My name is Eric Fernandes I am 32 years old and I have had a passion for organic gardening for a long time.  I was about eleven years old when I first started learning about gardening.  My father was the main inspiration for me getting started with this hobby.  Every year he would always have a small area in the backyard where he would use to grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  It was always interesting to me how he was able to grow this food right from our own garden.  At the time I never knew how food was grown, I just thought you could only get this food from the supermarket and never pondered where it actually came from.

Since this really peaked my interest I began watching my father with his gardening efforts during each season.  He was really interested in growing organically and he would always read The Organic Gardening magazine as well as many other books on this subject.  He was very knowledgeable and had much experience with gardening and when and how to grow whatever he wanted.

While I was watching him he knew that I had some interest in this subject because I would always listen to what he had to say.  To me it was very interesting on how simple it is to grow your own garden.  In the beginning I thought you had to have some secret techniques that would allow you to grow a bountiful garden.  Whenever the season began my father would always start out with growing onions in large totes which he was able to get from where he worked.

As he began planting onions I would always observe and eventually helped him in planting them.  It was a very simple task but with the amount of totes that we had it could take a while for one person to do them all.  This is when I began chipping in and started getting my hands dirty and jumping right into the organic gardening method.  After this we would then get to the bulk of the gardening season which included plants such as potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, pumpkins (unsuccessfully at first),  tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and even some corn.  We also have blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries which come back every year as well.

I really got very interested in what my dad was doing that I decided to grow my very own plant.  I wanted to do something that we didn’t have and one that would be kind of fun.  Since I was a tall kid at the time I wanted to try growing a sunflower plant.  This was my very first time growing anything besides the plants that I helped my father with.  I’ll be honest and say that it wasn’t very tall, but it did produce seeds that I was able harvest and eventually ate some of them.

This was my true start at gardening and from this experience would start a journey into the fun and exciting world of organic gardening.  For the next five years I would get my hands on all the books on organic gardening that my father had and read up on everything that I could.  This included taking much of my father’s advice about neat tricks and tips that he had gained from over 30 years of experience.

At around 17 years old my father gave me half of the garden area to work with for myself.  Basically he gave me half of the garden where I could grow anything that I wanted in the amount of space available.  This is when I started growing plants myself and learning from my own mistakes and successes.

I want to share with you all my experiences that I have encountered over the years whether failures or successes.  You will also discover everything that I know about organic gardening, including neat tricks and techniques, so that you too can begin your own quest to having a flourishing organic garden of your own.

To Your Gardening Success,
Eric Fernandes