310. Cindy Ondish | Master Gardener • Listener | Conneaut, Ohio

Hi Jackie!

I am a new listener who has been (vegetable) gardening all my life & in the last few years added fruit trees to my repartee. I live in NW PA, tho my garden is about 30 miles away in Conneaut, Ohio, a few blocks South of Lake Erie. I listened to the show with Melissa K. Norris today & enjoyed it very much. I will definitely be listening more! (& I entered the book give away, too!)

Keep up the good work!

Cindy Ondish

Tell us a little about yourself.

The way this weird situation started is a long story

where I live in NW PA I had a garden

trees grew up

we live amongst woods

My garden got worse and worse eveyryeareveryyear

tomato plans around my house

separate from this

my husband bought a place

boat garage

lot with weeds taller then me

hacked them down with a cycle

he noticed there was an asparagus

there’s where my garden is

the ground is like a gardener’s dream

person who owned it before was friends

there’s my garden

I resisted the whole thing a bit of the time

nothing grows at my house because there is no light

we’re there all the time in the summer

we cleared an acre out of the woods

some of it I want to turn back to woods

didn’t want to cut anymore down

such a gradual thing

I will

always had tomato plants around the house

pepper plants

pots on the deck

it was ok

I guess if I do raised beds

right in the middle of the lawn

gradual thing

worked

how wonderful this stuff grows

expanded

I came from an Italian family

everyone grew tomatoes

which is weird

we canned teammates

we ate a lot of pasta

that’s all I really knew

he came over on the boat from Italy

knew about other plants

my first garden

out of college

live in an apartment and stuff

as soon as I had space

I did

I have a lot of house plants

I have kind of a green thumb

good place to grow then at that time

I grew corn

whole range of things, my family never grew

so nice

feel like you can take care of yourself

empowered

I am going to the store

can it

grow it and can it

as I had my children

got bigger

trying to feed them

knew what I was feeding

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

How did you learn how to garden organically?

4

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

4

I was head over heels in love with parsnips

always had good luck growing parsnips

I know now my garden was such clay

even thought I tried to work things in it

if they dry out

once they dry out they’re dead

old timer

teaching me how to grow parsnips

never eaten a warship

boiling water on them

board over top

never did the top

mine would grow

because my ground was so nasty and wet

so I have been trying to grow them in my good garden

drainage

mulching them

could not get parsnips to grow

bummed out of it

more that I read

what do I have to lose

let them start sprouting on the sink

tedious job of picking up the sprouts

biggest most beautiful

start them first

plant them

plant them

pour boiling water over the row

seeds make them float to the top

waxy coating that has to get through the coating

worked because my ground was so wet

didn’t drain

new garden is drains

my husband introduced them to me

cravings for them

sometimes

bounty of parsnips

we started out

my husband cooks everything starting with