After my time on the reservation was finished I decided to go to seminary back East. There I met and married my husband. Soon after graduation we headed west, and soon our family grew.
Now in this current church, I was privileged to have the opportunity to garden again. The yard is not able to support a veggie garden in ground. There is not enough sunny space, etc. We live in an area where homegrown fruits and veggies are plentiful, so its cost effective to buy local.I decided to do container gardening. I wanted to do flowers...something new for me.
The first year, I started with one geranium and an ivy plant from a big box store. I borrowed tons of library books and bought a couple of books as well. In addition, I visited about 10 or so plant nurseries around the area. I asked questions, I observed their plant stock, and just got a ton of information. I quickly learned that sometimes the salesclerks knew a lot...and sometimes they didn't. I found one good salesclerk in a big box store in the garden section that had formerly owned a plant nursery so she's been a big help. I also found a plant nursery where the workers, not the salesclerks, but the actual workers...knew a lot. In just a few sentences they could give such a book full of information.
So the second year, I tried more flowerpots. My hubby liked the look of the flowers and encouraged I get more. I ended up with 17 that year. I learned a LOT that first full year, made a lot of mistakes and re-evaluated during that winter. I spent a ton of time that following winter researching and finding out what I did wrong, and what I wanted to try again.
The next year, I ended up with 28 flower pots and had a great time!!!! SO glad that I stuck with it. I had several kinds of annual geraniums, impatiens, diamond frost, begonias, ivy, million bells, petunias, pansies, and double impatiens.
This past winter, I have acquired, a "Christmas? cactus", a jade plant, and an African Violet for indoors....and now as I have written about a couple of posts ago on this blog I have a pot of Violas outside.
I will continue to write about my experiences with the various annual geraniums especially the Wilhelm Langguth zonal geranium, which really loved the environment where it was placed and grew to a small shrub size. More on the individual plants I have worked with in future posts. I'll also keep you up-to-date with my gardening adventures this year. :)
Showing posts with label gardening history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening history. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
My Gardening History, (pt. 3 of 4) re-post
It wasn't many years after we moved from that special house with the BIG veggie garden plots that soon I was on my own in the world. I had graduated college and was working for the summer in the Midwest. Then from there I moved to AZ and lived on an Indian reservation working as a mission worker. I lived with other single teachers on the school grounds, and we had the desert as our backyard, nestled on the valley floor between two mesas.
The backyard desert beckoned me to get my fingernails dirty. SOOOO...I learned how to garden like my friends and neighbors whose land I lived on. They had been tilling this sand for a good thousand years or so and were struggling to eek out a living....so I tried too. Growing a garden in the desert is MUCH different than growing one back East. The semi-aridness, and the sand called for a change of planting depths, and other changes in gardening. So I acquired some seeds and tried. And though the winds mixed with the sand blew hard that spring, and many of my seeds never took root, some did. I grew corn!! Corn in the Desert is SOOOOO different than corn in PA. But I grew it! With advice from the locals, I had such a small harvest, but a harvest I did!! I was excited. I came to have a much different appreciation for the local people once I planted my first seed, and struggled all summer for a crop. I only planted a couple of hills of corn, but it grew!
And I learned a LOT.There's something about being in a different culture and learning to grow their way.
The backyard desert beckoned me to get my fingernails dirty. SOOOO...I learned how to garden like my friends and neighbors whose land I lived on. They had been tilling this sand for a good thousand years or so and were struggling to eek out a living....so I tried too. Growing a garden in the desert is MUCH different than growing one back East. The semi-aridness, and the sand called for a change of planting depths, and other changes in gardening. So I acquired some seeds and tried. And though the winds mixed with the sand blew hard that spring, and many of my seeds never took root, some did. I grew corn!! Corn in the Desert is SOOOOO different than corn in PA. But I grew it! With advice from the locals, I had such a small harvest, but a harvest I did!! I was excited. I came to have a much different appreciation for the local people once I planted my first seed, and struggled all summer for a crop. I only planted a couple of hills of corn, but it grew!
And I learned a LOT.There's something about being in a different culture and learning to grow their way.
My Gardening History (pt. 2 of 4) Re-post
Looking back on my childhood/youth years at that one house, I realize I learned a LOT about gardening, just by watching my dad, and helping out in the family gardens each year. I learned how to plant with seeds, onion sets, seedlings and other young plants. I also learned how to put milk jugs over vulnerable transplants until the danger of frost was past and they were bigger. I also learned how to hoe weeds, and more weeds, etc. ;). I also learned how to harvest carefully. Some plants would yield another 'picking(s)' if you harvested carefully and didn't pull on the plant too hard when picking the beans or peas, lol. It was hard work, with the big garden plots, but our stomachs sure appreciated it!!
I also learned to LOVE the feel of dirt on my fingers and yes even under my fingernails. It was something I never really thought about until years later...it was my way of life.
Also, when you talk about gardens and love of soil, you gotta talk about other plants too besides veggies. Looking back I was very blessed by the 'boondocks' where we lived. We were WAY out in the country. Besides the veggie gardens we also had a peach tree, grapevines, a pear tree, apple tree, walnut trees, berries on our property, in addition to the woods that surrounded our house.
