Why did you start gardening?

[DiJon]

While browsing some garden and food blogs, I came upon some statistics about how many new veg gardeners there are. The timing of the uptick from 34% of us households growing veg in 2009 to 54% in 2010 coincides almost directly with the fall of Lehman Brothers, kinda interesting. I can say that the economy was definitely the reason I got interested in gardening, but not to save money. Work as a farm hand seemed to be the only non-service job I could get when I graduated in 2009, I thought it was a fall back, but it became my leading passion in life. What got everyone here into growing their own?

[SOB]

My parents always had a garden growing up and when I got my first home it seemed like the right thing to do. Living in an apartment before I had tried growing a few things in containers but having a yard I put in a small garden. That year seeing these little plants grow to be large, fruit producing plants was very gratifying. My garden has doubled in size ever since and my wife thinks I'm obsessed now

[Royiah]

I started becuase It can save on food costs. Fresh veggies cost alot if it makes up most of your meals compared to others who buy mostly prossesed foods.
I also do it for fun and exercise. When I'm not at work I'm inside on the computer doing stuff. So having a garden is another heather way to spend my free time.

[orgoveg]

My mother always planted flowers, ornamentals, and trees around the house and I always helped whether I wanted to or not. In 1996, when I bought my first home, I was excited to have my very own back yard and I wanted to grow things I could actually eat - the flowers just felt like a waste of time (in my young mind back then). I had a small patch of veggies for a couple of years and then decided it wasn't worth all the work.

I'm going to shorten a long story here: My kids worked hard one day to lay out a garden patch under a tree - even put a fence around it. I felt bad having to tell them nothing would get sun under the tree so I laid out another patch for them. I've been doing it every year since. Every year I say that I won't do it next year and then every spring I can't wait to get started. It's an addiction.

P.S. Along the way, I got interested in native wild food plants and completely organic gardening. Then I got really interested in the methods of our ancestors in their basic means of survival. That evolved into self-reliance and disaster preparedness. Gardening has led me down alot of new paths.

[Flatlander_MB]

I grew up helping my parents in the garden & as soon as I got my own place I put in a small strip along the fenceline to grow cucumbers and tomatoes. There's just no comparison between a store-bought & homegrown tomato.

[SPierce]

My grandfather's are the ones that got me interested; grandpa on my mom's side was a full time dairy farmer- he did corn, wheat, dairy and had a garden out by the house every year. We even had aspargus across the street!

My grandpa on my dad's side, grandpa priest, was the one who really got me into it- we'd go out and buy starter plants every year and plant a little garden together, ever since I was small. He's the one that showed me the joys of gardening- though my garden is a lot bigger today!

I do prefer to garden not only because I can grow my own food, though, but also for econoimcal purposes. I like being self sufficent and being able to grow my own food instead of depending on the grocery store.

I garden partly in their memory (they've both passed on) and partly because I have a passion for it.

I bet both grandpa's would be darn proud of some of what I've been able to grow too

[rainbowgardener]

I grew up a city kid. When my parents divorced and my dad disappeared, my mom had the lawn ripped out and poisoned and put gravel down. As a single working mom, entirely supporting us, she had enough else to worry about. None of all the natural, organic, homemade stuff I do is how I grew up.

I actually think I got in to gardening to have something to do with my compost. When I first bought a house on my own back in the late 70's, I started a compost pile, because I believed in not wasting things. I remember being just blown away at the miracle of compost, how you could put garbage and yard waste in there and it would come out lovely rich sweet smelling soil...

So then I started planting some things to grow in my compost. But I stayed a pretty small scale, not entirely passionate gardener for awhile. In 1990, my partner and I became resident caretakers for our Quaker Meeting. So we lived rent free in this huge gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright style mansion on 5 wooded acres in the city, in return for taking care of the house and grounds. That's when gardening became a passion for me. The little woods were full of wildflowers, so I worked on drawing and learning all the wildflowers. There were a lot of flower beds to take care of and then I started planting more. At one point I ripped out all the huge overgrown evergreen shrubbery across the front of the house and designed and planted all new foundation plantings.

By the time we bought our own place nine years later, I was totally hooked on gardening.

So that's my evolution of a gardener...

Incidentally none of it had anything to do with the economy or saving money (well except being able to live rent free by being caretaker) or growing my own food. Now I love growing food and eating from my garden, but I was well down the path as a gardener, before I ever planted my first vegetable. Initially it was all about ornamentals. I do love flowers!

