Just Grow Something | The &#8220;Why&#8221; Behind the &#8220;How&#8221; of Gardening

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates

Growing Garlic in Warm Climates - Focal Point Friday

Growing Garlic as a Perennial - Ep. 168

How to Choose a Garlic Variety to Grow - Ep. 214

How to Know When Your Garlic is Ready to Harvest

Find Seed Garlic: https://amzn.to/3BOX30U (aff)

New Merch!

Just Grow Something | Patreon

Bonus content for supporters of the Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

Planting Onions in Fall for a Summer Harvest - Ep. 220 Oct 15, 2024

This is the episode so many of you have asked for and now is the perfect time because, in most locations, this is the time to be planting onion sets or seedlings to overwinter and harvest the next summer. Successfully growing full-sized onions for fresh eating and for storage seems to allude many of us, I had trouble with it the first few tries, for sure, and I think it boils down to a couple of things. First is planting depth and spacing, second is soil texture and nutrients, and third is the timing of the planting. Bonus points if you actually know which type of onions you should be planting in terms of long-day and short-day or day-neutral.

If none of what I just said made any sense to you, you’re not alone. So, today on Just Grow Something we’re going to review the very basics of growing onions but then dig deep into the techniques you can use for getting them planted now to successfully harvest those nice full fat onions in the spring. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Save 20% on a Magic Mind Subscription: https://magicmind.com/GROWSOMETHING20 and use code GROWSOMETHING20

Ep. 133 - Growing Onions

Beginner's Guide to Growing Onions

YouTube video on planting fall onions

Save 20% at https://heirloomroses.com using code JUSTGROW at checkout. Order now, save now, deliver later!

Just Grow Something Merch: https:/justgrowsomething.com/shop

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Bonus content for supporters of the Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

How to Dry and Store Cut Flowers - Ep. 219 Oct 08, 2024

The fruits and veggies coming from our gardens are not the only things we can dry and store in the off-season. Think about the vibrant colors from the flowers in our yards and containers. We can absolutely preserve that beauty to use year-round, or at least to display through the dreary winter season, by simply air-drying them.

There are lots of ways we can use those cut flowers, ornamental grasses, and even edible flowers and herbs in our home décor and pantry. Yes, you’ve got the typical dried flower arrangement in the form of a bouquet, but what about centerpieces, wreaths, swags or other purposes like tea blends or simmer pots?

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about the conditions we need to properly dry our florals and other cuttings from the garden, when and how to properly harvest them specifically for this purpose, how to properly store them so they retain their color, and some usage ideas. Why shouldn’t we use all the colors of our summer garden to brighten up our indoor spaces as we move through fall and into winter? Let’s dig in!

Question of the month: What was your biggest failure in the garden this season?

References and Resources

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Bonus content for supporters of the Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

Simple Compost Solutions for Every Garden Space - Ep. 218 Oct 01, 2024

As we start to wind down the summer gardening season it’s a great time to be adding compost to your beds to help give the soil a boost. Letting the compost break down over the winter gives it adequate time to become activated with all the little microorganisms that are so important for delivering nutrients to our plants in the soil.

But, purchasing compost, especially really good compost, can be pricey and the bigger your garden, the higher the price tag! It’s hard to justify sometimes because some of us are growing our own gardens so we can save money on our food budget, not pay more to amend the soil than it would cost us to just buy our veggies at the grocery store. And if we opt for budget compost we may find not only is the texture and quality definitely fit the price point, but our plants aren’t getting much out of that soil the following season which is a complete waste of money.

I also understand that not everybody has room for a big compost pile in their yard, you may not even have a yard and are gardening in containers on a patio or porch, but you still want the best amendments for your soil and everybody has kitchen waste that can be used to feed our garden soil.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about the absolute easiest and least messy ways to build a small compost pile or composting system for your garden regardless of where you are. It may not be everything you need to add to your garden, depending on the size you’re working with, but it will absolutely reduce the need for having to purchase as much and you’ll be diverting waste from the landfill and helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process. Let’s dig in.

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Bonus content for supporters of the Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

Ep. 80 - Creating and Managing a Compost Pile

Ep. 106 - Introduction to Vermicomposting (Worm Farming!)

Ep. 107 - Worm Farming with Lauren Cain of Elm Dirt

Fall Garden Checklist by Hardiness Zone - Ep. 217 Sep 24, 2024

As the fall season is practically upon us and the pumpkin spice gods are already blessing us with their bounty, it’s time to get your garden ready for the changing weather. Fall gardening can look very different depending on your climate, but no matter where you live, the changing season means there are some important tasks to attend to for the success of your garden now and into the spring.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re tackling your fall garden checklist. Whether you’re buttoning up your garden for winter, transitioning into a cool-season planting cycle, or continuing to harvest year-round, today’s episode breaks down fall gardening tasks for three different groups of gardeners: Zones 3 and 4, Zones 5 through 9, and Zones 10 and 11. Let’s dig in!

Question of the Month: What was your biggest success in the garden this season?

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Bonus content for supporters of the Just Grow Something Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

Heirloom Roses: Use code JUSTGROW for 20% off! Through Oct. 31st, 2024

Getting Started with Cover Crops - Ep. 166

2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map | USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Frost Dates: First and last frost dates by zipcode - Garden.org

Proper Seed Drying and Storage - Ep. 216 Sep 17, 2024

Last week on the podcast we talked about which seeds we should be saving from the garden, how mature the fruits need to be when we harvest seeds and a bit about how to dry and test them. This week, we’re focusing on storing them properly.

When we get seeds from a catalog or other seed supplier, they’ve often gone through a set of steps that we may not be duplicating at home with our own saved seeds. Seed suppliers are required to test their seeds not just for germination percentage, but also for diseases and moisture content. These tests ensure that we’re not brining outside diseases into our gardens and make sure the seeds we get will maintain their integrity in storage without spoiling.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about how we can achieve the same results in our own seed collection. If you garden where certain diseases are prevalent you certainly don’t want to saving that disease to plant again with your seeds the next year. We also want to be sure our seeds remain intact in storage and we don’t open up a fuzzy, moldy mess when it’s time to plant in the spring. Let’s dig in!

Question of the Month: What was your biggest success in the garden this season?

References and Resources: Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something is Bonus content for supporters of the Just Grow Something Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

Vegetable: Hot Water Seed Treatment | Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment at UMass Amherst

Saving Seeds Properly - Ep. 215 Sep 10, 2024

Saving seeds from our gardens to use the next spring it is a great way to not only help our budget out a little bit but also to give ourselves some food security and doesn’t sound like it should be a very difficult task. At that point we’re not relying on someone else to grow our seeds for us that we have to buy over and over again. Just collect the seeds from whatever you want to keep, rinse them, dry them, and pack them away for next year, right?

Well, yes, but also, no. The method I just described can absolutely mean you’ll have beautifully preserved seeds that have fantastic germination the next season and yield a bounty of exactly what you thought you were planting. But it’s equally possible that you’ll open the seed packet the next season to find fuzzy gray fungus or black moldy growth on your seeds, or seeds that don’t sprout properly, or maybe they sprout and you get midway through the gardening season and the fruit on the plant look nothing like the ones you saved the seeds from.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re going to dig into which plants you should and shouldn’t be saving seeds from, how to properly collect, clean, and dry those seeds in order to best guarantee your success the next season, and how to quickly test them before you store them to know if they’re viable. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Hot Water Treatment for Seeds – Louisiana State University

Buy Me a Coffee!

How To Save Vegetable Seeds – Farmers Almanac

How to Choose a Garlic Variety to Grow - Ep. 214 Sep 03, 2024

If you have intentions of growing garlic for next year, now is the time to be ordering your seed garlic. Garlic needs about six months in the ground to get to maturity so, here in the northern hemisphere, we may be planting our garlic as early as mid-September in some areas.

With the plethora of catalogs and websites and garden centers offering garlic to gardeners, how do you know what variety of garlic to choose? And should you be choosing hard neck, or soft neck, or that look-a-like Elephant garlic?

Today on Just Grow Something we’re gonna' figure it out. We’ll talk about the differences between the types of garlic, and what might make you want to choose one variety over another – whether it’s to do with flavor, storage, disease resistance, or something else entirely. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something | creating a podcast and gardening videos | Patreon

Just Grow Something is Bonus content for supporters of the Just Grow Something Podcast! (buymeacoffee.com)

How many types of garlic are there? - Chef's Resource (chefsresource.com)

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

Garlic Variety Descriptions | The Dyer Family Organic Farm

Garlic | The Buffalo Seed Company

How to Grow Beets - Ep. 213 Aug 27, 2024

If you didn’t plan for a fall garden and maybe have changed your mind a little bit and want to give it a go, you might be looking for something you can very quickly put into the ground and grow directly from seed. Enter beets. They will happily germinate in almost any temperature of soil and they greatly appreciate the cooler days of fall when they are coming to maturity. They’re not fool-proof, because there is a little effort needed in terms of thinning in most cases and they do need a nice, loose soil to produce those beautiful round roots, but there is nothing that beats the flavor in the fall of a sweet, roasted beet alongside other root vegetables. Or, my go-to snack or addition to my salads, pickled beets, and my new favorite, beets roasted in air fryer. Even my husband admits those are good and he swears beets taste like dirt.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re talking beets! How to grow them, what type to grow for your area, and why does it seem that even when we carefully space our beet seeds out in the garden that we end up having to thin them anyway? So many seedlings! Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

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

⁠Garden Insect Netting⁠ (affiliate)

⁠Garden Frost Cloth/Row Cover⁠ (affiliate)

Artificial Intelligence and Gardening Advice - Ep. 212 Aug 20, 2024

I do searches online for gardening topics all the time. I will search key phrases to see if I can come up with topics that people seem to be searching for or gardening questions that may be trending. I even search specific ideas to see if there is new information or research that I’m not aware of. And more and more frequently I’m noticing a disturbing trend.

As I look at the search results, often times I will see multiple pages in a row, usually sponsored results, that have the exact same key phrases as the meta description, the little blurb you see under the link that tells you what’s on the page before you click it. When I click on one of those pages I find the page to be full of ads, with very little substance in terms of gardening know how. And the verbiage and style of writing is very mechanical, disjointed, and generic. If I click another one, the page layout is exactly the same and so is the wording. These pages are all designed to look like legitimate gardening blogs or how-to sites, but they all have two things in common – they are meant to earn money from the overwhelming number of ads being displayed and they are all written by artificial intelligence.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re diving into AI and gardening advice. Can AI be helpful when asking questions in the garden? Are those answers accurate? And how can we determine whether a source is reliable or not? Let’s dig in.

References and Resources

Vote for me in the Women in Podcasting Awards!

Save on a Magic Mind Subscription with code justgrowsomething20

Just Grow Something Website (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Preparing to Preserve: Basic Canning Supplies for Beginners - Ep. 211 Aug 13, 2024

There is something very satisfying about growing your own food, for sure, and being able to walk out into the garden to pick your lunch or your dinner. But, in the dead of a Midwest winter, the ability to be able to “shop” your own pantry for the things you eat the most, that you grew, that is a whole other level.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about the basic necessities you need for starting your own canning adventure. We’ll mostly focus on boiling-water canning and what can be safely canned in that manner, but since I jumped head first into pressure canning just a year after I started water-bath canning, we’ll touch on some of the differences in case, you too, are big on confidence but maybe a little shy on knowledge. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources

Vote for me in the Women in Podcasting Awards! Home Page - National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (Updated Edition)

Heirloom vs Hybrid vs GMO - Ep. 210 Aug 06, 2024

Over the past decade or so there has been much debate about whether open-pollinated and heirloom varieties should be the preferred choice for gardeners over hybrids. And there's been even louder discussion (arguments) over GMOs or genetically engineered plants. Why all the fuss?

We're getting a bit sciencey today. I mean, more than usual. We're discussing the difference between all these types of plants, when and how they are appropriate to use in our home gardens, and what, if any, implications genetic engineering has on our choice of food at the grocery store and the farm stand.

Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Vote for me in the Women in Podcasting Awards!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Save on a Magic Mind Subscription with code justgrowsomething20

Hybrid or Open Pollinated - Garden.org

https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/files/ef130.pdf

Choosing Bt Sweet Corn Varieties | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)

The True Story of Golden Rice, the Genetically Modified Superfood That Almost Saved Millions (foreignpolicy.com)

Transgenic Virus-Resistant Papaya: The Hawaiian 'Rainbow' was Rapidly Adopted by Farmers and is of Major Importance in Hawaii Today (apsnet.org)

Pinkglow® pineapple (pinkglowpineapple.com)

In Search of the Real Jersey Tomato (Part I) (Archived)

Rutgers 250 Tomato | Rutgers Research

Don't Overwater in the Heat - Focal Point Friday Aug 02, 2024

Mother Nature has opened the blast furnace door on west central Missouri. I recorded this quick episode on the fly in the gardens to share with you a little wisdom about what our plants are doing in the heat and how to avoid further damage to things like tomatoes by overwatering. Let's dig in!

You can find the video version of this podcast on Spotify and YouTube!

Growing Brussels Sprouts - Ep. 209 Jul 30, 2024

Back on episode 200, the Ask Me Anything episode, someone asked if I would do an episode on growing Brussels sprouts. I said no at the time because I hadn’t yet successfully grown them but indicated it may be soon because Brussels were having a moment in my garden this spring and it was looking good.

Well, here we are and we’re talking Brussels because I managed to successfully grow and harvest a summer crop from a spring planting and have round two of seedlings started already for planting soon for a fall harvest.

So, today on Just Grow Something, we’re talking Brussels sprouts! The background of the plant, how to grow it, what pests and disease plague it, and how to harvest and store. It’s a full blown crop specific episode that will hopefully demystify growing these teeny cabbage look-a-likes in your own garden. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

The Great Marigold Debate - Ep. 147

Weather History & Data Archive | Weather Underground (wunderground.com)

Health Benefits of Brussels Sprouts

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

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Starting a Garden Side Hustle - Ep. 208 Jul 23, 2024

Maybe you’ve heard the origin story of how I started gardening and then came to be a market farmer which lead to me getting a degree in horticulture which led to me doing this podcast. The short story is I had a really successful, very large, garden and I was sick of being stuck inside all the time working my day job and tried to find a way to make some side money from the garden, and the rest is history.

Maybe you’ve been in the same position. A lot of gardeners do really, really well a couple seasons in a row and realize just how much they enjoy being in the garden and growing things and daydream about setting up a little stand at the end of the driveway once a week or going to the local farmer’s market.

Would you believe me if I told you selling the produce from your garden isn’t the only way to make money from it?

Today on Just Grow Something we are talking ten different ways you can make money from your garden and only a couple of them involve selling the actual fruits and veggies. This is a very high-level look at the options you have so you can start thinking about what might actually fit into your lifestyle. Because, let me tell you, after 17 seasons of selling every week at the farmer’s market, it is hard work, and there are definitely other options available to you. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Save on a Magic Mind subscription or one-time purchase with code JUSTGROWSOMETHING20 at MagicMind.com/justgrowsomething

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Managing Heat Stress in Garden Plants - Ep. 207 Jul 16, 2024

It’s the middle of July and it’s the time of year when heat stress in plants can be a significant challenge for gardeners. If you’re gardening in the peak of summer or in a region with consistently high temperatures, heat stress can lead to wilting, reduced yields, poor fruit quality, and even cause plants to just up and die. But, we can do something about it. Lots of things, actually.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re talking effective management of heat stress in our plants, including preventive measures and actions to take after our plants are affected. We will talk all the strategies we can take to help maintain a healthy garden despite the heat. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Save on a Magic Mind subscription or one-time purchase with code JUSTGROWSOMETHING20 at MagicMind.com/justgrowsomething

Ep. 18 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrients and Why You Need to Know Them

Epsom Salts - Magic or Myth? - Ep. 206 Jul 09, 2024

If you are in any gardening group, whether an in-person club or online, you likely see countless home remedies for everything that ails our plants. Gardeners tout everything as a miracle cure for something in the garden, from putting tums in the soil to burying fish, making weed killer out of vinegar and salt (please don’t) to using dawn dish soap as an insecticide (again, please don’t).

One that pops up over and over again is using Epsom salts, either sprinkled or added to the soil or used as a foliar spray when diluted in water. I’ve seen it recommended for blossom end rot, boosting plant growth, germinating seeds and other random maladies. But, is it really good for your plants? Does it help with any of that stuff or is it just another case of correlation over causation?

Today on Just Grow Something we’re digging into Epsom salts. What they are, if they can help in the garden, and, if so, with what exactly. That way next time someone recommends Epsom salts for curing the yellowing leaves on your plant you’ll be able to decide for yourself whether that’s an effective plan. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Ep. 22 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrient Deficiencies and Toxicity

Focal Point Friday: Plant Nutrient Basics

Photosynthetic activity and onion growth response to compost and Epsom salt: International Journal of Vegetable Science: Vol 26, No 6 (tandfonline.com)

IMPACT OF EPSOM SALT APPLICATION ON BIOCHEMICAL CHANGES IN BEETROOT (Beta vulgaris L.). | Agricultural Research Journal | EBSCOhost

Effects of Epsom (magnesium sulfate) salt on growth performance of water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica) in nutrient film technique and media-based aquaponics systems | Aquaculture International (springer.com)

Effects of foliar and root application of epsom salt on aquaponics beetroot (Beta vulgaris) production in confined condition | Asian Journal of Medical and Biological Research (banglajol.info)

The Response to Epsom Salt Sprays of Mature Apple Trees of Three Varieties on Two Contrasting Rootstocks: Journal of Horticultural Science: Vol 43, No 4 (tandfonline.com)

Fertilize with Epsom Salts - Garden.org

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Save 10% on The Girly Homesteader Grow and Flourish Planner with code JUSTGROW

Steps for Planning the Fall Garden (and Why You Should Grow One) - Ep. 205 Jul 02, 2024

Last week on the podcast we talked about your summer succession plantings, things you can plant in the summer and harvest in the summer on repeat. This week, it’s all about fall, baby. I know it may seem like the summer growing season just started, especially if you have very few frost-free days, but this really is the time to be planning for a fall harvest. In order to get a viable crop before your first frost date or first hard freeze or before your Persephone Period hits, the steps to get there start now.

Today on Just Grow Something we are talking all things fall garden planning – what to plant, when to start your seeds, whether to grow from seeds or seedlings, timing the planting, and getting to harvest. By the end you will have a firm grasp on whether you want to tackle a fall garden and why I insist it’s one of the absolute best times of year to garden in most areas. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Frost Dates: First and last frost dates by zipcode - Garden.org

2024 Frost Dates: First and Last Frost Dates by ZIP Code | The Old Farmer's Almanac | Almanac.com

Just Grow Something Fall Garden Planning Challenge

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Summer Succession Planting for a Greater Harvest - Ep. 204 Jun 25, 2024

We are officially in summer in the northern hemisphere and, for many of us, she came in with a bang. It will hit 100 F here today with a heat index of 112 F and it feels like walking in front of a blast furnace stepping out into the sun.

This may make you think the summer growing season is a one-and-done situation, especially if you live somewhere further south than me where the temperatures can be even more brutal on a regular basis. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. In fact, even if you live further north of me where the temperatures are just now finally warm enough to start planting warm-season crops, there are a slew of things that can be grown in the summer vegetable garden that you can plant multiple times to get a greater harvest from the garden.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about the top five crops in different climates that can be successively planted throughout the summer. Whether your warm season is short or you’re gardening in a sauna, I guarantee there is something you can grow multiple times to increase your yield even if it feels like somebody opened the gates of Hades in your front yard. Let’s dig in.

