It is not. Mint is famously easy to grow. The problem is that it grows everywhere, and once it starts it does not stop, and the person asking the question usually learns this the hard way. Debora Gurrad delivered this information with the patience of someone who has answered it many times and still finds the topic genuinely interesting. That patience is, I think, the whole point.
Debora is a certified Master Gardener with the Vancouver Island Master Gardeners Association – a retired teacher who moved to Vancouver Island in 2017 and completed her certification not long after. The Master Gardener movement began in Washington State in 1973, she explained, when county extension agents who were supposed to be helping farmers kept getting calls from home gardeners they simply didn’t have time to answer. Someone had the idea to train volunteers. There are now roughly 50,000 Master Gardeners across North America and the UK, and every one of them is a volunteer. They never charge for advice. They are just people who love gardens and want to help.
Debora presents workshops from Campbell River to Nanaimo, which means she covers a lot of ground – literally – and has a feel for where people get stuck. The month of May, she said, is when it all lands at once: seeds to start, seedlings to harden off, soil to amend, containers to plant up. She said everything starts with the soil and that advice is worth more than almost anything else I’ve heard on the podcast this year. Add compost. Then add a little more. Let the microbes do the work.
That’s the thing about Master Gardeners – they are the people you wish you had on call, and for a lot of Vancouver Islanders, you actually do.
Hear the full conversation with Debora Gurrad on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP33PulsePodcast
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/