[Ruffsta]

I started 3 years ago, although my grandfather always had a garden when I was little.. that was not the reason I got started.. I got stared because I am a cook by trade and I could never get certain peppers from the grocery store... so I said the the heck - I'll plant my own.. I learned real quick that even buying certain pepper plants was impossible where I live and most don't grow naturally around here..

make a long story short.. I acquired the certain pepper seeds I wanted.. I started growing them and at the same time I said why not tomatoes.. then I pretty much started growing all kinds of things!

I'm ALWAYS looking for peppers I don't have.. even have a post about them:
[url]https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43455[/url]

[rainbowgardener]

Here's a couple previous threads on relevant topics:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=63534#63534


https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=61598#61598


Over the years of my evolution of a gardener, gardening has become more and more important in my life. Now I consider it part of my spiritual path as well as providing food, flowers, herbs, sunshine, physical activity, etc.

[mhannum]

My mom has gardened for decades, and I helped her while growing up, and her father was also a gardener for a long time. So, they got me hooked on it years ago.

[manny]

I started helping my mom do container gardening in my hometown of San Jose, Ca. Out here in Lincoln, Ne I decided to try growing plants because of the sheer wonder and beauty of the process. I still don't expect a harvest and tell myself its about the experience. Maybe this fall I can get the land lord to make the garden bigger.

[lorax]

I'm also a city girl originally, but I'm almost the exact opposite of RBG - my mom ripped up the lawn and put in veggie beds when dad split. I grew up on all natural, organic, homemade stuff because we didn't have the money for anything else, and mom's rationale was that a well-planted veggie garden needs only to be attended on the weekends, and can be ignored during the week (which I've found to be largely true!). Hence I've been gardening since I was old enough to know not to eat dandilion flowers; there was always a compost at the bottom of the garden. I've never looked back, and I've jonsed for a garden when we lived in apartments.

So, nothing directly to do with the economy here, either.

[Duh_Vinci]

Wow, so many "city folks" here...

As well, grew up in the huge city, by chance, ended up in the small town about 20 years ago. And 4 years ago actually bought some land deep in the country (prior HOA did not allow to grow gardens, so we just did very few veggies and herbs). So growing veggies now was almost a "given", now that I was definitely no longer a city boy, and had the space to do whatever I wanted, and no HOA can tell me what to do or not to do

Besides, other than the tasteless Roma and Red Beefsteak from the supermarkets, and round head lettuce was no fun. I remember my grandmother, far in the country use to grow so many veggies and fruits that actually had HUGE flavor, so I wanted to bring back the memories to reality, and seem like the garden just growing a little bigger and bigger every year...

I love what I grow and eat, and I know exactly what goes in there...

Regards,
D

[Susa]

What a fun topic! I really enjoyed reading all of your stories.
My partner and I are new to gardening and what got us started is the desire to work towards self sufficiency (to as much extent as we are able), to have access to clean nutritious food, free of pesticides (store bought organic is expensive!) and to reduce our carbon footprint. I'd say 75% of our diet consists of vegetables and fruits, so once we bought our first house we immediately jumped into growing. We started in December of 2011, and I can feel an obsession developing. The love and giddy excitement I feel for each one of my seedlings makes me jump out bed eagerly every morning to go check on them. As a bonus we are receiving visits from butterflies, birds, dragonflies and lizards, and knowing that we are vastly improving the soil life on the property makes it all the more fulfilling.

[Timlin]

Love this thread. For me it was different. I never lived near anyone who gardened, my Gparents were 1000 miles away from us and my parents had no interest at all.

25 years ago we bought property and moved out of town. I knew it would not be long till I'd be bored if I didn't find something to do so gardening was born. I started with flowers (saw an add for a daffodil catalog & could not imagine how they could have enough daffies to fill a catalog so I ordered it...our yard came alive with daffies for many springs after that!)

I bought every gardening magazine I could find since I didn't know the difference between annuals and perennials and I had no idea how to compost but I wanted to. Lucky for me Hubby loves projects so over the years he has build me one compost bin system after another looking for the best/easiest.

About 15 years ago he built me a small gh, then enlarged it a few years later. It has forced air wood heat and I love the early and late gardening it allows us.

Now I've moved to almost exclusively veggie gardening except for a few perennials that have survived the cutting back process. It's still something to get me outside away from the computer or the TV.......nothing feels as good as the summer sun, hands in warm soil and the white throated sparrow calling from the woods........like you died and went to heaven!

[applestar]

It all started with an African violet leaf. I read somewhere -- maybe a magazine in a dr's or hairdresser's waiting area -- that you can grow baby plants from a leaf. My mom had the typical houseplants, spider plants, pothos, African violets. Well, spider plants and pothos were obvious, but new baby plants from a leaf? I had to try it.