References and Resources:

Subscribe NowJust Grow Something | The "Why" Behind the "How" of GardeningJune 18, 20244x20300:25:4523.59 MBWhen Are Onions Ready to Harvest? - Ep. 203

I posted a video last week on TikTok and Reels about how to tell if your onions are ready to harvest and there was a lot of feedback. Onions are one of those crops that can take a long time to master and, even then, getting a good harvest can be hit or miss. Which is probably why that video got the response it did.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll go over how to tell if your onions are ready to harvest, when you should wait, and when you should pull them early based on the conditions of the plant. We’ll also talk about what can go wrong with onions causing them to either bolt prematurely or never get to the size we’d hoped. There are lots of intricacies to successfully growing onions but once we understand the things they rely on to produce, it does get easier. A little. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 114 - Planting Onions to Overwinter

When Are Onions Ready to Harvest? - Ep. 203 Jun 18, 2024

I posted a video last week on TikTok and Reels about how to tell if your onions are ready to harvest and there was a lot of feedback. Onions are one of those crops that can take a long time to master and, even then, getting a good harvest can be hit or miss. Which is probably why that video got the response it did.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll go over how to tell if your onions are ready to harvest, when you should wait, and when you should pull them early based on the conditions of the plant. We’ll also talk about what can go wrong with onions causing them to either bolt prematurely or never get to the size we’d hoped. There are lots of intricacies to successfully growing onions but once we understand the things they rely on to produce, it does get easier. A little. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Ep. 133 - Growing Onions

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Identifying Nutrient Deficiencies in Your Garden Plants

Squash Vine Borers and Squash Bugs in Cucumber Plants - Focal Point Friday Ep. 202 Jun 14, 2024

Well, I dropped the ball! This is a follow up to Tuesdays episode about problems in cucumbers. I failed to mention two pests that plague many gardeners - squash vine borers and squash bugs.

So, let's remedy this situation! Spend a quick 15 minutes with me while we talk about these pests and how to prevent them.

Problems with Cucumbers - Ep. 201 Jun 11, 2024

The summer gardening season is just about in full swing here in the northern hemisphere and cucumbers are definitely a crowd favorite. Whether you’re growing the for slicing, snacking, or pickling, a properly managed cucumber vine can be very productive. But it seems like when things go wrong with cucumbers, they go really wrong. Whether it’s dying plants, funky looking fruit, diseases, or other issues with our favorite cucurbit, we do have preventions and solutions.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re talking all about the problems we might have with cucumbers – pests and diseases, nutrient challenges, strange deformities, and more. By the end you should have a firm grasp on how to prevent these problems from occurring and how to recognize what you’re dealing with when they do. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Celebrating 200 Episodes: Ask Me Anything! - Ep. 200 Jun 04, 2024

Welcome to the 200th episode of the Just Grow Something podcast, my gardening friends! I launched this podcast back in February of 2021 as a way to pass on the gardening knowledge I had gained from my experiences on our own homestead and farm and what I had learned as I worked my way through my horticulture degree at Oregon State University. I’ve continued to learn along the way and pass on as much of that to you as I reasonably can in the 30 minutes or so a week we spend together here, as well as Reels and TikTok videos, the articles I write over on the website, the Facebook group and probably a few places I’m forgetting about.

Getting into the rhythm of coming up with a topic each week, recording, editing, and publishing that episode, plus trying to put creatives together to post to social media to promote those episodes took some time and I still don’t’ always get the social media part of it right! Some of you have been along for the ride since day one, some of you are brand-new; no matter where you fall on that scale, I am sincerely happy you are here and we can all be learning and growing as gardeners together.

This season I’ve been asking you a question each month to send in your answers but today, you are asking the questions and I am doing the answering. To celebrate 200 episodes, I did an “ask me anything” and you all had some great questions. Some about gardening, some about the business of farming, some personal, and I am here to answer them all. Let’s dig in!

Trellising Techniques for Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Beans and Peas - Ep. 199 May 28, 2024

One of the most labor-intensive parts of growing some of our garden crops, like tomatoes, can be trellising them. Other plants naturally just climb whatever we place next to them without much intervention from us, but they do sometimes need some initial guidance. Cucumbers and peas are two good examples of this. Often times this depends on the type of trellis we’re using.

The type of trellis we use boils down to personal preference, the amount of space we have, the materials available to us, and whether we’re gardening in an in-ground space or utilizing raised planters.

Today on Just Grow Something, we’re going to cover the multiple trellising options for tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and beans. Many of these trellising options can be utilized for other crops, too, and some of them are multi-purpose for any of these crops. By the end you will have a multitude of techniques to choose from so you can make the best choice for your gardening situation. Let’s dig in!

Question of the month: Ask me anything! Reach out and ask me whatever you want to know, gardening or non-gardening, and I'll answer your question next week for our 200th episode!

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Starting Your Own Sweet Potato Slips - Ep. 171

Cloning Plants for Succession and Expansion -Ep. 198 May 21, 2024

One of the strategies I use and encourage other gardeners to use for getting the most out of their gardens each year is succession planting. This is the process of planting a new crop of something after the first one has a little bit of growth on it so that we can harvest pretty continuously or planting a second crop after a first one has given its all.

This might make you think that you need to be buying new transplants or starting new seedlings all over again to get these succession plantings in the ground on time. Often times, for things like leafy greens or squashes, we can just pop some seeds directly in the garden and call it good. But for larger plants or those that grow slowly from seed, like tomatoes or basil, it’s better to transplant them as started seedlings. The fastest and easiest way to do this is with cloning.

We’re not talking about the sci fi version of cloning or even Dolly-the-sheep type clones. Propagating your own plants from cuttings of your most productive vegetable, herb or fruit plants can be very simple and straightforward and does not require any special equipment. Not only can you do this for your garden successions but it’s a good way to get new plants for expanding the garden, too.

Today on Just Grow Something, we’ll cover the easiest vegetables, fruits, and herbs to clone for either succession plantings or just for expanding the garden, the benefits of cloning, and exactly how to clone them. You might be surprised and just how easy it is. Let’s dig in!

Question of the Month: Ask Me Anything! DM me, jump in the Facebook group, send me an email ... we'll review the answers on our 200th episode!

References and Resources:

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Top Episode 1: Growing Peppers - Ep. 177

Problems with Peppers - Ep. 197 May 17, 2024

Growing peppers is one of the most asked about topics at the farm stand and the most played episodes of this podcast. Most of the time the frustration comes with either not getting bell peppers to grow large enough or other problems for peppers, in general, including sunscald, lack of ripening, and just generally poor plant growth and low production levels. And, of course, there are the problems with pests and diseases.

Today on Just Grow Something, we’re tackling all that and more. If you’ve had issues getting the most out of your pepper plants or if you’re brand new to the pepper game, this one’s for you. Let’s dig in!

Question of the Month: Ask Me Anything! DM me, jump in the Facebook group, send me an email ... we'll review the answers on our 200th episode!

References and Resources:

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Gardening in Shade and Solving Your Garden Maintenance Problems - Ep. 196 May 07, 2024

I hear from a lot of frustrated would-be gardeners at the farmer’s market stand who say they just don’t have enough sun in their yard to be able to grow anything. Of course, they can always go to maximum effort by growing in smaller containers and moving them around the yard as the season progresses to catch the light as the sun shifts, which is a lot of work, but it’s also very possible that many of these potential gardeners have more sun than they think. And this goes for my gardeners who are apartment dwellers or who live in condos with only a patio or balcony space to grow on. You might be able to grow more than you think. And, there actually are a selection of vegetables, fruits, and herbs that will do just fine in part-sun and others that will tolerate it if you have a little patience with them.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to define full sun, part sun, part shade, and shade so you have a better idea of what is actually possible in some areas of your yard and then we’ll go over the choices available if you truly do have less than full sun. Plus, we’ll go over your answers to the April question of the month and explore how we can solve some of the most common garden maintenance struggles you and I both have. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

The effect of milk-based foliar sprays on yield components of field pumpkins with powdery mildew - ScienceDirect

Preventing and Controlling Foliar Disease in the Garden - Ep. 195 Apr 30, 2024

Foliar diseases in both vegetable and fruit plants can significantly impact our yield and the quality of that yield if left unmanaged. If you’ve ever had powdery mildew on your cucumbers or early blight in your tomatoes, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even though the disease is affecting the leaves, the interruption of photosynthesis by the fungus affects the fruit development, and then the disease will jump from the leaves to the fruit and then we’ve got a real mess on our hands. And sometimes we can get one disease under control only to have another one swoop in and take out our plants before we even get any kind of harvest. This is especially true if you live in an area that is very humid or you have spring weather that bounces from warm and humid during the day to cool overnight with very little air movement and lots of rain. Warm temperatures, high humidity, lots of moisture and prolonged leaf wetness are the ideal conditions for fungal growth.

Today on Just Grow Something we are going to cover the different ways we can prevent fungal diseases from taking hold in our garden plants, what signs and symptoms to watch out for, which plants are most susceptible to fungal diseases, and which ones don’t usually have much of a problem with them. There are lots of things we can do as gardeners to prevent and minimize the occurrence of foliar diseases so we get the best yield possible from our plants. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

001_22856life1104s14_1_7.pdf (lifesciencesite.com)

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Growing Strawberries - Ep. 194 Apr 23, 2024

We talk a lot about growing vegetables on this show but, in truth, I am a huge fruit eater. I love fruit, either on it’s own or on a salad, in smoothies, in desserts, love it. Being someone who is a proponent of sustainable agriculture I also prefer to get my fruits locally if I can. That’s not to say I don’t always have bananas in this house and that I don’t love a good Mandarin orange, but if I can grow it myself, I feel much better. Fruit trees can be intimidating, and they can be temperamental if you don’t have the right soil conditions, berry canes and bushes also require a bit more care and maintenance. Which is why strawberries are the sort of gateway fruit for vegetable gardeners. You can plant them in ground or in containers, you can grow them in many different climates, and even minimal effort in maintenance will improve the yield dramatically.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about growing strawberries. Whether you’ve got an in-ground bed, a raised planter bed, or just a container on your back deck, we’ll talk about the soil and nutrient requirements, planting in the spring or the fall, maintaining the bed, potential problems, and more. Let’s dig in!

Question of the month for April: What have you struggled with the most in terms of garden maintenance and did you find a solution? Maintaining soil nutrients, reducing weed pressure, proper mulching, proper watering techniques, whatever your garden needs that you struggle with or that you used to struggle with and have found a solution. Answer the question from within Spotify, reply to this week’s email newsletter on Friday with your, answer in the Facebook group or send me a DM on social media. You have until April 30th to give me your answer and share your struggles and solutions with your fellow gardeners.

References and resources:

Strawberry | Description, Cultivation, Nutrition, Uses, Species, & Facts | Britannica

Strawberry: A Brief History // Missouri Environment and Garden News Article // Integrated Pest Management, University of Missouri

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024⁠ Taylor Precision Products Standard Grade Thermometer (Amazon affiliate link)

Proper Soil Temperatures for Transplanting - Ep. 193 Apr 16, 2024

Using the last frost date in spring or our average air temperatures might be a good guideline to start with when figuring out when to plant the garden, but a better method for knowing when it’s actually time to sow those seeds or transplant those plants is the soil temperature. Even though the air temperatures may be warmer than usual, the soil knows the truth. If that soil is cold and wet, or might be that way in the next ten days, your tomatoes, or peppers, or whatever, are not going to be happy sitting in chilled soil, no matter how warm the daytime air temperatures get. But, your sugar snap peas and lettuce might be thrilled.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about optimal soil temperatures for both cool season and warm season crops, for both seed germination and transplant growth, how to properly check your soil temperature, and where to find historic soil temperature data for your area so you can more effectively plan your planting dates and not be lulled into that false sense of security. Let’s dig in.

References and Resources:

This week's sponsor:

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Soil Temperature and Seed Germination (psu.edu)

Microsoft Word - Soil Temp Planting V2docx (wisc.edu)

Minera Nutrition of Plants: Principles and Perspectives | SpringerLink

facts you didn’t know about soil temperature (farmprogress.com)

Soil Temperature and Planting Crops (harvesttotable.com)

Jus Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Amendments to Add in Spring for the Summer Garden - Ep. 192 Apr 09, 2024

Back in November I talked to you about doing a soil test, using slow-release amendments in the garden to do their work gradually over the winter, and then doing another soil test in the spring to see how well it worked. Now’s the time in most areas to be doing that spring soil test before you start planting your spring or summer gardens.

But, what do you do if that spring test shows the amendments you added in the fall just weren’t enough to fix the problem? This time around you’ll need something that works into the soil a little more quickly if you want the garden ready in time to grow a lush crop for spring and summer. And even then you may find the need to add some supplemental plant food to directly feed the plants instead of the soil to be sure you get a good harvest.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’ll go over the organic amendments you can be adding to the garden now that will give the soil a quick boost and the possible ways to feed the plants directly while waiting for the soil to improve. Let’s dig in!

Question of the month for April: What have you struggled with the most in terms of garden maintenance and did you find a solution?

References and Resources:

USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service website: HungryPests.com

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Visit HeirloomRoses.com and take 20% off your order of roses with code JUSTGROW through October 31, 2024

Your Biggest Pests in the Garden - Ep. 191 Apr 02, 2024

I had such a fantastic response to the March Question of the Month and we had such great conversations on Facebook and Instagram that I made this week’s entire episode all about! You came in clutch with problems and solutions and there was plenty of community discussion, which is what I love. Gardeners helping gardeners.

We all have a lot of pests and some very clever ways to deal with them. And not all of them are insects. So, today on Just Grow Something we are talking all about your biggest pests in the garden. Let’s dig in!

April Question of the Month: What have you struggled with the most in terms of garden maintenance and did you find a solution?

References and Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Hardening Off Seedlings Before Transplant - Ep. 190 Mar 26, 2024

Hardening off is a process that helps plants adjust to the outdoor environment, preventing shock and ensuring they thrive once planted in the garden. Gradual exposure helps the plants acclimate to the conditions they will experience out in the garden or in their containers on your porch before you put them out there.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll go over the exact steps we need to take to harden off our plants prior to putting them out into the garden. This includes whether you’re growing them yourselves or if you’ve just brought them home from the nursery, garden center, or farmers market. Following these steps and displaying some patience will prevent the heartache of putting those plants out and having them fail. We’ll also talk about how to recover if your plants begin display signs of stress after they are already in their permanent home. Let’s dig in.

Question of the Month:

: “What is your biggest pest in the garden and how do you manage it (if at all)?” Leave a voice message from the link in the show notes, respond to the question in Spotify if that’s where you’re listening, send me an email, drop it in the Facebook group or in a DM to me on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. We’ve already had some good discussions around this in the Facebook group and I will read all the answers on next week’s episode. You have until March 31st to get me your answer.

References and Resources:

Effects of hardening off on Growth, Yield and Quality of some Pepper (Capsicum annuum) Cultivars | Ghana Journal of Science, Technology and Development (gjstd.org)

Influence of Different Methods of Hardening-Off Of Tomato Seedlings on ReEstablishment and Subsequent Growth

A COMPARISON OF CHEMICAL CHANGES IN PLANTS DURING COLD-HARDENING IN CONTROLLED AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS (cdnsciencepub.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Straw Bale Gardening - Ep. 189 Mar 19, 2024

Years ago I had some straw bales I’d used initially as fall décor that ended up in my chicken coop. The bales were used partially as a wind break all winter and partially as a roost. Well, chickens do what chickens do when they roost and by the spring of the following year those straw bales were full of nitrogen-rich chicken poop and starting to fall apart. So, I moved the out of the coop, watered the down really well for about a week, and planted a bunch of plants into them.

This was my first introduction to straw bale gardening and it worked wonderfully! The nitrogen from the chicken manure had kickstarted the decomposition process of the straw, providing essential nutrients for the microbes that do that work, and the decomp of the straw inside the bale created a fertile growing medium. I expanded the gardens quite a bit after that, as you all know, and haven’t worked with straw bales as a growing medium since. But this year, that changes. I’ve got a new spot I’m putting together behind my greenhouse with eight planter boxes already in place, but there’s also a fence at the back of that space I want to both cover and use as a trellis. I don’t want something permanent against that fence so I’m jumping back into straw bale gardening.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about how to use straw bales as a growing container and medium. I don’t have naturally conditioned bales this year, so we’ll talk about the process I’ll need to go through to get those bales ready. I’ll also cover the benefits of gardening in bales, what to watch out for, what plants do well with this method, and how to maintain them. By the end of the episode I think you’ll be convinced that straw bales are an effective way to increase the growing space in your garden without needing a permanent solution. Let’s dig in!

Question of the month for March: “What is your biggest pest in the garden and how do you manage it (if at all)?”

References and Resources:

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Taylor Standard Grade Thermometer

11 Tips for Starting a Strawbale Garden (epicgardening.com)

Straw Bale Gardening for Beginners | Almanac.com

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Donations and Dollar Stands with Meg Lea - Ep. 188 Mar 12, 2024

Today's episode is a special interview with Meg Lea of the Fox and Hound Garden in Wisconsin. Meg harvested an unbelievable amount of food from her Zone 4b gardens last year and donated over two thirds of it.

We chat about all things gardening, from planning to production, donations and dollar roadside stands, overambitious plantings and failing forward. It's a great conversation with a fellow gardener that you'll love to listen in to. By the end you'll have commiserated and maybe have an inkling to add a few new things to the garden. Let's dig in!

Resources:

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

👩‍🌾 Meg (@ourwiscohomestead) • Instagram photos and videos

Skidger – Garden smarter! – Innovative garden products

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Maintaining Fruit Trees, Bushes, and Canes Mar 06, 2024

If you’re planning to put in new fruit trees, bushes, or canes in your garden the best time of year, generally, is spring. We want the soil to warm up enough that the roots of the plants will begin to seek out water and nutrients as soon as placed in the ground with as little transplant shock as possible. But, if we have existing fruit trees, bushes, or canes then any maintenance on those trees should be done before the soil begins to really warm up and the plants come out of dormancy. This is usual sometime between late fall and early spring, which means most of the northern hemisphere is primed for these tasks right now.

Today on Just Grow Something, we’re going to talk about those tasks and how to tackle them: pruning, fertilizing, and moving your established plants if it’s necessary to do so. This is one of those tasks that can scratch the itch for getting out into the garden when maybe it’s still too early to really be planting much and they’re tasks that are important for us to get the best yield possible from those plants. Let’s dig in!

March Question of the Month: “What is your biggest pest in the garden and how do you manage it (if at all)?”

Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Get my FREE eBook on successful seed starting

Different Ways to Grow Potatoes - Ep. 186 Feb 27, 2024

Potatoes are a cool season crop, and most varieties need between 60 and 120 days to mature, so that means getting them in the ground as soon as the soil can be worked and giving them the time they need to grow. The great thing about potatoes is they can be harvested at any size, so it’s a crop that can do well in a short-season area and can also be grown in places other than big, long in-ground rows. If you have minimal space or you can only garden in grow bags or buckets, you can still grow potatoes.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re talking about just that – what are all the different ways and places we can grow potatoes? They are such a versatile crop it makes sense to tuck some into your garden area no matter what size it is. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Ep. 135 - Growing Potatoes

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Solanum tuberosum (Irish Potato, Irish Potatoes, Pomme de Terre, Potato, Potatoes, White Potato, White Potatoes) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Growing potatoes in home gardens | UMN Extension

ORGANIC POTATO GROWING GUIDE (woodprairie.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Full Spectrum LED mini grow light

Heat Mats and Grow Lights - Ep. 185 Feb 20, 2024

This month we’re talking a lot about seed starting and we can’t talk about starting seeds without talking about heat and light. Seeds sprout more quickly and efficiently when they’ve got the correct soil temperatures and the easiest way to do this is with a seedling heat mat. It’s not a requirement, though, so we’ll also talk about some ways you can up the ante on the soil temperatures during seed starting without a heat mat.

Once those seeds do sprout and you're nurturing those little seedlings the correct light can make all the difference, and usually even the sunniest window in your house just isn’t going to cut it. That means we need do a little investing in some lights to help our seedlings along. Today on Just Grow Something we'll explore soil heating options and various types of grow lights, including the most economical and even tabletop solutions. Let’s dig in!

