I’m not sure what made me plant my first garden. Raising my own food had great appeal even though I didn’t know hot to go about it. My husband was against it, saying it’s just a lot of work and that the soil in our yard wasn’t good for a garden. I convinced him to dig up a ten foot square anyway. But he firmly refused to do more than that.

Books are a great source of knowledge and I try to put into practice what I learn from them. At the time the only books I’d read, with reference to gardening, were written by Laura Ingles Wilder. Yes, the Little House on the Prairie series. A line I vaguely remembered went something like this. One for the worm, one for the crow, and one to grow. Meaning plant three seeds per hole, outside. Imagine my surprise when each little seed cup had three sprouts. I didn’t remember reading anything about thinning the plants.

Amusing is the only word for that first year. I started all my seed in the house, including corn, in February. You’ve heard the saying knee high by the forth of July. What we had was knee high and falling over by April. As you can imagine these plants had to be scrapped and once my husband could catch a breath between laughter he decided to help.

Now that the hubby was on board he reminded me that we don’t have birds or worms in the house and the sprouts need to be thinned. We started the proper amount and types of plants inside and when the weather warmed planted the corn seed, outside.

My daughter and I oohed and ahhed as sprouts started and the plants grew. It slowly dawned on me that some of these plants were not ones I wanted, but which ones? Did I mention I didn’t know to plant in rows and/or mark what was planted. And that my husband was getting great enjoyment from my lack of knowledge, therefore providing  very little input. This probably wasn’t the first time he doubted his choice to marry a lunatic town girl and it won’t be the last. I’ve come to believe he sticks around to see what I’ll do next. With my learning curve, we will have a very long and laughter filled relationship.

This first garden ended on a better note than it started on. We ended up with corn, peppers, pumpkins, and enough tomatoes for me to try my hand at canning. Canning came with more laughs at my expense and very few successes. I had been bitten by the gardening bug and each year I’ve expanded the garden, my book collection, and my knowledge through trial and error. Which is probably the lesson my hubby was trying to teach me. It’s best to learn by doing and gain knowledge from your many mistakes, than to have someone do it for you and not know why it worked out.