating their fill and making a raucous, joyous cacophony.
Fiction book (1990) -
She spends her mornings tending to the truck garden, ensuring everything is ready for the market.
Synonyms
1
3.4
A garden where people grow fruit and vegetables to sell
1
5.3
A farm that grows vegetables and other food to sell at markets
How Commercial
Surface Forms
Morphology
truck + garden
The compound's sense (‘a garden producing vegetables for local sale’) depends on an older/less-common sense of truck meaning trade/transport of produce rather than the everyday noun 'truck' = vehicle. A B1 learner who only knows 'truck' as a vehicle and 'garden' as a plot would not reliably infer the market-gardening meaning, so the overall sense is unpredictable from the parts.
Etymology
Truck garden comes from an older use of truck meaning 'trade' or 'goods', not the vehicle. Imagine a small garden where vegetables are packed to take to the local 'market' to 'sell', and you can see why it means a farm that grows produce for sale.