Just Grow Something | Evidence-Based Home Gardening

You’ll notice my tone is slightly different today and that’s due to the nature and seriousness of the topic I want to explore with you. Specifically, regarding the recently unsealed 54-count indictment against an organized crime syndicate in the southern U.S. relating to the horrible treatment of people they brought across the border to work on farms and who, subsequently were treated as slaves. I...

One of the problems of being a home gardener in many climates is that the season for salad greens can be short. Either you’re in a climate that gets way too hot in the summer to grow decent greens or you’re in a climate that has a very short growing season and it gets too cold too quickly. And, even if you’re in a climate where you can grow through the winter, you may not have enough space outside...

Way back in episode one, the introduction episode, I briefly mentioned that my love of gardening, and my naivety of how easy it was, was partly responsible for the beginnings of our farming adventures. During that episode I mentioned we started selling to the public through a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture program. I also mentioned I would eventually do an entire episode on what that is an...

As we start thinking about our gardens for next season, we may not just be looking at fruits and veggies and herbs. Many of us like to plant our landscape and the areas surrounding our vegetable gardens with plants that are beautiful to look at. Maybe they’re for cutting flowers and bringing into the house or maybe they’re just for some added color and beauty while we spend our time outside. It ma...

It’s that time of year! This evening I will be binge watching whatever show the Mean Farmer and I decide upon while maniacally separating clove after clove of garlic. We’re planting close to 15 pounds of garlic this year, a combination of both hard neck and soft neck varieties. Depending on the variety, that’s anywhere from 25 to 40 cloves per pound. Which all need to be separated from their heads...

The past few weeks we've talked about the fall garden and overwintering in the garden. Some of our gardens have already seen a hard freeze or snow, some a killing freeze but still have plants going strong, and some don't see a freeze at all but simply go dormant. This week we’re going to talk about the three things to do at the end of your garden season to get you off to the best start NEXT year....

We’ve talked about cloning plants by taking cuttings to save our favorite garden specimens over the winter while taking very little space. But, what about bringing plants in to overwinter in a dormant state or even keeping them productive? If you’ve got the space, there are several techniques for overwintering your most productive garden plants to either continue the bounty all winter long or to k...

So, we talked last week all about saving seeds from your best garden specimens to use in your garden next season. But, what about that big, beautiful, healthy plant that's just produced loads of veggies for you all season long? Don't you wish you could bring it inside and then bring it back out next year? Well, you can! And you can do it without taking up the entirety of your window space indoors...

This Focal Point Friday episode is the second in our two-parter on saving seeds. Tuesday’s episode focused on which plants you should be saving seeds from, how to properly collect and clean those seeds and how to hedge your bets against carrying over diseases on or in your seeds. This episode focuses on seed storage, whether it's seed saved from your own garden or over purchased from a supplier. L...

Have you decided this is the year you’ll start saving seeds from your garden? Or, maybe you’ve saved seeds in the past and have had some problem with viability or germination the next season. I mean, it doesn’t sound like it should be a difficult task. Just collect the seeds from whatever you want to keep, rinse them, dry them, and pack them away for next year, right? Well, sure! And while followi...

It's October! And October 1st is the first Friday of the month which means another Can You Dig It? episode. This month we talk unknown plants in the garden that turn out to be lilies (and edible) and when to start saving seeds. This is also a precursor to next week's double episodes on seed saving. Great information here and more to come. So, let's dig in! Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Fac...

Traditionally, home gardeners have planted bare-root strawberry plants in the garden and had to wait an excruciating year to pick their first ripe berry. But, most commercial farms plant exclusively in the fall and harvest their first berries in the spring. On this episode, Karin talks about how the home gardener can use this technique to get a perennial strawberry bed producing earlier, the diffe...

Have you been keeping notes all season long in a garden journal? Have you kept track of your varieties, harvests, weed pressure, insect pests, weather conditions, etc? No? No worries! Right now is the time to make some annotations about your gardening season to help put you on the right track for next year's garden. Doesn't need to be fancy, but the more you write down now the less you'll have to...

