Do you garden in English or another language?
Associated Press writer Jessica Damiano spent 2022 writing about gardening. She wrote about how to prepare your plants and soil for the winter. She also gave advice on gardening in shady places, or areas without much direct sunlight. She gave guidance on issues as different as insect control and saving and storing seeds.
Most recently Damiano wrote about the language of gardening, providing meanings to some unusual words used in the field.
For example, do you know what scarification is? Sounds like what happens when you see a ghost. But there are no ghosts in our gardens! Gardeners scarify seeds by making little cuts, or roughening, their hard outer covers. The act helps the seeds to germinate**.**
When a seed germinates it begins to grow.
Another technical gardening term that sounds mysterious, even to many native English speakers, is xeriscaping. It simply describes a way to garden with plants that do not need much water.
Damiano’s words are even more difficult for people who do not speak English as a first language. Some of the gardening words are more commonly used in other ways.
For example, how about the word broadcast? You might think of the word when you are watching a television program or listening to a report from Voice of America on the radio. However, in the gardening world, broadcast means to spread seeds over a large area instead of planting in single, straight lines.
Damiano also includes the word amendment in her list. If you are familiar with VOA stories about the United States Constitution, you may think you know the word amendment. An amendment is a change to the constitution. For example, the first amendment guarantees freedom of speech, religion and the press.
But in gardening, the word amendment has to do with material added to soil as a way to make it more fertile. Compost or animal waste is a soil amendment.
Below, see Damiano’s list of 35 “elusive” words all gardeners should know.
I’m Dan Friedell.