August 19 Column: Gardener Profile Andy Smith

One of my favorite aspects of being a garden columnist is that I get to write about some outstanding local gardeners. Today’s column is about Andy Smith and his wife, Margaret. Here is a link to it in The Spokesman-Review: Bountiful harvests come from small city lot.

What makes Andy and Margaret so special? Well, in addition to growing a fabulous raised bed garden on their city lot, they believe strongly in giving back to the community. They enjoy sharing their harvests with others and have been giving a raise bed, soil and plants to individuals who are interested in learning to garden. They hope to give away two raised beds each year.

I was so impressed with their generosity and wanted to share their story with you. Here are some photos that I took during my visit to their garden. And don’t forget that this week’s video is below them.

The photo above is of Andy’s awesome compost set-up!

Andy built the greenhouse above. Who else is green with envy?

Andy told me that he “stole” my idea about having a mailbox in the garden to hold tools and such. I don’t mind one bit! (and besides, it wasn’t originally my idea)

This week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video is a little different. It’s the first of two parts where I answer your gardening questions. I recently posted on Facebook that I was interested in doing a Q&A video and asked what questions folks had. Well, it was one of those “ask and ye shall receive” situations! I received all sorts of interesting questions (and a few challenging ones) about critters, insects, vegetables, flowers, growing in containers, fruit tree care, and several ones that I put into a miscellaneous category.

This first Q&A video is a bit on the long side, 28 minutes. I’ve tried to keep my previous videos fairly short (usually around 10 minutes), but I didn’t want to break up the Q&A videos into too many parts. So here goes… let me know what you think. The second part will air next week.