TheBanyanTree: Letting down the ancestors

[Laura]

On 27 Jan 2010 at 20:56, Anita Coia wrote:

> My first foray into a vegie garden has been a dismal failure. I'm sure my
> Italian grandfather, who was famous for his ability to grow ANYTHING, is
> turning in his grave when he gazes down on the sad remnants of my plants. 

I SO empathise with you, Anita.  My mother and grandfather could pick up a dead, dry, half 
rotted stick, poke it into the ground, and in 5 years there would be a beautiful tree.  I buy 
beautiful trees, carefully plant them, tend them, and love them, and within a month they are 
dead.  Veggie plants are no better.  What the drought and bugs don't get, the rabbits and 
squirrels do.  I spend far more money trying to grow veggies than it costs to purchase them 
from a local farmer who is good at growing things.  I finally gave up.

I fondly remember my grandfather's huge garden.  Potatoes, beets, beans and peas of all 
varieties, onions, corn, watermelon, tomatoes! oh! the tomatoes!, spinach, anything that 
would grow in our climate.  I wish I could do the same, but with the sticky clay soil, 
limestone bedrock 8" beneath the sod, and houses all around blocking the sun, even if I 
didn't have a black thumb, I don't think I'd get the same results.

I keep wishing, though!

-- 
Laura
wolfljsh at gmail.com
http://wolfsinger.wordpress.com