*Question of the Month: “What is your most successful crop and why?” This could be a specific variety of something that outproduces all the others, the plant that you love the most, or the crop that grows fantastically well for you without fail every single year. Whatever you consider your most successful crop in whatever way you consider it successful. Send me an email, post it in the Facebook group or send me a DM on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok… you have until February 29th to get me your answer!

References and Resources:

4 Pack 4FT LED Shop Light

48" x 20" (four tray) Waterproof Durable Seedling Heat Mat

10” x 20.75” (single tray) Waterproof Seedling Heat Mat

Best Grow Lights for Growing Vegetables Indoors.

Guide to Choosing a Grow Light - Johnny's Selected Seeds.

5 Different Fluorescent Tube Sizes and How to Choose One (thespruce.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Harvesting peat moss contributes to climate change, Oregon State scientist says | OSU Extension Service

Seed Starting Soils and Containers - Ep. 184 Feb 13, 2024

Seed starting does not need to be intimidating but it does come with a special set of requirements for true success. Two components to that success are the soils we use and the containers we choose. Not all soils and containers are created equal. Today we dig into the different types of seed starting mediums and containers available on the market and ones we can dig up in our own home. (Pun intended.) Ssurprise surprise, the potting soil you choose to use may not actually be soil at all. And the containers may be something you already have sitting in your recycling bin. Let’s dig in!

*February Question of the Month: What is your most successful crop and why?

Episode References and Resources

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

The Girly Homesteader Planner

Starting Flower Seedlings Indoors - Ep. 183 Feb 06, 2024

If you’re planning to grow flowers alongside your vegetables this year, there may be some additional steps you’ll need to take when getting those started. Most annual flowers are started in ways very similar to our annual vegetable plants. But some flowers are trickier to start, especially perennials. And some can’t easily be started from seed and need to be propagated using other methods.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about the easiest flowers to start from seed and those “special” flower seeds, the ones that need a little more time and attention than our standard annuals. Let’s dig in!

February Question of the Month: What’s your most successful garden crop and why?

References and Resources:

Planter | Garden Planner

Vegetable Garden Planner | Garden Planning Apps (almanac.com)

Free Garden Journal Printables - Green in Real Life

Free Garden Flower Download

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 117 - Growing Cut Flowers in the Home Garden with Kathy Gormandy

Soil Blocks and Flower Bars with Kathy Gormandy - Ep. 182 Jan 30, 2024

Soil blocking is a seed starting technique that uses small blocks of soil or seed starting mix. There are no containers, no small plastic cells, just the soil itself. The benefit of soil blocking is, of course, you’re not keeping a bunch of plastic containers around to start your seeds in, but also there is no chance for the roots of the seedlings to become bound by a container. The plants roots will reach the edge of the soil block and simply stop growing until the block is planted, the roots come into contact with more soil, and can take off growing again. This reduces the transplant shock.

Today on Just Grow Something I brought back our flower farmer friend, Kathy Gormandy, to talk about how she uses soil blocking on her farm. We also talk about her new retail space, the importance of locally grown florals, and more. It’s a conversation that has me taking a second look at trying soil blocking again this year. Let’s dig in.

References and Resources:

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

https://education.teamflower.org/learn/growing/ssl/what-you-can-do-to-protect-yourself-from-pesticides-in-the-floral-industry

What Do Florists Spray on Flowers to Keep Them Fresh? - Floral Fantasy Land

Soil-Block Making | A Better Way to Start Seedlings, by Eliot Coleman (johnnyseeds.com)

Kathy Gormandy (@pkfarmflowers) • Instagram photos and videos

https://www.facebook.com/PKFarmlife

Artisanal Blume

P&K Farms (pkfarmlife.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something | creating a podcast and gardening videos | Patreon

Succession Planting to Extend the Harvest - Ep. 181 Jan 23, 2024

As we start to get our garden plans in order for this year, succession planting is something that absolutely should be included in our calendars and our garden maps. It’s really the best way to ensure not only to do you have more to harvest throughout the season but that you take advantage of open spaces in the garden when one crop ends or the season changes.

Today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about what succession planting is, how it relates to interplanting and relay planting, and how to successfully schedule your successions to reach your gardening goals, whether that’s to feed your family for the entire year or just be sure you’ve got enough salad ingredients to get you through the summer. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Plan Like a Pro Garden Planning Course

Save 10% and get Free Shipping with code JUSTGROW10 at Planter Box Direct

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Courses | Just Grow Something

Interplanting to Maximize Your Harvest - Ep. 180 Jan 16, 2024

There is a fine line in gardening between overcrowding the plants and making efficient use of space. If we do it right, the plants benefit from each other and we can get way more out of our garden than we ever dreamed. But if we step over that line, we end up with plants competing with each other for space, water, sunlight, and nutrients and our yield is dramatically reduced.

As we start planning our gardens for the year it’s time to take a look at the space we have to work with and plan out our gardens to effectively use that space to our advantage. Today on Just Grow Something we’re talking interplanting or intercropping. This technique not only allows for you to grow more in the exact same space, but can also reduce weeds and conserve water. Let’s dig in.

References and Resources:

Companion Planting Chart | Just Grow Something

Tomato N Uptake (ucdavis.edu)

CDFA - FREP - CA Fertilization Guidelines - Lettuce Nitrogen Uptake and Partitioning

Nitrogen fixation in peas (Pisum sativum) (lincoln.ac.nz)

Some vegetables require less water than others | OSU Extension Service (oregonstate.edu)

Cornell Guide to Companion Planting.pdf (unl.edu)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Plan Like a Pro Information Sign Up

How to Choose a Plant Variety - Ep. 179 Jan 09, 2024

You may have an idea of what you want to grow in terms of vegetables in your garden – say zucchini and tomatoes, for example. If you open the seed catalog or website to the page for zucchini you may find as many 18 to 25 different varieties to choose from, each with their own unique set of attributes in terms of shape, size, color, growing conditions, disease resistance, pollination type, and more. Move on to tomatoes, well now you’re talking hundreds of varieties in different classes from cherry to beefsteak to sauce types. And that’s just one supplier. It can be overwhelming, and we can fall victim to the dreaded analysis paralysis – spending so much time gathering information while trying to decide that we fail to decide.

Let’s take a little bit of the overwhelm out of the equation by defining what exactly it is we are looking for in each of the types of vegetable or fruits we want to grow before we even dive into the catalogs or walk into the garden center. If you’ve got a list of attributes you’re looking for ahead of time it makes it easier to make a decision about what will do well in your garden, meet your goals, and eliminate some of the distractions. Let's dig in.

Don't forget to answer the question of the month for January: How do you plan your garden each season?

Resources and References:

F1 hybrid - Wikipedia

Home | The Buffalo Seed Company

All-America Selections | AAS Winners | Best New Plants

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Gurney's - America's Most Complete Seed and Nursery (gurneys.com)

Choosing a Seed Supplier - Ep. 178 Jan 02, 2024

It used to be easy to just choose a catalog and order seeds because there were only a handful of choices and, generally speaking, unless you were going to the nursery or garden center to buy seed packets from a kiosk, you were ordering from a physical catalog that you actually got in the mail. But, nowadays, a simple internet search will yield thousands of results from companies all over the world and it’s a little bit more difficult to weed out the bad guys.

So, today we are going to talk about ways to find a legitimate, established, verified seed company whether it’s online, through a catalog, or local to you. And what to do if you encounter a new small business that seems legit and you’d love to support them, but you also want to make sure you don’t get burned. I will also give you a list and links to my favorite suppliers over the years, including my very first catalog purchase. Let’s dig in!

Question of the month: How do you plan your garden each season? Tell me by leaving a voice message, sending an email, responding below (in Spotify), or from the Facebook group!

References and Resources:

True Leaf Market

Bring Your Garden to Life with Rare and Heirloom Seeds (rareseeds.com)

Home - SeedSavers

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Saving the Past for the Future Urban Farmer | Seeds, Plants and Garden Supplies (ufseeds.com)

Johnny’s Selected Seeds | Supporting Farms & Gardens Since 1973 (johnnyseeds.com) Harris Seeds: Vegetable Seeds, Flower Seeds, Plants & Growing Supplies Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Capsicum annuum - Wikipedia

Top Episode 1: Growing Peppers - Ep. 177 Dec 26, 2023

Let's revisit the most downloaded episode of this podcast the past three season: growing peppers! Peppers are one of those plants that I get asked about all the time; it’s also one of those vegetables that is a mainstay in many people’s kitchens, and they can be expensive at the grocery store, so knowing how to grow your own is high up on the gardening wish list for a lot of people. So, today we talk all about peppers, both sweet and hot, how to get them to germinate, their feeding requirements, planting, spacing, harvesting and all the usual basics. By the end of this episode, I hope you can fill in the gaps of what’s been going on with your peppers to get you some success or give you the confidence to give them a try if you’re new to the capsicum scene. Let's dig in!

References and Resources:

Pharmacological importance of an ethnobotanical plant: Capsicum annuum L - PubMed (nih.gov)

Bell Peppers 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits (healthline.com)

Chili Peppers 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Effects (healthline.com)

6 Ways to Use Epsom Salt in the Garden | Epsom Salt Council

Capsicum annuum (Grossum Group) (Bell Pepper, Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Sweet Pepper) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Midwest Vegetable Production Guide for Commercial Growers.

Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening, 1978

Damrosch, Barbara; The Garden Primer. Workman Publishing, New York. 1988

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Finding rewrites the evolutionary history of the origin of potatoes (2005)

Top Episode 2: Growing Potatoes - Ep. 176 Dec 19, 2023

Potatoes are a staple in many households. The wonderful thing about Irish potatoes is that they can be grown just about anywhere, in ground or in planters or buckets. They can be a quick shoulder-season crop or they can spend 120 days in the ground, making way for fall-planted crops when they’re done. You can pick them early for baby potatoes, leave them late for storage potatoes, or anything in between, and they are one of the easiest crops for beginners because they are pretty hands off. Which may be why this episode was so popular.

So, let’s revisit your second favorite episode of all time. Ready to grow potatoes? Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

Hijmans, RJ; Spooner, DM (2001). "Geographic distribution of wild potato species". American Journal of Botany. 88 (11): 2101–12. doi:10.2307/3558435. JSTOR 3558435. PMID 21669641.

Potato Production and Consumption

Solanum tuberosum (Irish Potato, Irish Potatoes, Pomme de Terre, Potato, Potatoes, White Potato, White Potatoes) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Potato: Nutrition facts, recipes, benefits, side effects, and more (msn.com)

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Growing potatoes in home gardens | UMN Extension

ORGANIC POTATO GROWING GUIDE (woodprairie.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Free Download: Onion Growing Fact Sheet

Top Episode 3: Growing Onions - Ep. 175 Dec 12, 2023

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another episode of Just Grow Something as we count down the top four episodes of all time throughout the month of December. This week we revisit the #3 most listened to episode of this show: Growing Onions.

Onions are such a staple in most kitchens, it's no surprise many gardeners want to grow their own. The problem is they can be a bit tricky if you don't understand the difference in daylength requirements for growing those giant bulbs. Nutrient needs, soil type, water and storage are covered in this episode, all the things I wish I'd known when I made my own feeble attempts at growing onions years ago! Let's dig in.

References and Resources:

Ep. 114 - Planting Onions to Overwinter

(PDF) Traditional and modern uses of onion bulb (Allium cepa L.): A systematic review (researchgate.net)

Onion History - National Onion Association (onions-usa.org)

Nutrition Information for Raw Vegetables | FDA

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

Growing Onions: Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Onions | The Old Farmer's Almanac

Onion Planting Guide - Dixondale Farms

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

American Indian Health - Health (ku.edu)

Top Episode 4: Growing Zucchini - Ep. 174 Dec 05, 2023

Over the past season we have welcomed a lot of new listeners from all over the world, so I thought for the month of December it’d be fun to revisit the top four episodes of the past three seasons of this podcast.

We’ll start with your #4 favorite episode of all time: Growing Zucchini and other summer squashes. This is actually an episode from this season so for it to be in the number four spot means you guys were really interested in this information, and I am happy to share it again. I’ve edited it just a little bit to get right to the good bits, so let’s dig in!

Episode Resources and References:

FoodData Central (usda.gov)

Cucurbitacin - Wikipedia

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

Cucumber, Squash, Melon & Other Cucurbit Insect Pests | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

Squash, Zucchini and Summer | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Follow me on Instagram JustGrowSomethingPodcast.com

Climbing Seed Prices and Proper Seed Storage - Ep. 173 Nov 28, 2023

The seed catalogs for the 2024 gardening season here in North America have begun rolling in and it always makes me excited. One of my favorite things to do on a chilly night is set myself up in my chair by the fire with a hot cup of something tasty, snuggle under a blanket with a stack of seed catalogs and a highlighter, and just peruse the newest hybrids and old favorites, marking the catalog as I go. If you like to do the same, this year you might be in for a little bit of a shock.

If you’re not going for standard, open-pollinated varieties that have been around forever you might be surprised what you find when you start flipping through those pages. Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about how these prices seem to be different from the previous few seasons and how we can cut our expenses in the garden through proper seed storage. If you have leftover seed from this past season, you really want to be sure you’re storing them properly so they will still be good for next season and beyond. We’ll talk the best conditions for storing the seeds in our stash, types of storage containers, and how long each type of seed can be stored. Let’s dig in.

Resources and References:

Ep. 63 - Proper Seed Storage: Moisture levels, storage conditions, containers, and more

Ep. 108 - Basics of Saving Seeds

How to Start Saving Seeds From Your Garden (and Why) - Ep. 159

Six Steps for Saving Seeds From Your Garden

Do Seeds Expire?

Saving Seeds From Your Region to Improve Your Garden (video)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map | USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Updated USDA Hardiness Zone Map - Ep. 172 Nov 21, 2023

On November 17th the USDA updated the Hardiness Zone Map based on data from the past 30 years and many of us are now in new zones. So, what does that mean? Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to deep dive into the USDA Hardiness Zone Map; what the zone numbers and colors mean, how to use the map, what’s new and different with this version, what this means for perennials versus annual plants, and how it all ties into changes we may or may not want to make in our garden plans. Let's dig in!

Episode References and Resources:

Canada's Plant Hardiness Site

Storing the Most Popular Types of Fall Garden Crops: No Freezing, No Canning, No Dehydrating Required - Ep. 162

Ep. 117 - Growing Cut Flowers in the Home Garden with Kathy Gormandy

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 94 - Growing Sweet Potatoes

Starting Your Own Sweet Potato Slips - Ep. 171 Nov 14, 2023

Many home gardeners and market growers alike rely on seed companies and other suppliers for not just our seeds, but also our started plants, roots, or bulbs. Things like garlic, onions, and seed potatoes are often purchased rather than saved from the previous harvest or started at home and sweet potatoes also fall into this category. For years I purchased started sweet potato slips to grow and I often still do, just because of the quantity I need.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to go over three ways we can easily get our own slips started either from our own harvested sweet potatoes or from store-bought ones. It’s easier than you think and even if you need a lot of slips, it takes up less room than you might think. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources and References:

Ep. 135 - Growing Potatoes

Growing Sweet Potatoes in Missouri | MU Extension

Sweet Potato Starts and Plantings (k-state.edu)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 76 - Managing Soil pH in Your Garden

Fall Amendments for the Spring Garden - Ep. 170 Nov 07, 2023

Fall is officially here, and I don’t know about you, but my garden is ready for a bit of a break. But that doesn’t mean the garden soil shouldn’t be doing something in the meantime. We all know testing our soil is the only real way to find out what is lacking in our gardens as far as nutrients are concerned and what the pH level is of that soil. Testing your soil now and adding the appropriate amendments means they will have a chance to break down into the soil, incorporate themselves, and become water soluble which is really the only way they can be absorbed by your plants come spring.

But, how do you know what to add, when to add it, and how much? Today on Just Grow Something we’ll review some of the most easily accessible amendments you can use on your soil right now to give you a better garden next season and help you figure out how much of it to use, based on your own soil test results. Let’s dig in

Episode Resources and References

Affects of pH on Nutrient Availability

Soil Acidification

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Check out the selection of microgreens from today's sponsor, True Leaf Market!

Microgreen Basics - Ep. 169 Oct 17, 2023

Microgreens can be grown at any time of the year with very little in the way of equipment and it is super easy to get started. For many of us home gardeners, the season for salad greens can be short. And I don’t know about you, but I still crave fresh greens in the wintertime. The easiest answer to supplementing our greens is to grow microgreens indoors.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re getting started with growing microgreens; what supplies you need, which are the easiest ones for beginners to grow, and what you need to know about selecting seeds to use as microgreens. Let’s dig in.

Episode Resources and References:

Assessment of Vitamin and Carotenoid Concentrations of Emerging Food Products: Edible Microgreens

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group⁠

⁠Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon⁠

Growing Garlic as a Perennial - Ep. 168 Oct 10, 2023

Right about now is the time that some of us are looking at getting our garlic cloves into the ground for next summer’s harvest. It really is a pretty simple crop to grow but it seems like seed garlic is getting more and more expensive to purchase. I generally save the best specimens from this year’s harvest and plant it in the fall, but our bulbs this year were far from impressive, none of them really worthy of saving (remember, we save the best and eat the rest) and I found myself having to order a lot of seed garlic this year. So on this episode of Just Grow Something I’m digging further into the idea of a perennial garlic bed.

This is something I explored a couple years ago and that I did unintentionally in my garlic bed from last year. So, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of different ways to get a perennial harvest from one bed of garlic. It’s not as foolproof as, say, asparagus, where you plant it once and then just continue to harvest for the next 30 years. But, there are a whole host of ways to enjoy that garlic flavor we love while also protecting ourselves from the inflation that seems to be happening with seed garlic. Just one more way to become more self-reliant in our own gardens. Ready to tackle garlic as a perennial crop? Let’s dig in!

Resources and References:

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Frost Protection Measures in the Garden - Ep. 167 Oct 03, 2023

It’s been an unusually warm start to fall in many areas of North America, my home in west central Missouri is no exception where we’re still seeing temperatures up into the 90s F the past few days. But I know we’re inching closer to our usual first frost date and I’m most certainly going to be prepared because our weather is notorious for changing practically overnight and then changing again.

If you’re somewhere that experiences frost, which is basically anywhere up through USDA Hardiness zone 10, it pays to be prepared for the unexpected. Sometimes you may only have a few hours warning that a frost is coming overnight and scrambling to find everything you need at the last minute and covering plants in the dark is no fun. Especially when the forecast shows a two-week warm up after one night of frost.

On today’s episode of Just Grow Something we’ll review what the USDA Hardiness Zone map actually means, what temperatures differentiate a frost from a freeze, which crops can survive an initial frost, and different options for frost and freeze protection in the garden. By the end you should have a pretty good idea of what you’ll need to have on hand based on your hardiness zone, what you’re growing in the garden and how much work you want to put into to protecting your plants from the cold. Let’s dig in!

Resources and References:

2023 Frost Dates: First and Last Frost Dates by ZIP Code | The Old Farmer's Almanac | Almanac.com

Portable Mini Greenhouse

Pop-Up Mini Greenhouse

Five Crops to Plant in Fall for Winter Harvest, Zone by Zone - Ep. 163

Crops to Plant in Fall and Harvest in Spring - Ep. 164

Get Magic Mind: Use code JustGrow20 at checkout

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Check out True Leaf Market’s Cover Crop Mix

When to Plant Your Cover Crops - Focal Point Friday Sep 29, 2023

We talked all about cover crops in the last episode: why we should use them and which crops perform what job. Let's chat today about when each of those crops should go into the ground for best results.

Don't forget you can get a garden cover crop mix from True Leaf Market here:

Getting Started with Cover Crops - Ep. 166 Sep 26, 2023

As the growing season is winding down in many areas, we may be looking at some bare empty spaces in our gardens and wondering what to do with them. Should you just mulch it over? Add fresh compost and let it sit? How about a cover crop?