This Garden Talk Tuesday we’re digging into growing a favorite fall decoration of many people – mums or, more accurately, chrysanthemums. Now you absolutely can grow these fall flowers in your garden year-round but you need to know what you’re planting. Is it possible to plant the mums you get from your garden center and have them come back each year? The answer is: it depends. Knowing the differe...

Did you plant pumpkins this year? What about winter squashes? One of the questions I usually get around this time of year about pumpkins and other winter squash is, “how do I know when it’s ready to pick?” There’s nothing worse than waiting all season long for that huge vine to flower and produce these beautiful fruit, only to harvest it way too early because it looked ready or leave it out there...

I've talked about using these before, but what's the difference between a row cover, a frost cover, and insect cover? What about shade cloth? This episode we'll dig into the different materials available commercially to purchase for each of these tasks in your gardens, which ones are multi-purpose and which ones aren't, the accessories that go along with them and what alternatives you may have jus...

What is this?? It's a common question in the garden when we come across an insect, or any other arthropod, that we don't recognize. This Focal Point Friday we'll talk about the key items to take note of when trying to identify any one of the hundreds of thousands (literally!) of insects we may encounter in our day-to-day lives and then what to do with that info. Let's dig in to identifying insects...

This Garden Talk Tuesday we’re going to talk about a leafy green that people either really love or really do not care for – arugula. And though we refer to it as a green culinarily, like lettuce or kale, botanically it’s actually an herb and it definitely has a peppery or mustardy bite. It’s in the same family as the brassicas we’ve talked about in previous episodes, but the growth habit is comple...

It's the first Friday of the month and time for another Can You Dig It episode. To be honest, this one snuck up on me! And, it must have snuck up on all of you, too, because I don’t have any listener questions for this month. But, I do have an interesting question that was posed to me by a customer at the farmer’s market stand and a couple quick tips on how to finish the season strongly with some...

This Garden Talk Tuesday we’re going to look at another crop that’s great in the fall garden - cabbage! This is another one that works well in the cooler shoulder seasons of spring and fall and does exceptionally well in fall weather. Plus, it’s another bonus crop that can survive a light frost with no damage if it’s covered and can withstand longer periods of cold weather if properly protected. T...

We’ve talked quite a bit this season about things that can and do go wrong in the garden and some ways to prevent them. In our first Garden Myths episode, we talked about things like coffee grounds, banana peels and eggshells in the garden, whether watering during the heat of the day can burn your plant leaves, marigolds, adding sand to your soil, talking to your plants, and more. If you missed th...

Right now many of you are getting ready to transition from your summer garden to your fall crops and that’s pretty much what’s going on around here. And many of you are likely going to be using spaces that were previously used for a spring or summer crop or both. Whether you are interplanting your fall stuff under the canopy of your summer plants or planning to pull those plants to make way for th...

I hope this week has been treating you well, especially in the garden. This Focal Point Friday I want to talk about something I think is pretty prevalent, especially on social media, but in any sort of promotional or educational space, like YouTube or podcasting, when it comes to teaching people how to garden. There is this tendency, I think, to only show the beautiful parts. I mean, it makes sens...

It is super-hot again here today and I can’t help but continue to look forward to my fall gardens. Another great fall crop is beets and you can bet we’ve got a ton of them planted already with plans for another succession planting this coming week. So, let’s dig in to how to grow beets! Beets are grown for both its root and its tops. In the U.S. and Canada, we simply refer to the root as a beet. B...

This is the August edition of our Can You Dig It episode! We have a couple food-related articles and a couple gardening questions from listeners and folks in the Facebook group. If you haven’t joined the Just Grow Something Gardening Friends group on Facebook yet, jump in there. Answer a couple of questions so we can make sure you’re not a bot of some sort, and you’ll be joining like-minded garden...