I had one of my first panicky garden moments when I started to see flowers popping up on my veggie plants. Some of them are big, some of them are small, some of them are beautiful, but I didn’t know what to do with any of them. Let’s dive right in. Generally, the default recommendation is to leave the flowers. An “obvious but not obvious” point: flowers are where the actual tomatoes/peppers/etc. come from. (We’re not above the basics in this newsletter). BUT, that’s oversimplified and there are a few scenarios when you’d want to snip them off. It’s really a question of where the plant is putti ..read more

Harvesting Lettuce It’s important to harvest lettuce every so often to increase production (and enjoy the fruits/veggies of your labor). Quick lesson on why to make sure you keep harvesting: Stimulates growth of new leaves (promotes continuous harvest, maximizes yield) While you’re at it, remove damaged or diseased leaves — helps prevent the spread of disease Max quality: delaying harvest can lead to tough and bitter (aka over-mature) leaves Lucky for you, it’s pretty hard to f*ck up this part of the process. Here are the simple steps: Wait until there at least 6 leaves Cut lower ..read more

Square Foot Growing Once you have a raised bed, you need to decide what to plant, and how! Square foot growing is a really great beginners method for just getting the plants in the ground. Especially for those of us who are trying to maximize our small space, row planting can feel like you’re leaving too much soil on the table… Square foot gardening was developed by Mel Bartholomew in the 1980s. It involves dividing a garden bed into small square sections, typically 1 ft x 1 ft, and planting different veggies in each square. Great things about this method: It can morph to any amount of space ..read more

Over the next few Fridays, I’m going to take a slightly different approach. I get so many questions from you all now, and I just can’t keep up with sharing all of the distilled intel I want to share! We’re in the midst of prime gardening season, and I want to make sure you’re armed with the info you need. While I make steady progress in my mission to make growing your own veggies really, really ridiculously easy and fun, I want to give you a head start with research and content that’s helped me get going. This will be pinned so you can always find it, and I’ll continue to build it out as I go ..read more

What to seed start v. direct sow When we garden, we often buy plants that that are in pots and already a few inches tall. This is super convenient and great. But sometimes we might want to start a plant from seed, particularly an edible plant. Maybe we want to show our kids where their food comes from (it’s not a plant you buy from the garden store, but a seed…start all the way at the beginning). We might want a variety of veggie or fruit that isn’t available at Home Depot or our local garden store (see last week’s newsletter on heirlooms). Or, especially if we’re hoping to grow a good volume ..read more

I’m excited to have many new subscribers this Friday! If you’re wondering why we’re here, I encourage you to read my post about why I’m growing my own veggies. But the “why” is just part of it. Desire doesn’t equal action. In fact, I recently ran an Instagram poll about gardening, and the number of “aspiring gardeners” far surpassed the number of “actual gardeners.” I know a lot of people reading these would really loveeee to be growing their own veggies, but it’s so damn hard. “I don’t even know where I’d start” “There’s so much gear” “I don’t think I could water EVERY DAY” “I have kids an ..read more

Blue Zones are regions around the world where people live measurably longer lives than the rest of us (by several years…). Take Okinawa, Japan, where the average life expectancy is over 85 years, one of the highest in the world. These areas are characterized by low rates of chronic diseases and an abundance of centenarians. In contrast, chronic diseases have been on the rise in the US in recent history. In fact, in 2018, 6 in 10 adults in the US had at least one chronic disease, and 4 in 10 had two or more chronic diseases (CDC). Where are the Blue Zones? Blue Zones are found in places like Ok ..read more

One of the inspirations for starting this experiment was the birth of my daughter, Lily. I want her to know where her food comes from in a time when we’re more disconnected than ever from nature. She reads books all day, and in the absence of a place to see things growing in the New England winters, I thought this would be a good start. These would all make beautiful gifts for foodies, nature lovers, or gardeners. I’ve linked to all of these, but I’d like to point out that you can likely find these at your local library. What a great way to keep your selection fresh. We are the Gardeners (Joan ..read more

The amount of enthusiasm I have for this project is high. But today was the first time that I thought: Dang! This might be more than I signed up for. After seed starting, putting together the raised bed (having my husband put together the raised bed), I figured the next difficult part would actually be getting things to grow A “quick” errand to the local garden store today ended up being a longer, entirely confusing experience. I went to get soil to fill the raised bed this weekend. Easy enough. When I asked the first employee I saw how I should fill the bed, he said with Organic Raised Bed ..read more

We could spend a whole newsletter on how the above applies to all areas of life, but instead of going there, I’ll focus on how to just get started in the garden. When we moved out to the ‘burbs last year, and I decided I wanted to grow some of our food, I went deep. I followed a bunch of accounts on Instagram, found all of the most popular YouTubers, and checked out numerous books from the local library. The more I read, the more I felt like I was completely overwhelmed with information. Somewhat paralyzing. Instead, I decided to start small and just do. That worked for me, but in talking to f ..read more