Grandma on Gardens

Your grandpa used to have a story about a tree - - it must have been Scottish - - I could tell by the language: “I cut you doon...” It was all about the things that you do with a tree. Then it says, “...and may God forgive me.”

I learned about gardens from my mother. She knew all the Latin names of the flowers. I was in Scotland when I learned about it. She learned from her grandfather, who was in charge of a big estate. It had a name on it - - a castle. I can't remember.

It helped me when I started gardening myself. I learned how to plant, how deep different things go, and what weeds look like – that's important, that you know what a weed looks like. Some people don't know a weed from a flower.

A really good garden is one that has pliable soil. Cultivating would be the first step if you wanted to grow a new garden. I don't cultivate anything now, I'm too old. The back hurts. Well, I do grow things on my deck. Well, where I live its easy to buy organically grown vegetables so it wouldn't matter as much if I could not grow things.

I remembering entering potatoes in the Fall Fair and to get six all the same size, I had to dig up about 50 lbs.

You have to have a plentiful supply of water to garden. Carrots like tomatoes.

The first garden I planted, we didn't put a fence around it. The deer got into it and ate the tops off of everything...except the potatoes. They even ate the onions. That's when we learned that there were deer.

Food is grown locally without pesticides and we need farmers that don't use genetically modified seeds.

I have been involved with the Farmer's Institute, Women's Institute and Conservancy. Women's Institute has been involved with GMO free products.

And do you what? We're supposed to look and see if something is GMO free in the grocery store. We also need to check and see if things are made in Canada. We need to support our local suppliers....but you know, I'm not much of a user. I don't buy a lot of stuff. Some people are always going out, buying stuff. I don't. I hate it.

Everything we buy we should look and see - - take the cleaning products, for instance, are natural. Now we have choices. We never used to have. We can buy (green product label) or whatever.

People are more conscious today, I find, than they used to be. I used to be kind of an odd person because I composted and recycled. My own family used to talk about my “wierd garbage” because I separated things for recycling and didn't throw everything in the one bag.

I have made jam with fruit and berries that I raised. I don't eat pickles, so I don't do pickles. I've done canning. I don't anymore. You can only learn about weather and temperature by being outside.

I have one big concern to share with educators about ecological education: Don't use pesticides.