Introducing Broken Prairie Gardens

Sagae Hosta

It is safe to say that I have had a life-long attraction to gardening.  I grew up, surrounded by family and friends who viewed gardening as a natural way of life.  Both sets of Grandparents, were avid gardeners.  My Grandparent Alcorns, Bert and Lula, lived in town on a huge corner lot.  Their garden spot was several times larger than their home.  An orchid and grapes filled the back acre or so of their yard.  They were adventuresome in their gardening.  Bert's family was from Kentucky so he experimented with a variety of southern crops.  His biggest success was ....... of all things....... peanut growing! 

As soon as I was able to get into the dirt, I was right in the middle of my folk's garden.  To this day, I remain mystified that one can plant that tiny seed, cover it with dirt, water it and then........ there is a tomato!  I have been planting seeds and covering them with dirt most of my life.  With Mark spending long hours in the "big garden" (farming), our family garden has fallen to my doing.  I don't mind a bit.  Gardening is very therapeutic!  Over the years, I have had huge gardens.  I used to can mega amounts of fruit and vegetables.  Now I have what I call my "kitchen garden".  It produces an amount of vegetables that we can use up during the summer.  With the exception of sweet corn, decent produce can be purchased at our grocery store during the rest of the year.  My family is convinced that there is no equal to our homegrown frozen sweet corn so we put up a year's worth of that. 

When our kids were in 4-H, I learned about a Master Gardener program sponsored by Kansas State University Extension.  At the time, our county was not eligible to train for it :-(   Six years ago, I saw the news article stating that Clay county was invited to attend classes for the River Valley Extension Master Gardener program!  Yeah!  I was the first one to sign up that year.  The intent of this program is to train people who will go back out to their communities and volunteer to educate others. The program in my area has grown and we have over 30 volunteers in the district.  We have a variety of programs and projects going in our county.  I hope that this blog will be another means in which to pass on information that has been thoroughly researched. If it is something that is hearsay, or that may have worked once for me, I will let you know.  I will do my best to keep it entertaining!