On a Lark

[Setec Astronomy]

Another thread I started caused me to think about how I ultimately wound up here at TJ...

When I was a kid, my father used to grow a lot of stuff in the yard, I'm not sure how much of it was his idea, and how much was us kids instigating, but I helped him plant a lot of fruit trees, which were largely unsuccessful, and many different vegetables, berry bushes, some concord grapes, etc.

As an adult, I wasn't really interested in any of this, until I guess I got to about the age when my father got interested in it. It started for me when I saw an ad in the newspaper for some "container berries". I recalled my youth having blueberries and raspberries, and it sounded kind of fun, so "on a lark" I ordered a couple of each. First year, I got zero raspberries, and a few blueberries that the chipmunks got before I did. Since blueberries and raspberries in the ground were always fine during the winter, I never gave a thought to there being a problem, however, in the containers, nothing made it through the winter, oh well.

6 or 7 years ago I was at a farm stand and they had some orange cherry tomatoes. I liked the yellow cherries from the supermarket, and I liked orange peppers, so, "on a lark", I bought them. The sign said Sungold. Well, they were the best cherry tomatoes I'd ever had! So I googled them, and found out I was never going to see them in the supermarket, but here were seedlings for sale online! And I have those empty planters on my deck from the dead berries, so, "on a lark", I started growing Sungold tomatoes.

Then the next year my SO was at a restaurant with her son, and she described some little fruit that was like a small yellow sweet tomato but wasn't, that she really enjoyed as a garnish with the dish she had. I researched and found it was a ground cherry...which is not something that you would find in a supermarket, but as luck would have it, they sold seedlings at the same place I was getting the Sungold plants from! And those pots from last year were really too small for the Sungolds...so, "on a lark", I bought some ground cherry seedlings.

And so it went, "hey why don't we grow some peas!" Or strawberries! The last couple of years I've been a little more deliberate in my planning, (probably to the detriment of other areas of my life, but I've never been able to balance things). When I got more deliberate, I needed more information, and found and tried to join that other tomato forum, but that didn't work out, so here I am.

[MissS]

What a wonderful story! Thanks so much for sharing it with us. You made me smile.

[bower]

I love a story that reminds me of my Dad. He was a farmer's son and didn't garden much when we were growing up, but once he settled back home and had more free time, he was constantly gardening and experimenting with it. He got me into it, for sure, and once I was hooked we did a thousand projects together. He was always trying something new.

Some young friends of mine who were farming, brought me a bag of tomatoes one year, all different colors and tastes! I had to try that, so thanks to the internet, went and found out about heirlooms, and the next year planted up. Had to join TV to see the pics, while trying to figure out how to deal with the failures, the tomato diseases, and so on. And there I met loads of gardeners - my favorite people in the world.