My friends limit their "gardening" to a couple of 'Early Girl' tomatoes (so they can get something fast) and a pot of crocuses... They DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

BTW, they are often sick and I am healthy. I think that is because I eat dirt. Not deliberately. But what gets on you in the garden stays on you for a while, LOL!

I used to tell my kids a little dirt never hurt anyone. You're proof positive Yardenman

I don't want to make TOO much of this, but I haven't had a cold or the flu since I was 12 (and I'm 66 now). When we were kids, we dug trenches in the woods, made dams in the creeks, and just generally tussled around in the dirt every day. We came home for dinner in Summer covered with dirt and you KNOW we had do have gotten a lot of it inside.

Today they call it "probiotic" but we just called it "dirt". LOL! And Mom was on an endless crusade to rid us of it. Little did she know...

My parents always grew some flowers and tomatoes, for a while a raspberry patch. But it wasnt til I was 16 that I raised my own patch of giant marigolds from seeds. I watered them cheerfully til they germinated but started to lose interest, dad made me stick to it and water them daily. Then I went on a 3 week Girl Scout trip and dad agreed to water my plants for me while I was gone---what a surprise when I returned to see 5-foot tall blooming plants! I was hooked from then on, always had a garden even when in apartments. When we got our first house in Buffalo NY had a friendly neighbor who helped me learn how to set up lights and domed trays to really accomplish a lot. When we moved south I really enjoy the long growing season and all the salvias and warm zone plants. I'm 52 now and daughtets are young adults, they love to visit and have home grown food and sometimes I bring them gifts of fresh pesto or Carolina Reaper peppers for the boyfriend. Gardening is a big part of what makes our house a home!

SCButtercup said: Then I went on a 3 week Girl Scout trip and dad agreed to water my plants for me while I was gone---what a surprise when I returned to see 5-foot tall blooming plants! I was hooked from then on, always had a garden even when in apartments. When we got our first house in Buffalo NY had a friendly neighbor who helped me learn how to set up lights and domed trays to really accomplish a lot.... Gardening is a big part of what makes our house a home!

Gardeners always find a way to garden. Balconies, front steps, sidewalks, wherever we can, we do.

Yes, I can easily remember why and when I first got interested in plants. Before this I never gave any though to plants of any type. Grass, trees, flowers, crops, nothing. I was in Viet Nam. Not a lot of fun. One day I needed a break and snuck out of camp by myself. Really a dumb thing to do. Walked through the jungle for a while and suddenly came out into a clearing. A field (probably 20 acres) of beautiful flowers say 3 feet tall. Imagine something beautiful in this situation. As I got half way through the field the sirens went off which means we are being attacked and get your butt back to camp. I turned to go back and was very surprised to see a huge swath of "dead" plants were I had just walked. I felt bad. Beauty to sadness in moments. Promised myself I would figure out what they were and why I had killed them when I got back to the US. Turned out they were Sensitive Plants. They live in such a damp place they droop their leaves and stems at the first rain drop or touch by something. Hey, plants were interesting and I was hooked. My first plant was, of course, an avocado pit (toothpicks in a glass jar of water.) Something my grand mother always had on the kitchen window sill. Gene

I had just gotten out of the hospital after a month's stay. I wasn't supposed to get out with a working brain. Oh, well. I had a working brain, but the future wasn't looking very bright at that time.

I had to force myself to get up and out and start living again. So, I made a promise to myself that I would go somewhere new every day. I made a list of places to go and the first place on that list was a specialty miniature rose nursery. That was the beginning of my rose life.

As I healed, I got a job and my normal life continued, but my interest in roses also grew into a passion. I met a breeder who became my rose mentor. When we talked roses, he didn't dumb it down for me, but he gave me a list of rose books to read so that I could understand what he was talking about. I learned about the history of roses, the botany of roses, the breeding of roses, the breeders of roses, the rose industry and more than most people ever learn about roses. My mentor introduced me to a world of roses that is different than most people have a chance to know and experience. WOW !

I've probably had hands on experience with close to a 1000 roses through volunteer work at nurseries and in public gardens. I've worked on the recovery of lost roses for the living archive of Ralph Moore's roses, I've grown test roses for a few breeders. In other words, I've lived roses.

No, I am not an expert. I just learned about roses in a different way than the average rose gardener and played in a different rose world where I learned different skills. It has been a lot of fun, but I didn't learn how to be a gardener.

As for knowing other aspects of gardening, I am no longer a true novice, but I am still fixing my novice mistakes. I still don't think of myself as someone who gardens efficiently and well. I think I often am working too hard because I don't have good gardening skills. It's still early days for this part of my gardening journey.

I doubt if I'll manage to create the garden I had in mind when I first bought this house. My learning curve has been slower than I thought it would be as I've had to learn about soil, climate and plants as well as make my novice mistakes and start over on a few things. The roses I planted are fine. It's the other areas of gardening that are still more of a work in progress. It's just that I am now working in an older body, so I may not get it all done, but I am having a grand time learning new skills.

