High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

One of his first projects was to build a little greenhouse, a lean-to affair attached to the house, made from discarded windows. Benches were simple, cinderblocks and boards. Plastic gallon milk jugs filled with water were stacked against the back wall for heat storage.

In this space, he started many vegetable and flower seedlings for the garden, and grew cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes for almost year- round harvest, the only slow time being in the dead of winter when day light was too short to produce much of a crop.

Every container that came into the house was potentially a pot for plants: plastic beer cups, the cut-off bottoms of milk contains, Styrofoam cups, egg cartons, yogurt containers, juice cartons, and used paper cups. With a nail he punched a hole in the bottom for drainage. He then filled these with his own home-made potting soil which was a mix of compost, garden soil, and sand. It was heavy but served its purpose.

Rather than buying flats of flowers, he potted a couple of geraniums in the fall, kept them in the greenhouse in the winter, and took cuttings in the spring. Every Memorial Day for over 25 years, geraniums graced the graves of my mom's relatives in the Boalsburg Cemetery, widely recognized as the birthplace of Memorial Day, the first celebration being held in 1864. Grave decorations were a big deal.

My dad was a devout composter, well aware that compost was the means to a healthy garden. Besides cow manure, vegetable scraps, lawn clippings, leaves, and coffee grounds were all heaped in a pile and eventually returned to the garden.

Even in rainy Pennsylvania, my dad had a rain barrel under every down spout for collecting run-off. He fashioned them from 55 gallon drums. During dry spells, he hand watered his garden by dipping water from the barrels.

Fancy garden gadgets were rarely purchased when cast off items would make do. To protect his newly planted tomatoes, squash and cucumbers from frost, he fashioned little hoop houses using old snow fencing. Plastic milk jugs filled with water were set near young transplants to trap heat. Bamboo, grown in an out-of-the-way spot, was cut for use as stakes, old panty hose for tying up tomatoes and cucumbers, and newspaper for mulch.

I'll never know if all of this were due to frugality, an ethic of not letting anything go to waste, or just plain old common sense. Whatever it was, Walter definitely had a green thumb and was living Grün long before anyone had ever heard of "reducing your carbon footprint."

Hattie Braun is the Master Gardener Coordinator for Coconino County Cooperative Extension. Dana Prom Smith, a Master Gardener volunteer, is coordinating editor for the Master Gardener Column. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For gardening questions, call the Master Gardener Hotline, 774-1868, x19, or visit MG Web site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.