Yardenman said:I know what you mean, Deryll. No plant like rough treatment. I keep my fingernails functional and that really helps with picking beans. I simply push a thumbnail intothe very top of the bean top and they hardly know I have been there.
Injuring a plant while harvesting from it is NEVER a good thing.
I wanted to comment on the above before describing what I consider to be my biggest gardening problem ...
As I mentioned in my post about why I first got interested in gardening, I started out learning everything I could about roses. When I volunteered to work in public rose gardens, I could prune all day long and come out with hardly any scratches even tho' I never wore gloves and always was assigned to the vampire roses. The other volunteers usually came out bloodied as if they had gone to war.
Many of the roses I worked on were the large shrubs and climbers that had not been touched for years. Some of which I had to lasso down so that I could get to the center of the plant to clean it up properly. Kind of tricky stuff ...
I cannot tell you how I move through a rose plant to do my pruning without being harmed, nor can I teach it, but even if one is not working on a food crop, working gently with a plant has it's benefits ...
My real problem as a gardener is:
I actually don't know how to garden. Yes, this is true. I learned about roses from a scientific point of view and have studied them for decades. I have worked with them in public gardens, nurseries and other people's gardens, but never really had a garden of my own until I bought this house in '04. I used to own a condo down in San Diego ... the land of thirteen months of summer ...
All of my gardening at my condo was container gardening. Roses, of course ..
I have read a lot about gardening and understand a lot of gardening theory, but there is no substitute for hands on experience or having someone show you how to do things in the garden. I am quite certain I do not know how to work in the garden efficiently and am often working too hard. I just can't seem to get the work done.
Yes, I've learned a lot on my own. I've made enough mistakes that I have had plenty of opportunity to learn from them ...
I keep telling myself that if I can get the time management thing working right, and learn better gardening skills, I'll enjoy the process of gardening more. I just haven't gotten to that point yet.
