Tea Party Gardening

by Doug
(in his garden)

After having a tea party with friends the other day (remember I'm Canadian, a member of the British Commonwealth, and we really do drink a lot of tea.) Having said that, I have decided to try a new form of gardening:

The tallest plants will be given the most fertilizer. Shorter plants will receive less and the shortest none.

I will not harvest the vegetables produced by the tallest plants, they grew that tall they deserve to keep all their fruit.

I will not protect the shortest plants from pests and plant diseases. It's their choice to be small so let them deal with it themselves.

All plant training and pruning will be reserved for the taller plants so they might reach their potential. Shorter plants need to work harder to become taller.

My neighbor has a lovely garden but she treats plants equally, so I'm going over there to teach her how to garden properly. Should she object, I'll simply cut all her plants down.

Gardening books, written by so-called plant experts, are useless. These people have been gardening too long and are part of the gardening bureaucracy. I'll give everyone a garden blog and read the ones I agree with.

Plants allowed to grow in my garden have to have names I can pronounce. I am not interested in foreign sounding plant names and I'll watch the foreign sounding plants in my neighbors garden carefully in case they spread.

I prefer my flowers old-fashioned and plain. These are the ones my grandfather grew. None of those double hybrids or (heaven forbid!) frilly flowers will appear in my garden. Those that do appear will be removed immediately and the seeds will not be saved.

I will not share seeds with other gardeners. Let them get their own seeds. The more seeds I have, the bigger my garden can be. Maybe I can control all the garden seeds.

I’ll let you know how this all works out.