Using a cover crop gives back a ton of benefits: improving soil structure, preventing erosion, acting as a living mulch, and adding nutrients back into the soil. And, yes, this can be done in both in-ground beds and raised planters. What you plant and what you do with it when it’s done all depends on what you want to get out of it, so today we’ll cover all the options to help you figure out which crops work best for your individual garden needs. Let’s dig in!

Karin's Recommendations for Cover Crops:

Preventing soil erosion and providing weed control: clover, mustard, oats, peas, daikon radish, winter rye, and vetch.
Nitrogen fixation: alfalfa, clover, chickpeas/garbanzos, field peas, soybeans, lentils, and vetch.
Green manure: buckwheat, clover, mustard, oats, peas, radish, winter rye, wheat, barley, and vetch.
Creating biomass: alfalfa, mustard, oats, peas, rye, wheat and barley.
Breaking up the soil: alfalfa, clover, and daikon radish.
Attracting beneficial insects: alfalfa, buckwheat, clover, mustard, and hairy vetch in its second year when it flowers in the spring.
Forage: Alfalfa, clover, and mustard. (Mustard is a brassica so if you have animals that are sensitive to plants in that family, like rabbits, you may want to avoid that one.)

Episode References and Resources:

Get Magic Mind: Use code JustGrow20 at checkout

Check out True Leaf Market’s Cover Crop Mix

Marigolds as Companion Plants

The Great Marigold Debate: Friend or Foe?

Terminating Cover Crops | Southern Cover Crops Council

Using Cover Crops and Green Manures in the Home Vegetable Garden – Wisconsin Horticulture

Tips for Planting Cover Crops in Home Gardens (psu.edu)

Cover crops and green manures in home gardens | UMN Extension

Farm Seed & Cover Crops | Comparison Chart (PDF) | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Try Magic Mind and get 50% off a subscription for a limited time with code JustGrow20

Overlooked Edibles: Parts of Our Garden We Didn't Know We Can Eat - Ep. 165 Sep 19, 2023

Obviously, we grow our vegetable gardens so we can harvest most of the plants to eat. Yes, some of them are pretty flowers and foliage that are a feast for the eyes, but mainly we just want to eat, right? I generally subscribe to the idea that no parts of the plants we grow should be wasted. If it’s not something we’re going to eat, that green matter needs to go into the compost pile so it can go back into the soil and grow more yummy veggies for my plate.

Turns out I’ve been doing the eating part all wrong. Many of the vegetables and some of the fruits and flowers offer more edible parts beyond the commonly harvested portion than I ever realized. And this is actually pretty important when we think about the number of people who go without nutritious food every day. The more of each of these plants we can eat, the better our nutrition is and the better able we are to truly nourish our friends and family with the food we’re growing.

Today on Just Grow Something we're jumping into some of the overlooked edibles in our gardens, the parts of the plants we didn’t know we can eat. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources:

7 Ways to Eat Zucchini Greens - Our Permaculture Life

Zucchini, You Can Eat the Stems, Too. – Lower Valley Assembly

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Growing Garlic in Warm Climates - Focal Point Friday Sep 15, 2023

Garlic needs specific conditions to grow and, often times, gardeners in warmer climates have a hard time meeting those conditions. Let's talk about some tips and tricks to making sure the conditions are right for growing garlic in your garden and one way to cheat the system!

Reference episode: Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Crops to Plant in Fall and Harvest in Spring - Ep. 164 Sep 12, 2023

This week, let’s take a different approach and talk about things to plant now and through the late fall to get a jump on the spring harvest or even harvest in the summer.

The timing of these plantings is going to vary by the region you garden in but the concepts are the same. Plant something now and let it get well-rooted, allow it to go dormant, then as the daylength increases in the spring watch it bounce back up with growth as soon as the conditions are right with no effort on our part in the spring.

This does a couple of things for us: allows us to put our early spring gardening hours elsewhere, often toward crops that need a little extra effort anyway, and gives us an even earlier harvest than we would typically see if we usually need to wait for the ground to thaw or warm up before working in our garden beds. Many of these things are particularly important for those of us in temperate or cold-weather climates but gardeners in warmer zones can take advantage of this, too, depending on the crop.

On today’s episode of Just Grow Something we’ll talk garlic, onions, root veggies, sprouting broccoli or broccoli raab, cold-hardy greens, and more that you can set and forget for a harvest next year. Let’s dig in!

Resources and References:

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates

Ep. 114 - Planting Onions to Overwinter

Ep. 133 - Growing Onions

Ep. 118 - Cover Crops in the Home Garden

Untreated Onion Sets | Sprout Mountain Farms

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast

Taylor Soil Thermometer

Truly Garden Cover Crop Seed Mix

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Five Crops to Plant in Fall for Winter Harvest, Zone by Zone - Ep. 163 Sep 05, 2023

If you live in an area that sees hard freezes in winter and sometimes extremely low temperatures, then you might think there isn’t anything you can grow for harvest in the winter. Not so! Even if you live in areas where the ground is routinely frozen solid for months on end, you can keep some crops in the ground and, with some effort, harvest some of those during at least the early parts of winter before bringing the final harvest indoors.

If you live in an area where you can grow food year-round you might not be aware of what crops are best for you to grow in your climate at the coldest and darkest time of the year.

There are two main factors that go into what you can grow in your garden through the winter: your weather conditions and your number of daylight hours.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re going to talk about crops that are contenders for being planted in the fall, harvested in the winter, whether you’re in a warmer area with plenty of daylight, or don’t have much daylight and it gets super cold. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources and References:

Sunset and sunrise times for any location - Free calendars and calculator (sunrise-sunset.org)

Storing the Most Popular Types of Fall Garden Crops: No Freezing, No Canning, No Dehydrating Required - Ep. 162

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Taylor Precision Products Standard Grade Thermometer

Direct Sowing Seeds in Late Summer Heat - Focal Point Friday Sep 01, 2023

We've talked about transplanting fall crops in the late summer heat, but what about sowing those seeds directly into the garden? Soil temperature is a real concern here, so today we'll spend a few minutes reviewing the optimal germination temperature for direct-sown fall garden crops and a few tricks for reducing the soil temperature more quickly.

Resources:

Soil Temperature and Seed Germination (psu.edu) Ep. 142 - Planting by Soil Temperature vs Air Temperature: When's the best time to plant?

Storing the Most Popular Types of Fall Garden Crops: No Freezing, No Canning, No Dehydrating Required - Ep. 162 Aug 29, 2023

Late summer and all through fall are the times many gardeners are harvesting crops they want to keep for the long-term to use throughout the winter. How do we harvest and store these vegetables to be sure they retain their flavor, texture, and nutrient value? Today we'll discuss basic cold storage of the most popular types of fall garden crop: no refrigeration, no freezing, no canning, no dehydrating. Just what you can rig up in your basement, a closet, a garage or, if you’re lucky, a root cellar. Each category of crop has its own preference for long-term storage conditions and it’s well worth making sure you have these areas figured out and set up ahead of time so you can keep the bounty going for as long as you can. Let's dig in!

References and Resources:

Ep. 42 - Just Grow Carrots Ep. 48 - We Got the Beet! Ep. 94 - Growing Sweet Potatoes Ep. 52 - Cabbage Ep. 34 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Winter Squash Ep. 133 - Growing Onions Just Grow Something Website

Shade Options for Late Summer Transplants - Focal Point Friday Aug 25, 2023

When talking about protecting our summer transplants from excessive heat to get them through to a fall harvest, we can't overlook the possibilities of shade. Temporary shade structures in the late summer garden can help protect our transplants, but it doesn't always require us to purchase or create something! On this Focal Point Friday episode, we spend just five minutes discussing six different options for protecting our fall transplants from too much sun.

Resources:

Fall Garden Transplants: Tips for Success in the Heat - Ep. 161

Fall Garden Transplants: Tips for Success in the Heat - Ep. 161 Aug 22, 2023

If you’re somewhere where Mother Nature is currently trying to cook you, what do you do to prepare and transplant crops that prefer cooler weather than what you've got? Do you wait? Do you forge ahead and just keep your fingers crossed? Today we’ll talk about how to mitigate the heat when trying to transplant fall crops including the reason why I actually didn’t get any of my plants in the ground last week and, instead, am transplanting now when it’s even hotter. Our heat index yesterday was 125F and I am not worried about my plants. We’ll talk about why. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources:

Basic Research and Applications of Mycorrhizae - Gopi K. Podila - Google Books

Influence of drought hardening on the resistance physiology of potato seedlings under drought stress - ScienceDirect

Ep.101 - How to Prepare and What to Grow in Your Fall Garden

Steps For Growing a Fall Garden

An Interview with Karin from the Just Grow Something Podcast! - The Girly Homesteader Podcast | Podcast on Spotify

Episode 89 - Life. with Karin Velez - The Rural Mindset Podcast | Podcast on Spotify

Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

More Fermenting Basics - Focal Point Friday Aug 11, 2023

Let's throwback to my first episode on fermenting and talk a little bit more about the basics. What are those bacteria doing? How safe is fermentation? Let's talk pickling versus fermenting, veggies versus fruits, and cold storage.

Episode Resources:

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

Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Getting Started in Fermenting - Ep. 160 Aug 08, 2023

Fermenting foods can be a fun and rewarding way to both preserve the harvest and enhance the flavors of our garden bounty. If you're a beginner looking to get started with fermenting your own foods, I’ve discovered it’s not hard, but there are some essential things to know. Today on Just Grow Something we’ll look at the key tenants behind fermenting foods, the basics of getting started, what types of equipment are necessary and what are just nice-to-haves. Ready to start fermenting? Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources and References:

Preserving Episodes | Just Grow Something with Karin Velez

Plan Like a Pro Fall Registration

Fermented Vegetables Book

Fermenting Supplies Kit

National Center for Home Food Preservation | How Do I? Can (uga.edu)

Health benefits of fermented foods: Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition: Vol 59, No 3 (tandfonline.com)

Health benefits of fermented foods: microbiota and beyond - ScienceDirect

Eating Fermented: Health Benefits of LAB-Fermented Foods (mdpi.com)

Are Fermented Foods Effective against Inflammatory Diseases? (mdpi.com)

Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Avoiding Disease in Saved Seeds - Focal Point Friday Aug 04, 2023

It's always best to start with saving seeds from your healthiest plants. But what if disease is unavoidable? In this throwback to episode 62, we talk about the two best treatments for saving seeds from plants infected with disease.

Episode Resources:

Hot Water Treatment for Seeds – Louisiana State University Ep. 62 - Properly Saving Seeds in Your Garden Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

How to Start Saving Seeds From Your Garden (and Why) - Ep. 159 Aug 01, 2023

If you were gardening in 2020 you likely remember the shortage of seeds that happened when the world shut down and suddenly everybody was growing a garden. Many seed companies were overwhelmed with the influx of orders and that shortage continued into the 2021 season. There’s nothing more disappointing than to peruse a beautiful seed catalog and make out your list of favorites to grow, only to be told the company is sold out.

Enter seed saving. If you grow heirloom or open-pollinated varieties, you can avoid this problem all together by saving your own seeds. Not only is it cost effective but often times you are creating a stronger strain that is going to work particularly well in your garden each subsequent year because the parent plant has been exposed to, and survived, everything your climate can throw at it.

Today on Just Grow Something we’re digging into why we should add seed saving to our list of garden tasks, even if it isn’t for every variety we grow in our garden. We’ll talk about the practice of saving seeds, including plant selection and pollination control, and go step-by-step into how to extract, clean, dry, and store those precious commodities to be sure we have plenty of options for our gardens for years to come. Let’s dig in.

Episode Resources:

Plan Like a Pro is open for fall registration! Get started here:

Plan Like A Pro | Just Grow Something with Karin Velez

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Ep. 63 - Proper Seed Storage: Moisture levels, storage conditions, containers, and more

Chart of Seed Viability and Simple Seed Germination Test

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Timing Fall Garden Starts - Focal Point Friday Jul 28, 2023

On this Focal Point Friday, we go back to Episode 101 and talk about three important things to consider when starting plants for the fall garden: germination time, days to maturity, and harvest window.

Episode Resources:

Ep. 101 - How to Prepare and What to Grow in Your Fall Garden

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Late Summer Succession Planting - Ep. 158 Jul 25, 2023

Succession planting gets a lot of attention in the early part of the season when we’re fresh and the garden is new, and we're not beat down by weather or pests or diseases or the endless pulling of weeds. But we often forget about it toward the hottest part of the year. This is why having a garden plan that goes from spring all the way through to fall and even into winter helps, because it’s laid out for us and it doesn’t require thought, just effort.

Succession planting is a really valuable technique for us to ensure a continuous harvest throughout the summer and into the fall. By staggering plantings of certain crops, we can extend the growing season and maximize our yields. Today we talk about some important things we need to know specifically about summer succession planting, what crops are most suitable to a late succession, timing, techniques, and how to use intercropping with your succession planting to make the most of the space you have. Let’s dig in!

Episode Links:

Just Grow Something Fall Garden Challenge Registration

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Five Best Veggies to Grow in the Fall Garden by Region - Focal Point Friday Jul 21, 2023

When we're talking about fall gardening, it's important to know what grows well in our area at that time of the season so we can better plan. Let's chat about the factors that go into deciding what to grow in the fall garden and my top five picks for your USDA Hardiness Zone, from Zone 1 to Zone 13.

Your Fall Garden Planning Checklist - Ep. 157 Jul 18, 2023

If you’ve never grown a fall garden, you are missing out. There seems to be so much less insect and disease pressure with a fall garden. The weather seems to be a bit more predictable, too, even if it is still hot when we get started.

This doesn’t mean the fall garden is fool-proof, but it does mean that many of us get a second chance or sort of “redo” of our spring crops. If there were things that didn’t grow well for us that we’d like to try again, fall is often a great time to do that. If there were things that grew fantastically well and we want more, fall is a great time for that, too. It’s also a time to get things going that will overwinter in the garden if our climate is mild enough or if we can employ some extra protection measures.

On today’s episode of Just Grow Something we’re going to run down the things we should be considering in the garden as we move into fall. The time to do these is now; many colder areas get shorted when it comes to summer gardening and the earlier we can plan and prepare the better off we are. And stick with me until the end and I’ll tell you all about my Fall Garden Planning Challenge. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources:

Fall Garden Planning Challenge - Sign Up Here!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Buy One Get One Free from Elm Dirt: Use Code WOLFCREEK

Safe Rainwater Collection: Beating Drought in Your Garden - Ep. 156 Jul 11, 2023

If you're in an area that is facing a drought this summer, like I am, you might be thinking of ways to combat it in the garden. Enter the rain barrel!

Home gardeners often use rain barrels to collect rainwater from roofs as a supplement to summer irrigation. Rainwater is a natural and unchlorinated water source for plants, but rooftop runoff can be contaminated by chemical and biological pollutants.

Today we talk about the practicality of rain barrels, possible contaminants and where they come from, and how to safely use rain barrel water in the garden. Let's dig in!

Resources and Citations:

Chang, M., M.W. McBroom, and R.S. Beasley. 2004. Roofing as a Source of Nonpoint Water Pollution. Journal of Environmental Management 73: 307–315.

Chen, J.J., R.C. Beeson, Jr., T.H. Yeager, R.H. Stamps, and L.A. Felter. 2003. Evaluation of Captured Rainwater and Irrigation Runoff for Greenhouse Foliage and Bedding Plant Production. HortScience 38(2): 228–233

de Kwaadsteniet, M., P.H. Dobrowsky, A. van Deventer, W. Khan, and T.E. Cloete. 2013. Domestic Rainwater Harvesting: Microbial and Chemical Water Quality and Point-Of-Use Treatment Systems. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 224(7).

Lim, K.Y., and S.C. Jiang. 2013. Reevaluation of Health Risk Benchmark for Sustainable Water Practice through Risk Analysis of Rooftop-Harvested Rainwater. Water Research 47(20): 7273–7286.

Shuster, W.D., D. Lye, A. de la Cruz, L.K. Rhea, K. O’Connell, and A. Kelty. 2013. Assessment of Residential Rain Barrel Quality and Use in Cincinnati, Ohio. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 49(4): 753–765.

POTENTIAL CONTAMINANTS IN RESIDENTIAL RAIN BARREL WATER (HOME GARDEN SERIES), Washington State University Extension

100-Year-Old Way to Filter Rainwater in a Barrel - The Prepper Journal

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

The Link Between Ultra-Processed Foods and Mental Health - Focal Point Friday Jul 07, 2023

Is eating ultra-processed foods associated with depression, anxiety, memory problems, and trouble reasoning? An article I read in early May took me down a research rabbit hole and there are a lot of recent studies that say just that: 60% of the American diet is ultra-processed foods and they are causing mental health issues and cognitive decline. Today we're digging into the data and uncovering what defines ultra-processed foods, how much it affects our mental health, and to what extent. Resources and Citations: How Eating Ultraprocessed Foods Can Affect Your Mental Health - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Characterizing Ultra-Processed Foods by Energy Density, Nutrient Density, and Cost - PubMed (nih.gov) Nutrients | Free Full-Text | The Healthfulness of the US Packaged Food and Beverage Supply: A Cross-Sectional Study (mdpi.com) Current Intake of Ultra-Processed Foods in the U.S. Adult Population According to Education-Level and Income | Current Developments in Nutrition | Oxford Academic (oup.com) Cross-sectional examination of ultra-processed food consumption and adverse mental health symptoms - PubMed (nih.gov) Association Between Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods and Cognitive Decline | Dementia and Cognitive Impairment | JAMA Neurology | JAMA Network Diet and depression: exploring the biological mechanisms of action | Molecular Psychiatry (nature.com)

Growing Melons: Watermelon, Cantaloupe and More - Ep. 155 Jul 04, 2023

There are few things that taste like summer quite like cantaloupe or watermelon. These hydrating favorites can sometimes be a little mystifying for new gardeners to grow. And what's the difference between a crenshaw and a canary melon?

On today’s episode, we’re digging into all things melon. What does it take to grow them, can they cross-pollinate, and what’s the trick to picking a truly ripe watermelon? Let's Dig in!

Episode References and Citations:

Wasylikowa, Krystyna; van der Veen, Marijke (2004). "An archaeobotanical contribution to the history of watermelon, Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai (syn. C. vulgaris Schrad.)". Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. 13 (4): 213–217. doi:10.1007/s00334-004-0039-6. ISSN 0939-6314. JSTOR 23419585. S2CID 129058509.

Paris, Harry S. (August 2015). "Origin and emergence of the sweet dessert watermelon, Citrullus lanatus". Annals of Botany. 116 (2): 133–148. doi:10.1093/aob/mcv077. PMC 4512189. PMID 26141130.

Strauss, Mark (21 August 2015). "The 5,000-Year Secret History of the Watermelon". National Geographic News.

"Cantaloupe". Oxford English Dictionary. 2016.

Marion Eugene Ensminger; Audrey H. Ensminger (1993). "Cantaloupe". Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia (2nd Edition, Volume 1 ed.). CRC Press. pp. 329–331. ISBN 084938981X.

Melons: Cantaloupe, Muskmelon, Honeydew, Crenshaw, Casaba, etc. | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

Watermelon | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

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

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

Episode Links:

Buy One Get One Free from Elm Dirt: Use Code WOLFCREEK

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Excessive Heat in the Garden: Helping Our Tomatoes, Peppers and Other Summer Plants - Focal Point Friday Jun 30, 2023

It's hot and your plants look awful! Extreme heat can mean extreme responses from our gardens. Let's spend a few minutes talking about what's normal, what we should and shouldn't be doing, and how we can help when needed to help the summer garden get through a heat wave.

Summer Garden Checklist: Eight Tasks to Keep the Harvest Going - Ep. 154 Jun 27, 2023

Today we’re talking specific tasks we need to perform in the garden to get our best yield and to keep the harvest going through to fall. Unfortunately, our gardens are not “set and forget it” kind of things. We can’t just put the plants out there and come back in six weeks and expect to harvest. And as the days heat up and summertime events take over it can be tempting to skip some of these things in favor of other more fun activities.

