A Good Gardener

What is a good gardener?

Did you ever wonder what makes a person a good gardener? You know the type, their garden always seems to be perfect, everything they plant comes up and produces. They seem to have what is referred to as a "green thumb".

In today's world where most people have or are seeking a degree from college a person may be called an agriculturalist or an agriculturist, but not a gardener. The people that I'm referring to are ones that live just across the street or down the rode a ways.

Were these good gardeners born that way, you know, did they inherit the gene? Or, is this something that is a learned talent? Maybe they are just more in touch with nature. It could be the old hunter-gatherer instincts kicking in.

I don't know if there is a gardening gene, but I think where and to what extended family we're born into does make a difference. If you have learned to appreciate the beauty and wonderment of the earth and nature you will have a tendency to want to plant, garden, farm and improve your environment.

I know in my case the desire to have a vegetable garden goes back to my childhood. There weren't fresh vegetables available year round as there is today. We had home canned veggies but when spring came the fresh vegetables from the garden were wonderful. The smell of the plowed earth and the planting was the sign that winter was gone and spring was bursting out all over. Our first greens each spring came from the wild Pokeweed or locally referred to as Poke Salat.

Sometimes the good gardener label gets started in the local community by people that drive by and see this well maintained yard or garden and think it just happens. They don't know how much work it really requires, the seed that are planted that never sprout, the plants that are planted and then die or the time spent learning about new seeds or plants.

I know friends bring me seeds and ask me to plant these because they make the most beautiful flowers or I ate some of this while on vacation and it would be great to share it from your garden. What they don't know is that many plants that grow in other areas will not grow in my garden or yard. So does this make be a bad gardener? No, even an agriculturist can't control Mother Nature; we can fool her sometimes, but not many times.

Many people think I can plant anything in the garden and it will grow and be bountiful, but I consider myself maybe an average gardener. There are people that I know that appear to have the best garden around, but when I talk with them they seem to have the same problems or more than I do. With most people, if they perceive something, it is a fact.

When you garden organically there will be that mystery factor. You never purchase deadly chemicals or synthetic fertilizers and you have this habit of gathering up leaves and grass clippings to put in a thing called a compost pile. Then you put it in your garden and things grow, and you never spray to kill insects. Now that means you are either a good gardener or you have some kind of magical powers. Like I stated above, perception is reality.