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Two knee replacements from years of pulling weeds haven’t stopped the 77-year-old from toiling away in the one-acre community garden at Redeemer Lutheran Church or teaching a gardening program at four elementary schools.
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Lois Ankrum, 77, of Winona transplants marigolds in the Winona State University greenhouse Tuesday. Ankrum has been a Winona County Master Gardener for 19 years and will be speaking at an urban gardening seminar at Holzinger Lodge Saturday.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News |
“You’ll find once you get into it, you don’t even think about the time,” Ankrum said. “I call it therapy, horticulture therapy. Your reward is what you’re harvesting.”
Ankrum, a Winona County master gardener for 19 years, grew up gardening, but she said that’s not a prerequisite for anyone starting their own garden. Neither is space.
The southeast Minnesota chapter of the Sustainable Farming Association has partnered with the Winona County Master Gardeners to offer an urban gardening seminar Saturday on how to grow an indoor or outdoor garden in small spaces.
Master Gardeners will discuss everything from picking out seeds, appropriate containers and lighting for growing indoors, how to sow seeds, soil fertility, garden design, transplanting from indoors to outdoors, crop rotation, organic inputs, intensive gardening and water gardening.
It’s “Gardening 101” for would-be gardeners who have space to those whose only place to grow is in a cramped apartment, said Lonnie Dietz of Whitewater Gardens Farm.
Folks will also learn to grow for the seasons, Dietz said, as well as storage tips to extend crop seasons. It makes for fresher eating, he said.
“We don’t have to buy all these things from everywhere else,” Dietz said. “So much of the food is shipped halfway around the world so we can have it on our shelves.”
Smart gardening is staying away from what’s expensive at the grocery store to save money at the cash register, Ankrum said. It’s also not planting crops that need a lot of room to grow, like cabbage, when space is limited.
Some things about gardening take experience to learn, like how many seeds to plant based on family size, she said, but every garden requires a little care.
“Where you plant your garden is a big factor in it and also how well you take care of it such as watering and fertilizing,” she said.
Size doesn’t matter, Ankrum said, because intensive gardening can produce a lot of produce with all the right space utilization tricks. It’s tucking seeds to cover every square inch; it’s raising plant beds so there’s a slope; it’s knowing to plant carrots next to plants with a bigger root system; it’s picking lettuce in time to plant beans.
For the strictly indoor gardeners, planting containers can be placed near a south-facing window or under a florescent grow light 16 hours a day. An ordinary desk lamp would do the trick, she said.
The main step Ankrum recommends for any would-be urban gardener is getting a soil test through the local extension office.
“It will tell you just exactly what to do to make it suitable for what you plan to use it for,” she said.
Basic gardening materials and tools are universal: new seeds, plastic cell pack containers, soil mix of vermiculite and peat, a hoe, trowel, three-pronged fork, kneepads.
But a diary is the successful gardener’s best tool, she said.
IF YOU GO
Contact reporter Amber Dulek at amber.dulek@lee.net or (507) 453-3513.