We’re going to run down the list of eight things we need to be paying attention to as the gardening season moves on in order to keep things running smoothly. Any one of these by themselves can be critical to our garden success but I would say the first three are the most vital in my experience. And I’ll be upfront about how difficult this can be when it’s hot and sweaty and dusty and dry and the pool is calling your name which is why having a checklist in front of you of weekly tasks can help get you in the garden and done so you can enjoy the rest of your summer activities knowing your garden is well-tended. Let’s dig in!

Episode Links:

Four Ways to Use Less Water in the Garden

Ep. 134 - Soil Texture and Composition: How it affects water and nutrients in the garden and how to know what type you have

Types of Mulch for the Garden

Benefits of using compost as mulch in your garden.

Ep. 55 - Identifying Insects in the Garden

Companion Planting and Trap Crops for Insect Control

Ep. 99 - Eight Common Tomato Diseases: Identification, Prevention, and Treatment

Ep. 18 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrients and Why You Need to Know Them

Ep. 22 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrient Deficiencies and Toxicity

Identifying Nutrient Deficiencies in Your Garden Plants

Indicators of Nutrient Toxicity in Garden Plants

What To Do If Your Plants Show Signs of Nutrient Deficiency (Or Toxicity) Buy One Get One Free from Elm Dirt: Use Code WOLFCREEK

Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon JustGrowSomethingPodcast.com

What is Well-Draining Soil? - Ep. 153 Jun 20, 2023

The description on just about every seed packet or plant tag usually says something along the lines of, this plant “likes fertile, well-draining soil, with lots of organic matter.” The fertility part we likely understand, and we talk about soil organic matter all the time around here. But what about well-draining soil? What does that mean, how do we know if we have it, and what do we do if we don’t? If our soil isn’t well-draining are we destined to only garden in planters where we can completely control the soil? Can we create well-draining soil in our containers or can we modify our existing soil to make it well draining?

We know the soil we are gardening in is one of the biggest building blocks for a healthy plant and, therefore, a healthy harvest. What are the possible consequences for not having well-draining soil? How does it affect the plants? We are getting into all of that today including, step by step, how to test any soil in any location to see exactly how well it drains. Let’s dig in!

Episode Resources:

Ep. 136 - Filling New Raised Beds

Ep. 134 - Soil Texture and Composition: How it affects water and nutrients in the garden and how to know what type you have

Buy One Get One Free from Elm Dirt: Use Code WOLFCREEK

IARC Monographs Volume 112: evaluation of (who.int)

Glyphosate, Liver Disease, and Metabolic Syndromes in Children - Focal Point Friday Jun 16, 2023

New research from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health shows that childhood exposure to glyphosate is linked to liver inflammation and metabolic disorder in early adulthood, which could lead to liver cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease later in life.

Thousands of people have filed lawsuits against Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, and its parent company, Bayer, claiming that exposure to glyphosate caused them to develop cancer.

Levels of glyphosate found in our foods have always been within the Environmental Protection Agency’s "regulatory safe levels", but all the prior research was focused on cancer risk. What about liver and metabolic syndromes? Other health risks?

Today's episode explores new findings and continuing research in this area.

Episode Resources:

Roundup ingredient found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats, and other cereals | Fox Business

Association of Lifetime Exposure to Glyphosate and Aminomethylphosphonic Acid (AMPA) with Liver Inflammation and Metabolic Syndrome at Young Adulthood: Findings from the CHAMACOS Study | Environmental Health Perspectives | Vol. 131, No. 3 (nih.gov)

Looking beyond Cancer: Glyphosate and Liver, Metabolic Diseases in Youth | Environmental Health Perspectives | Vol. 131, No. 5 (nih.gov)

Childhood exposure to common herbicide may increase the risk of disease in young adulthood - UC Berkeley Public Health

Kids’ glyphosate exposure linked to liver disease and metabolic syndrome - EHN

Growing Okra - Ep. 152 Jun 13, 2023

On today’s episode we go over the basics of growing okra, including preferred temperatures and conditions that are key to its success, and discuss ways to work around some of those preferences to get yourself a crop even in a short season or difficult climate. You can most certainly grow this southern favorite in a cooler climate with a shorter season with just a few tricks!

Episode Resources:

Vegetables. Wageningen, Netherlands: Backhuys. 2004. p. 21. ISBN 9057821478.

"Okra, or 'Gumbo,' from Africa". Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M University. http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabletravelers/okra.html

"Colonial Food In Philadelphia - 1883 Words | Internet Public Library".

Okra - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

Okra: Nutrition, benefits, and recipe tips (medicalnewstoday.com)

Growing Okra Plants | How to Plant Okra and General Growing Tips

How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest Okra - Harvest to Table

Okra | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

19 Best Okra Varieties To Grow In Your Garden Or Container (gardeningchores.com)

How to Store Okra (eatingwell.com)

Podcast Resources:

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Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Burpee 'Sure Thing' zucchini

Can Parthenocarpic Zucchini Save Our Harvest by Helping Us Avoid Pests? Jun 09, 2023

If you're in the U.S. Midwest, squash bugs and squash vine borers often keep you from getting your best zucchini harvest. But what if there were a variety of zucchini you could keep covered the whole time you were growing it so the pests couldn't get to it? And it would fruit without pollination? Today we explore the possibility of parthenocarpy in zucchini varieties, where to find them, and how they can thwart our biggest zucchini pests.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Dunja - Organic (F1) Zucchini Squash Seed | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Golden Glory - (F1) Zucchini Squash Seed | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Noche - (F1) Zucchini Squash Seed | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Give Parthenocarpic Squash a Try Next Year | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

Conflicting Gardening Advice: Who Should We Believe? - Ep. 151 Jun 07, 2023

Sometimes it is very difficult to sift through all the information and advice we get as gardeners and to know what exactly we should be doing out there. This source says one thing, that blog says another thing, and the book on our bedside swears those other two are incorrect. What are we supposed to do?

Today we’re talking about two specific pieces of advice I was asked about over the weekend that seem to be complete opposites of each other but, in reality, they are two sides of the same coin. One of those pieces of advice came from me and how you act on that, and other pieces of advice, totally depends on your unique gardening situation. We’ll go deeper into that on today’s show.

We’ll also announce the winner of our 50k giveaway and I’ll share how my day in the garden went. It might just make you feel a little better about yours. Let’s dig in!

Podcast Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Garden Amendments and Pets: Dangerous Mulch, Moldy Compost, Mycotoxins and More - Focal Point Friday Jun 02, 2023

Our pets are part of the family and we hate to see anything happen to them. Let's be sure there's nothing we're doing in the garden that might be hazardous to their health. Today's discussion is all about avoiding the dangers from our compost piles, mushroom compost, mulch, fertilizers and amendments.

Episode Resources:

Mushroom Toxicity | VCA Animal Hospitals (vcahospitals.com)

Tremorgenic Mycotoxins - Moldy Food Strikes Back - CriticalCareDVM

Common Garden Dangers for Dogs - BluePearl Pet Hospital (bluepearlvet.com)

Dangers of Fertilizers to Pets (intermountainpet.com)

Rhubarb, Asparagus Beetles, Fertilizer, and Other Gardener Questions - Ep. 150 May 30, 2023

The height of the gardening season in the northern hemisphere is on the horizon which means peak time for gardening questions! Today we dig into why rhubarb might not turn red when ready to harvest, what the numbers on fertilizers mean and why the source matters, battling asparagus beetles, and preventing garden damage from animals during drought.

If you've got a gardening question, I'd love to hear it! Send me a message on social media, email me, use the link below to send me a voice message or jump into the Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook group!

Episode Resources:

Asparagus beetles in home gardens | UMN Extension

The Asparagus Beetle: Organic Control Tips – Mother Earth News

How and When to Fertilize Your Vegetable Garden | The Old Farmer's Almanac

Garden Fertilizer Basics | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)

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Other Resources:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Eight Common Tomato Plant Diseases - Focal Point Friday May 26, 2023

Since it's peak tomato growing season in most areas of the northern hemisphere, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an old episode about tomato plant diseases! This is not a comprehensive list, but a discussion of eight of the most prevalent diseases. As always, be sure to check with your local university extension to find out which diseases are most prevalent in your area. This will save you some stress. Let's dig in!

Episode Resources:

Ep. 99 - Eight Common Tomato Diseases: Identification, Prevention, and Treatment

Identifying and Controlling Persistent Weeds in the Garden - Ep. 149 May 23, 2023

I spent the better part of my afternoon on Monday pulling Johnsongrass from my tomato field and in between my pole beans, which is what prompted today’s episode. That Johnsongrass is a perennial weed that reproduces both by seeds and by rhizomes and it’s been an aggressive problem for us in one particular field and I thought it would be helpful to give some tips on controlling all types of weeds in your garden.

Today we’ll talk about knowing the difference between annual weeds and perennial ones, the different ways they spread, and some strategies on how to prevent and control them. In most cases, you are not going to eradicate them completely, so managing them is the name of the game here. In some cases, this could take years and the frustration level may make you want to give up. But trust me when I say even the heaviest weed infestation can be controlled with a plan. Let’s dig in.

Episode resources: 33 Lawn and Garden Weeds: How to Identify and Control Them. https://www.bhg.com/gardening/pests/insects-diseases-weeds/types-of-weeds/. How to Get Rid of Garden Weeds Naturally | The Old Farmer's Almanac. https://www.almanac.com/weed-control-techniques. Identify common weeds / RHS Gardening. https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/Common-Weeds. How to Identify 25 Common Weed Types and Control Them | HGTV. https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/landscaping-and-hardscaping/12-most-common-weeds-pictures. Weed Persistence: Why Are Weeds So Persistent? - Science ABC. https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-are-weeds-persistent.html. Podcast Resources:

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Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Tomato Varieties for Short-Season Areas and Challenging Climates - Ep. 148

Tomato Varieties for Containers and Small Spaces May 19, 2023

Tuesday we talked about tomatoes that perform well in short seasons or challenging conditions. I had several listeners reach out and ask about growing in containers and small spaces. There are lots of options for this! On this Focal Point Friday episode, we talk container growing, the different categories of compact tomatoes, and varieties that perform well in just about any small space.

References:

Tomato Varieties for Short-Season Areas and Challenging Climates - Ep. 148 May 16, 2023

For many gardeners the ultimate vegetable to grow is the tomato. There really is something special about the flavor of a fully ripe tomato picked from the vine and brought straight to your plate. Unfortunately, growing tomatoes can be a challenge if you live in an area with a short season.

For those of you living in colder regions your growing season for warm-weather crops may be very, very short between frost-free days. Those in very warm climates have the opposite problem; you may need to get a quick crop in before the days turn so hot you can’t grow anything! And even if neither of these applies to you, you might be in an area that is plagued by heavy pest pressure or foliar diseases that take out your plants fairly early in the season. In any of these cases, you need a tomato plant that will produce quickly and reliably.

So, today we’re going to go over what traits you should look for in a tomato variety if you need them to produce quickly and review some varieties that not only match those traits but many that can actually perform well under cool-weather conditions, which is not the norm for most tomato varieties. If you’ve ever struggled with getting tomatoes to produce in your garden before the first frost of the season hits or before the sun tries to cook them on the vine or before the insects and diseases completely destroy your plants, this episode is for you. Let’s dig in.

Episode Resources:

Vegetable Breeding Program | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

Moskvich (aka Moskovich) Tomato - Heirloom, Open-Pollinated, non-Hybrid Victory Seeds® – Victory Seed Company

Bush Early Girl Tomato – Bonnie Plants

Santiam Tomato, Santiam Tomato Seeds - Reimer Seeds

Sub Arctic Plenty, Tomato Seeds | Urban Farmer (ufseeds.com)

Heirloom Tomato Seed - Oregon Spring | Non-GMO Vegetable Gardening · True Leaf Market

Quedlinburger Fruhe Liebe Tomato, Medium-Small Tomato Seeds: Totally Tomatoes 83 Fast-Growing Short-Season Tomato Varieties for Cold Climates – Garden Betty

Podcast Resources:

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Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

JustGrowSomethingPodcast.com Merchandise | Just Grow Something

Tomatoes: To Prune or Not to Prune? Keys to Your Biggest Tomato Yield. May 12, 2023

Does pruning your tomatoes in a certain way increase the yield? Does it really matter? Are there other more important factors involved? I get asked all the time if we prune our tomatoes, how we prune them, how many tomatoes a gardener should expect to get from one plant, etc. Folks tend to get frustrated when it’s not a straightforward answer.

Your tomato yield is likely to boil down to a number of factors before you even get to the pruning question. Today's episode digs into the three factors that are a much bigger consideration in tomato yield than pruning and whether pruning is suited to your specific goals. Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon

The Great Marigold Debate - Ep. 147 May 09, 2023

For as long as I can remember I’ve believed that marigolds were the best companion plant for everything. Despite the naysayers touting time and time again that it was all conjecture, I stood by the research I could find that proved otherwise.

If you listened to last week’s Focal Point Friday episode you understand the position I’ve found myself in after all these years of companion planting marigolds in and amongst all of my garden plants. To my way of thinking, as long as there wasn’t a proven detriment to the paring then even if the marigolds weren’t preventing the pests in my garden, they would at least be attracting the beneficial insects that either were good pollinators or that actually preyed on the insects I didn’t want hanging around. And many marigolds have a strong scent and I hoped this would also serve to confuse those pests that plague my crops.

Do I still believe all these things? Yes. I will go to my grave defending marigolds as good companion plants because I have the science-backed research to show those benefits. I, as always, will link to boatloads of research in the show notes so you, too, can nerd out about some plant science. But, have I had to take a step back and do a little more research about my beloved companion before I continue to make recommendations to people in their gardens? You betcha. Because science is always evolving and so are we as gardeners and one of my favorite mantras is we don’t know what we don’t know. And sometimes we just gotta admit when we’re wrong.

RESOURCES:

Insects | Free Full-Text | Conservation Biological Control of Codling Moth (Cydia pomonella): Effects of Two Aromatic Plants, Basil (Ocimum basilicum) and French Marigolds (Tagetes patula) (mdpi.com)

Weed and Pest Control: Conventional and New Challenges - Google Books

Which companion plants affect the performance of green peach aphid on host plants? Testing of 12 candidate plants under laboratory conditions - Ben Issa - 2016 - Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata - Wiley Online Library

Incorporating lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus L.) and marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) as non-host barrier plants to reduce impact of flea beetle (Chaetocnema confinis C.) in cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata L.) (actajournal.com)

Evaluating French marigold as a border insectary plant for the enhancement of beneficial arthropods in sweet corn plantings - ScienceDirect

Intercropping of Pak choi (Brassica rapa chinensis) with Marigold flower (Tagetes erecta L.) and Onion (Allium cepa L.) to control foliar pests researchgate.net)

"A Proactive Pest Control Calendar and Rearing Beneficial Insects" by Victoria Bolden (upenn.edu)

Microsoft Word - Draft-Proceedings_8th DBM Conference_2019 (researchgate.net)

Companion planting with French marigolds protects tomato plants from glasshouse whiteflies through the emission of airborne limonene | PLOS ONE

Episode Links:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Best Companion Plants for Zucchini and One Potentially Disastrous One - Focal Point Friday May 05, 2023

Companion planting is a great way to deter pests in our garden, specifically for summer squashes. Some plants repel pests like aphids, whiteflies, melonworms and pickleworm. Others are better suited as trap crops, attracting aphids, squash vine borerers, squash bugs and cucumber beetles so we can remove them from the garden and destroy them before they get to our zucchini or yellow squash. It's important to know which pests we're dealing with so we know which plants to use and how to use them. And I'll bet many of us have used one specific plant incorrectly as a companion plant for our area, and that includes me! Let's dig in to the best, and worst, companion plants for zucchini and other summer squashes.

Resources:

Companion planting with French marigolds protects tomato plants from glasshouse whiteflies through the emission of airborne limonene | PLOS ONE

Virginia State University College of Agriculture | Companion Planting

melonworm - Diaphania hyalinata (ufl.edu)

Can the introduction of companion plants increase biological control services of key pests in organic squash? - Lopez - 2022 - Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata - Wiley Online Library

⁠9 of the Best Companion Plants to Grow with Zucchini (gardenerspath.com)⁠

Ep. 146 - Growing Zucchini and other Summer Squashes May 02, 2023

Summer squashes are a staple in most summer gardens. Whether you call them zucchini, courgette, or marrow, they can be easy to grow and very prolific, so they are a great introduction to a successful harvest for new gardeners.

Unless you live in an area where pests and diseases are the name of the game: squash vine borers, squash bugs, cucumber beetles, drought, powdery mildew and bacterial wilt can all destroy a squash plant before we get a single fruit.

Whether you live where squash grow so prolifically that you're sneaking onto your neighbor's porch at night to drop off a bag full or you're battling invaders to get a single harvest, today's episode has you covered with techniques for planting and protecting our coveted summer squash. Let's dig in!

Episode links:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

American Indian Health - Health (ku.edu)

Merchandise | Just Grow Something Episode Resources:

FoodData Central (usda.gov)

Cucurbitacin - Wikipedia

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

Cucumber, Squash, Melon & Other Cucurbit Insect Pests | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

Squash, Zucchini and Summer | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

Focal Point Friday: Choosing Whether to Grow From Seed or Transplant Apr 28, 2023

Whether we grow our garden from seeds directly in the soil or start out with transplants, there are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to both methods. Today let's break down the five main factors to consider when making this decision.

As always, find more gardening information on the Just Grow Something website.

Ep. 145 - Kitchen Waste as Plant Food: Egg Shells, Banana Peels, and Tea Bags, Oh My! Apr 25, 2023

The gardening "advice" we get may not always be accurate. Bury a whole egg under your tomato plants? Make a tea from banana peels? What advice is legit and what is bogus? Let's look at the scientific research behind common kitchen scraps that might also be used as garden amendments: banana peels, eggshells, teas leaves and spent coffee grounds.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Comparative Study of Various Organic Fertilizers Effect on Growth and Yield of Two Economically Important Crops, Potato and Pea (scirp.org)

RESOURCES

Effects of banana peel compost rates on Swiss chard growth performance and yield in Shirka district, Oromia, Ethiopia - ScienceDirect

Preparation of nano-fertilizer blend from banana peels | SpringerLink

BIO-ORGANIC LIQUID FERTILIZER PRODUCTION FROM CHICKEN MANURE AND BANANA PEELS AND EVALUATING ITS EFFECTIVENESS ON LETTUCE (Lactuca sativa L.) UNDER HYDROPONIC CONDITION. (haramaya.edu.et)

HEN EGGSHELL WASTE AS FERTILIZER FOR THE GROWTH OF PHASEOLUS VULGARIS (COW PEA SEEDS)

Chicken eggshells as a soil amendment and their relationship with the morphological response of mustard plants (Brassica juncea, L.) - IOPscience

The use of spent coffee grounds in growing media for the production of Brassica seedlings in nurseries | SpringerLink

Agriculture | Free Full-Text | Spent Coffee Grounds Applied as a Top-Dressing or Incorporated into the Soil Can Improve Plant Growth While Reducing Slug Herbivory (mdpi.com)

Acute Toxicity of Experimental Fertilizers Made of Spent Coffee Grounds | SpringerLink

Impact of spent coffee grounds as organic amendment on soil fertility and lettuce growth in two Mediterranean agricultural soils: Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science: Vol 64, No 6 (tandfonline.com)

Biblioteca Digital do IPB: Effect of fresh and composted spent coffee grounds on lettuce growth, photosynthetic pigments and mineral composition

Use of Spent Coffee Ground Compost in Peat-Based Growing Media for the Production of Basil and Tomato Potting Plants: Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis: Vol 47, No 3 (tandfonline.com)

Applying spent coffee grounds directly to urban agriculture soils greatly reduces plant growth - ScienceDirect

Focal Point Friday: Composting Basics Apr 21, 2023

This is the time of year when we not only start to have a lot of yard waste and garden waste but we generally have food waste coming out of our kitchens year round, so now is the perfect time to put all that waste to good use. The average American produces about 1,600 pounds (726 kg) of garbage a year and approximately 75% of this garbage is organic material. That means 1200 lbs of the 1600 pounds of waste produced could be composted. Per person. We don’t want that organic material going to the landfills and causing methane gases to add to the atmosphere, so let’s talk about the basic ingredients of a compost pile.

