Gardening Supplies and Landscaping Tips
Listen and Read
Listen, answer the questions, and read along with the audio recording.
Listening Quiz
Select the best answer for each question, then press Check Answers.
Use arrow keys to choose between options within each question.
1. The family’s garden is ____ their house.
2. The man says, “We usually plant tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, corn, carrots, peppers, and ____.”
3. At the end of the growing season, the family ____.
My wife has a beautiful flower and vegetable garden behind our house. Every year in the spring, she prepares the soil by mixing in compost, peat moss, and manure into the ground using a tiller. (Sometimes, she does this by hand if we’re only using a small area for the garden.) This helps enrich the soil with vital nutrients so plants can grow.
Next, she usually plants more things from seedlings (small plants) rather than planting seeds because seedlings already have a good start. We usually plant tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, corn, carrots, peppers, and broccoli. (We also have strawberry plants and several fruit trees on our land.) We dig a small hole in the soil, place the seeding in, add a little water, and then cover the roots of the plants with dirt. From time to time, we fertilize the plants to help them grow, and the fertilizer helps plants develop strong roots, stems, and leaves.
Throughout the growing season, we weed the garden, water it, and check it for unwanted insects. If the plants are infested with insects, we sprinkle an insecticide on the plants. We pick the vegetables and fruit when they’re ripe. When the growing season is over, we pull out the old plants by hand or use a tiller to plow them under. We add any dead leaves from our trees to enrich the soil for the coming year.
Discussion
Does your family grow a garden? Why or why not? If so, what kinds of things do you plant? What do you do to prepare your garden?
Online Investigation
Suppose that you really enjoy gardening, but you are moving to a new city overseas to work. Unfortunately, you don’t know anything about the climate of the area, nor do you know what kinds of plants will grow there. First, choose a country where you would like to live. Then, using the internet, find out about the seasonal conditions and weather of that country and then research whether the following plants would grow successfully in that region:
peach tree, sunflowers, watermelon, orange tree, tomatoes, strawberries