{"id":12005,"date":"2015-08-27T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/?p=12005"},"modified":"2015-08-25T16:33:53","modified_gmt":"2015-08-25T20:33:53","slug":"ken-conkle-and-his-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/ken-conkle-and-his-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Conkle and His Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kim<\/a>By: Kimberly Smith<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last year, around the beginning of spring, a citizen of Antwerp who goes by Ken Conkle started a community garden for himself and the community of Antwerp. I couldn\u2019t help myself but to wonder why he spontaneously grew a garden\u2026 so why did he? Mr. Conkle has a burning passion and has great techniques for growing gardens.<\/p>\n

Ken became interested in gardening when he was about twenty years old. He attended school in Fort Wayne, IN to earn his master gardening skills at the age of forty! Ken\u2019s community garden is not so spontaneous after all. \u201cI love to create win-win situations,\u201d Ken tells us. If you asked Ken what his favorite thing about gardening was, he would explain to you that there is a certain sense of pride and accomplishment that you really can\u2019t put into words. How much more passionate can you get about gardening?<\/p>\n

\"Ken<\/a>Mr. Conkle is a proud man and is happy to help his community. He loves to share his crops in such a selfless way that he is not ashamed to boast about his extraordinary garden.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re pondering about where he gets his inspiration, his brother Rod is where his encouragement lies. Mr. Conkle is not afraid to inform us that Rod could grow circles around him and gives Ken a hand with any heavy lifting involving gardening. Ken definitely doesn\u2019t appear to be crestfallen when he says he wouldn\u2019t be able to garden if it wasn\u2019t for his brother.<\/p>\n

Mr. Conkle says gardening is absolutely one of his favorite pastimes and would even go crazy without it. While he loves to grow a little bit of everything, tomatoes are his favorite vegetables to grow because they\u2019re so visually appealing and grow to large sizes.<\/p>\n

\"Ken's<\/a>On another note, he shared with us a quote he favors from his beloved brother Rod, \u201cGod made dirt and dirt don\u2019t hurt.\u201d A personal quote he likes to live by his own, \u201cEverything starts with the dirt.\u201d Looking through the eyes of any gardener, that is probably the best place to begin with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Kimberly Smith Last year, around the beginning of spring, a citizen of Antwerp who goes by Ken Conkle started<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1304,2335],"tags":[218,224,339,4286,417,797,2379,2142,4205,4206,4284,4285,1091,225,3885,12,236,4289,4288,59,46,4287,3691,303,780,3801,223,3802],"class_list":["post-12005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-farming","category-nature-2","tag-antwerp","tag-bend","tag-community-2","tag-conckle","tag-county","tag-garden","tag-gardening","tag-ken","tag-kim","tag-kimberly","tag-kimmy","tag-kimsmith","tag-nature","tag-news","tag-oh","tag-ohio","tag-old","tag-outdoors","tag-passion","tag-paulding","tag-school-2","tag-skill","tag-skills","tag-smith","tag-vancrest","tag-wbn","tag-west","tag-westbendnews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YQd9-37D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 16:11:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}