I remember my first attempt at 'gardening' was tinged with sadness. When I was very young I was eating an apple one day and fascinated by the pips in the centre. So I got a little tiny pot and some soil and placed the pips in it. How cute! Anyway I watered and looked after it for days on end, anxiously awaiting the first sign of life. Day after day passed and nothing. Had all my effort been in vain? Then one day, success! I noticed a green shoot of some sort poking its head out through the soil! I was ecstatic. I watched it grow bigger as each day passed. Needless to say I was a proud little guy. The sad part of the story comes now. I was showing off my remarkable green fingered talent to my cousin who proclaimed that what I was growing was none other than a pesky weed. "You are crazy, and jealous" I proclaimed without haste. My cousin then proceeded to pluck my little gardening achievment out of its comfortable home and laughed in my face. *Crack* was the sound of my heart at the point. With quivering lip I ran to Mother but alas it seems that I was the only one with an emotional investment in the project To this day I don't know what was growing in the pot but I'd like to have found out. Heck I wouldn't even care if it was a weed, the point was that I grew it.
How very sad - darn cousin! I'm glad you didn't let it stop you from growing even more. I remember carefully gathering up maple spinners and planting them in little pots of dirt. I watered them and was absolutely thrilled when the equivalent of a large grove of maple trees came sprouting up - never mind that they were teensy-weensy maple trees, they were maples, and they were growing! I had a quite a lot of them. I showed my mom who was incredulous. "Maples?! Where would you ever plant them?" (I had no yard at that time, heh... I'd gathered them off the sidewalk nearby). I hadn't thought about that part - where they would go when they got bigger. Disheartened, I remember tending them only a short while longer and then sticking them in the ground at a nearby schoolyard (where they were probably mown down the next time the mower came around). Oh well! It did teach me to think about what I would do with the grown-up plant before starting something....
I have gardened for as long as I can remember. However, my 'teacher' was my maternal grandad. We only had a teeny garden and he had a whopper, so I used to plant things at the end of his garden, my first ever allotment I suppose.
My first experience of gardening was growing carrot tops in saucers of water. I then progressed on to mustard and cress on wet blotting paper. I had lots of houseplants but never had a garden until Ian and I got married. Now I simply wouldn't want to be without one.
I started life on a farm so was surrounded by growing things. We helped in the fields from a young age. I don't know when I started gardening on my own. I think I must be a frustrated farmer with all the things I TRY to grow now. Dooley
I'm so sorry about your first garden experience Frank!! I know how you feel my cousin (not Heather!)did the same thing to a bean I had grown in our classroom. We had grown them to give to our Mother's for Mother's Day! I was on the school bus carefully holding it so it would not get hurt, then my cousin said because she didn't have one to give to her Mom I couldn't give my stupid little plant to my Mom and grabbed it from me and pulled it out of it's pot and threw it at me! I was heartbroken and very mad!! I swear I could feel steam come out of my ears! But I just picked my sad little bean plant up and tried to repot it best I could. I took it home to my Mom and told her Happy Mother's Day! It was a sad looking thing. My Mom proudly put it in the kitchen window, but it died very soon afterwards!!
I was about 7 or 8 and I was watching mom cut a green pepper. After she was done she told me to go throw the left overs in the compost pile. We had a HUGE compost pile not for gardening but for the worms to go fishing with. I threw them out there and over the days watched them grow. My mom eventually saw them growing and plucked them so the next time she had me throw green pepper seeds out, I kept them. I then cleaned out a corner of a overgrown spot between two sheds, wayyyyy back in the corner. I planted my little seeds and watered them, waiting excitedly to see them come up. When I saw the first little green heads I was so excited and ran and told my mom. She came to look and said I need to care for them properly to get peppers off them. Water and weed she said. So I watered them everyday. But I weeded them right out of the ground. I was heartbroken! Mom still laughs about it to this day. But because I was so heartbroken that I had killed my little peppers that she gave me an avacodo seed to plant. I watered it and it grew tall, about my height at the time. And then it died. I was again so heartbroken. But now I look back and wonder if it didnt die. It was very cold and it was so small. Maybe it just was taking its winter nap. The child in me can only hope!
Lots of great stories, really enjoyed reading all of them And thanks to all who sympathised with my *ahem* traumatic gardening experience. I feel much better now Keep the stories coming!
I don't know if I can remember back that far! When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I was "recruited" to help in the garden by my mother. She had to entice me by saying, If you want any supper, you'll get your rear end out to the garden! So out I went. Then it was not my favorite job. My 2 older brother were both big enough to help with the planting on the farm, so I got stuck in the garden. The very first thing I can remember planting were onion sets. And I also remember planting potato "eye". But I have to admit, there is nothing better than boiled "new" potatos. Now we are not talking about a little backyard garden here. Mom always had a full acre in garden. Another time I will have to tell about the summer the beer truck overturned into the garden and spilled it's load. We had the best sweet corn in 3 counties!!!
I was only five years old and we were living in an apartment so my mother used an egg carton and had me put soil and seeds in there and let me water it and then they started germinating and she taught me the word shoots. Is that word still used today? She then transferred everything to pots on the terrace. Then one day, my first grade teacher wanted all of us to bring in tulip bulbs and I didn't know what tulips were since we were still in the apartment and could only have so much on our terrace so I thought she meant lightbulbs. LOL!!! OK all of you can laugh all you want. So I told my mother that night that I needed bulbs so she was confused so she called my teacher that night and it was straightened out and then my mother gave me some tulip bulbs and taught me what tulip bulbs are....our class them planted them in front of the school.
Hehe Tweety, great story. It could have been worse, you may not have consulted your Mom and actually brought the lightbulbs into class
OK Frank here is the sweet corn story! I was about 14 or so, and one day a semi- tractor trailer rig went by the house. The driver fell asleep and went off the road into our garden. Well he was loaded with black market beer that he had bought in Cleveland. He didn't want to go back to Louisville with an empty trailer. The doors on the trailer had broken open and the driver was encouraging the crowd of people to take as much "free" beer as they wanted. He didn't have paperwork on the load or tax stamps either. A lot of the bottles broke and the beer ran out into the garden. Specifically the area where the sweet corn was planted. Mom had like 10 rows of corn that year. The sheriff came out and asked Dad if he knew any of the people that took the beer and Dad told him there was just too many people to get a look at them. Of course he knew about 90% of them. He never asked if Dad had any beer. We had 110 cases of beer in the hay mow under the hay! The truck had been carrying over 1,000 cases of Carling Black Label beer. That's how we had the best beer, I mean sweet corn in 3 counties!
