I call myself a trial and error gardener.
I didn’t really ‘garden’ growing up. I had a few yard chores like picking up sticks before my dad mowed. He tried briefly to make mowing my chore but after I ran the riding mower up a tree, he gave up.
My late teens and early twenties were spent like most, in other people’s homes or in apartments. If I even had houseplants, I don’t remember. My first house was a bit over planted. The three years my husband and I lived there we cut down several plum trees that dropped their fruits on our (and our neighbor’s) cars as well as a Bradford Pear that smelled so bad when it flowered that I insisted I was allergic to it.
When we built our next home in Texas, I was beginning to have an interest in gardening, at least in terms of yard beautification. We had also ripped out some overgrown bushes at the previous house so when the landscapers came with our HOA prescribed x number of bushes and trees, I made sure I was there. I insisted they double the size of our front bed against the house and plant the teensy bushes a few feet from the house instead of against the foundation…and plant the damn Bradford Pear in the neighbors yard…not mine!
I tried my hand at vegetable gardening a few years before we moved out of Texas.
It was so dang hot and dry there that my attempts produced very few results. I was elated when we moved to Virginia and I was able to grow tomatoes successfully for the first time. I had one great year of zucchini (my favorite!) then lost all of my plants the next year to squash borers. (Squash what? Yeah…I had no idea either.)
When we moved to Florida I was excited to try growing in this lush, tropical climate.
Again…it was very hodge podgey with limited success. I joined a garden club in my local town. The group was small and only met during ‘snowbird’ season, but they were awesome ladies and had some fantastic speakers.
One of these was Elise Pickett from The Urban Harvest. A multi-generational Floridian, she is a passionate advocate of micro-homesteading and gardening…Florida-style. I started following her and learning a ton about what I was doing wrong Florida gardening. She posted an ad for part-time office/garden help and I jumped at the opportunity to learn even more.
Through her I’ve met a whole network of like-minded people. I’m still very much a bumbling amateur. I don’t ‘plan’ my garden very well and get side-tracked with other projects at crucial times during the season. But I’ve had way more success than in the past and some good harvests as well.
At our home on the barrier island, I tucked edible plants in between the Tropicals and made use of pots and containers. Now I’m sitting on an acre of land with an area already established as a raised garden. I’m overwhelmed but I’m going to continue to approach it Iike my artwork…learn about the ‘rules,’ do a bunch of experimenting and be amazed when something good turns up!