Am I a beginning gardener?

I have gardened all my life.  Just turned 70 and some of my first memories are of being in the garden with my mother.

That being said, I seem to learn new things each year and seem to forget things each year.  ;-)

Last year I started a new garden.  It did really well, so I thought, for new soil and all.  Most things did great.

Soil is an on going building process.  My last place of living I worked on the soil for 19 years and it was amazing.  (When I sold the place the purchaser said that was the main reason he wanted to buy it, all the gardens I had created).

So my new garden last year is good, but a few to many trees around it for some plants, sooooo........

Starting another garden this year.  That will make 3 different gardens, different locations and different soils.

I am excited to get started on this one!  Beginning again!!

Dennis Barrow wrote:I have gardened all my life.  Just turned 70 and some of my first memories are of being in the garden with my mother.

That being said, I seem to learn new things each year and seem to forget things each year.  ;-)

Last year I started a new garden.  It did really well, so I thought, for new soil and all.  Most things did great.

Soil is an on going building process.  My last place of living I worked on the soil for 19 years and it was amazing.  (When I sold the place the purchaser said that was the main reason he wanted to buy it, all the gardens I had created).

So my new garden last year is good, but a few to many trees around it for some plants, sooooo........

Starting another garden this year.  That will make 3 different gardens, different locations and different soils.

I am excited to get started on this one!  Beginning again!!

I definitely would not consider you a beginner Gardner! I do however LOVE that a person of your years is actively still searching for knowledge. You are destined for many many more years on this earth with that attitude. Very very uplifting and encouraging 🖤

Hi Dennis,
Gardening/Farming is one of those areas where things are different. Lets imagine someone who is 60 and has been doing a particular thing for 40 years. An expert woodworker may have made thousands of pieces and tens of thousands of cuts. A violinist has played thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of songs and times. A gardener or farmer has essentially done it 40 times. I know you are planting multiple plants in a garden each year, but you "have a garden" 40 times. We would still call that person experienced... perhaps even an expert... but compared to experts in other fields, they are still very new.

When it comes to gardening (and really any endeavor), experience helps.. but I always find it easiest to start at the beginning.

This so reminded me of all the years planting with my grandmother.  She has been gone for a long time now, but she planted about 85 gardens!  I still help my father with his.  If I live as long a grandpa I only get to do this 34 more times.  I can't remember one year being like another.  We used to plant corn here in April when I was a child.  Now in May it may get frozen out.  Not to long ago we had 25 deg f on May 30th.  Last year we had 22 deg f on the 17th of May.  Every year I feel like it's a whole new process.

Christopher Shepherd wrote:This so reminded me of all the years planting with my grandmother.  She has been gone for a long time now, but she planted about 85 gardens!  I still help my father with his.  If I live as long a grandpa I only get to do this 34 more times.  I can't remember one year being like another.  We used to plant corn here in April when I was a child.  Now in May it may get frozen out.  Not to long ago we had 25 deg f on May 30th.  Last year we had 22 deg f on the 17th of May.  Every year I feel like it's a whole new process.

The way you just put the fact that our lives are just a wink in time into perspective the way you just did for me…. Shew

Gierlothnir Wodanson wrote:[The way you just put the fact that our lives are just a wink in time into perspective the way you just did for me…. Shew

The good news is if I live to be old as grandma was, I get to plant a garden 45 more times!

Dennis Barrow wrote:Starting another garden this year.  That will make 3 different gardens, different locations and different soils.

I am excited to get started on this one!  Beginning again!!

Bravo, sir! We are all beginning gardeners, because each season is a new beginning. We don't know what it will bring, but we will watch closely, adapt quickly, and remember what we learn.

Something about this post really speaks to me. Every year is different, and I'm always trying something new. There's always something to learn.

I'm always trying new crops and new ways to grow, so in that respect yes, I consider myself a beginning gardener.   My first twenty-five years of existence I thought gardening was all done is straight rows and tilling and using chemical fertilizers was the norm.  While I questioned the use of chemical fertilizers as a child, it was many years before I took the controversial step of banishing their use in my gardens.   Actually one of the stories I love to tell over and over is how my late father-in-law ranted that I was wasting my time growing beans without fertilizer.   That day I planted beans in his garden and applied fertilizer and then immediately went home and planted the same beans in my garden without fertilizer.   His patch produced one meal of beans while mine produced many meals throughout the season.  And yes, I did take great pleasure in reminding him that mine were grown without chemicals.

I'm mostly gardening in raised beds now and that has been quite a learning experience concerning plant spacing, intercropping, vertical gardening and mulching.  This year I'll be experimenting with no-dig in an area which I've been doing a lasagne-style approach for the past year. So once again I consider myself a beginner because I have absolutely zero experience with those techniques.   So as long as I keep experimenting, I'll always be a beginner gardener of sorts.

How awesome that they buyer of your old place was able to appreciate all you put into it.