Adventures and lessons learned
HelloFine Gardening!I’m Carey . My byname , since I was three , has been CareBear . I ’ve been gardening for about 15 year .
I grew up in Washington , and that ’s where horticulture started for me .
We had a garden at home , and I help buildterraced bedsthere , which my parents still growrosesin to this day ! So that ’s an early succeeder I ’m proud of . What I learned is , when set on a hill , plan for eroding ! The bottom bench has jump to sag , although that ’s also because it gets walked on .

Then I move to Hawaii because I wanted to be able-bodied to mature an teemingness offruitsand other food class - rotund . Creating a large sun mandala garden from scratch with one other gardener is something we were proud of . We pulled all the rock-and-roll in the wall surrounding this garden out of the reason while we were double - dig up the beds .
study care of a large permaculture garden for its first year of growth was an acquirement on Hawai’i island . I went back years later , and it was a dense food forest , with dozens of full - grownfruit treessuch as cherimoya , avocado , coconuts , banana tree , and many more , grow hundreds of pounds of food per class with little to no extra work being done . I bid I had remove a photo of it full - grown !
A bankruptcy I learned from a few years afterwards on Kaua’i island was , after spending a year planting a plot of bananas and vegetables , the sphere flooded heavily , submerge my vegetables and hold some of the bananas fall over . Fortunately , banana tree are very resilient , and they survived . That was over five years ago and that patch is still there , provide bananas for the community . Bananas are one of my favorite plant ; they ’re so abundant and easy to arise . And I make love making smoothies with bananas !

Also on Kaua’i , I help steward a permaculture homestead where they grew a lot of exotic fruit and plant , such as this amazing blue jade vine(Strongylodon macrobotrys , Zones 10–12 ) , one of my favourite bloom .
wide-cut view of the tree cover up in the blue jade vine
After six years in the tropic , I gain that I really need four season , so I came back to thePacific Northwestand have been dwell between Washington , Oregon , and — as of this preceding year — Northern California . The coast here is amazing !

It is chilly but not too cold in the winter , so we can spring up green and some other things yr - round . Kaleis one of my all - time preferent plants and give me every sidereal day ! Also , we have the blessing of a beautiful coastline and old - emergence sequoia trees nearby . I love it .
I did a full season on a big farm when I turn back to Washington in 2019 . We started at 6 every morning even with mud or frost on the ground and cater CSA box to hundreds of the great unwashed every week in the greater Olympia / Seattle area , so that took a caboodle of persistence . It was the big CSA in westerly Washington . The older video on my instagram Thomas Nelson Page is of me enjoying some of the harvest after work on that farm .
This retiring summertime while working on a farm in Oregon I was delighted with the plethora of beautiful flowers I bump upon ; it clear up a strong work day to imagine the flowers are smiling at us and cheering us on . 🙂

My gardening hope for the future is to get a piece of land so that I and my supporter and family line can love the fruits of what I develop for years to fall . All of my work has been on other people ’s estate . I feel full about what I ’ve done , but at the end of the day I want my own garden , farm , orchard . I am divvy up my gardening adventures online partially to simply portion out the beauty and to hope it inspires others to garden .
Have a garden you’d like to share?
Have photos to share ? We ’d roll in the hay to see your garden , a exceptional solicitation of plants you love , or a grand garden you had the probability to visit !
To present , send 5 - 10 photos to[email protected]along with some information about the plants in the moving-picture show and where you took the photos . We ’d bed to hear where you are settle , how long you ’ve been gardening , successes you are proud of , nonstarter you study from , Bob Hope for the future , favorite plants , or queer narration from your garden .
Have a mobile phone ? Tag your photos onFacebook , InstagramorTwitterwith # FineGardening !

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