It was, ironically, the death of my father that led me to organic gardening. Dad was an avid gardener and one of the last things he requested I do was plant – not vegetables – but “…flowers,” he said. “You need to plant a lot of flowers.”Six months went by and one day in the dark of winter, struggling in my despair, I took myself to the library to find a way to fulfill his request. I hadn’t a clue how to plant anything. It was December, 2001, just three months after 9/11. I was six months into my grief. The country was depressed, I was depressed. Since I had no spare land to grow on, I leafed through some dated, black and white books on the topic of container gardening. They had long been gathering dust on the shelves. What caught my eye and sparked my interest though, that dismal December afternoon, were the books about growing vegetables. To me, these seemed to have a point. After all, you could eat vegetables. Containers and vegetables. I lugged a stack of books home.
Already “into” nutrition and healthy diet, I decided this would be an acceptable substitution for flowers and Dad would understand. I had to mail-order organic seeds, since none were readily available at the time. The High Mowing Seeds catalogue, when it arrived in the mail, was like Christmas for me. I ordered more varieties of tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers than made sense, then ordered about 15 more packets of other vegetable and herb seeds. I really just couldn’t limit myself. I also ordered warming pads for the seedlings, and any other contraptions that looked “necessary.” I was honestly like a kid in a candy store.