UNDER THE BOARDWALK

Grandad Green, Supreme Gardener, Otūmoetai, Tauranga

Late 1970s–1980s

“I often wondered how my grandad grew rows and rows of sweet carrots every year because whenever I try, the tiny carrot seeds won’t germinate for me,” Ella Armstrong (nee Green) told me.

It was only recently, while watching a gardening video on growing carrots from seed, that Ella discovered her grandfather Viv’s secret.

Ella smiled when recalling how her grandad’s garden always had several planks strategically placed in it and how she thought he had placed them there so he could walk on the soil and not get his gumboots muddy.

“In the video I watched, the gardener laid long wooden planks over the area where he had sprinkled carrot seed. He explained that the planks were to keep the sun off the soil to stop the seeds from drying out and dying and that was a ‘deja vu’ moment for me. I have no doubt the planks served as boardwalks for Granddad to walk on too, because he could be out in the garden for hours in his gumboots, garden gloves and overalls, but he never seemed to get dirty gumboots doing it.”

She also remembers a visitor telling her grandfather off for bending from the waist while tending to his garden and how he replied: “If the men in the rice paddies can do it all day long then so can I.”

“That was our grandad. Old school, stoic and better off for it, all day long.”

Ella is going to try grow carrots her grandad’s way this summer and she is in no doubt her own kids will get to enjoy big, juicy carrots straight from the garden.