Hello community people, hope you are doing great, and your gardens are doing well too.
There's no gainsaying that childhood is a learning period. During this time, the inquisitive mind of the child will always want to learn, ask series of questions and try out new things. And in years to come, some of those things will come in handy and help them navigate through life. It's also worthy of note that some careers that people find themselves in today spurned from what they learnt during their childhood days.
The #aprilinleo topic for today, 16th April centers on things learned during childhood days that has been useful now in adulthood.
There are quite many of them but I'll just talk about gardening.
My love for gardening started from right from my childhood days. Then we had a garden almost a stone throw from our house and varieties of crops were planted there - vegetables like okra, fluted pumpkin, pumpkin, bitterleaf, waterleaf, including corn, sweet potato, three leaf yam, yam, cassava, curry leaf, scent leaf, just name it.
There were fruits like pawpaw, cashew, orange, guava planted in our compound too. Apart from the garden, we had other portion of lands we were cultivating. During the Easter break, we'll all travel to the village to spend the holiday there and to farm too. My parents loved farming to the core because they knew how beneficial it was, and they never for one day kept us away from the farm. So far you're under my parents root, farm work you must do.
Did I enjoy it at first? No, but as time went on my interest in it began to grow that whenever we were at the farm, I would always follow my mother's trail while she plants cassava, corn, vegetables and others, to observe what she was doing. Sometimes she allows me plant the corn and okra after I must have promised not to play with them, hehehe. You won't blame me because as a child the farm was another place to play, pursue butterflies and other insects, including picking of palm kernels which I will later crack to eat, lol. But as I grew older I learnt better, I was then able to plant cassava, pumpkin and other vegetables.
But then in my little mind I always wondered why we had to farm, of all things so one day I asked mom about it. This was her reply "growing your own food is a very good way to eat healthy as you know the source of the food. You also stay fit because doing so you're equally exercising. Most importantly, you'll be saving money which you would have used in buying them. You may not understand it now but in years to come, you will".
As I grew older, some of the things she told me began to make sense as I saw that mom never bought food crops, fruits and vegetables from the market, we harvest them fresh from the garden and eat. It also served as a source of income as we usually sell some to take care of other needs.
Seeing how beneficial gardening was to my family then, I resolved that whenever I have my own home, I'll have a garden no matter how small. And luckily now I have a small place in my compound where I carry out gardening activities. Infact the first year I moved in there, I used poultry feed bags to plant vegetable and okra at my backyard and the yield was encouraging.
Later on I got this place and I was so happy that I can plant my favorite vegetables like ugu (pumpkin), ugboru (fluted pumpkin), spinach, and okra and I tell you I haven't bought them from the market. I even have pawpaw trees too. I shared a post where I harvested the tumeric I planted in a cellophane bag
.
The yield from these crops I planted last year was so surprising, even the tomato which mistakenly germiated, hehehe.
 |  |
|---|---|
| Pumpkin leaves | Tomatoes |
The joy of having a garden, planting varieties of crops, tending to them as they grow to the level of harvesting is just indescribable.
Yams I harvested
How about the satisfaction that comes from eating what you grew, fresh from the garden, and even giving some to neighbors, friends and family members. I remember the day I cut spinach leaves and sent to my sister inlaw, she was so overjoyed.
Now I no longer buy some of these food crops that I usually cultivate, the money that would have been used in buying them is channeled to other things.
Here's one funny thing I do now which I learnt from mom and that's walking down to the garden to cut some vegetables while the food is already cooking, hehehe. I'm sure some of you who have gardens can relate to this.
 |  |
|---|---|
| Cutting scent leaf | Cutting spinach leaf |
Now that we're in the farming season here, I'm sure gonna plant in my garden. I already got some fluted pumpkin seeds and this special okra seeds from mom. I want to try the okra seeds and see how the yield will be.
I have my pumpkin (ugu) seeds from last year, so I'll plant it too including corn. I may add other crops or not but the most important thing is that I didn't let the things I learnt about gardening go to waste and I will surely pass it on to my children.
Many thanks for reading.
Still the #threadsaddict 😂
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