Resources:

Ep. 80 - Creating and Managing a Compost Pile

Ep. 81 - Talking Compost with Stan "The Compost Man"Slaughter

Ep. 82 - Compost Systems for Home Gardeners

Ep. 106 - Introduction to Vermicomposting (Worm Farming!)

What is Vermicompost and Why Should We Care?

Ep. 144 - Gardening and Gleaning for Charity: After The Harvest Apr 18, 2023

Last summer we talked a little bit about growing extra produce in our gardens specifically for donation. I will leave a link to that episode in this episode description. This week I have the pleasure of interviewing two folks from After The Harvest, an organization here in the Kansas City Metro area that rescues fruits and vegetables from going to waste and donates them to agencies that serve hungry people in the Greater Kansas City area. Their volunteers glean after the harvest, picking what’s left in farmers’ fields and picking up already harvested leftover produce. They bring together volunteers, growers, financial donors and food agencies all participating in fighting hunger, improving nutrition and reducing food waste.

Our farm has donated to After The Harvest for years at one of our local farmer’s markets and I was happy to reach out get them on this show to not only spread their mission here locally but to speak to you about how you can get involved in whatever organization facilitates the movement of fresh fruits in vegetables in your area to the people who need it the most.

So, take a listen to my conversation with Brooke and Clay from After The Harvest and maybe think about the ways you can be helping this movement in your own area with produce from your own garden. Let’s dig in.

RESOURCES:

Ep. 95 - Grow a Row to Donate

After the Harvest | Healthy Food for Hungry People » After the Harvest (aftertheharvestkc.org)

Volunteer » After the Harvest Gleaning Calendar

Laws, Resources, & Organizations for Gleaning & Food Recovery - National Gleaning Project

Map of Gleaning & Food Recovery Organizations in the USA (nationalgleaningproject.org)

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Merchandise | Just Grow Something Positively Farming MediaPodcast Playlist on Spotify

Focal Point Friday: Transitioning Plants into the Garden or Indoor Growing Space Apr 14, 2023

In this timely flashback episode, we go back to episode 91 and talk about hardening off our plants to move them into our garden spaces. Whether we've started them from seed ourselves or we've purchased plants and brought them in, our plants need some time to acclimate. The process is a little different in both cases. And if we're growing plants indoors, we have a different set of circumstances to navigate.

Let's talk about transitioning our plants.

References: Ep. 91 -Transitioning Your Plants into Your Garden

Ep. 143 - Growing Corn: Sweet Corn, Popcorn, Dent Corn and more Apr 11, 2023

One of the best flavors of the summer has to be sweet corn right from the stalk. If it’s picked at the right time and eaten right away, you really don’t need anything on it. It’s just that good. If you’re lucky to find some at the farmers market and can get it home and eat it right away, it’s almost as good.

But we can absolutely grow our own even in smallish spaces. And what about growing our own dried corn varieties? There are so many choices when it comes to dent corn, popcorn, and other dried corn types that we can use for corn meal and even just for decoration. You’ve probably seen beautiful glass-colored heirloom varieties in catalogs that are almost too pretty to be believed.

But what you also may have seen in the seed catalogs next to the sweet corn are little letters like su and sh2 or terms like synergistic or sugar-enhanced. What does all that mean and is it genetically modified? Today we’re going to figure out exactly what it takes to grow both sweet corn and dried corn, all the differences between the two categories and the corn varieties within them, what can plague corn plants and how to harvest and store it. Let’s dig in!

Resources:

How to tell the difference between types of corn - Farm and Dairy

American Indian Health - Health (ku.edu)

Native American Indians and their use of Corn

Growing Heirloom Corn Varieties - Little House on the Prairie

Corn 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits (healthline.com)

What are the differences between the various types of sweet corn? | Horticulture and Home Pest News (iastate.edu)

How To Avoid Corn Cross Pollination - Our Stoney Acres

How to Grow Sweet Corn - Farmers' Almanac - Plan Your Day. Grow Your Life. (farmersalmanac.com)

Organic Insect Management in Sweet Corn - SARE

Dent, Flint & Flour Corn (southernexposure.com)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Soil Temperature and Seed Germination (psu.edu)

Focal Point Friday: Spring Frost Protection Options Apr 07, 2023

It's spring planting time in areas of North America, or getting close to it, and many of us have the danger of a late frost hitting our gardens after we've spent so much time putting tender annuals in the ground. Let's revisit some options for frost protection in the garden, using both purchased items and those we can find around the house.

Ep. 142 - Planting by Soil Temperature vs Air Temperature: When's the best time to plant? Apr 04, 2023

How do we know as gardeners when the appropriate time is to plant those seeds or transplant our seedlings? There are guidelines on the backs of seed packets and tables and charts online and in books that tell us the supposed correct date to plant those seeds. But this generic information is usually based on the average last frost date for our area. If you’re in an area that doesn’t often get a frost or if you live in a frozen tundra that date can be deceiving. Plus, that information doesn’t take into consideration the fluctuations we see in our temperatures and weather patterns each season or the ever-changing climate. In nature, seeds just know when to sprout at the right time based on the cycling of the seasons. There proper germination is based on factors like moisture levels, light availability and, most importantly, soil temperature.

Today we’ll talk about optimal soil temperatures for both cool season and warm season crops, for both seed germination and transplant growth, how that compares to our average air temperatures, how to properly test your soil temperature and where to find historic soil temperature data for your area so you can more effectively plan your planting dates. Let’s dig in.

Resources:

Soil Temp Planting V2docx (wisc.edu)

Mineral Nutrition of Plants: Principles and Perspectives | SpringerLink

7 facts you didn’t know about soil temperature (farmprogress.com)

Soil Temperature and Planting Crops (harvesttotable.com)

Soil Temperature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Taylor Precision Products Standard Grade Thermometer (Amazon affiliate link)

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Focal Point Friday: Mushroom Compost Mar 31, 2023

Let's round out our mushroom discussions with some good 'ol compost! What is mushroom compost, is it good for our gardens, and how do we use it? Can we use the substrate from our own homegrown mushrooms and how is that different from the commercially available bags in the store? Spend a few minutes with me today to discover mushroom compost.

Resources:

Mushroom Compost: The Bad, The Good and The Beautiful - Compost Magazine

Analysis of Fresh Mushroom Compost in: HortTechnology Volume 20 Issue 2 (2010) (ashs.org) Say Thank You!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

MyCo Planet - Fresh Gourmet Mushrooms (mycoplanetkc.com) Say Thank You!

Ep. 141 - Talking with Mushroom Growers Mar 28, 2023

Last week we talked all about growing mushrooms but that was all based on research and nothing to do with my own personal experiences. Even though my husband has always wanted to create a “fungus of the month club” to go along with our CSA program, we’ve never quite gotten there. I have worked with multiple mushroom growers over the years as vendors at our local farmer’s markets and have yet to even grow mushrooms from a kit! I just support them at their stands when I get a craving for a cremini.

So, I thought it would be super helpful to hear from not one, but two different mushroom growers about how they got started growing and where they’ve gone from there. Technically, it’s three growers because one brought along their production manager, and they were all a wealth of information.

RESOURCES:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Focal Point Friday: Plant Nutrient Basics Mar 24, 2023

On this week's Focal Point Friday episode, we're revisiting the basics of plant nutrients. Good plant growth is directly correlated to good plant nutrition. The efficiency with which a plant uses the nutrients in the soil varies greatly according to the composition of your soil, water availability, soil temperatures, and so much more. But it’s important to know how the most essential nutrients work so you can choose soil amendments and fertilizers, if necessary, that will most benefit what you’re growing.

Knowing which nutrients your plant relies on most and which stages of growth are most demanding will help you get the most out of your garden without negatively affecting the plants or the soil. Just like it’s possible to be lacking in nutrients, it is possible to have too much of a good thing!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 140 - Growing Mushrooms Mar 21, 2023

This week, we’re digging into a topic I have been asked numerous times to cover and really couldn’t because I’d never grown them! With names like puffball, stinkhorn, enoki, paddy straw, shaggy mane, and more, I didn’t even know where to begin to research how to grow them much less do a deep dive into the ethnobotany of the crop.

I’m talking about mushrooms. This is not going to be my typical crop specific episode because the rabbit hole I went down made me realize the awesome complexity of what we refer to as a mushroom and all the different traditional and current uses for them. So, while we’ll deviate a little from the format today, prepare to learn everything you can possibly imagine learning about growing mushrooms in about a 40-minute timeframe. And, trust me, there’s a lot. Let’s dig in!

RESOURCES

Health Benefits of Mushrooms – Cleveland Clinic

The Mushroom Council | Explore Mushrooms

The largest living organism in the world is the mycelium | 7 Miracles, which Mushrooms are Capable to Perform! (chirkup.me)

What is the scientific name for a mushroom? (narkive.com)

Mushrooms: Health Benefits & Nutrition Facts - Drlogy

Mushroom Growing Supplies List: Everything You Need | GroCycle

Growing Mushrooms at Home: The PF Tek Method – Mother Earth News

How to Grow Mushrooms: Step-By-Step Guide (wayofleaf.com)

How to Start Growing Mushrooms at Home (curativemushrooms.com)

Growing Mushrooms at Home - Gardening Solutions - University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (ufl.edu)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Focal Point Friday: Quick Tips for Weed Management Mar 17, 2023

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another Focal Point Friday episode. Let’s spend just a few minutes together reviewing a snippet of info from a previous episode, highlighting a new topic, or quickly focusing on a current event in the food and agriculture world.

This week's focus is weed management. The main strategy to keep weeds out of the garden: prevention!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 139 - Foliar Feeding: Increasing Plant Nutrition Through Their Leaves Mar 14, 2023

Foliar feeding has been the subject of a little bit of debate over the years, both in the horticultural space and as far as online gardening information goes. The practice of foliar feeding or foliar fertilization essentially involves applying water-based nutrients to the leaves of our plants to enhance their nutrition. In the home garden this can be done with a spray bottle or a pump sprayer or by using an attachment at the end of our hose that feeds the liquid into the water as it passes through.

While 90% of the nutrients for our vegetable crops as soil applications based on soil tests and the specific crop’s nutrient needs, foliar fertilization is meant to help maintain or enhance or correct a plants nutritional profile during the growing season.

On today’s episode we dig into what foliar feeding is, how to use it, the benefits and drawbacks, what stages of growth are most benefited by it and why I choose to use it in rotation with my other approaches to plant nutrition and soil health. And, yes, there is a soil component here. There always is. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 22 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrient Deficiencies and Toxicity

RESOURCES:

Identifying Nutrient Deficiencies in Your Garden Plants

Foliar Feeding Revisited // Missouri Produce Growers Bulletin // Integrated Pest Management, University of Missouri

Foliar Fertilization for Vegetable Crops | Weekly Crop Update (udel.edu)

Foliar nutrition in vegetables: A review (phytojournal.com)

Focal Point Friday: Understanding Plant Nomenclature - Family, Genus, Species, Variety, and more. Mar 10, 2023

What exactly does that name on the plant tag or seed packet mean? How does that affect what we plant and how or where we plant it? On this Focal Point Friday, let's go way back to Episode 6 to demystify plant nomenclature and the differences between open-pollinated, heirloom, and hybrid.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 138 - Gardening for Nutrition Mar 07, 2023

Did you know that poor diet is the leading cause of disease worldwide? Diets low in fruits and vegetables contribute significantly to some of the world’s most widespread and debilitating nutrient-related disorders. Which is why many of us garden. We want to include those fruits and vegetables in our diet.

And, if we have limited space, we need to be particular about what we’re planting. When I help people plan their gardens, I’m always reminding them to go back and review their “why”. If your goal for your garden is to reduce your family’s food budget, like mine was in the beginning, then maybe the things you should prioritize planting are the things your family eats the most or the things that cost you the most in the grocery or at the market.

But, if we’re gardening to increase the overall nutrition our family consumes, does that mean we should be focused on planting something other than our most purchased items? And, if it’s all about saving dollars, can we grow things that make us feel fuller longer because they’re more nutritious? Which fruits and vegetables degrade the most from the time they leave the farm to when they hit our plate? Which fruits and vegetables the most nutrient-dense overall?

On today’s episode I’ll give you the rundown on some studies that have been done about which vegetables decline in nutrition the fastest, which ones are the most nutrient-dense overall, and what we need to do in our own gardens post-harvest to preserve those nutrients that we’ve worked so hard to grow. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

RESOURCES

Ep. 52 - Cabbage

Low Energy Density Foods and Recipes: Will They Help You Feel Full with Fewer Calories? | Optimising Nutrition

Optimising foods for satiety - ScienceDirect

Maximizing the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables (ucdavis.edu)

Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Part 1. Vitamins C and B and phenolic compounds (ahealthylife.nl)

Vegetables_122107_S (fda.gov)

Fruits_122107_S (fda.gov)

Postharvest Handling | USU

Harvesting and storing home garden vegetables | UMN Extension

Focal Point Friday: Follow-up to Sunflowers, Compost and Manure Mar 03, 2023

On this week's Focal Point Friday episode, I'm following up with questions and comments I got about some recent episodes about phytoremediation, commercial compost, and using manure in the garden safely.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 137 - Growing Celery Feb 28, 2023

Celery is a cool-season crop that can be a bit finicky about its growing conditions. If carrots are divas, then consider celery Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold, but just right! On today’s episode I give you the lowdown on growing your own celery at home and this includes those of you who live in warmer climates. The main consideration for celery is it takes a really long time to grow from seed and it can be a water hog if you want those big plump stalks. Some varieties need to be trenched and mounded in order to get those pale stalks like you’re used to seeing the grocery store, and they don’t tolerate a heavy frost. And even though they don’t like the heat, too much time spent below a certain temperature can actually cause them to bolt. But, if you know how to mitigate all those things, the flavor of homegrown celery can be so much more intense than what you get in the store. Let's dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Umbellifer or apiaceae? - Richard Jackson Garden (richardjacksonsgarden.co.uk)

Resources:

Apium graveolens (Smallage, Wild Celery) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Celery / Apium graveolens Herbal Medicine, Health Benefits, Side Effects (medicalhealthguide.com)

Everything you didn’t even know you wanted to know about celery - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Cel-Ray - Wikipedia

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

Celery | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

Focal Point Friday: Manure in the Garden Feb 24, 2023

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.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Animal-Manure-in-the-Garden.pdf (wsu.edu)

Bunny honey: Using rabbit manure as a fertilizer - MSU Extension

Colorado Master Gardener Training (colostate.edu)

Ep. 136 - Filling New Raised Beds Feb 21, 2023

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 bags of potting mix just isn’t the way to go. If you’ve gotten behind on building your beds or you’re just now deciding you need to create some, especially if you’re creating a garden for the first time, it’s important to know what to fill those beds with.

Today we’ll talk about different techniques we can use to fill those raised beds properly so that the growing medium is not only biologically active, which is helping the plants get the nutrients they need, but also doesn’t break the bank.

Ep. 80 - Creating and Managing a Compost Pile

Ep. 81 - Talking Compost with Stan "The Compost Man"Slaughter

Ep. 82 - Compost Systems for Home Gardeners

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

Resources:

Effect of high compost temperature on enzymatic activity and species diversity of culturable bacteria in cattle manure compost - ScienceDirect

Microbiological parameters as indicators of compost maturity | Journal of Applied Microbiology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Focal Point Friday: More About Intercropping Feb 17, 2023

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

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 135 - Growing Potatoes Feb 14, 2023

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 family for a year, most everybody has space to maybe do some fingerling potatoes or some small boiling potatoes for at least a few meals.

Of course, there’s a great sense of satisfaction dumping the dirt out of a pot or digging into the soil and pulling up a potato plant and seeing all those potatoes hanging from the root system. And the flavor and texture of new potatoes are just fantastic and really can't be found in the grocery.

Ready to grow some spuds? Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Hijmans, RJ; Spooner, DM (2001). "Geographic distribution of wild potato species". American Journal of Botany. 88 (11): 2101–12. doi:10.2307/3558435. JSTOR 3558435. PMID 21669641.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Finding rewrites the evolutionary history of the origin of potatoes (2005)

Potato Production and Consumption

Solanum tuberosum (Irish Potato, Irish Potatoes, Pomme de Terre, Potato, Potatoes, White Potato, White Potatoes) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Potato: Nutrition facts, recipes, benefits, side effects, and more (msn.com)

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Growing potatoes in home gardens | UMN Extension

ORGANIC POTATO GROWING GUIDE (woodprairie.com)

Focal Point Friday: Are Sunflowers Good or Bad for the Garden? Feb 10, 2023

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 everything you've heard about sunflowers is true!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

Allelopathic Plants. 7. Sunflower

Sunflower Power! (landhealthinstitute.org)

Potential of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) for Phytoremediation of Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Behaviour of Helianthus annuus L.: an ethogram for sunflower, and the effect of potential competitors on soil nutrient patch use

Ep. 134 - Soil Texture and Composition: How it affects water and nutrients in the garden and how to know what type you have Feb 07, 2023

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 we’ll talk about how to test our soil composition and texture by using the jar method or the ribbon method, and what the results mean for you and your garden. Let’s dig in!

Get your soil texture download

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES

Soil Water Holding Characteristics - Center for Landscape & Urban Horticulture (ucanr.edu)

Soils & Plant Nutrients | NC State Extension Publications (ncsu.edu)

Soil Texture Analysis “The Jar Test” | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

Testing Soil Texture by Hand – The Soil Ribbon Test – GrowIt BuildIT

Focal Point Friday: Proper Lighting for Seedlings Feb 03, 2023

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 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 dirty. Enjoy!

Reference episode: Ep. 77 - Five Tips to Successful Seed Starting

Ep. 133 - Growing Onions Jan 31, 2023

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 crop-specific episode of season three, we’re jumping into everything onion, including background information, cultivation both in-ground and in containers, pests and diseases, harvest and storage. Let's dig in!

Free Download: Onion Growing Fact Sheet

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

(PDF) Traditional and modern uses of onion bulb (Allium cepa L.): A systematic review (researchgate.net)

Onion History - National Onion Association (onions-usa.org)

Nutrition Information for Raw Vegetables | FDA

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

Growing Onions: Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Onions | The Old Farmer's Almanac

Onion Planting Guide - Dixondale Farms

Affiliate Links

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

Get 10% off the Black Rifle Coffee Club!

Focal Point Friday: Proper Airflow for Seedlings Jan 27, 2023

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 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 dirty. Enjoy!

Reference episode: Ep. 77 - Five Tips to Successful Seed Starting

Ep. 132 - Average Crop Yield and Plants Per Person: How Much Space Do You Need in the Garden? Jan 24, 2023

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 plants you’ll need this year based on that average.

But how do you figure out how many of something you’ll need if you’ve never grown it before? And if you’re a beginner, where do you even start to figure this all out?

That was one of the biggest problems I faced as a new gardener. So, in today’s episode we’ll briefly cover a couple of different ways you can use to figure out how many plants you’ll need to meet your harvest goals this year. It is not exact and it will require some time and patience to get through, but once you have a starting point it gets easier from there. Let’s dig in!

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My garden planning course, Plan Like A Pro, is open for registration through February 2nd, 2023! Go to https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/pro to get all the details and get started right away on planning your best garden yet!