Enjoyed reading all the stories.
I wrote this answer when Sharon and Trish, why back when, were highlighting member's gardens.

My early gardening experiences were with my parents and grandparents who were avid gardeners all (mostly vegetables, laid out in perfect grids).
In the 80’s I worked for a seed company as an assistant field rep, field inspector, and liaison to the trucking companies utilized for processing grain. During that span of time I had access to the company’s research greenhouse and really got into seed propagation.

One year I was placed in charge of 5000 acres of seed corn contracted to growers with irrigation systems along the Illinois River in Mason and Tazewell counties (quite rural with a lot of land forested). I drove a company pickup to and from those areas pretty much daily that summer. To occupy my mind during those travels I learned to identify around a hundred plants (weeds and wildflowers) observing them in passing. One day I happened to come upon a wild lily, L. phildadelphicum, the 'prairie lily'or 'wood lily' out in the middle of nowhere. It looked interesting and at that time I wasn’t really familiar with the genus Lilium so I got out and went for a closer inspection. I walked over to it and just stared, it was beautiful. I think that experience helped propel a newly emerging appreciation of flowering plants to a new level culminating in the obsession it has developed into today.

If interested, here is a link to the garden tour -
http://garden.org/ideas/view/S...

I also force bulbs into early bloom every winner. I have a refrigerator dedicated to this pursuit, I usually force 150 to 200 bulb blooms every year.
Here's a link to an article I wrote (also a bit back) that illustrates my techniques...
http://garden.org/ideas/view/j...

I got started forcing while I was working for that seed company noted above. The company purchased like 500 bulbs to make yjr front entrance more appealing. They got 300 in the ground but had 200 Yellow Appledorns left over, these were kept in a walk in refrigerating unit. That particular year I was working the machines that clean soybeans from harvested debris dumped for cleaning and packaging by contracted growers. I worked the second shift and often worked alone, everything was/is so robotic that I had time on my hands and finding those bulbs left over, I asked if I could experiment with the forcing idea to salvage the left overs, So I borrowed 5" pots from my research buddies, potted em all up , returned them to the walkin and three months later surprised all the employees with forced tulips. I've been forcing ever since.

WOW, JMorth! You might have given me a new itch.... oh,no!!

Tea.

jmorth said:

5000 acres of seed corn .

I cannot imagine 500 acres never mind 5,000! LOL!

It was a big deal. It was all under irrigation. That area is famous for contract fields not only of agronomic seed production but things like Green Giant green beans and other vegetables.

That fall I met one on the legendary pioneers of the seed corn industry, one of the Funk brothers. Probably only older farmers know that name, but in the world of agronomic seeds he and his brother are famous. The company I worked for leased one of his processing plants to clean and store the corn from that 5000 acres. I heard he had a a million dollar rock and mineral collection and being a rock collector myself, my imagination was ignited.
He lived not far from that plant so one day I went over there, knocked and met him. He was in his low nineties, hale and hardy. He gave me permission to see his collection which was kept in a modern building at the family mansion. The caretakers there let me in, and I gotta tell you, it was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen!

Impressive! And that's what got you gardening?

Working for a seed company kind of molded me in that direction.

Jobs do do that, LOL!

Speaking of corn, thanks for the acorn Yardenman!

You are welcome to the acorn. Seed companies are part of my gardening life. *I* can't make seeds on my own, after all. And without seeds, I wouldn't have a flower or vegetable garden... LOL!

Speaking of acorns, I, too, want to thank you, Yardenman. Learning about roses through the eyes of a breeder was an adventure. Even there, with every cross, it comes down to a seed with millions of possible outcomes ...

Every cross-pollination offers new possibilities and you never know what you might get. But I want to make sure you are not mistaking me for someone else who breeds flowers...

When I first started growing plants I was about 12 years old and started out growing geraniums of all different kinds, I was more amazed how easy it was to grow them from cuttings. There was a near by garden at the time where I used to live where the gardener trimmed the there geraniums so I always used to collect the trimmings take them home with me and plant them straight into pots and they'd always grow new roots within weeks and thrive. I then got interested in growing more cuttings from other plants but they were not as easy however I was very successful with growing cuttings from weeping willow trees, I then got interested in growing horse chestnuts in pots which also grew nicely, I then became more interested in growing more trees like Acorn trees they are one of my favorite trees, In fact I've been growing an Acorn tree in the back of my living room in a very large plant pot thats 6 six years old now and has been doing very well I remember people telling me that is was a crazy idea to grow an Acorn tree in a plant pot and have it as a house plant as they have large tap roots but its still thriving, it will be re-potted sometime next year into a slightly larger pot. The indoor Acorn tree has never gone dormant and has always kept its green leaves all year around and makes a wonderful centerpiece of my Victorian living room. I'm now into growing tropical plants indoors under grow lamps... I have many plants successfully growing such as several banana plants, pineapples, citrus trees and recently sprouted some palm tree seeds and bamboo seeds. I love growing things. I'm planning on doing an experiment to see if I can grow some Mango's indoors which I know is a bit of a challenge here in the UK but not impossible.