As many of you know, I own and operate the natural Gardener Gardening and landscape maintenance business. I call my business the Natural Gardener because gardnering to me came naturally. When I was a little boy my family had a huge vegetable garden. We grew almost every vegetable and watermelons and cantaloupes.
One of my fondest memories of my childhood was my daddy putting me up on his shoulders. We would go down to the watermelon patch and look for a nice big melon. My daddy would have already picked out a melon before we went ‘searching’ for a melon. He would stop in front of the melon and say, “How does this melon look to you, Davey?” it would be the biggest, juiciest looking melon in the patch. We would head back up to the house – with me giggling on my daddy’s back – knowing that he would cut it in half and refrigerate it for three of four hours. My mom would call my little friends moms and invite them over to help eat the watermelon. That was back in the days when a watermelon was a luscious thing.
Lots of seeds, lots of juice, lots of goodness harvested from God’s good Earth. My adddy has been gone for meany years – but sometimes, late at night, after I say my prayers – I imagine myself on my daddy’s back picking watermelons. I only hope and pray that God has a watermelon patch up there in His heavenly garden, so me and my daddy can relive my fondest, most precious memory of us picking watermelons.
Another precious memory was cleaning the chicken coop. My mom used to order 50 baby chickens every Spring. They would eventually be used for meat on the table and for thei eggs that they would lay. My grandmother loved and grew Cannas in her yard. Cannas are tall growing perennials with tropical looking foliage and huge flower spikes. She gave me a whole bunch of Canna bulbs one Spring. I was only twelve years old but I already had the wonderlust of gardening in my veins. I planted those bulbs all the way across the side of the yard. After two weeks, I saw strong green spears shooting up out of the ground. They grew quickly with the generous Spring rains. By this time, they were about two feet tall.
About this time of the year, it was time for me to clean the manure out of the chicken coop. We normally mixed it into the garden soil, but I remember my daddy saying it was excellent fertilizer for plants. It was old chicken manure so it was safe to put around plants and would not burn the roots. I spread all of it around the Cannas. We had generous and frequent rains that helped to dissolve the chicken manure and drain it down to the roots of the Cannas.
My aunt and uncle came out one Sunday evening for my mom’s famous fried chicken dinner. The secret was she fried it, then put it in a covered glass casserole dish for an hour and a half at low temperature. I think it was 275 degrees.
Back to gardening now. My aunt got out of the car and yelled out – “Oh My God!” when she saw the giant Cannas. They were six feet tall! She said, “Davey, what did you do to those Cannas?” She said hers only got to about four feet tall. To this day, I think God for aunts, Canna bulbs and the best chicken manure.
Speaking of bulbs, now is the time to plant bulbs that will flower next Spring. The favorite here are what people call yellow bells, jonquils or daffodils. They are all the same plant. Jonquils are to me the harbinger of Spring. They might get a little snow on them, but they will survive. October and early November are the best times to plant Spring-flowering bulbs such as these. For February and March-flowering bulbs, plant Chionodoxa, Galanthus Snow Drops and Iris Reticulata. I only recommend planting tulips if your property is 100% deer-proof. Deer consider tulips a delicacy and they will eat the whole plant and the flowers. Spring flowering bulbs should be planted up with Thanksgiving. It is best to wait until the ground has cooled off quite a bit. Happy gardening and don’t let the deer discourage you from gardening. There are hundreds of plants that are 100% deer-resistant.
