Got Magic?

When I was a very little girl I thought my grandparents were magic.  They were gardeners.  Every Saturday, it seemed to me, they worked in the yard.  They grew some of the shrubs that lined the long driveway to their house. Camellia japonica, C. sasanqua, holly, boxwood, and several varieties of azaleas were planted down the drive and around the house.  Two acres of sandy earth had tall pine trees which gave shade, pine needles, and helped acidify the soil to the liking of those acid-loving plants.  My grandfather never bought mulch.  What I clearly remember is the miniature forest of rooted cuttings in sand boxes with window sashes over them. 

Seriously, with a bit of both you too can have a fabulous garden.  Plants are just like us; they are what they eat.  Feed your soil the good stuff and you’ll have a rich, well amended soil that will help to produce healthy and beautiful plants and nutritious vegetables.   Everything starts with the soil and here in the South Carolina Lowcountry, our soils run the gamut from pure sand to heavy clay with the ideal being somewhere in the middle of the range.    Fortunately, everyone can commit to improve the growing conditions in their gardens.   It is just like you getting the appropriate vitamins and minerals from your food.  The confidence comes with time and experience and there is help available. Never give up.

(no, not the illegal kind)

Before the days of pharmacies being built every two miles or so, our great grandparents (and other ancestors for thousands of years before that) survived on herbal and other cures from their gardens or wildcrafted from the woods.

This point was personally brought home to me one summer when I was nine years old and got stung over most of my back by a Portuguese Man of War jelly fish at Pawley's Island.  It felt like a thousand burning bee stings at once.