25
The neighbor lady who taught me about soil pH with her bare hands
Back around 2019 when I first started my veggie patch, I was out front digging up a spot for tomatoes and this older woman from two doors down walked over. She just squat down, grabbed a handful of dirt, smelled it, and said "you got too much clay here, gonna need some lime." Then she rubbed it between her fingers and showed me how it wouldn't crumble right. She told me she'd been growing in this neighborhood since 1982 and every plot on our street needs a pH boost because of the old oak trees dropping leaves for decades. I tested it later with one of those $8 kits from the hardware store, and she was dead on. I still think about that moment when I'm mixing in my amendments each spring. Has anyone else had a stranger walk up and drop some gardening wisdom on you like that?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
patriciah5113d ago
Man oh man that is such a classic neighbor story. I had a similar thing happen with an old guy who saw me struggling with my compost bin and told me I needed more browns, then just reached into his own bin and pulled out a handful of dry leaves to show me the ratio. That kind of hands-on advice sticks with you way more than any YouTube video. It is something about watching someone who has just done it for decades, they can smell and feel what the soil needs without any gadgets.
4