MindSpinner

Gardening is in my genes, and it’s part of my upbringing. When I was very small, I helped my mother and my grandmother plant beans and corn. We planted them together, as the Cherokees do. We’d drop two or three grains of corn, then two or three white half runner beans, then corn again, alternating down the long straight garden rows, covering the seeds lightly with a hoe. The beans grow up the corn, using the corn for a bean pole. My great grandmother was too old to help then, but she sat at a window and watched vigilantly, and told us how we were doing it wrong. Months later, we’d sit on the front porch, catching the breeze off the lake, and string and snap the beans.

In adulthood, I’ve moved again and again, and planted again and again. Everywhere there has been dirt, I’ve left a garden. Here are some of my favorite choices.

For starting seeds in the house (under flourescent shop lights with grow light tubes): Jiffy 7 Pellets, in plastic trays (”greenhouses”). These are quick, easy, and I have an unreasonable affection for them My inner six year old gets a big kick out of pouring water on the pellets and watching them swell up. I’ve had good luck starting seeds with them, and I can readily tell when they’re drying out and need water. Bigger seedlings get tucked into Jiffy Peat Pots when their roots grow out the bottoms of the soil plugs. I found them this year at Lowe’s.

Annual flower seed: Morning Glory Minibar Rose
These are not the rambunctious, freely seeding morning glories my mother tries to keep out of her beans. Their tiny leaves look like variegated ivy, and their 2″ white-fringed pink flowers are vibrant and lovely. They climb the rails of my deck steps and adorn the lattice under the deck.



Fruit: Blueberry Sunshine Blue
Not only can this compact blueberry be grown in a pot, it’s also a good foundation plant, with tiny pink flowers in spring. I had planted three varieties of blueberries at my ex’s house, and Blueberry Sunshine Blue was the only blueberry variety I ordered when I moved here. The berries I managed to save from the birds were among the yummiest I’ve tasted.

Landscape Roses: Knockout Rose
I have never seen any plant grow faster, look healthier, or bloom more prolifically than Knockout Roses. I planted the original Knockout roses as part of the foundation landscaping in front of my house. People stop to complement them and to ask what they are. They bloom from May until hard frost. I like the foliage as well as the flower; new growth is a lovely burgundy; older growth is a healthy dark green. (One doesn’t buy these for a beautifully formed bloom so much as for color.) Mine have grown bigger than the catalogs say they do, though, and I should have given then twice as much growing room as I did based on what I’d read of their eventual size. I have three that are 5.5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. In front of the garage, they do a beautiful job of hiding the fact that the blinds I put on the garage windows came from another house and are a foot too short ;->.

Tree: Appalachian Spring Dogwood
So many wonderful choices, so little time and space. Because I loved the American dogwoods in my grandmother’s yard, I was happy to find the variety Appalachian Spring last year. I grow Chinese dogwoods, too, but it was nostalgia and love for the trees of my childhood that induced me to order this cultivar, developed from a tree resistant to anthracnose.