I will always remember the walks that Dad and I, and usually my brother would take through the woods, just enjoying the creations that the Lord has made. Wildflowers grew in abundance, along with weeds, vines, and berries. We even found a swinging vine in our woods.
As the years passed, and we moved from that house, things began to go downhill in more ways than one...but one thing for sure remained the same, Dad would always take a walk with my brother and I as his health permitted, and we'd always have a garden, albeit much smaller as the years passed and the houses that we lived in had much smaller lots.
I also learned to LOVE the feel of dirt on my fingers and yes even under my fingernails. It was something I never really thought about until years later...it was my way of life.
Also, when you talk about gardens and love of soil, you gotta talk about other plants too besides veggies. Looking back I was very blessed by the 'boondocks' where we lived. We were WAY out in the country. Besides the veggie gardens we also had a peach tree, grapevines, a pear tree, apple tree, walnut trees, berries on our property, in addition to the woods that surrounded our house.
I will always remember the walks that Dad and I, and usually my brother would take through the woods, just enjoying the creations that the Lord has made. Wildflowers grew in abundance, along with weeds, vines, and berries. We even found a swinging vine in our woods.
As the years passed, and we moved from that house, things began to go downhill in more ways than one...but one thing for sure remained the same, Dad would always take a walk with my brother and I as his health permitted, and we'd always have a garden, albeit much smaller as the years passed and the houses that we lived in had much smaller lots.
My Gardening History Pt. 1 of 4 (Reposting from other blog)
Speaking of gardening, :).....I thought I'd repost some of my older posts from my other blog. Here's part 1 of my gardening history...how I came to love 'dirt underneath my fingernails'.
I think, I was almost born with dirt under my fingernails. I realize that now. For a period of several recent years, without dirt to be in and garden, I felt something missing. Now that I'm gardening again, I know the feeling that I was lacking........These memories of my recently dearly departed Dad are sweet. It all began as a child in a house where I lived in another state. Back then our focus was on survival. We grew what we ate, (prettynear') and we ate what we grew!! We had two BIG plots of garden for a veggie garden. Each spring my parents would have our landlord or someone else 'disc' the gardens. They'd bring in their tractor and turn over the soil. It created huge playing mounds, if the dirt was the right texture. Then soon Dad would bring out his tiller and start the several day job of tilling the ground. Then he'd rake it and then we'd start to plant. Little bit at a time, veggies that would take the cold first....then eventually the warmer weather ones. He'd either hoe rows or dig holes and we'd plant, and plant and plant...lol, the seeds or sets, or transplants.
We had: onions, head lettuce, leaf lettuce, red peppers, yellow peppers, potatos, tomatoes, peas, green beans, corn, radishes, carrots, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, cabbage, celery, wax beans, and probably a couple of others I have forgotten.
oh my!!
We'd also receive seeds from our local elementary school to plant and then bring the harvest in the fall for some sort of harvest festival. Fun. One year I brought in a HUGE pumpkin that ended up being a chair in the reading group circle area until it outlasted its prime. Then the school cooks, took the pumpkin and returned with roasted pumpkin seeds.
Those were the days...planting, picking, harvesting, shelling, snapping, watering (by hauling water in huge pots in our little red wagon), hoeing, weeding.
What sweet but sad memories. But the gardening love instilled by my Dad lingers. :)
I think, I was almost born with dirt under my fingernails. I realize that now. For a period of several recent years, without dirt to be in and garden, I felt something missing. Now that I'm gardening again, I know the feeling that I was lacking........These memories of my recently dearly departed Dad are sweet. It all began as a child in a house where I lived in another state. Back then our focus was on survival. We grew what we ate, (prettynear') and we ate what we grew!! We had two BIG plots of garden for a veggie garden. Each spring my parents would have our landlord or someone else 'disc' the gardens. They'd bring in their tractor and turn over the soil. It created huge playing mounds, if the dirt was the right texture. Then soon Dad would bring out his tiller and start the several day job of tilling the ground. Then he'd rake it and then we'd start to plant. Little bit at a time, veggies that would take the cold first....then eventually the warmer weather ones. He'd either hoe rows or dig holes and we'd plant, and plant and plant...lol, the seeds or sets, or transplants.
We had: onions, head lettuce, leaf lettuce, red peppers, yellow peppers, potatos, tomatoes, peas, green beans, corn, radishes, carrots, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, cabbage, celery, wax beans, and probably a couple of others I have forgotten.
oh my!!
We'd also receive seeds from our local elementary school to plant and then bring the harvest in the fall for some sort of harvest festival. Fun. One year I brought in a HUGE pumpkin that ended up being a chair in the reading group circle area until it outlasted its prime. Then the school cooks, took the pumpkin and returned with roasted pumpkin seeds.
Those were the days...planting, picking, harvesting, shelling, snapping, watering (by hauling water in huge pots in our little red wagon), hoeing, weeding.
What sweet but sad memories. But the gardening love instilled by my Dad lingers. :)
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