by Georgina ArrowsmithThe AGM meeting was a wonderful forum for gardening discussion. Advice for harvest improvement was abundant. The mystery of peas was de-shelled and tips to pacify basil’s Tuscan homesickness unearthed.
What was quickly made apparent to myself however was how far behind my fellow nature students I was. Luckily, by my mere presence at a gardening AGM, everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt and I awkwardly bluffed my way through the event.
I admit that I am not completely alien to gardening and sporadically throughout my life have been the proud exhibitor of various colorful pots of sticks or dust, more than once helping the local rodents through times of famine. This rate of success just wouldn’t do if I hoped to master an entire personal allotment.
I realized I needed help. I needed to find this ‘magic book’ that I assumed to be hiding in every gardeners cupboard. The spell book of gardening, because of course, gardening I know from experience must be a kind of witchery, governed very little by layman's intent.
I began to search for it. There are many books that seem to advance from variations of a cryptic code and I assume if you know this code they would unlock wonderful secrets. They have a variety of titles; companion planting, permaculture, soil building...
but I am not ready for these chapters. I needed to find the first book in the initiation of these deep secrets. I despaired that perhaps I had missed the boat, that Gardening 101 was assumed to be common knowledge and archived already.
Then I found it. I am currently one page in and know this is the book for me. It starts...
“Plant it with the green side up”.
