So tomorrow I will meet with Ron, the photographer with the little magazine for which these questions and answers were written. We worked all weekend tidying up the yard, and there is still more to be done! I hope he is good at capturing a pretty picture from a less than perfect reality!
-Could you please provide a little background about your gardening experience and philosophy?
We began our first garden together even before our marriage. Every year, regardless of our circumstances which in our youth were often transient, we would plant with the spring. I found the bounty of the Northwest a wonderful compliment to my early attempts at cooking from scratch. One of the convincing features of settling in Entiat, was the access to irrigation water, the light soil, and the long summer days which all contribute to luscious plant growth. In gardening, as in most things, there is always more to learn, and I will never consider myself having fully mastered the craft. I learn through trial and error, through reading and from others’ examples. Gardening is almost an instinctual compulsion. It is nourishing and satisfying to the soul as well as the body. I attempt to pass on the simple things I have learned about growing plants and am so happy to see my children and grandchildren growing and harvesting food from their own gardens now. At the library, I sometimes use the platform of Storytime to promote gardening to the very young children and moms who visit. Just this week I gave lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts and cauliflower plants away to the families who attended after a set of spring stories including Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. Conversation at the library often gravitates to the topic of gardening, and food.
I have been composting for many years. Previously, I used an inexpensive large black plastic composter. A few years back, Gary built me a three stage wooden compost system. I toss all of our kitchen vegetable waste, coffee grounds from local bakeries or coffee vendors, yard and garden waste into the first stage box. From there, over time the pile gets moved first to the second stage box, and then finally to the third. I screen the finished compost if I am using it in pots. Otherwise it goes directly into the garden. Composting is an inexact science but almost always successful endeavor. A sign of success is a wealth of worms! I have in the past gone to great lengths to wheelbarrow home the neighbor’s fallen leaves or grass clippings, or to drag heavy plastic bags of grocery store discarded produce through the aisles for my compost. As time and opportunity allow, the compost pile is either very well nourished or somewhat neglected.
Secrets from Granny 