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 Ondish Tell us a little about yourself. The way this weird situation started is a long story where I live in NW PA I had a garden trees grew up we live amongst woods My garden got worse and worse eveyryeareveryyear tomato plans around my house separate from this my husband bought a place boat garage lot with weeds taller then me hacked them down with a cycle he noticed there was an asparagus there’s where my garden is the ground is like a gardener’s dream person who owned it before was friends there’s my garden I resisted the whole thing a bit of the time nothing grows at my house because there is no light we’re there all the time in the summer we cleared an acre out of the woods some of it I want to turn back to woods didn’t want to cut anymore down such a gradual thing I will always had tomato plants around the house pepper plants pots on the deck it was ok I guess if I do raised beds right in the middle of the lawn gradual thing worked how wonderful this stuff grows expanded I came from an Italian family everyone grew tomatoes which is weird we canned teammates we ate a lot of pasta that’s all I really knew he came over on the boat from Italy knew about other plants my first garden out of college live in an apartment and stuff as soon as I had space I did I have a lot of house plants I have kind of a green thumb good place to grow then at that time I grew corn whole range of things, my family never grew so nice feel like you can take care of yourself empowered I am going to the store can it grow it and can it as I had my children got bigger trying to feed them knew 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. 4 I was head over heels in love with parsnips always had good luck growing parsnips I know now my garden was such clay even thought I tried to work things in it if they dry out once they dry out they’re dead old timer teaching me how to grow parsnips never eaten a warship boiling water on them board over top never did the top mine would grow because my ground was so nasty and wet so I have been trying to grow them in my good garden drainage mulching them could not get parsnips to grow bummed out of it more that I read what do I have to lose let them start sprouting on the sink tedious job of picking up the sprouts biggest most beautiful start them first plant them plant them pour boiling water over the row seeds make them float to the top waxy coating that has to get through the coating worked because my ground was so wet didn’t drain new garden is drains my husband introduced them to me cravings for them sometimes bounty of parsnips we started out my husband cooks everything starting with