Why did you start a garden?

I started gardening way back because that is what my grandparents did. And then I experienced the superior taste of homegrown food. I let gardening fall by the wayside for awhile, but then I came back to it for preparedness reasons. Now I do it because of the superior taste. Well, my wife gardens and I help her.

Speaking of taste, I had another new experience this year. We have grown potatoes before, and they have tasted like potatoes. This year our potatoes tasted better, better than any commercial potato I have ever tasted. I didn't know that could happen. In the past we have mounded our potatoes with horse manure. This year we mounded them with finished compost that we bought.

Marie Grace wrote:Stuff just tastes better.

This is probably why I still do it! Veggies just don't taste right when bought in plastic bags. Strawberries should be pink inside not white, and plums should be juicy not crunchy!

I also feel it is in my genes to want to grow stuff. I had a little plot as a child, my Mum and Grandad grew food in the garden. I live in a challenging climate now for veggies, but soft fruit likes it here and is sublime!

The idea of being independent from the all mighty Corporate powers that be is attractive to me. I don't have to worry about recalls either. Plus, let's face it, I know what goes and doesn't go into my soups, pies, jams & jellies.

Like many here, my grandfather, who we lived with until I was ten, grew much of our food. He had three acres in a semi-rural area with an orchard, hens, bees, a huge veggie garden, and a cut flower garden where he grew flowers for sale. He built the house himself during the depression. I was devastated when aged ten, he sold the place and we had to move to a very average suburban house, where the yard was mostly lawn.

When I married hubby, his yard was neat and tidy lawn, it's now a not-at-all-tidy food forest and wildlife garden, that passersby either love or hate. I think the reason I love our place in Bulgaria is because it has the same feeling. in the village, it's considered abnormal if people don't grow their own food. If someone has land, of course they'll use it to grow food!

My mom and dad always had a garden, and I just thought Moms and Dads grow veggies. The kids loved playing in the dirt/ mud.  Somewhere along the way it went from something I just did, to something I enjoyed, to my passion. My kids that are grown now are much better at eating what I grow then I, I'm working on eating more from the garden. For me it's the amazing process of putting a tiny seed in the soil and growing a beautiful productive plant, what ever that may be.  There's  always something to learn, and it never gets old. It's truly my happy place.

Interesting thread!

I had "always" wanted to garden, but because I was young, wild and free and in a big city high up in an apartment I didn't garden.
When I became a mum, we moved to suburbia and for the first time I had a garden.
My inner visions and dreams exploded all over the place - it was a steep learning curve, the tomatoes crawling over the ground in the first season.
Live and learn, and pro tips from the ( nosy ) neighbor brought some structure in the cacophony of things.

In the beginning it was "tomatoes, strawberries and flowers", the second wave was "herbal healing stuff" , third wave was "food forest" and now, in a new place, I'm getting the hang of trying to produce as high of a % of our food as possible, getting the healing garden going on the side - literally, on the edges and in the corners of the veggie garden.
Flowers are a luxury in this setting, but I'm a luxury kind of girl (plus I adore bees), so heading into our 2,5th season I'm going to sprinkle flowers  e v e r y w h e r e  

I started gardening during quarantine. At the time, I was bored, and like many, I took up a hobby to fill the time. For me, it was gardening. Some of my friends did baking, one did some citizen science thing, and another got into writing. At the start of quarantine, I was miserable, but by the end, it wasn't too bad because I could just go outside and garden. I wasn't really at a good place at the time and like many, I had some issues with having to stay away from other people in a time filled with anxiety. Gardening gave me an escape from the pandemic. I enjoyed the fruits of my labor, even when produce was hard to come by at the grocery store due to supply chain issues, and enjoyed learning about the science behind it all. I gardened so much that my mom told me that it was like my great-grandfather who had a small hobby farm and grew acres upon acres of vegetables, among other things (I think he'd be a Permie today). I am also a total science nerd, so hearing about why/how the things I was seeing worked made it that much more rewarding. Each year after that, my garden and my skillset/knowledge grew. I got into sustainability and permaculture as a result of that and now I am studying agriculture to farm one day.

Probably because it's baked in genetically?

My granddad and his brothers had a large nursery, where my mom grew up in the business.

He also taught ghetto kids how to garden/truck farm for one of the social improvement societies of the time.

https://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Livermore_School%20Gardens.pdf

The photos in that were his also.


My mom and dad grew a huge victory garden WW 2 era, and off and on again gardens through the years.
Good basic how to here too:

https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Documents/services-ag2.pdf


Due to the nature of my dads employment we moved every 4 - 5 years. Long before house flipping was a thing, my parents would buy a fixer upper house and redo it,  selling it at a profit. This include my mom bringing her landscaping skills from the nursery to bear for big time "curb appeal" when selling.

When I was frequently thrown out of school for being a recalcitrant teenager I was put to work on the landscaping of the current house. I didn't mind that a bit.

I was big into the back to the land movement in the 1970s. Much gardening and raising of meat animals.

Looking back, I realized how important gardens were to my well being...physically, spiritually  and mentally.

guess that's why I always managed to have a garden all through the years.

Well, I grew up on a farm where the dairy held up for 4 to 5 years after my father ruptured 2 discs in his back working a night job so he could keep farming during the day.  After that, the cows were sold off and my father purchased the first hydraulic backhoe in central New York State.  We never stopping growing gardens, however.  We grew at least 30 to 40 bushels of potatoes until I was nearly out of high school.  Then potatoes dropped to a few rows in a large garden.  I was given a rototiller around the late 50's and ran those until after college.  I read Rodale's Organic Gardening religiously and then took off to Colorado to work as a geotechnical engineer.  After I married, we moved back to Denver for a few years and I kept gardening when possible.  We bought a house on an acre of land in a village and I turned an old trash spot into a garden using tons of leaves and grass clippings.  When the parents passed and the kids graduated, we moved back to the farm where I continue to garden and have found deer far more of an issue than when we kept dogs.
I remember the Jim Crockett's Victory Garden from when I was a teen and could see PBS shows occasionally.  For the poster who remembered the Victory Garden shows, here are some publications:     Crockett, James Underwood. (1977). Crockett's Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16121-3.
   Crockett, James Underwood. (1978). Crockett's Indoor Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16124-4.
   Crockett, James Underwood. (1981). Crockett's Flower Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16132-9.
   Morash, Marian. (1982). The Victory Garden Cookbook. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-50897-9.
   Wirth, Thomas. (1984). The Victory Garden Landscape Guide. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-94845-6.
   Thomson, Bob. (1987). The New Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-84337-9.
   Wilson, Jim. (1990). Masters of the Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-94501-1.
   Weishan, Michael and Laurie Donnelly. (2006). The Victory Garden Companion. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-059977-5.

A site on IMBD still hosts some newer episodes.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065739/episodes/?ref_=tt_eps_yr_sa

I hope some folks enjoy.