Well, it's nice to "meet" you all. I found these forums by sheer accident, I think, and although I am just new here today, I've already been all over them.
I am not new to gardening, much like I am certain many of you, I learned all I needed to know(ok, all I thought I needed to know, haha) about the outdoors from those who came before me..my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents. I was lucky in that I had a great grandmother who didn't pass away before first passing along her extremely valuable knowledge in all things. Ok, so her knowledge being in all things might have been merely my interpretation, since she passed away when I was only 8. That said, she and my great grandfather had quite a lot of property, in an area that one would have never expected there to be property, so they had a MASSIVE garden. I can remember days gone by spending hours outside with her tending the garden, feeding the wildlife, and learning, so very much learning. We'd always cook what we grew, canned, stored, froze, you get the idea. Those memories of tending to the outdoors with her, in all capacities(she never told me I was too little, even though I really was, lol) are some of the most vivid and fond memories I have.
As a parent now myself, I have made it my mission to teach my own children all about the outdoors, plants, how to sustain one's self, how to care for the nature around you-rather than force it to adapt to you...you get the idea. For a few years (when my kids were smaller) we managed a beautiful vegetable garden in our backyard. Mother nature, however, had different plans for our backyard. It has been at least five years since we last had a real functional(successful?) vegetable garden in our yard, though try that we have, mother nature is a force not to be reckoned with. I miss it dearly, so much so that we are going to attempt to try it again this year. At least, that's our goal, according to my children(now teens). We have some wild strawberries growing in our backyard that sparked the conversation.
Anyway, back to how I got here, I actually found the website through the seed forum while trying to find resources for seed exchanges. I know most people would simply say "go buy some", and they'd be right to say so. The problem is, that's not a possibility for us at this moment, for reasons that matter not to anyone but me and mine, I'm certain. So, we're taking it slowly, trying to get at least one or two veggie varieties growing each year until we get an amazing garden going again. We have missed it terribly, and I can honestly say the ability to can, freeze, store, etc... all of our previous garden's wares, is what kept us going for nearly three years, we truly had that much at one time, lol. So much that we were able to help a lot of other families too, and I would love to get back into that, because such things are in desperate need where I live, but not available.
This year, we are working on tomatoes...mostly because my son loves them and insisted. He has an amazing green thumb, even now as a teen. When he was three he planted a pumpkin seed-just one-by the front of our house, behind my rhododendron bush and never told me. I found out a few weeks later when said pumpkin plant was spilling over the front area onto my lawn, haha. Everyday, he took his three year old tukus outside, talked to his plant, pet it, watered it..he took great care. We had to mow all around it. By the end of the season, from one little(but VERY healthy) vine, he got FOUR gigantic pumpkins. So...yeah, we're going with him on this one-he could grow a garden in a bottle of ketchup. He found some old seeds I still had stored, though I'm not convinced they're going to do all that well, if anyone can grow them, he can. Sadly, the remainder of what used to be our seed stashed was thrown away by someone not so kind last year
So we're working on rebuilding, one plant at a time...and that's my long winded way of explaining how we got here why we got here..and....HELLO