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Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Transplanted Vegetable Crops | Plant Quantity & Average Yield Chart + Feet of Row per Acre | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Direct-Seeded Vegetable Crops | Seed Quantity & Average Yield Chart | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Vegetable Crop Yields, Plants per Person, and Crop Spacing (harvesttotable.com)

Explore Cornell - Home Gardening - Vegetable Growing Guides

Vegetable Planting Calendar | MU Extension (missouri.edu)

How Much Should I Plant? Vegetable Yields Per Plant – Bonnie Plants

Focal Point Friday: Plan Like A Pro Jan 20, 2023

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 we should be planning our gardens and I want you to have the best garden year yet! Listen as I walk you through everything that is included in this course and how to get on the waitlist for the early bird bonuses.

Let’s get down and dirty!

Get On the waitlist: Plan Like A Pro

Ep. 131 - The Basics of Winter Sowing: Seed Starting Outdoors Jan 17, 2023

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 indoors can feel intimidating or overwhelming. Even for me, someone who has an entire room dedicated to seedlings, with shelves and lights and fans and water systems, I run out of room every single year and need to adhere to a strict schedule to get plants rotated out to the greenhouse to make way for more plants in the basement.

Which is why the concept of winter sowing intrigues me. I always wondered why we couldn’t just plant the seeds we wanted to grow out in the garden in the winter and let them naturally come up on their own? Apparently, about 30 years ago someone else had that same question and she came up with a modified way to approach it with great success. Her name is Trudi Davidoff. Trudi refined the winter sowing process, worked with the USDA to coin the terminology and the method and then created a non-profit and spent more than 20 years teaching the Wintersowing Method to anyone and everyone who wanted to learn. I joined the Winter Sowers group on Facebook and watched YouTube videos and read posts from Trudi herself and I am ready to start winter sowing as a way to germinate some of my own seedlings this year.

This episode, we’re going to go over the technique of winter sowing, the do’s and don’ts, the basic list of supplies you’ll need and how to get started. It’s meant to be inexpensive and easy. There is really nothing technical about this and I think we can all do this with both vegetables and flowers for our gardens. Let’s dig in!

RESOURCES:

Winter Sowers | Facebook

Links for this episode:

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Focal Point Friday: Top Three Reasons to Grow Your Own Food Jan 13, 2023

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 dirty. Enjoy!

Ep. 130 - Companion Planting and Intercropping: Gaining space in the garden, repelling insects, and other benefits Jan 10, 2023

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 interchangeably or in conjunction with each other. But is intercropping and companion planting the same thing, or do they serve different purposes? To my way of thinking they are two sides to the same coin, each serving their own purpose but in very much the same manner.

In today’s episode we’ll dig into the principles of both intercropping and companion planting, explore the differences and similarities between both, and talk about how we can use both methods to our benefit in our gardens. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Companion Planting Chart | Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Plan Like A Pro | Just Grow Something with Karin Velez (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Resources for this episode:

Tomato N Uptake (ucdavis.edu)

CDFA - FREP - CA Fertilization Guidelines - Lettuce Nitrogen Uptake and Partitioning

Nitrogen fixation in peas (Pisum sativum) (lincoln.ac.nz)

Agronomy | Free Full-Text | Synergistic Effects of Agronet Covers and Companion Cropping on Reducing Whitefly Infestation and Improving Yield of Open Field-Grown Tomatoes (mdpi.com)

Focal Point Friday: Easiest Crops for Beginning Gardeners Jan 06, 2023

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 Basics

Ep. 129 - Determining New Garden Bed Dimensions Jan 03, 2023

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 situations! I prefer my in-ground beds to be one size and configuration and I prefer my raised planters to be another in most cases, but there are instances where I change that up, too.

So how you do you know what size beds you should be creating? It took me a lot of years to finally land on what my preferences are and what works best for me and if I had asked myself the right questions when I was first starting out, I probably would have landed on those answers a whole lot sooner. Today we’ll talk about the different things you should consider for raised planters and the ones to think about for in-ground beds. And it’s not always the same for both. Let’s dig in!

Get a Free Bloom Juice from Elm Dirt: Use Code JustGrow

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 128 -The Barnyard Language Podcast with Caite and Arlene Dec 27, 2022

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 can’t get any more honest than the Barnyard Language podcast. This one will be a little different than the Drink and Farm episode from last week. If you missed that one, I highly encourage you to go back and take a listen. Caite and Arlene from Barnyard Language focus on issues revolving raising kids on a farm and the struggles that can go with that and they invited me on to talk about gardening with kids. I will warn you their episodes are marked explicit and this one is no exception because if you’ve ever worked in a barnyard, you know the expletives sometimes fly. And with all three of us being on rural internet, some of the audio staggers a little but it’s well worth it to listen to this conversation because there are some really good insights in there. I will link to the Barnyard Language podcast in the show notes so you can find more of Caite and Arlene when you’re through here. Let’s dig in!

Barnyard Language: https://barnyard-language.captivate.fm/episodes

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Ep. 127 - We Drink and We Farm Things with Bev Ross Dec 20, 2022

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 some farming firsts. You’ll recognize Ashley Constance in this episode along with our friend Erica Leniczek from the Rural Mindset podcast. These are some great stories and I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode. Of course, I will link to the Drink and Farm podcast in the show notes so you can find more of Bev and Sam when you’re through here. Let’s dig in!

Podcast — We Drink & We Farm Things (wedrinkandwefarmthings.com)

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Ep. 126 - A Little Self Reliant Podcast Dec 13, 2022

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 on the Rural Woman Podcast with Katelyn Duban and if you missed it, I highly encourage you to go back and listen. This week, I’m Ashley Constance of the A Little Self Reliant podcast! You may remember Ashley from episode 98 all about getting started in homesteading no matter where you are. During my episode on Ashley’s podcast we talked all about compost. She asked some great questions and I’m super happy to share that episode with you. Of course, I will link to the A Little Self Reliant podcast in the show notes so you can find more of Ashley when you’re through here. Let’s dig in!

Free Garden Planning Basics Download

A Little Self Reliant Podcast

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Ep. 125 - The Rural Woman Podcast with Katelyn Duban Dec 06, 2022

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 shows, some of whom you’ve heard interviewed on this podcast.

So, without further ado let’s jump into this week’s episode. You heard Katelyn Duban of the Rural Woman Podcast on this show back on episode 88, where we talked about the ups and downs she went through while expanding her garden as a new gardener. I was a guest on Katelyn’s show talking at length about how I got started in gardening and farming and I’m super excited to share that episode with you here. I will link to the Rural Woman podcast in the show notes so you can find more of Katelyn when you’re through here. Let’s dig in!

Get My Free Garden Planning Basics

The Rural Woman Podcast

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Ep. 124 - Q & A: Is market gardening worth it? Is it too late to plant garlic? How do I know if my strawberries are dormant? Nov 29, 2022

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 taking advantage of this little tidbit of information!

Let’s dig in.

Grow Guide Podcast E146: Inspiration For Adding Figs, Lemons and Olives to Your Northern Garden with Steven Biggs — The Grow Guide (thegrowguidepodcast.com)

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Ep. 123 - 2022 Gardener's Gift Guide Nov 22, 2022

‘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 upgraded to this year. This is a fun episode and hopefully you’ll come away with some great gift ideas for your favorite gardeners and maybe even yourself.

Let’s dig in!

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Ep. 122 - Planning a Drought-Resistant Garden: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques Nov 15, 2022

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 in place. So how do we, as gardeners, balance a need to grow our own food and in some instances food for others with the need to use less of a very precious resource. We’ll talk about tips, tricks, and techniques to keep your garden growing with less water input from the gardener.

On that same note, the question of the week involves choosing drought-tolerant varieties of plants and whether or not that benefit has any drawbacks, specifically how well the plant is then able to tolerate very wet conditions. So, if your garden is full of drought-tolerant plants and you’re suddenly inundated with several days of rain are you sunk?

And in the DRL, it’s serious freeze protection, the Moth, and a flashback to the 80s.

Let’s dig in!

Resources:

Book: “How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth”

Soil Texture Analysis “The Jar Test” | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

80’s Pop Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 108 - Basics of Saving Seeds

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 121 - Transitioning from Military to Farming, with Arcenio Velez Nov 11, 2022

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 transition back to civilian life where those things don’t always hold true.

There are a lot of military servicemembers who have seen and done things that make it almost impossible to functional in regular society. Working in agriculture in some way, whether it’s with crops or livestock or machinery or whatever, can help with the transition. It’s been proven.

In today’s interview we talk a little bit about why the unexpected parts of farming, that just don’t seem to meet the definition of a regimented lifestyle, actually fall right in line with what a veteran may be comfortable with.

Let’s dig in!

RESOURCES:

FARMER VETERAN COALITION (farmvetco.org)

Veterans & Beginning Farmers – National AgrAbility Project

Veterans to Farmers | Turning Protectors Into Providers

Veteran's Farming Initiative (veteransfarming.org)

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 120 - Growing for Farmers Market, Part Two: Planning, Planting and Pricing Nov 09, 2022

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 than that. It’s not hard, but the amount of space you have to work with is going to dictate what you grow and how you grow it and that requires planning. Then once you get to harvest, how the heck do you decide what to charge?

Let’s dig in!

Resources:

Vegetable Crop Yields, Plants per Person, and Crop Spacing (harvesttotable.com)

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 119 - Growing for Farmers Market, Part One Nov 03, 2022

This episode we’re going to get started with selling at farmer’s markets. This subject will be a two-parter. Planning a garden with the intention of selling some of it is different than just selling the extra you happen to grow, and we’ll talk all about all those details in part two. Today we’re going to walk through all the things I didn’t take into consideration before I started selling our produce in our CSA program and at multiple market stands. This is quite literally a “I did it all wrong so let me tell you how not to do it” episode!

In the question of the week, we’re talking green sweet potatoes. And in the DRL, it’s vintage camper life, crawdads, and a vegan running coach. Let’s dig in.

Camping, Campgrounds & Campsites | Camping Reservations | KOA

Podcast - The Planted Runner

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Ep. 118 - Cover Crops in the Home Garden Oct 25, 2022

This episode we’re digging into how to use cover crops in our home gardens. I kept saying I needed to do a full episode on this and we’re doing it today. This is not reserved for just big farms with thousands of acres of land. Using a cover crop in the home garden is beneficial in all kinds of ways and can be tailored to what you need: improving soil structure, preventing erosion, as a living mulch, to add nutrients back into your soil, or all of the above. This is effective for both in-ground beds and raised planters. What you plant and when you plant it, and what you do with it when it’s done all depends on what you want to get out of it, so we’ll cover all the options and techniques for planting and terminating those crops and which crops work best for our individual garden needs.

And the question of the week is a two-parter! It’s about pruning nectarine trees and when to apply copper sprays or dormant oils. And how do you tell if a tree is dormant versus maybe, just dying? Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Cover Crop Collection for Planting - 9 Packets of Popular and Hardy Cover Crops

Blend of Gardening Cover Crop Seeds: Hairy Vetch, Daikon Radish and More

COVER CROP Premium Blend- Hairy Vetch, Crimson Clover, Peas, White Oats

Resources:

Terminating Cover Crops | Southern Cover Crops Council

Using Cover Crops and Green Manures in the Home Vegetable Garden – Wisconsin Horticulture

Tips for Planting Cover Crops in Home Gardens (psu.edu)

Cover crops and green manures in home gardens | UMN Extension

Farm Seed & Cover Crops | Comparison Chart (PDF) | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

Ep. 117 - Growing Cut Flowers in the Home Garden with Kathy Gormandy Oct 21, 2022

This episode we are digging into growing cut flowers in our garden. I am not a flower farmer, I’m a mediocre flower grower at best, but I love having cut flowers in my house and I’m determined to grow my own at some point. And since right now is the time we should be preparing our beds for the spring, and flower beds would be no exception, I thought it was the perfect time to talk to an expert.

Kathy Gormandy is a cut flower farmer and the owner of P and K Farms, a 3-acre farmstead in southern Alabama. P and K Farms is a small sustainable family farm offering seasonal cut flowers, arrangements, and event work and Kathy got her start selling flowers at the farmers market just as a way to attract attention to her vegetable stand. She quickly realized the demand for those flowers outpaced any vegetable she could grow, and her flower farming journey began.

I sat down with Kathy to get advice on the easiest flowers to start with, perennials make good cut flowers, tips for how to keep blooms coming on all season long, the best soil conditions for growing flowers, and more. I got so much good information from this conversation and already have my wish list going for what I want to plant here for my own homegrown bouquets. Get ready to take notes because Kathy is a wealth of information and a joy to listen to. Let’s dig in!

P&K Farms (pkfarmlife.com)

Get the book - David’s Farm: Healthy Soil

Kathy Gormandy (@kathyzitnik) • Instagram photos and videos

P&K Farms | Facebook

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Ep. 116 - Asparagus: Prepare in Fall, Plant in Spring Oct 18, 2022

Asparagus is a fantastic perennial, with healthy beds lasting as long as 30 years. Asparagus crowns are planted in spring, but the fall is when you want to prepare the bed. So, today we’ll go over everything you need to know about planting and growing asparagus so you can get your beds prepped in time and place those orders for spring crowns.

In the question of the week, we’re talking another favorite perennial – strawberries! Lots of questions around winter requirements these juicy beauties, so I’ll give you the lowdown on what you should be doing for them on the off season. In the DRL we’re talking down time, Southern Living, and Elyse Myers; and I’ve got a correction from last week. Let’s dig in!

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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

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

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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Resources:

Vegetable Planting Calendar | MU Extension (missouri.edu)

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

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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Hardiness zone - Wikipedia

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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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)

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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!)

Join the Black Rifle Coffee Club. Save 20% and caffeinate alongside me while providing for military troops and first responders!

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

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.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

RESOURCES:

Get a free bottle of Bloom Juice with any purchase by using code JustGrow at checkout: Elm Dirt

Etsy Elm Dirt Worm Bin Plans

Book: Worms Eat My Garbage

From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste (epa.gov)

Ep. 106 - Introduction to Vermicomposting (Worm Farming!) Aug 16, 2022

One thing I’ve been interested in starting for quite some time is vermicomposting, or worm farming, or composting with worms. Whatever you want to call it, composting with worms is a fantastic way to get rid of any food scraps out of your kitchen while creating a beautiful soil amendment for your garden.

Having a worm bin in the basement where it can be easily accessed is a great way to give those scraps from the kitchen a purpose much more quickly than if we were adding them to a big compost pile outside.

Today we talk all about the basics of worm farming: how to build a bin, what to add, how many worms and what type, and more!

Question of the week: How to time the tomato harvest (spoiler alert: it depends!).

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Resources:

USDA ARS Online Magazine Recipe for Flavorful Tomatoes

How to Make Your Tomatoes Taste Better Instantly | Glamour

How to Create and Maintain an Indoor Worm Composting Bin | US EPA

Elm Dirt

Ep. 105 - How to Care for and Maintain Your Fruit Tree Aug 09, 2022

The last couple weeks we’ve focused on selecting your fruit tree, preparing the soil and, finally, planting. Now it’s time to talk about maintaining that tree. Just like anything else in the garden, your fruit tree is going to give you a much greater harvest if you give it some attention. I will be the first to admit I am lousy at this. It’s not that I don’t know what to do and how to do it, it’s just that I don’t get around to doing it at the appropriate time. Some of my trees haven’t minded this at all and produced boatloads of fruit with no problem. My most recent trees, however, are suffering for it. It’s something I intend to fix, so not only will we talk about pruning and pest management in this episode, but I’ll share with you what I plan to do in my garden to be sure I’m out there doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done so I can finally get the harvests I want from my trees and maybe it will help you in maintaining your fruit tree.

The DRL: fall planting, hydroponics, and the Two Acre Homestead podcast.

Question of the week: How do I know when my watermelon is ready to pick?

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 104 - How to Properly Plant a Fruit Tree Aug 03, 2022

Last week, we talked all about how to choose the right fruit tree for your garden. We covered things like climate, available space, and the time it takes to maintain a tree. This week, we’ll dig into how to actually plant that tree. This is going to change, of course, based on what you’re planting and where you’re planting it, but the basics of it are pretty similar no matter the tree or the gardening space. Planting your tree the right way and avoiding some common mistakes will put you well on your way to getting years of fruit out of whatever tree you choose. And, trust me, I have made some mistakes when planting our fruit trees. We’ll talk about picking the spot for your tree, the best time of year to plant, and what to do to prepare the space for best results.

Question of the Week: Why didn't I get pumpkins from my plants last year?

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Positively Farming Media Podcast Playlist on Spotify

Ep. 103 - How to Choose the Right Fruit Tree for Your Garden Jul 26, 2022

If you’ve ever dreamed of walking out into your yard and picking fresh, ripe fruit whenever you wanted, you’re not alone. Many of us are fruit lovers and wish we could have even just one tree that would produce our favorites. But the thought of whether or not a fruit tree would even fit in your yard, the care involved, whether or not you’d need a pollinator, how long it would take to get your first harvest and all those other questions may have stopped you in your tracks in the past.

Let’s demystify the process of deciding on a fruit tree for your garden. Yes, there are a lot of factors to consider but the good news is there are many options for types, sizes, varieties, years to maturity, and level of maintenance that different fruit trees need. There’s bound to be something out there that fits your space and your gardening style, even if that space is a balcony or your gardening style could be defined as less-than-attentive. So, before you give up on the idea of having your own fruit tree or trees in your garden, let’s talk about what you should consider before making your final decision.

The DRL: Talking about summer garden burnout

Question of the Week: Problems with potatoes rotting at the stem.

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Ep. 102 - Perennial Fruits and Vegetables for Your Hardiness Zone Jul 19, 2022

What’s better than putting a plant out in the garden, tending to it lovingly, and then reaping the reward of a harvest at the end of the season? Planting that plant one time and reaping the rewards year after year after year, of course! That’s the beauty of a perennial fruit, vegetable, or herb. Plop that puppy into the ground one year and give it a little attention each season and it can continue to provide for years or even decades.

Today we’re going to talk about the difference between an annual that readily self-seeds and a perennial and we’ll go over the most suitable perennials for each hardiness zone. This won’t be a deep dive, instead just a quick overview so you know what to plan for and what to shop for so you can get in on the perennial game in your garden. Let’s dig in.

This week's DRL: planting fall potatoes, "Scratchman" by Tom Baker, Plantrama podcast

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Ep. 101 - How to Prepare and What to Grow in Your Fall Garden Jul 12, 2022

It may be blistering hot where you are, I know it is here, but now’s the time to plan that fall garden. The biggest mistake I see with most fall gardens is they get planted too late. I did that many years in a row when I first started gardening. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to be planting cool season crops in the heat of the summer and I would wait until September to get them in the ground. But, our first frost here is mid-October, so an early September planting date only gives me 6 weeks of growth on frost sensitive plants and that’s often not enough time to get a harvest or to really take advantage of the full harvest window of many of the plants you can harvest in the fall.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, you want to get those plants or seeds in the ground early enough for them to actively be growing as the weather starts to cool down AND to be mature well before your first frost date or your Persephone period so you can actually get them harvested. Today we’ll touch a little bit on how to plan out your fall seed starting and planting schedule and then talk about the plants that typically are good for a fall harvest in most areas. Let’s dig in.

This week's DRL: tending tomatoes, harvesting, fall seed starting; "Scratchman" by Tom Baker; the Barnyard Language podcast.

Question of the Week: Scraggly herbs not performing well at this part of the season. What to do and how to manage them.

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Gardening with kiddos w/ Karin Velez - Barnyard Language (captivate.fm)

Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew Concentrate

Captain Jack’s Copper Fungicide

Ep. 100 - What's the One Thing You Wish You'd Known When You Started Gardening? Celebrating 100 Episodes! Jul 05, 2022

This is it. 100 episodes! When I first started this podcast back in February of 2021, I did it because I wanted to share the knowledge I had gained while studying for my horticulture degree. Other than helping our farm business, I didn’t really have any plans for utilizing my degree after graduation. And, honestly, using it to help the farm would absolutely have been enough. There were things I learned in school that I hadn’t learned through experience in my own gardens yet, so gaining that knowledge and then getting to put it into practice has absolutely been invaluable. And I think that’s why I wanted to do something more with it, share it in some way.

