Gardeners Glossary
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A Nantucket Gardener’s Glossary

• A Guest Blog Post by Tobey Leske •

Well, once more the gardening season is upon us. For my friends who are not gardeners, here is a short glossary of terms you may hear the gardeners in your family use from time to time.

Cold Frame: A wooden box with a glass roof for the kids to aim at.

Dead heading: What the slugs do after they find the beer.

Seed catalog: Planted in your mailbox, flowers in late winter.

Mulch: Pieces of dead plants put on live plants as encouragement.

Hybrid: What you say to the crow that just ate your tomatoes.

Growing zones: The frustration levels of gardeners in different areas of the country.

Compost Pile: A circle of snow fence into which you put your food scraps for the deer and rabbits to eat when the garden isn’t growing.

Deer Fence:  A gardener’s slang term meaning a project involving significant work with minimal results. eg: “My husband’s buying that boat was a real deer fence move.”

Rabbit fence: Chicken wire which is buried in the ground to rust.

Razed beds: What the deer and rabbits leave.

Rototiller:  A really heavy and noisy machine with spinning blades extremely close to your toes.

Hoe: What your wife says when the rototiller snags the deer fence. Often used more than once and occasionally with expletives. eg: “hoe, hoe, hoe, for ******’s sake!”.

Crop rotation: What the rototiller did just before snagging the deer fence.

Last frost: The look given while you fix the deer fence, replace the plants, and untangle the rabbit fence from the rototiller.

Satisfied Gardner: Oxymoron.

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