310. Cindy Ondish | Master Gardener • Listener | Conneaut, Ohio

Hi Jackie!I am a new listener who has been (vegetable) gardening all my life & in the last few years added fruit trees to my repartee. I live in NW PA, tho my garden is about 30 miles away in Conneaut, Ohio, a few blocks South of Lake Erie. I listened to the show with Melissa K. Norris today & enjoyed it very much. I will definitely be listening more! (& I entered the book give away, too!)Keep up the good work!Cindy OndishTell us a little about yourself.The way this weird situation started is a long storywhere I live in NW PA I had a gardentrees grew upwe live amongst woodsMy garden got worse and worse eveyryeareveryyeartomato plans around my houseseparate from thismy husband bought a placeboat garagelot with weeds taller then mehacked them down with a cyclehe noticed there was an asparagusthere’s where my garden isthe ground is like a gardener’s dreamperson who owned it before was friendsthere’s my gardenI resisted the whole thing a bit of the timenothing grows at my house because there is no lightwe’re there all the time in the summerwe cleared an acre out of the woods some of it I want to turn back to woodsdidn’t want to cut anymore downsuch a gradual thingI willalways had tomato plants around the housepepper plantspots on the deckit was okI guess if I do raised bedsright in the middle of the lawngradual thingworkedhow wonderful this stuff growsexpandedI came from an Italian familyeveryone grew tomatoeswhich is weirdwe canned teammateswe ate a lot of pastathat’s all I really knewhe came over on the boat from Italyknew about other plantsmy first gardenout of collegelive in an apartment and stuffas soon as I had spaceI did I have a lot of house plantsI have kind of a green thumbgood place to grow then at that timeI grew cornwhole range of things, my family never grewso nicefeel like you can take care of yourselfempoweredI am going to the storecan itgrow it and can itas I had my children got biggertrying to feed themknew what I was feeding Tell me about your first gardening experience?How did you learn how to garden organically?4 Tell us about something that grew well this year.4I was head over heels in love with parsnipsalways had good luck growing parsnipsI know now my garden was such clayeven thought I tried to work things in itif they dry outonce they dry out they’re deadold timerteaching me how to grow parsnipsnever eaten a warshipboiling water on themboard over topnever did the topmine would growbecause my ground was so nasty and wetso I have been trying to grow them in my good gardendrainagemulching themcould not get parsnips to growbummed out of itmore that I readwhat do I have to loselet them start sprouting on the sinktedious job of picking up the sproutsbiggest most beautifulstart them first plant themplant thempour boiling water over the rowseeds make them float to the topwaxy coating that has to get through the coatingworked because my ground was so wetdidn’t drainnew garden is drains my husband introduced them to mecravings for themsometimesbounty of parsnipswe started outmy husband cooks everything starting with