Gardening is fun!!!!

Gardening is my avocation, something I truly love. I am a CPA by profession and it can get boring. Taxes and deadlines are a common place thing in my life, but when I am in the garden I have peace away from the telephone and cell phone. I can just commune with nature and talk to my plants.

What brought a straight laced, deadline driven CPA into the garden was two free copies of Organic Gardening (and Farming) over 36 years ago. I was a new mother and I had a six month old daughter that I stayed at home with all day. Now she was a really bright child as evidenced by the fact she has multiple published books and articles by the time she was 25 years old. However, back in those days, she was not a great listener nor was she great at conversation.

I needed an outlet and I read all the time. I just wasn't that impressed with the first issue of Organic, but oh that second issue really struck a cord with me. It was all about nature's gold-the leaves of fall.

I was sold and I wanted my hard red clay to be soft and easy to plant in, so I sent out my husband to collect leaves. He would wait until somebody had bagged up fifteen or twenty bags of leaves and ask if he could have them. His usual response went like this.

"Hey Martha, some idiot wants my leaves" and the wife would respond "Well give them to him!" My dutiful husband would pick up the bags and bring them home. We set up an area for the next year's garden and dumped the leaves for next year's planting. When the spring came, my husband turned all of nature’s gold into my garden clay and the soil became a planter’s delight. It was soft and sweet and I had become a convert.

I read everything I could get my hot, big hands on and I soon was growing food for my little family, my wonderful father-in-law and mother-in-law and everybody who came to the house.

It was a wonderful garden and really made me happy to go and weed and pick. By that time, my daughter, Annie, was fourteen or fifteen months old. She would sit and help me pick veggies and pull weeds. (Remember, I said she was really smart, and she paid real close attention to what I pulled up.)

It was a great summer for vegetables and I was well on my way to being an organic gardener. I loved how fresh everything was and how safe it was to feed to my family. I loved watching things grow, and that would explain 35 years later, I am the mother of six children. I have three girls and then I had three boys. I also love watching different kinds of plants grow and I love gardening.

Why "The Lower Forty"?

When I was young and growing up in the South, I encountered one of my Grandmother's friends who supplied my Grandmother Annie's grocery store with corn meal. His name was Johnny Byrd and he lived in Logansville, Georgia. He invited us to visit his farm, which he referred to as his lower forty. What he meant was that he had a farm with some acreage. It turned out his lower forty was 500 acres of white corn and cattle. (The lower forty is a vintage expression about the lower forty acres that traditionally are the last to be planted.)

I was lucky enough to get to visit Mr. Byrd's farm when I was about eight. He had milk cows and we saw his automated milking system. I did not know at the time exactly how progressive Mr. Byrd's farm was in the late fifties.

We took home Fried Chicken that Mrs. Byrd cooked and we were told that the chickens were fed the wonderful white corn grown on the farm. That was truly the best chicken I ever tasted and I only hope my lower forty can be half as productive. The backyard now, and maybe some day some acreage.

The Beginning

At last I'm out in the garden again! My WONDERFUL husband was kind enough to pour all the potting mix into the grow boxes, and I got to lovingly plant my tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, and squash. Tomato varieties include heirlooms: yellow pear, genovese, purple Cherokee, and pink brandy wines. I also planted hybrids including Park's Whopper, Beef Master's, Juliettes, and Romas.

My favorite kind of eggplant is the beautiful Japanese eggplant with its deep purple accents on the leaves and stems and pretty, elongated flowers.

My peppers are an assortment of bell peppers includes red, orange, and yellow once they ripen. I even have some of the mini peppers in the bunch - great for quickly roasting with some olive oil or using with kabobs!

Squash varieties include Patty Pan and other Italian types of zucchinis.

Please check back for future pictures.



http://www.agardenpatch.com/Garden-Patch-Grow-Box