I was in high school. I got books from the library and followed directions, and it worked! I had baby African violets. Then I read about air layering a rubber plant. Well, my mom had one of those too.

I often think things might have been different had I gone to Rutgers or Cornell. I visited Cornell but had applied to Colgate instead. I was accepted to Rutgers and Colgate but chose a different university where they didn't have an extensive botany/agricultural program. After changing my major several times, I ended up in computer and technology field....

But my fascination with plants and propagation continued and I had amassed a hefty collection of plants in my dorm room by the time I graduated and had to donate most of them to the school's greenhouse sale because they wouldn't fit in the trailer I rented for the move.

But that didn't keep me from buying more plants and propagating more to grow in the window and balconies of my apartments.

When I finally had a house and garden to plant in, I grew a lot of vegetables, but I was getting plants from big box stores and seeds from mass market catalogs. I was learning to grow them well by conventional means, but I was more interested in the fact that they grew from seeds and tiny plants than that I was growing FOOD. I worked long hours and didn't get home until dark. Harvesting was more of a chore and I didn't find them particularly tasty. My partner who had no interest in gardening whatsoever was complaining that I was letting them rot.

Then while trying to figure out what to do with all the garden waste, I stumbled on organic gardening and composting. I subscribed to Organic Gardening Magazine, read every issue from cover to cover, and started composting. Neighbors complained and blamed a giant rat that started to hang around our houses on my compost pile but the County Animal Control officer who came to retrieve the rascal which had been dispatched by the combined efforts by the men of the neighborhood said it was an escaped pet and my compost was in no way to blame (in fact said probable attractant was something else -- I think dogfood kept in somebody's garage) and gave me kudos for its construction and function. Basicaly told them they were wrong. My neighbors re-considered and asked me to help their kids with their science fair project on composting....

Well, that was years ago. I've been gardening organically and growing edibles ever since. The more I grew from seed, the more I turned into a specialty variety and flavor snob though. And now, my interests include edible landscaping and smallscale self-sustainable gardening as well as maintaining a backyard wildlife habitat and monarch butterfly way station.

[Enginerd]

I grew up watching things grow in my grandmothers' and mother's garden and, much to my chagrin, doing a LOT of garden related chores. To this day, I still can't plant green beans - spent too many summer mornings hunched over rows.

I started 3 years ago when I finally had a real back yard to call my own. Every year it's gotten bigger, and I'm lucky to have the space. For me it's not about the cost - in fact the food I've grown myself probably costs more! I spend too much $$ on gadgets. Maybe if I do this long enough, I'll eventually get my money back!

The best part for me is getting home from a long day at work and going out to the garden to see what grew that day, plucking a few weeds, and enjoying the stress-free outdoors. The pride I feel eating or canning something I grew myself makes it taste better!

[hendi_alex]

I can't remember when I didn't grow at least a small garden, say of 15 feet by 24 feet or so. The number one motivation was that homegrown quality tomatoes can't be bought in the grocery store. The lack of flavor and poor texture of store boughts seems to get worse year by year. That attitude about tomatoes gradually carried over to all veggies, that you simply can't buy home grown freshness and quality. Also, with the modern use of so many chemicals, home grown allows a person to control what if any chemicals are used on food crops. So now we grow the majority of our vegetables year round, mostly eating what can be grown in the garden during any particular season. That is the main reason that I work so hard with season extenders, trying to get at least seven months of summer vegetable production each year. During the late fall and winter, we eat lots of collards, kale, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, and parsley. Obviously the diet is much more interesting from April through November.

[digitS']

It was a fairly natural progression for me.

I grew up on a farm and, altho' my family moved off the farm, I continued to work for farmers. It wasn't quite what I wanted to do since so much of the work involved machinery. When a farmer I worked for suggested that I continue thru the winter working in the equipment shed - I panicked!

The job that I found instead was working in a greenhouse, 12 months out of the year, growing. By this time. I had quite a few years experience in my own garden as well and that continued after I left the greenhouse.

These days, I am supposedly retired and live on a small lot. What that has meant is that I have a home greenhouse and I've found other places to garden. I call it GOOPP. That's "gardening on other people's property." It has been challenging in recent years but with large gardens, I have enough produce to sell at a farmers' market.

Steve

[bcallaha]

When growing up, our family ate what we grew in the garden. All of the vegetables we ate came from the garden, with a couple of exceptions. We didn't grow brocolli, or cauliflower, so I actually didn't know what those were until I was a young adult on my own!! Tending our huge garden was a chore while growing up, so by the time I was a young adult, I didn't want anything to do with a garden.

