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.
