Daddy’s Garden

With Spring finally here in Georgia, my daddy is chomping at the bit to get his garden planted.  Honestly, it keeps him going and there’s nothing I like to see more than him getting excited about his garden,  planting seeds and plants and watching them grow into something our family can eat.  He’s been doing this for so long, as long as I can remember and it truly keeps him active and loving life.  So, we will never discourage him from gardening as long as he is physically able to do it.

Gardening keeps my daddy going, I’m convinced of that!  He will be 88 in July and is still going strong.  He complains when the weather doesn’t warm up fast enough so he can get out there and prepare his plot of dirt.

I told him when he got ready to start the garden to let me know, since many of you are interested in how and when he plants.  I captured him running his tiller over the garden getting it ready for planting.  You would think this dirt isn’t rich enough, but he has been amending this soil with compost for years, even though it still looks like red clay.

Just last week, he planted rutabagas and broccoli plants.  These are the first in the ground and it won’t be long before more go in.  In fact, he planted some early tomato plants right after these went in.

By the way, if you wonder where I got my build from, there you go.  My dad was 6’5″ tall in his early years and was always long legs and lanky. I got blessed with the same.  My sister and I both ended up at 5’8″.

This dirt doesn’t look that rich, does it? But, he manages to bring up a good garden in this soil.  Years of experience, I’m sure.

We had another freeze after he put these in the ground and he was really afraid he might lose some.

I went outside with him as he showed how he covered them all up the night before to try to keep those tender plants from freezing.  He somehow had enough buckets to cover them all.

I think the broccoli plants are OK, but he was not so sure about the tomato plants.  I’ll find out how they did this week. He wanted you all to see the downside to gardening.  When you plant early, you always take a chance at a late freeze.

I’ll come back later and share his garden as more and more things get planted and give you some updates this year on how my daddy plants and grows his garden.  After more than 50 years of gardening, he definitely knows a thing or 2 about harvesting vegetables.

In the meantime, I did a little video with him talking about when and what he plants and how he gets his garden started.  I thought many of you would love to see this, so enjoy!