As I got older, I started to miss gardening, so I started with a small garden with the basics. My family liked the fresh taste of home grown tomatoes, and green beans, so my garden grew to include other vegetables. Now I have almost 3,000 sq ft of garden and enjoy every minute I spend there.

Brad

[treehopper]

I think it's like hunting or fishing...there's something deep in you that drives you in a direction. When you find it, you know.

[skiingjeff]

My father had a garden when I was a kid and my father-in-law has one now. Over the years we received some of the produce, Now my father-in-law is the only one left and is 86 so he has scaled back on his production. So this year is the first year we are trying some veggies. We started Herbs last year with some small success, so on to more!

[tremuloides]

Hmmmmm.....

Great question!

I have ALWAYS loved plants/botany (Biology Major from way back...LOL)....

I truly enjoy watching things start from just about nothing and end up in something greater than they were at inception. My "better half" gives me a bit of grief about "hovering" over my little seeds but truly enjoys the happiness I get from seeing the first "green" pop from the soil.

Having traveled all over the world I have been to many places and experienced many types of different local cuisines that I probably never would have had a chance to taste.

What I found was that eating is and will always be (in my opinion) something that can be one of the greatest pleasures in life. If I have the opportunity to actually harvest something that I have put some TLC into, it will probably taste that much better.

Since my family is now settled after years of traveling, the opportunity to actually grow to provide for ourselves (at least in a little way) and get back to a bit of a "simpler" way of life is something that I embrace.

Let's now see if we can actually make it work....LOL

[PunkRotten]

I remember back when I was in kindergarten and our teacher had everyone plant a bean into a cup. Ever since then I thought plants were cool and was fun to watch them grow. I was just really fascinated with that and still am.


When I was a kid my mom also had a garden. I remember tomatoes, green beans, cantaloupe, zucchini, sunflower, lettuce and a few others. Years passed and I was not into gardening. But I always liked plants.


About 2 years ago I started up again. I started small scale with a few tomato plants and a jalapeno. Then last year I started up bigger, I did tomatoes, peppers, lots of herbs, lettuce, radishes, carrots, kale etc. And now I am even growing more things.

My main reasons for liking plants and gardening is cause it is fun. And I can also save money on food, it gives me exercise, relieves stress, gives me a sense of being present. It is also one of the few activities these days that actually bring me some enjoyment. I get satisfaction in knowing that I try my best in nurturing the plants. And I also like that bees, hummingbirds, and other beneficial insects ( bad ones too ), like visiting my garden.

[orgoveg]

I noticed that several folks are saying that they save money on food. That has not been my experience. With organic methods. I have learned how to keep the money I spend on gardening to a minimum and I think I am actually saving money now. I make compost and I don't use anything else for soil amendments. I usually go through two bottles of fish emulsion for fertilizer. I don't use a tiller (which would cost alot to buy and use gasoline), preferring to use a fork for loosening the soil. My garden is small enough to do that. I save my seeds from year-to-year. I have learned to use organic pest control methods which usually don't require me to buy anything. The only other thing I might have to buy is copper fungicide. I just installed two rain barrels to save on water costs. Still, I usually end up buying some seeds and maybe some potted plants to replace those that don't succeed. I might be spending a little less now or at least breaking even.

Saving money is not my reason for gardening. It's alot of work and if you consider time to be money, you could earn alot more from a side-job than you save from growing vegetables. If you review my original post in this thread, you'll see that I decided at one time that all of the work wasn't worth it. Now I see alot more beauty in gardening and it has nothing to do with saving money.

I'd be interested to hear what those of you who garden on a large scale end up spending (money and time).

[skiingjeff]

My husband and I are just starting vegetable gardening but we have had "gardens" for the 7 years we have been in our new home and had the room. We have 3 very large beds with shrubs and perennial flowers in them and one raised bed we started last year for herbs. We also have raised beds surrounding the house with shrubs/flowers and one for annual plants. Additionally we made "turrets" around the 3 trees in front of our house which has bulbs for spring and Hosta in the summer.

This year we are adding an 8' by 12' garden for some vegetables because we like fresh veggies and I'm trying to start my annuals from seed in our basement.

I agree that we spend a lot of money to maintain the gardens with buying the mulch, bulbs, seeds, and all the rest. It is also very time consuming but we do it because we enjoy it! Whether at night or in the early morning, there is nothing more satisfying than looking over at all the beauty and watching things grow and change.

