Just Grow Something | Evidence-Based Home Gardening

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Funny Cuz It's True with Elyse Myers (chtbl.com)

Episode 60 – Fall Planted Strawberries

asparagus | Description, Major Species, Vegetable, & Facts | Britannica

NParks | Asparagus officinalis

Asparagus Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits (verywellfit.com)

Explore Cornell - Home Gardening - Vegetable Growing Guides - Growing Guide

Asparagus - Wikipedia

Harvesting asparagus | UMN Extension

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Ep. 115 - Preparing the Garden for Winter (and Spring!) Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

Depending on where you garden you may have just had your first frost or even a hard freeze. If you are one of my warm-climate gardeners, you’re steadily marching toward the time of year when plants begin to go dormant or, if you don’t have a Persephone Period, the time of year when growth slows dramatically. Now is the time to take advantage of that period of time to either put the garden to bed for the winter or to get it ready for spring, or both!

Today we’re talking about what to do to get your garden ready for winter slumber, even if you’re overwintering plants in those beds, and how doing these activities now will absolute get you to a better start in the spring. It took me many years to realize just how much better my season starts in spring if I do some of the prep work now. My mental state and my garden soil both thank me for it.

We’re also chatting about the question or comment that I’ve gotten the most this fall from gardeners at the market stand and, of course, since this is Missouri, it obviously has to do with growing tomatoes…or maybe not growing tomatoes. I’ll weigh on why this year was such a horrible year for growing tomatoes here and what you can do in your own garden to give yourself a better chance at harvesting your most loved fruit or veggie. Let’s dig in!

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Vegetable Planting Calendar | MU Extension (missouri.edu)

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Ep. 114 - Planting Onions to Overwinter Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

This episode we’re going to tackle one way to grow onions for spring, depending on our location. We haven’t done a full onion episode yet and I promise we will because there’s a lot to unpack there, but since now is the time to get some types of onions in the ground depending on your goals, we’ll cover some of the basics and the how and why for overwintering.

We’ll also review the Question of the Week, which is actually more of a discussion than a question surrounding the difference between hardiness zone and climate and how growing degree days are affected by each of those. Understanding each of these terms and how your garden will react to each can go a long way toward better timing of your succession plantings in the garden. Let’s dig in!

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

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Black Rifle Coffee Club!

References:

Hardiness zone - Wikipedia

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

DK Earth: Climate Zones (factmonster.com)

Map & Key Features of Long-Day, Intermediate-Day & Short-Day Onions (johnnyseeds.com)

Choosing Onions – Short Day or Long Day? - Farm Homestead

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Ep. 113 – Dehydrating, Cold Storage, and Fermenting: More Ways to Store Your Harvest Sep 27, 2022

Show notes

This week we’re back to preserving our harvest! This episode we’ll talk about ways to dehydrate your fruits and veggies and how to use them when you’re ready, the basics of cold storage including temperature, light, and humidity requirements, and look a little bit at fermenting your garden goodness and whether or not that’s a viable way to actually store produce or just good for our gut health.

I respond to a comment I got on TikTok about pressure canning: spoiler alert, opinions are not backed by science. And in the DRL we’re talking hydroponic lettuce, succession planting, and doing hard things. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Book: Plant, Grow, Harvest, Repeat by Meg McAndrews Cowden

Podcast: We Can Do Hard Things

Food Dehydrator Options

What Are Fermented Foods? - Heart Foundation

How To Ferment Vegetables (the Ultimate Guide) - Fermenters Kitchen

Fermented Food Recipes Archives - Fermenters Kitchen

Fermenting Kits

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Ep. 112 - Modifying Fruit Recipes for Canning and Topping Tomato Plants Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

Karin's voice is shot! So, instead of talking about preserving our harvest through cold storage, dehydrating and fermenting like promised, this episode will be focusing on something shorter and sweeter: can you safely modify a recipe for preserving fruit in a water-bath canner by using less sugar? We'll also talk about why and how to prune or "top" your tomato and pepper plants as we get closer to first frost or the Persephone period. The goal is to save some energy for those developing fruit to get to maturity before the season ends. Let's dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving

The Ball Jar Store – Jars, Appliances, Accessories

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

NCHFP Complete Guide to Home Canning

Home canning without sugar - MSU Extension

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Ep. 111 - Preserving Basics, Part Three: Pressure Canning Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

Okay, here we go. The big beast: pressure canning. I know it can seem scary to have a giant pot on your stove that you think could explode at any moment and that fear probably stems from pictures you’ve seen of pressure canners doing just that: lids embedded into ceilings and exploded contents all over the walls.

I’m here to tell you pressure canning is perfectly safe if you follow the instructions. And modern pressure canners have all kinds of safety features designed to keep you from destroying your kitchen even if you do screw something up. I’ve been pressure canning for about a decade and I’ve never had an incident in my kitchen. Ever. Even when I was first starting out and didn’t have a clue what I was doing and was just reading the instructions from a book.

There are a lot of reasons you may want to pressure can, not the least of which is the much wider variety of things you can preserve over water-bath canning. You don’t need to worry about acidifying foods before preserving them and you can actually can whole meals in a jar for emergencies, if you’re so inclined. My favorite thing to pressure can? Green beans, plain and simple. But this year I’m going deeper into beans and meats and all kinds of stuff to hedge my bets against winter power outages in our rural area. And I’m super excited to try new things.

