The secret to a green thumb
After 11 years of gardening, I came to the conclusion that the secret to a green thumb can be summarized in three simple words – love, care and soil.
I love gardening and enjoying working in my vegetable garden. Gardening is one of my hobbies and passion. I don’t mind weeding, digging in the dirt, and get my hands dirty and rough.
I take good care of my vegetable garden. I check on it, water it almost every day.
It brings me great joy and satisfaction to see my vegetables grow and to be able to eat fresh vegetables from my own garden every day. This summer, for just 40 days from the last week of July to the end of August, I harvested about 230 cucumbers from my garden. It is a good year for me.
Without love and care, it’s impossible to have a nice garden, healthy plants and a green thumb.
I know people who absolutely have no interest in gardening. They won’t even go out to their own backyard to pick vegetables from garden. They would rather go to a store and buy what they want. Surely you cannot expect a green thumb from people who have no interest and passion for gardening or plants and don’t care about them.
People told me that I have a green thumb because I like plants (I have quite a few in my office and house). But often times I don’t feel like so, especially when it comes to my houseplants. They don’t look quite as healthy as those in the stores.
This summer I visited a relative in Germany. She has similar house plants as what I have, such as spider plants, but every single plant in her house looked so much more healthy than those in my house. I was surprised by the difference. So I asked her what she did. She told me that she re-pots her plants every year in spring. Even if she doesn’t have to change the size of the pot, she still removes the old soil, trims the roots, and replace the old soil with new soil. This is her secret to having a healthy houseplant and a green thumb.
My houseplants have soil that feels like a rock, because I haven’t changed the soil for a a few years. No wonder they don’t grow as well and healthy as they could be if I had done the same thing as my relative does.
So I plan to re-pot every houseplant in my house that needs a face-lift next spring.
With love, care and good soil, I will have a green thumb.