I've posted a couple pics of our beds from a couple years ago because I haven't taken any yet this year. I hope they work as I've been having trouble with the sizing of them and am trying to get it right...

https://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/826/img0087gr.jpg/

https://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/813/img0086f.jpg/

https://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/338/p1010970x.jpg/

[Jer31]

I'm from the country so gardening is in my blood. When I was a kid I would help my mother and grandmother plant and weed their gardens. We use to have a pretty good size vegetable garden and my grandfather would give us grand kids 5 dollars for every drill we would weed. I was quite a bit younger than my cousins (those pesky teenagers) so I would end up making 10 dollars a week! Not bad for a 8 year old!

The best part of the vegetable garden was after we put in the all of the hay for the cows and horses my grandmother would make a tasty stew from all of the veggies we grew that year. Even after all these years I can still remember the smells and the tastes of that stew and the memories of all my entire family being together.

[jal_ut]

I see a lot of you have mentioned your parents or grandparents gardened, and so it was with me. We lived on a farm and having a veggie garden was a way of life. It is just something we did, and I never considered going without a garden when I got my own place. I enjoy gardening. The garden really helped me to feed my children. Even now that I am retired, a day seldom goes by that we don't eat something from the garden. Yesterday I ate an apple that has been in cold storage, and drank some grape juice. Frozen corn and peas and bottled green beans show up on the menu almost daily.

[digitS']

. . . I'd be interested to hear what those of you who garden on a large scale end up spending (money and time).

Perhaps that should be a reason for another thread, Orgoveg.

There are lots of reasons for gardening. You have mentioned the beauty. Yes, it probably makes sense to find a part-time job and use the money earned to buy food. ( Perish the thought!)

I mentioned above that I sell produce that goes beyond our household needs at a farmers' market. I can fully understand that some gardeners spend more than they can gain in savings or by selling their produce. In North American society, agricultural workers must be the poorest paid in the entire workforce so, even if everything works out right . . . there won't be much $ in the enterprise.

I was once interviewed by a reporter for a regional ag newspaper about my farmers' market experiences. When I told the guy how much I had made in annual income he asked me about the difference between gross and net . . . when I told him, he folded up his notebook and that was the end of the interview .

Still, I don't spend more money on gardening than I take in. And, with experience and a little conscientious effort and barring a calamity, there's no reason to if one makes that choice.

Steve

[LLandry11]

My husband and I grew up in the country, however, neither one of us had ever had a garden growing up. When we moved back to the country 5 years ago, my husband instantly wanted a vegetable garden, but I had no interest whatsoever. Every year, he would bring up the subject again, but I had no clue how to go about it, and I just saw it as WORK!
Last year, it would seem that fate stepped in. While having our "yearly conversation" about starting a garden, my uncle (a seasoned gardener) stopped by for a visit. He had just had surgery, was off work for 6 weeks, and didn't know what to do with his time. He wasn't able to physically do the work, but he offered to guide us through all of it.
We had nothing prepared. We called a neighbor to come till. He cleared a spot -- 35’ X 100’. I remember thinking: "What are we getting ourselves into?!" And everybody around us thought we were crazy... "You're first garden is 35’ X 100’?!"
My uncle walked us through everything, from beginning to end, literally! We didn't even know how and when to pick our veggies! All I knew to do at first was weed. But I found it so peaceful and that's what hooked me. Being in the garden allowed me to relax and unwind. It was good exercise as well, and I enjoyed being outside. It was also nice to spend this time with my husband, talking and laughing, working towards a common goal.
We didn't know what to expect from our first garden. Luckily, it was a HUGE success! I had no idea there would be such a difference between our garden veggies and the supposedly fresh veggies we buy from the grocery store. Everything was so good! And it made me fall in love with cooking too! I love looking up new recipes to incorporate all of my veggies. I also love sharing the fruits of our labor with our family and friends.
So, why did I start gardening? Because of my husband. But I will continue to garden for all the reasons listed above. I'm ready to go again this year, bigger and better than last!

[RogueRose]

Last year I gardened because for the first time ever moved to a house (rented) and I had space. I figured I would give it a hand and had SO much fun with it. Growing up I had a garden here and there (my mother was a diplomat so we moved a lot) and I LOVED eating carrots fresh from the ground with dirt and loved fresh corn. So I had the space and went ahead and did what I could.

THIS year though - I went on a trip to Antarctica and have become deeply concerned with climate change and our world and I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint and dependency of food imported and grow my own food so I expanded my garden big time this year. And this is why I garden.