Just Grow Something | Evidence-Based Home Gardening

What manures are "safe" to use in the garden and which ones need to be composted? The question came from a listener and the answer may surprise you. Say Thank You! Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon Follow me on Instagram JustGrowSomethingPodcast.com Merchandise | Just Grow Something Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spo...

Purchasing compost and potting soil can be expensive and new garden beds can take a lot of soil to fill them. Plus, we’ve talked before that commercial compost often needs a little help getting the microbes up and moving again in order to make it biologically active and not just an inert material that’s not helping our plants at all. So, filling a raised bed with nothing but trucked in compost and...

For this week’s Focal Point Friday, I answer a question asked by a student in my Plan Like a Pro garden planning course last week. She wanted some clarification on what I mean when I’m talking about intercropping. “Does that mean I plant another crop in between the rows of the other or does it mean the second crop is spaced in the same row as the other crop.” Companion Planting Chart Say Thank You...

Potatoes are a staple in many areas of the world, and they can be grown just about anywhere. Your yield definitely improves if you follow a few techniques, but there are so many options: from big long in-ground rows, to raised planters, old bathtubs or wash basins, buckets, grow bags, even pots on your patio. So, even if you don’t have hundreds of row feet of space to grow potatoes for your entire...

Jennifer in the Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook group said, “I've seen, several places now, an argument about whether sunflowers are toxic to other plants around them or whether they are soil cleaners. Can you give us the low-down?” This was a great question and one that was asked again just a few days later in our Kansas City Area gardening group, as well. The quick answer is every...

Different types of soil have different water holding capacities and nutrient availability. Much of this is based on the percentage of three soil particles in the soil composition: sand, silt, and clay. Knowing what the texture of our soil is helps us to know what how water and nutrients move through our soil and the best amendments for our particular soil type and the plants we want to grow. Today...

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another Focal Point Friday episode, this time covering proper lighting for your indoor seedlings. It's not as complicated as you may think! These quickie episodes are either an important highlight from a previous episode or a quick focus on a current event in the food and agriculture world that I think we should be talking about. Think of these episodes as a...

Most beginning gardeners struggle with growing full-sized bulb onions for a number of reasons: they don't understand there are different onions for different growing situations and that the nutritional needs for onions at different stages of growth are different from other root vegetables. I struggled with all of this plus not growing the correct type of onion for long-term storage. In this first...

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another Focal Point Friday episode all about proper airflow for the seedlings you may be starting indoors. These quickie episodes are either an important highlight from a previous episode or a quick focus on a current event in the food and agriculture world that I think we should be talking about. Think of these episodes as a way to tickle your brain with one...

It’s often difficult to know exactly how much of each crop to plant, even for experienced gardeners. You’ve had to have been pretty meticulous with keeping track of your harvests to have a firm grasp on how much each of the plants you grew last year actually produced. And then need to average that out over a few years, figure out whether that’s enough for your needs, and then decide on how many pl...

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another Focal Point Friday episode. On this week’s quickie episode, I am introducing you to my brand-new garden planning course, Plan Like A Pro. I have been working around the clock for almost two months now on videos and downloads and building an online community and I want to give you all the details before we launch next week. It's the time of year when w...

If you like to start your own seeds for your garden but often struggle with the amount of space it takes up, you’re definitely not alone. Or maybe you’ve wanted to start your own plants but are put off by all the indoor growing requirements? Having the space, the lighting, fans for strengthening the seedlings, keeping a watering schedule, getting them hardened off … starting transplants from seed...

Welcome to this Focal Point Friday episode featuring the top three reasons why you should be growing your own food in your own garden, even if that "garden" is a pot on a windowsill in your kitchen. Think of these episodes as a way to tickle your brain with one or two ideas to ponder while you’re planning or planting or digging in the garden this weekend. Without further ado, let’s get down and di...

As we start to plan our gardens for this year, we may realize that we don’t have enough room for everything we want to grow. This is where intercropping and succession planting come in. We’re planting different plants with each other to make the most of our space or we’re planting them one after each other, sometimes with some overlap. And lots of times you will hear these terms used interchangeab...

Welcome to the first Focal Point Friday episode of season three. Think of these episodes as a way to tickle your brain with one or two ideas to ponder while you’re planning or planting or digging in the garden this weekend. This week, it's all about the easiest crops to grow for beginners. Without further ado, let’s get down and dirty. Enjoy! Related Episode: Ep. 2 - Garden Talk Tuesday: The Basic...

Welcome to season THREE of the Just Grow Something podcast! We’re going to kick off this season with an in-depth look at how to figure out what size garden bed is ideal for you and your gardening space. I have run the gambit of different sizing on beds, both in-ground and raised planters and I’ve finally landed on my preferred sizing and spacing for both. And, guess what? It’s different for both s...

Throughout the month of December, we’ve been doing little something different around here where I’ve been treating you to episodes of other podcasts where I was invited to be a guest. This week is the final week of having some honest conversations about different topics related to farming and gardening with other podcasters within the Positively Farming Media podcast group on their shows. And you...

Last week you heard my interview with Ashely Constance of the A Little Self Reliant podcast all about compost. This week, we change it up a little bit. We’re going to hear an episode of the We Drink and We Farm Things podcast, affectionately known as Drink and Farm. This podcast is hosted by Bev Ross and Sam Bolton. Sam is on hiatus and Bev invited me and a few others onto the show to talk about s...

Throughout the month of December, we are doing little something different around here. I am treating you to several episodes of some other podcasts where I was invited to be a guest. These will be some honest conversations about different topics related to farming and gardening with other podcasters within the Positively Farming Media podcast group on their shows. Last week you heard my interview...

Throughout the month of December we’re going to do something a little different around here. I am going to treat you to several episodes of some other podcasts where I was invited to be a guest. I hope you’ll enjoying hearing some honest conversations about different topics related to farming and gardening as I speak with other podcasters within the Positively Farming Media podcast group on their...

Let's do a Q & A! We’ll talk about whether or not market gardening is worth it, both from a personal satisfaction standpoint and from a monetary one, explore whether or not it’s too late in some areas to plant garlic, find out how to tell when your strawberries have gone dormant, and talk about a very interesting tip I learned about growing fruit trees in colder climates. You bet I’m going to be t...

‘Tis the season! We’re moving into the time of the year when gift giving is on everybody’s mind. Whether you’re looking for gift ideas for the gardeners in your life or if your loved ones are asking for gift ideas for YOU, I’ve got a bunch of ideas in a variety of price ranges. Some of these are things that are on my own wish list and some of them are things I already own that I swear by or I upgr...

This week we’re talking about how to use less water in the garden. We are still in drought conditions here in west central Missouri, it was a hard gardening year for sure, but I also know when I lived in northern California that water conservation was always a topic of discussion and that was 30 years ago. Many of you live in areas where water is just naturally scarce, and restrictions are always...

There’s something to be said for military life. It’s regimented. There’s a strict hierarchy, there’s a chain of command, there are orders to follow, and you know day in and day out what your duties are. And if you’re someone who fits well into that sort of lifestyle and the mindset that’s necessary to take on the demands of being in that lifestyle, it can often be very, very difficult to transitio...

This episode is the second of two parts talking about growing for farmer’s market. This week we’re digging into changes to your garden plan and other considerations around planning, planting, and pricing the produce you want to take to market. When I first started, I really thought it was just a matter of increasing the volume of what I grew, but it turned out to be a little bit more complicated t...