So, before you decide that pressure canning isn’t a viable option for you or if you’ve just been too scared to try it because it just seems dangerous, hang out with me today while we go over the basics of pressure canning, do’s and don’ts, the must haves and the nice-to-haves, and all the resources you could ever need to do it all safely and effectively. Let’s dig in.

Question of the week: multiple questions! Garlic and Why Is My Garden Suddenly Dying?

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Use Code JUSTGROW for a free bottle of Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt

The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving

The Ball Jar Store – Jars, Appliances, Accessories

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

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Ep. 110 - Preserving Basics, Part Two: Water-Bath Canning Sep 06, 2022

Show notes

Last week we talked about the basics of freezing your garden harvest or your extra haul from the farmer’s market and that’s definitely an easy way to get started. But, if you’re really serious about preserving your food and hedging your bets against power outages or you just enjoy the texture of canned foods over frozen, the entry-level process for canning is the boiling water bath. This type of canning only requires a few special pieces of equipment that are readily available and relatively inexpensive. The process of water-bath canning is pretty straightforward, but food safety is always important so we’ll talk about what equipment you need and what are nice-to-have, the process of canning, what is safe to can in boiling water and what needs pressure canning, and lots of resources to help you find safe, tested recipes to get you started on your canning journey. Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Use Code JUSTGROW for a free bottle of Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt

The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving

The Ball Jar Store – Jars, Appliances, Accessories

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

Save 20% on your Black Rifle Coffee Club subscription

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Ep. 109 - Preserving, Part One: Freezing Aug 30, 2022

Show notes

This time of the gardening season is likely the time you’re seeing a bounty of goodness coming from your garden, especially if you’re in a climate where the summer heat is starting to wane just a little bit. This usually signals to my garden that it’s time to make one last hard push to reproduce, so the tomatoes and peppers and other summer plants start to push out all kinds of fruit. This is also the time when later planted warm-weather crops start to put on their fruit. I planted my Amish Paste tomatoes late this year purposefully in order to delay the onset of fruit until I would be more prepared to handle preserving.

But that’s not to say there haven’t been periods over the gardening season where I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of produce coming in the house and my go-to method for preserving during the hottest and busiest time of the garden season is freezing. (This is also a good way to preserve a bounty that you find at the farmers market unexpectedly and maybe you don’t have your canning game together yet.) Freezing is like the entry level way to preserving your harvest because it’s the easiest, it can be done in very small batches, and it doesn’t require anything in the way of special equipment.

There are pros and cons to every preservation method and freezing is no exception, but if you need a way to put something up quickly and easily, you really can’t go wrong here. Today we’ll review the basics of freezing, what you’ll need to freeze produce successfully, the reason behind blanching and which veggies can maybe skip the hot water bath, and more. Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Use Code JUSTGROW for a free bottle of Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

Save 20% on your Black Rifle Coffee Club subscription

The Freelance Fairytales Podcast — The Freelance Fairy (alexfasulo.com)

Food Saver Vacuum Sealer

Freezer Storage Containers

Freezer Storage Bags

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Ep. 108 - Basics of Saving Seeds Aug 23, 2022

Show notes

This is the time of year when most gardeners in the Northern Hemisphere begin preserving their harvest. Summer's bounty is giving one last push and the cooling temperatures mean the fall garden is ramping up. Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about preserving that harvest, and this week is no different. But, instead of talking fruits and veggies for eating we're talking seeds for growing.

Saving seeds from our own gardens can have many benefits. Not only are we ensuring we have enough seeds for next seasons garden, hedging your bets against shortages (see also: The Year That Shall Not Be Spoken Of), but seeds we save and replant year after year will also be better suited to our unique climate and gardening situation.

But knowing which seeds to save can give us a little trouble. Will it produce the same fruit we harvested it from or something different? Did it cross-pollinate with something else or is it self-pollinating? And how long will they last in storage before I need to refresh my seed stash? We dig into all this and more while talking the basics of saving seeds on today's episode.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Episode 62 - Properly Saving Seeds in Your Garden (This one is a deeper dive into some of the minutia of saving seeds)

Episode 63 - Proper Seed Storage: Moisture levels, storage conditions, containers and more (prepare to geek out!)

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Ep. 107 - Worm Farming with Lauren Cain of Elm Dirt Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

On Tuesday we talked all about the benefits of composting with worms and the basics of how to get started. Today, we talk to an expert. Lauren Cain is the founder and owner of Elm Dirt, a local Kansas City area company specializing in worm castings and products derived from those worm castings. Lauren’s company got its start in an unexpected way and, like all things at the beginning of 2020, took a turn she did not expect. From vermicomposting in her home to worm farming in a warehouse, her company and its products have grown leaps and bounds in just two years and with very good reason.

I’ve gotten to use the products Elm Dirt sells and have been so fascinated by and impressed with the results that I’m ready to start my own worm bins here at home. I’m confident this conversation will absolutely have you convinced that worm castings and the products made from them should be an essential part of your garden plan going forward. Let’s dig in.

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