When did you realise you were a 'proper' gardener?

[onefivenine]

I'd have thought a proper gardener is someone who makes a living from gardening?

This is the first year I've had a garden or attempted to grow anything, but I think I'm a proper gardener as I've produced food from it! That must count?!

My mum said the scallions I gave her were the best she's ever had. They were in a 12" pot.
My friends are getting chillis on the plants I nurtured and gave them, and their tomato plants are flowering. My broad beans are the best I've ever tasted and same for the peas. I have mexican gherkins plumping up in the growhouse, and courgettes just forming.

I have few plants mostly containers around my new garden, but plan to take cuttings from my camellia once it stops growing, to spread it along a fence.


Am I a proper gardener? Well I'm trying!

[sauzee]

I wont ever be a complete gardener but at least i'm a happy one for my first year i think i have had every pest so far slugs on leaves and laying eggs on stalks of rhubarb,pigeons ate all brassicus leaves crows ate all peas,potatoes some had scab some looked like blight as a few were soft and mushy and to top it onions didn't grow then carrots got carrot fly but still happy as lettuce was ok

[Two_Sheds]

imo, anyone who doesn't just buy garish, multi-coloured bedding plants is a proper gardener, ie grows their own from seed

[OllieMartin]

imo, anyone who doesn't just buy garish, multi-coloured bedding plants is a proper gardener, ie grows their own from seed

Don't you think they have to have some measureable degree of sucess gardening too though?
I meet most people on here's criteria for being a proper gardener, but as it's my first year and I'm yet to harvest anything from 90% of my plants I don't think of myself as 'proper'. Not til a full, successful year.

[FionaH]

Proper gardener? I wish!

[Flummery]

My son in law began growing his own veg last year. He asked what to put on newly dug (from lawn) veg beds so I said blood fish & bonemeal is a good start. He went to a local garden centre to ask for some. The chap serving asked him how he got to know of it! He said his MIL had advised it. "Ah yes" said the not-so-young chap behind the counter, "It's always the old ones who know about this." Made me feel like Methuselah's Ma!

[gojiberry]

I don't think you can define "real gardener" and it's more a case of whether you grow for enjoyment regardless of the results. I don't think anyone will ever know everything as the subject matter is so vast, which means we are all, to some extent, still learning how to grow veg. Is it fair to try and gage a real gardener by knowledge and experience. I think even if you only repot a houseplant then you are a real gardener as you have created the environment for a plant to grow bigger and to flourish.

Ian

[piskieinboots]

imo, anyone who doesn't just buy garish, multi-coloured bedding plants is a proper gardener, ie grows their own from seed

a touch unfair methinks - what is garish to 'you' isn't to someone else, thank goodness, otherwise we would all have gardens looking the same

not everyone has the space/confidence to grow from seed, but if 'you' can put a plant into soil and nuture it then you are a gardener IMO

[Two_Sheds]

It may be unfair, but anyone who decorates their garden with plastic ornaments and every shade of petunia ... are entitled to their taste, but they ain't a real gardener.

[bluemoon]

My son in law began growing his own veg last year. He asked what to put on newly dug (from lawn) veg beds so I said blood fish & bonemeal is a good start. He went to a local garden centre to ask for some. The chap serving asked him how he got to know of it! He said his MIL had advised it. "Ah yes" said the not-so-young chap behind the counter, "It's always the old ones who know about this." Made me feel like Methuselah's Ma!

We asked a young chap in B&Q for some BFB. 'Oh, no' he sneered, 'we don't stock things like that'. No they don't, they call it something like "General Purpose Organic Fertilizer (contains blood, fish and bonemeal)" Presumably calling it that is what allows them to charge £2 a kilo for it.

[snakeshack]

first year on the lottie,and i now consider myself a proper gardener,the defining moments were digging my first spuds and having the wife tell me they were the best she's ever had and now being told to go to the allotment as the housework wasn't as important as the veg.

[bluemoon]

I was discussing this with OH last night and he says he finally feels like a proper gardener now we have the chickens. He thinks it's probably because he wasn't brought up by keen gardeners - all lawn, and even mowing it was a chore - so his first ideas were shaped by watching The Good Life in the 70s.

[DiamondLucy]

I felt like a 'proper' gardener when i ate my first home grown raddish this year! Feeling more and more proper the more i harvest.....

[Storming Norman]

Two Sheds,

What about those of us who grow our own petunias - from seed??

[digthatchick]

Never mind SN ... someone has to