I grew up on a farm and hated most things involved with gardening—except the eating part. Suddenly, at the age of about 25, the green bug hit. I benefited from access to the local botanic garden, a hort major sister, a background in environmentalism, and Fine Gardening magazine.

I knew early on that I wanted to plant local as much as possible & integrate food crops. I also favor short cuts to minimize work in favor of enjoying the garden.

1. Plant local. Living in a prairie state, the obvious plant selections for my gardens included coneflowers, sunflowers, grasses, and other natives. Serviceberry trees figured large, since they are native, attract birds, and the spring berries are edible. Because the plants are native, they’ve survived & thrived in my gardens.
2. Recycle. I’m a firm believer of composting. I never wasted money on special bins, but did create a couple “fenced” piles that I turned about once a month. This became tiresome, so the short cut I read about included digging a hole somewhere in the garden & simply tossing leftover scraps in that hole. Once it was full, move on to another spot in the garden & dig a new hole. Works like a charm.
3. Lawns. I thought it a waste to have big lawns (also costly), so early on I created huge planting beds and reduced the size of my lawn. My current home has more beds than grass, I’m happy to say.
4. Food. I have never owned a tiller—too heavy, noisy, costly, etc. Instead of creating a standard vegetable garden, I tucked plants or seeds among my perennials. I also incorporated planters, vertical gardening, and espaliered fruit trees. This has worked great—not too much work and more food concentrated in one spot (I put a couple pots next to a fence & they grew up the fence. Hanging pots from the fence added to the harvest).

Happy gardening!

These aren’t exactly experiments. To the average gardener, it probably will sound like I was the strawman in the Wizard of Oz, and finally got a brain. “if I only had a brain…” My mother, raised on a self-sufficient farm, regarded me as an imbecile.

• Fertilizing plants, both indoor and outdoor. I’d had OK success with outdoor plants, but indoor plants—I was the black thumb. Until I moved to a post agricultural area, where fertilizer was readily available, I had no idea what miracles it would work.
• How essential good drainage is. Having pots that didn’t drain properly killed more of my plants than anything.
• Propagating plants from cuttings. I’d done this for years, but after transferring to a work facility with many gardeners, I read up on it. I had a particularly gorgeous scented pink rose, and 3 of us yearly attempted to propagate the plant using rooting hormones. No luck, and unfortunately my lovely plant had one too many harsh winters and died. I’m still working on my woodier plants.
• The importance of cutting back/pruning to get stronger growth.
• Planting the right plant in the right soil, in the right light, in the right level of soil moisture and the right pH.
• Realizing that in my relative cold climate (5/6) some plants could thrive if protected during the winter.

Like many gardeners with a little success, I’m now buying plants that have been marked down to a fraction of their original price, and reviving them. It’s kind of the Lazarus complex.

Often non-chain stores willingly offer me plants that have reached a point of being un-saleable. There’s still green in the branches, but higher end nurseries don’t want many half dead plants in with their normal stock and reviving them is too time consuming to do on a large scale.

ALL these experiments were successful.