SALT LAKE CITY — Joshua Armstrong spends his afternoons in his backyard talking to his plants, watering them and watching YouTube videos about how to plant his latest finds. At just 9 years old, the Riverton native has found that gardening is what he wants to do now, and hopefully, in the future.
Joshua’s love of gardening began two years ago with a rogue onion sprouting in the Armstrong family’s pantry. His curiosity led him to watch a YouTube video on gardening and plant an onion in the backyard, opening up the world of gardening to Joshua.
“I quickly fell in love with it and fell in love with gardening,” Joshua said. “I was like, ‘Wow! I’ve never seen this before. This is the best day ever.'”
The little onion didn’t survive in Joshua’s yard, but it did inspire him to continue learning about plants and how to care for them.
“We all make mistakes,” Joshua said. “The second onion that I found sprouting, it grew into a big, big, giant onion.”
Joshua even did his interview with another sprouting onion in hand. His dad believes it to be approximately Joshua’s 50th sprouting onion. Yet, Joshua doesn’t only grow onions. He also grows potatoes, garlic, pumpkins, gourds, flowers and everything he can get his hands on. The veggies he grows are used in the kitchen, as fall decorations and as pumpkins for Halloween time. When the pumpkins are done, he and his family smash the pumpkins and let the seeds scatter around and grow.
He makes sure to take care of his plants every day. Watering the plants, getting rid of pests and finding a place to plant amid the weed barrier are all part of the day-to-day. His family jokes that he is the plant whisperer, as he can often be found talking to his plants and helping them to feel loved.
“I tell them how good they’re doing, and I say to them, ‘Good job. I’m proud of you,'” Joshua said.
When his family was on a vacation, his grandparents, Rosemary and Dan Armstrong, were tasked with watching the plants.
I want to be a farmer because I really, really love gardening.–Joshua Armstrong
“They grow better for him than they do us,” Dan Armstrong said, laughing. “They love him. They don’t seem to respond as well to us. I’m a little skeptical about talking to plants, but he seems to have a magic that we don’t have.”
Many times, YouTube videos teach him how to plant and take care of the specific type of plant. He even has plants sprouting out of the cracks in his driveway. Sometimes, he has been caught trying to hide vegetables or intentionally let them rot so that they will sprout.
“The hardest part about gardening is making sure you give your plants enough water so that they don’t die. I need to water them for 10 seconds every single day,” Joshua explained.
His at-home garden is his favorite thing to tend to.
Joshua Armstrong, 9, has tried to find gardening space anywhere he can in his yard in Riverton. Casey Armstrong, Joshua’s dad, hopes to get him a plot of land in a community garden one day. (Photo: Family photo)
“Whenever we come home from anywhere, he runs out of the car and immediately runs to check the plants,” said Casey Armstrong, Joshua’s dad. “Whenever we go to the grocery store, he insists on going to the vegetable section so he can go through and look. … It’s the thing that he’s the most passionate about.”
As Joshua goes into the fourth grade, his passion for plants shows no signs of slowing.
“It’s kind of unusual because kids his age are kids. They’re not interested in that. … He loves all of nature,” Rosemary Armstrong said. “He’s very, very special.”
When he grows up, Joshua hopes to be a farmer and to continue growing plants.
“I want to be a farmer because I really, really love gardening,” he said.
Joshua also loves sharing facts about the plants he grows and encouraging others to get their hands in the dirt.
“I’d give people the advice to start with planting onions because they’re easy to plant. All you need to do is water them and take care of them,” he said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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