When you know you’re hooked on gardening is something I’ve been wondering a lot about in my third year of this glorious endeavor. Am I hooked? Could I walk away from it? Quit it cold turkey? Am I addicted? Yesterday, I got my answer.
An actor had brought a bag of grapefruit and tangerines from his trees to share at a recent rehearsal for an upcoming staged reading. I am one of the actors in the cast. (I’ve been an actress for over thirty years.) I picked up one grapefruit and three tangerines. They sat in my kitchen window for a few days and first I ate the grapefruit, well, it was so juicy I squeezed it for my breakfast. Yesterday, I squeezed the three impossibly juicy, thin-skinned tangerines and out came deeply orange juice. Now, recollecting drinking that down (I actually stirred in a whopping tablespoon of raw cow’s cream), makes my mouth water afresh.
My first thought was, I’ve got to contact the actor and find out the variety, then look for a tree in a nursery, hoping against hoping that I could find one that produced such juicy and sweet fruit. Immediately, that thought was erased by realizing I had the very seeds waiting in my hand juicer! There were 48 seeds from three tangerines! I stared at them for a moment. They almost spoke to me. Then, without hesitation, I carefully laid them out on a napkin and ran for the used, freshly-sunned Diatomaceous Earth granules in my garden shed, and then the mad scramble for some planting cells ensued.
I had just recycled the cells from all my trays, which I’d used three times and were falling apart. After potting up over 170 seedlings into Solo cups the last month, I’ve been telling myself, emphatically, that I would NOT be starting ANY seeds till at least October, and to ensure that, had tossed them all in the recycle bin.
“Not even ONE?” I kept repeating as I searched my large, growing pile on the driveway, or “operating area,” I call it, of bags of amendments, many sizes of pots, loads of my clay dirt waiting for the day I will screen it and fluff it up and add it back to it’s rightful place in my yard, and general disarray. No, there wasn’t a single tray of small cells. But, I found two trays of larger cells! My mind raced ahead doing the math, eight cells, two seeds each, take the largest 16 seeds! Yes! I could plant these seeds! And save the rest to share. If I got more than one good seedling, I should share those! (Of course, I could have mixed up some potting medium, but, I’m hooked on starting seeds in D.E. now. Oops, there’s that word “hooked” again.)
Check out:
40+ Amazing Diatomaceous Earth Uses For Health, Home And Garden
Within 30 minutes of swallowing that memorable juice, I had planted seeds and the waiting had begun. Then, it occurred to me. I AM HOOKED. *UPDATE 2017. I have learned since writing this that you will never get the taste of the fruit by planting a seed from it. The tree must be grafted. Please watch my recent video “How to Graft Citrus”.
There are many, many other examples, but I’d much rather hear from YOU! I’d like to do an update on this post with an article compiling reader’s comments (you may leave comments on LBS on Facebook, also). Please leave a comment about when YOU knew YOU were hooked on gardening, as pertains to growing food. When did it hit you, how did it hit you, has it hit you, yet? Please share with friends! This could be interesting! I look forward to hearing from you! – Kaye
P.S. If you aren’t using diatomaceous earth in your gardening practice, learn about it in this in-depth article by Paul Wheaton.
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