Nurturing a Garden at Home -LOH #244

Hello my wonderful ladies of hive, welcome to my blog once more. Today I want to give my opinion on the recent Ladies of Hive Community Contest #244 and specifically I will be answering the first question which goes thus “Are you one of those who prefers a house with or without a garden? Do you like plants? What do you do to take care of them?”

To be very honest, I am definitely one of those people who love a house with a garden, in fact, I do not think a house ever really feels complete without one. So yes, I truly like gardens and plants, and I believe they add life and meaning to a home not just that alone, they save cost.

source Personally, I prefer a house with a garden, even though there is none I will have to create one for myself. Actually, I grew up with my grandmother and we used to live in a very big compound, I learnt a lot from her. Despite the fact that she had lots of farmland where she cultivated yet she still had gardens at the compound, one with ornamental flowers about the compound and another with food crops and that was where I learnt how to tend and care for crops even as a child.

At her crop garden she planted crops like pepper, curry leaves, scent leaves, okra, tomatoes, garden egg, pumpkin leaf sugar cane and even groundnut, I would say it was a small but mighty garden. Countless times that garden had helped us in divers ways, back then we barely buy things like pepper, scent leaf or even pumpkin, that was because we had them all in the garden and it save cost a lot of times.

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Not just the crop garden but the flower garden also served a lot of purpose, the ornamental flowers beautified the whole compound and guess what , we often see snakes enter our compound on many occasion and my grandmother had to plant flowers around the compound that scares snakes away and since then we never saw snakes in the compound.

Till today I will never forget that day, there were beautiful marigold flowers and that was the day I learnt that some flowers and plants have the ability to scare such a dangerous reptile that is one of the benefits of having gardens in our homes. Even as a kid, my grandmother would always show me how to water the crops and the flowers and I would always help her with that whenever she was not around.

She also taught me the percentage of water required by each plants as some plants tend to consume water than others, and when some plants were not growing well she told me reasons why they weren’t growing well. Not just that, I learnt how to stake the pumpkin so it would fruit better.

For the flowers, the were brightly colored and beautiful and we would always trim the flowers and keep them in good shape, there were indeed great lessons for me. Now my grandmother is no longer with me but I still have that love of tending for crops and flowers.

In our old apartment, the compound had space and I was able to have a miniature garden but my parent and I recently moved to a new apartment now, everywhere is made of concrete and there is no soil around. Still I did not let that stop me from tending and growing crops, I bought some bags earlier today and I will fill them with loamy soil on Saturday and go ahead to plant crops in them.

source I believe having a garden is not just about having the soil or space because you can actually plants in bags, containers and even old pots as long as you are willing to tend and care for it. If you have been thinking of starting a garden just go ahead and try no matter how small your space is, it will always grow provided you care for it well.

Thank you all for reading.