I have been growing vegetables since I was a boy. When I was about 17 I was the only one of five children living at home. My parents were ill and I took over the vegetable garden and I have had one ever since.
I know how to set an irrigation tube, and I helped with the harvest. I learned the law of the harvest without even knowing I was learning it. On the farm, you learn early that you reap what you sow.
Plant no tree sooner than the vine.
Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.
Anyone who knows me will attest that at any time during the day, you are most likely to find me picking tayberries, 'deadheading' peppermint, or succession-planting shallots. There is almost nothing, really, that I would rather do.
Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they've always one foot on the ground andthe other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals.
I haven't really got a green thumb, but I love gardens and their architecture.
True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.
I'm really good at growing roses.
When all is said and done, is there any more wonderful sight, any moment when man's reason is nearer to some sort of contact with the nature of the world than the sowing of seeds, the planting of cuttings, the transplanting of shrubs or the grafting of slips?
The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.
To plant and maintain a flower border, with a good scheme for colour, is by no means the easy thing that is commonly supposed.
Anybody can dig a hole and plant a tree. But make sure it survives. You have to nurture it, you have to water it, you have to keep at it until it becomes rooted so it can take care or itself. There are so many enemies of trees.
Gardening is a humbling experience.
I feel very guilty about not having a vegetable garden, but it is quite time-consuming.
I handed my tools. The two of them reached down to help me out of the crater I'd dug. ''Isn't that a little deep?'' Yoda asked. ''It'll help the roots get established,'' I explained. ''Established where? China?
Keep the soil healthy and the bad seed won't grow.
In the southern half of the country perhaps no crop has larger possibilities for quick increase of production of food for both men and animals than the sweet potato.
I'm a gardener, and I love to plant.
I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers... I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids.
The most effective step that may be taken to increase the production of these crops is to enlarge the acreage devoted to them in the regions where they are grown habitually.
Eggplants are finicky, complicated, and often misunderstood. If you know how to treat one well, then it shows that you have know-how and dedication.
You plant twenty coconut trees over here, and twenty coconut trees over there, and you water this batch and don't water that batch. Of the batch you water, nineteen will survive and one will die. Of the batch you don't water, nineteen will die and one will survive.
