Home Gardening Inspiration & Education

Growing a garden full of foods you can eat now and preserve for later is a powerful thing, it increases your food security, and decreases your reliance on stores and the larger supply chain. It is also so healthy both while you are preserving and being able to eat from your garden during the winter. The act of harvesting and preserving your food takes time and can be a bit of a work out but I think that is part of the benefits. You are spending time being producing and keeping your mind and body active. The sense of accomplishment when you look over all you've stored is a reward in itself.

Below I will be discussing two categories of preservable foods, crops that are easy to store and last a long time, and crops that are easy to preserve through canning, freezing, or fermenting. Growing these crops will give you a level of control over what you eat not just in the growing months but in the winter months too and by storing food you are giving yourself independence from stores. In our...

Myths in the gardening world are problematic. They deter hopeful home gardeners and confuse new home gardeners by making it sound complicated! That's why today I want to discuss 4 common home gardening myths and the truth behind them! 

Dismiss the myths that are holding your garden back!

Myth #1: The best spot for your garden is a spot that gets sun all day.

A full day of sun for us can be as much as 10 -14 hours but your veggies and fruit don't actually need that much. In the farming world full sun means 6 hours of direct sun, and some plants like lettuce and do well in as little as 3 hours of sun. The best spot in your yard for a garden only needs 6 hours of direct sun and for many plants shade in the afternoon is beneficial. A bit of shade in your garden can help reduce issues like sun scald in peppers and tomatoes. It can also help reduce water loss, mid-day wilt, and high temperatures in the garden. If you do not have a good spot that gets both direct sun for 6 hours...

As we head into fall most insects will start to find places to overwinter and be less active in the garden, that being said there are still plenty that will stick around to eat the last of the available harvest before winter sets in! Be on the look out for these fall garden pests to protect your fall harvest, and set yourself up for success next year! If you can stay on top of pest control in your garden and kill the insects before they can find a place to overwinter then you will reduce the number immerging in the spring to snack on you next seasons crops. To control these pests in your home garden the best management is physically removing them and killing them on sight!

Beet Armyworm are a caterpillar that loves bush beans in the fall so pay special attention to these and any cucurbits you may still have in your garden like squash, pumpkins, or melons. The larvae will eat the leaves and even the fruits of your plant as they mature. Be on the look out for the caterpillar but...

The cool season is not far off and that means fall gardens are in! We all love free plants and this summer you may have had to purchase some cool season plants to supplement your garden so today I want to talk about how you can take the scraps of 7 common cool season plants and regrow them! I will walk you through how to regrow green onions, romaine lettuce, celery, carrot tops, bulb fennel, leeks, and herbs. 

What you'll need: 

- A container (glass preferable), this could be a cup or a dish 

- Fresh water 

- A sunny window is preferred but a bright indirect light will also work 

- Food scraps! 

You may have already dabbled in the art of regrowing food scraps; green onions are an easy and common way to start. 

1. Green Onion 

I am starting with green onions these are by far the easiest plants to regrow from grocery store scraps or from your own garden scraps. When you buy them at the store you get the whole plant but often only use the...

The cool season is just around the corner, and you can start getting your garden ready with these basics! It is time for lettuces, beets, swiss chard, cabbage, dill, and more!

To prepare you need to prune, clear, prep the soil, and pick your plants. Very soon we plan to release a Free Fall Challenge to walk you step by step through growing a fall garden so in this blog I just want to go over the basics.

Pruning

Your summer garden should be winding down, plants will produce less, and be producing smaller fruit. The plants that are still producing can be pruned back to encourage the plant to put out their last fruit. Any dead or yellowing foliage can be cut away and put in your compost.

Clear

Clear away any dead or dying plants and any debris that may have built up in your garden. You want to clear as much soil space as you can in your beds for the new planting, but leave anything still producing, and give your garden a fresh start. 

Prep the Soil

Between growing seasons,...

Plant sales are my favorite I love searching through and finding plants to take home and save. That being said, you have to know what you are looking for or you can end up with wasted money and dead plants.  

Rule Number 1: Only buy perennials 

Annuals won't be able to recover in time before the season ends but perennial will be able to establish itself enough to over winter and come back stronger the next year. This means that herbs are the perfect salvage plant or edible perennial flowers like beebalm. Shrubs and trees often take longer to recover from poor conditions but if you are willing to wait 3-5 years you won't be able to tell the difference.  

Rule Number 2: Don't buy a dead plant 

This might seem like an obvious rule but it's not always clear if a plant is dead or alive. When buying a rough looking plant check for signs of new growth, little light green leaves, new shoots. You can also check the roots, gently tip the plant out of the...

Planting, caring, pruning, and watering, growing your own vegetables takes time and effort but it is so worth it to harvest fresh and local produce. That is unless your beautiful vegetables fall prey to destruction like Blossom End Rot. The rot eats the fruit from the bottom up greatly reducing their quality and their palatability. What may be even more concerning than watching your beautiful tomato or pepper rot is knowing that blossom end rot affects the whole plant. It is not a disease or caused by a pest, Blossom End Rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the soil. If one fruit shows signs it is not uncommon for multiple more fruits on the same plant or in the same bed to also develop rot.

The Cause

Blossom End Rot is found in tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, melons, and peppers and is caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil. Plants need calcium just like people, they need it for cell structure and to fight pathogens with out calcium the cells can break down and rot. There are two...

When setting up your garden you may have grand ideas of saving money on groceries while eating organic and fresh! Then you start and realize that, especially in the first year or two, the grocery store prices aren't looking so bad. You have to buy tools, soil, raised beds (or material to make them), trellises, and it all takes time!

Don't despair because we have 10 tips to help you save money gardening and a promise that if you stick with it and invest the time and money now, in the years to come it will be worth it. Gardening really can be cheaper and better than shopping at the grocery!

1. Buy Quality

That is actually our first tip, invest now in quality that will last you your life time. If you can, buy quality materials to build your raised beds like the red cedar we use, or just buy quality raised beds. It will cost more upfront but it will last and you won't find yourself spending as much time on repairs or spending more money replacing them multiple times later on. Red cedar...

Have you ever gone out into your garden and seen your tomato plants leaves riddled with holes? You could have a Tomato Hornworm infestation. These guys are the real life hungry hungry caterpillar and, though arguably cute for a pest, they can be very damaging as they eat through your plants! They can chew wholes through leaves, eat small stems, and take chunks out of your fruit. Even thought they are large they are hard to see on your plant because they take shelter during the day and are active at night. Carefully read below to learn how to identify them and what to do if you do have them in the garden.

Identification: 

Adult Moths are brown/grey and nocturnal, you are not likely to see them flying around your garden unless you do a night time scout walk. They come out of the ground as adult moths in the spring and mate and lay their eggs. Eggs can be found on the leaves, both on top and the underside, and are green and smooth. The caterpillars are green, white, and sometimes...

Have you ever had little vegetable plants pop up in spots where you haven't planted anything? Or maybe you've seen a tomato plant amidst your squash. These are volunteer plants, plants that have sprouted from seeds that overwintered from the season before. It is common for these volunteer plants to be in the tomato family which can be very exciting, free tomato plants!

The best case scenario is that these volunteer plants are just like the tomatoes you planted last year but what people often don't consider is cross pollination. Some vegetable plants can cross pollinate with other plants in the same family. Cross pollination is when the pollen from one plant reaches the female flower of a different species in the same family of plants and creates a viable seed. An example of this in that animal kingdom is a ligar, a mix of a tiger and lion, which can then go on to mate with another liger, a tiger, or a lion and have more ligar babies. In the plant kingdom tomato plants in the ...