I am so excited to be sharing this journey with you and sharing our collective knowledge as we work toward our most productive dream gardens. This episode we are celebrating with some input from you telling me all about what you wish you knew when you started gardening, and I’ll share some of my hard-learned lessons, too.

Spoiler alert, I’m still learning. And every time I learn something new, I’m sharing it with you. Let’s dig in to our 100th episode!

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Ep. 99 - Eight Common Tomato Diseases: Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Jun 28, 2022

If you grow tomatoes, it’s very likely you’ve had some sort of disease attack your plants. In our area of west Central Missouri, it’s usually some early blight followed by Septoria leaf spot with maybe some powdery mildew thrown in just for fun. We may even experience tomato leaf curl if it’s a bad year for whiteflies. Every area has their own tomato diseases to contend with. On today’s episode we talk about the eight most prevalent tomato plant diseases, how to prevent them, how to spot them, and how you can treat for them, prevent the spread and, hopefully, save your harvest. And even If you’ve never experienced a disease problem in your tomatoes, count yourself lucky, but you should also know what to look for because there’s always a first time for everything.

This week's DRL: Japanese Beetles, the Midwest Vegetable Production Guide for Commercial Growers, and The Epic Gardening Podcast (joined by our friend, Marion Whitehead!).

Question of the Week: How to time planting for fall harvest.

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Resources

Ep. 93 - The Stories Behind Plants with Marion Whitehead | Just Grow Something

The Epic Gardening Podcast - Epic Gardening

Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew Concentrate

Captain Jack’s Copper Fungicide

Eliot Coleman Four Season Harvest Books

Sunset and Sunrise Times

Tomato Diseases & Disorders | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

10 Common Tomato Plant Diseases (and How to Heal Them) - Garden and Happy

Ep. 98 - Becoming A Little More Self Reliant with Ashley Constance Jun 24, 2022

Just because you live in town or don’t actually want to do all the things doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do just a little bit more for yourself and your family in this modern globally connected world. It doesn’t matter where you live or where you are in life, you can be a little more reliant on yourself and your local community to make yourself a bit more secure in a very uncertain world.

My guest today is the perfect example of that. Ashley Constance is a first-generation homesteader who moved from the big city to a little acreage in March of 2020. I mean, talk about timing, right? Along with her husband, dog, cat, and a gaggle of other critters, Ashley raises as much of her own food as possible while working to empower others to do the same.

Join me for a fantastic conversation about homesteading where you are, with what you have, and maybe making the leap to something bigger.

In January of 2022, Ashley launched her podcast and her website, A Little Self Reliant, which is aimed at inspiring others to embrace a bit more self-reliance no matter where they're at. Ashley discusses things like gardening, raising animals, preserving, DIY, supporting local growers, embracing sustainability, and more.

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A Little Self Reliant: 90 Homesteading Skills to Build in the City on Apple Podcasts

90 Homesteading Skills to Build in the City - A Little Self Reliant | Podcast on Spotify

Ep. 97 - Modern Homesteading: It's Not What You Think Jun 21, 2022

When you think of homesteading, what comes to mind? Ma and Pa Ingles out on the prairie trying to build a home and raise a family with their own resources on a large plot of dusty land? Maybe you think of the early pictures of covered wagons crossing dangerous territories on their way to stake a claim out west. Yeah, me too! But, in reality, modern homesteading is nothing like that.

Today, homesteading can happen just about anywhere. Because modern homesteading isn’t about relying only on yourself. It’s also about having a community and relying on resources close to home for the things you can’t produce yourself. And that home can be anywhere – in the city or in the country. It’s just a matter of taking the steps to figure out what you can reasonably provide for yourself and what you can glean locally to make yourself a bit more self-sufficient. Just because you live in a suburban neighborhood doesn’t mean you can’t hone many homesteading skills and become a homesteader.

Homesteading in our modern, globally connected world doesn’t mean all or nothing. So, if you’ve ever had the idea that you’d like to rely a little less on the outside world and a little more on your own backyard, today’s episode is for you. Let’s dig in.

What am I listening to? "Into the Garden with Leslie". Find it here: Into the Garden Podcast (lhgardens.com)

Question of the Week: How do I tell the difference between Tomato Leaf Curl Virus and plant stress?

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Resources:

https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/library/gardening/what-makes-tomato-leaves-twist-or-curl/

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/tomato/tomato-leaves-curling.htm

Hunter-Gatherer Culture | National Geographic Society

Why do communities exist? For internal or external purpose? Or both? | by Fabian Pfortmüller | Together Institute | Medium

Homesteading | Simple Self Sufficient Off-Grid Living

Can You Homestead In the City – Country Family Homestead

Ep. 96 - Growing Green Beans Jun 14, 2022

I have a confession. When I was a teenager and young adult, I hated fresh green beans. I was used to eating them out of a can and, to me, fresh green beans were “fuzzy”. I definitely was tuned to the smooth, soft, already cooked texture of a canned green bean. I maintained that I didn’t like fresh green beans even after I started growing my own garden as an adult. It wasn’t until my third year of gardening that I gave it a try and learned to love the flavor and texture and freshness of fresh green beans and the difference in home canned green beans over the commercial type.

So, let’s talk about growing green beans. I really believe they should be a staple in everybody’s garden for diversity and nutritional value. They’re a crowd pleaser, for sure. They are relatively easy to grow in almost any situation, but there are some pests and timing the harvest is often the trick to successfully growing green beans. Let’s dig in.

Doing: Seed-starting ... again!

Reading: Looking for suggestions from you for audio books!

Listening to: "Two Can Play That Game" podcast.

Question of the Week: "How do I know when my garlic is ready to harvest?"

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Ep. 40 - Growing Garlic | Just Grow Something

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates | Just Grow Something

Ep. 27 - Preserving the Harvest, Part One | Just Grow Something

Ep. 31 - Preserving the Harvest, Part Two | Just Grow Something

Garden Will Insect Bird Barrier for the Garden

Resources:

Introduction to Green Beans - Food Gardening Network (mequoda.com)

https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-green-beans

Phaseolus vulgaris - Wikipedia

Phytohaemagglutinin - Wikipedia

Green bean - Wikipedia

Ep. 95 - Grow a Row to Donate Jun 07, 2022

In most places in the U.S. there are multiple agencies that work with other agencies to get excess food into the hands of those who can best use it. Whether they work directly with food banks, social service organizations, shelters, and churches or if they have their own collection and distribution system, these agencies often run into a similar problem. They have a ton in the way of non-perishable, boxed or canned goods and less in the way fresh fruits and vegetables. Sometimes this is because they just don’t have a way to store or distribute it. Other times, it’s simply a lack of donations of these items. One way to help your local agency is by growing a row, or several, or even a full garden, specifically for them. Today we’re going to talk about the logistics behind this, what items are often the best to grow, how to make it practical for you, and how to successfully deliver the harvest to the people who need it the most. And, sometimes, that might just be your neighbor up the street. Let’s dig in.

Question of the Week: "Should I prune my tomatoes?" The answer: it depends!

Don't forget to send me your submission for our 100th episode! Who are you, where do you garden, and what is the one thing you wish you knew when you started gardening and why?

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Merchandise | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

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Resources:

Donate Produce » After the Harvest (aftertheharvestkc.org)

U.S. Hunger Relief Organization | Feeding America

Home - Harvesters

Ep. 94 - Growing Sweet Potatoes May 31, 2022

Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite things to eat and, subsequently, to grow. I can eat sweet potatoes baked, fried, mashed, chipped, like tater tots, as a pie, you name it, I’ll eat them. And it only takes a few plants to give you a really good harvest, so they’re perfectly suited for smaller garden spaces. Despite the name, they actually aren’t potatoes and what we eat isn’t a tuber, it’s a root. They are a tropical crop that needs at least four months of warm weather and warm soil, but there are many short-season varieties of sweet potato available today and they will grow in cooler-climate areas given the right circumstances. And, bonus, they are drought- and heat-tolerant and they don’t have a ton of pests or diseases, so they’re great for beginning gardeners, too. We’re getting the beds ready right now for planting our sweet potatoes, so I thought it’d be a good time to drop a little knowledge on you and get you into the sweet potato game, too. Let’s dig in.

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Merchandise | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

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Resources:

Identifying Nutrient Deficiencies in Your Garden Plants | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Indicators of Nutrient Toxicity in Garden Plants | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Ep. 18 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrients and Why You Need to Know Them | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Ep. 22 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Plant Nutrient Deficiencies and Toxicity | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Ep. 91 -Transitioning Your Plants into Your Garden | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Ep. 55 - Identifying Insects in the Garden | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Common Names of Plant Diseases (apsnet.org)

Pest Database | IRAC (irac-online.org)

Sweet potato - Wikipedia

Plant Sweet Potatoes | How to Grow Sweet Potatoes – Bonnie Plants

Sweet Potatoes vs. Yams: What’s the Difference? | Mississippi State University Extension Service (msstate.edu)

Ep. 93 - The Stories Behind Plants with Marion Whitehead May 27, 2022

On Tuesday, we talked all about preserving our culture and our heritage through our food, which includes the plants we grow. Today, I’m joined by Marion Whitehead who is just as passionate about plants and their stories as a I am, maybe even more. I mean, I’ve not been known to write poetry about my plants, but Marion has! And she is uniquely qualified to do so, since she is immersed in plants, both native and exotic, in her work at the Blue Mountain Botanic Garden in New South Wales, Australia.

Being raised by two science teachers, Marion was always interested in the natural world and went on to study the same botany degree as her mother and grandmother at University of Sydney. Marion also majored in history, and it was this double major that piqued Marion’s interested in, not just the science of plants and how they work, but the cultural and historical importance of them.

This was such a fun conversation. We talked about her journey into botany at a young age that was sidetracked into television marketing for a while before leading her back to horticulture through her love of plants and their stories. And there are certainly some interesting stories. Join me and dig a little deeper into the stories behind plants with Marion Whitehead.

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Merch Shop!

Blue Mountains Botanic Garden

Ep. 92 - Preserving Our Culture Through Food May 24, 2022

Do you have a favorite food from childhood? Do you have a favorite recipe your grandmother passed down to you from her grandmother? The history of our food is important to preserving our cultures and our heritage. Many times, the ingredients that go into those foods are very regional. But, what if the knowledge of those ingredients was lost somewhere along the way? What if nobody remembered how to grow or forage for the main parts of some of our traditional family and cultural dishes?

Today we’re talking all about why traditional foods are important and what happens when a culture is unable to or restricted from passing on that knowledge to the next generation. Let’s dig in.

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Merchandise | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

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Resources:

Pre-order Jenna Kutcher's "How Are You, Really?" Book Today!

Ethnobotany - Origin and Evolution of Life (brainkart.com)

The Sioux Chef – Revitalizing Native American Cuisine / Re-Identifying North American Cuisine (sioux-chef.com)

Ep. 91 -Transitioning Your Plants into Your Garden May 17, 2022

I know many of you have already been planting your gardens and many more have transitioned from spring plants into warmer weather summer crops. But I also know there are plenty of you that haven’t started planting yet at all, whether your climate conditions aren’t right, or your garden space isn’t ready or whatever. And, honestly, planting is a season-long activity. We start with cold crops in spring, move into summer crops, then right back to cold crops and the stuff we want to overwinter. And I’ve spent the last two Saturdays at farmer’s market and online answering questions about how and when to put those plants into the ground. This episode I’m going to cover the things you need to remember when finally moving those plant babies to your gardening space. And I’m not just talking about hardening off your plants, either, although that’s part of it. Things like acclimating the plants you bring home from other growers into your gardening space, watering and spacing requirements, and special considerations for my indoor growers. Let’s dig in

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Positively Farming Media Playlist

Resources:

Ep. 28 - Garden Talk Tuesday: Tomatoes | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Ep. 90 - Indoor Gardening May 10, 2022

The whole idea behind starting this podcast was to give you the information you need to grow your own food, no matter how much space you have. Most of what I’ve covered on this show has been toward in-ground gardens and containers, only briefly touching on growing indoors. That’s about to change. Whether you have no access to an outdoor growing space, you want to expand on what space you do have by growing more inside, or you want to extend your season by using your indoor space for gardening, I’ve got you covered. This episode we’ll go over the basic requirements for growing fruits, herbs, and vegetables indoors, the different systems you can use to get the most from your space and your plants and the bonus pieces you can splurge on to take your indoor gardening over the top. Let’s dig in.

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Resources:

Plant Juice – Elm Dirt

Ep. 89 - Growing Peppers May 03, 2022

One of the crops I really thought would be easy to grow that turned out not to be for me was peppers, specifically bell peppers. Turns out not only do peppers really prefer a lot of heat, they also prefer more water than I typically use in my gardens and in my fields. And peppers are one of those plants that I get asked about all the time in messages and at the farm stand. Because once you get the hang of it, you can grow boatloads and we bring lots of beautiful peppers to market and it gets people talking. It’s also one of those vegetables that is a mainstay in many people’s kitchens and they can be expensive at the grocery store, so knowing how to grow your own is high up on the gardening wish list for a lot of people. So, today we’ll talk all about peppers, both sweet and hot, how to get them to germinate, their feeding requirements, planting, spacing, harvesting and all the usual basics. By the end of this episode, I hope you can fill in the gaps of what’s been going on with your peppers to get you some success or give you the confidence to give them a try if you’re new to the capsicum scene. So, let’s dig in to growing peppers.

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Resources:

Capsicum annuum - Wikipedia

Pharmacological importance of an ethnobotanical plant: Capsicum annuum L - PubMed (nih.gov)

Capsicum annuum (Grossum Group) (Bell Pepper, Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Sweet Pepper) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Bell Peppers 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits (healthline.com)

Chili Peppers 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Effects (healthline.com)

6 Ways to Use Epsom Salt in the Garden | Epsom Salt Council

Capsicum annuum (Grossum Group) (Bell Pepper, Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Sweet Pepper) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Midwest Vegetable Production Guide for Commercial Growers.

Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening, 1978

Damrosch, Barbara; The Garden Primer. Workman Publishing, New York. 1988

Ep. 88 - Expanding the Garden as a Beginner with Katelyn Duban Apr 29, 2022

On Tuesday we talked about expanding your gardens and today I’m talking with my new friend, Katelyn Duban from the Rural Woman Podcast. Katelyn had never gardened before moving to her husband’s family farm in rural Alberta and she had never intended to garden even after moving. But after embracing the rural lifestyle, Katelyn dove into growing her own food beginning with a few pots of lettuce on her front steps and ending with a spaghetti squash monster and a new love for gardening. Katelyn expanded her garden in 2021 and we talked all about modifying expectations, the importance of knowing how to grow your own food even if you don’t have to, gardening as a way clear your head, and so much more. I know you will enjoy this conversation and come away with a great feeling about expanding your own garden, too. Let’s dig in.

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The Rural Woman Podcast with Katelyn Duban – Growing a Garden from the Ground Up with Karin Velez

Katelyn Duban: Facebook | Instagram | Website | Twitter | The Rural Woman Podcast

Ep. 87 - Expanding Your Garden Apr 26, 2022

If your garden went really well last season, then you might be thinking of expanding your space this season. Even if you didn’t have a fantastic yield last year you may still be thinking of increasing your gardening area because you’ve seen food prices going up in the store recently, or you want certain heirloom varieties, or you just like a challenge! I am the first one to support relying more on yourself for your food needs and less on the grocery store. So, let’s talk a little bit today about the things you should take into consideration when deciding to expand your garden. Spoiler alert: bigger isn’t always better. Let’s dig in.

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Resources:

Why We Need to Know Why | Psychology Today

Ep. 86 - How Many Seeds or Plants Do You Need? Apr 19, 2022

When you’re planning your garden, do you have trouble determining how many plants you should grow? It’s very easy to overdo it, especially in the first few years because you don’t know how many plants you need in order to get the volume you want your garden to produce. I was guilty of not planting enough greens the first few years but way overplanting the cucumbers. So we ended up with too few salads and way too many cucumbers. I was giving them away weekly and we canned enough pickles to provide five families for five years. So today we’ll walk through how to determine the number of seeds or plants you’ll need to plant in order to achieve the harvest you want so you can more accurately plan your garden space and not end up with too much of one thing and not enough of another. Let’s dig in! Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon Follow me on Instagram JustGrowSomethingPodcast.com This podcast is a proud member of the Positively Farming Media Podcast Network Resources The Rural Woman Podcast with Katelyn Duban – Growing a Garden from the Ground Up with Karin Velez Vegetable Planting Calendar | MU Extension (missouri.edu) How Much Should I Plant? Vegetable Yields Per Plant – Bonnie Plants

Ep. 85 - Molasses in the Garden: Yay or Nay? Apr 12, 2022

I’ve done plenty of garden myth episodes before on this podcast so when the subject of molasses in the garden was brought to my attention, it piqued my interest. I do know that molasses as a food has a good amount of nutritional value for us as humans and it stands to reason that those same nutrients would be good for the soil microbes and for our plants. But does it make sense to use molasses as a treatment for your garden soil or for your compost pile or are there better alternatives out there for feeding our favorite soil bacteria? And would using molasses even work? Let’s dig in and find out.

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Molasses Fertilizer for Soil

Resources:

Molasses for Plants

Improving Garden Soil: Milk and Molasses Magic

MOLASSES & SOIL MICROBES. DOES THIS GARDEN HACK WORK? | Gardening in Canada - YouTube

Ep. 84 - Grow Your Own Tea Garden Apr 05, 2022

A few years back I began to pay more attention to the ingredients in my tea. And I discovered that many of the tea blends I was using contained artificial flavorings. Even the organic teas used so-called “natural flavorings” without indicating the source of that ingredient. So, I started making my own tea blends from herbs I grow in my own garden. I sell many of these herbs as plants at our farm stand and help folks put together their own tea gardens every season. So, this episode we’re going to talk about some of the most common herbs, flowers, and other plants to grow in your garden for making your own tea blends, and how to harvest and use those herbs, and a few of my favorite blends that you can try yourself. Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Green vs. Black Tea – What’s the Difference? (pureleaf.com)

Resources:

Tea - Wikipedia

Ep. 83 - Growing Luffa Mar 29, 2022

Back in 2020, otherwise known as “the year that shall not be named” growing luffa became this sort of garden craze. I have no idea how it got started, but it seemed like everywhere I looked on social media gardening accounts they were talking about growing luffa. Now, if you didn’t jump onto the luffa bandwagon back then or if you’ve not been successful yet in your luffa growing adventures, you are certainly not alone. Luffa needs a really long growing season and it seems that where you are gardening also affects when and how you harvest your luffa. It can be a little persnickety and I’ve found that no two regions seem to grow and mature their luffa in the same manner. It took two years for us to get a successful harvest from our plants but I’ve loved having them in my house now.

So, what is luffa and why should you even bother? As my husband discovered back in 2018, luffa is the sponge you can grow yourself for all kinds of household uses. But, traditionally, luffa is so much more than that and can be a great addition to your garden for lots of reasons. So, let’s dig in to how to grow luffa, with some special tips on growing in areas with shorter growing seasons, and why I’m not growing luffa this year.

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Resources:

Ep. 77 - Five Tips to Successful Seed Starting | Just Grow Something (justgrowsomethingpodcast.com)

Luffa aegyptiaca (Loofah, Luffa Sponge, Sponge Gourd) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Luffa - Wikipedia

History of the Luffa, Loofah, Loofa, Loufa, Loofa, Lufa, Luf Sponge – Luffa Gardens

Luffa Facts, Health Benefits and Nutritional Value (healthbenefitstimes.com)

How to Grow a Luffa Sponge Successfully. Even in a cold climate! (theartofdoingstuff.com)

Ep. 82 - Compost Systems for Home Gardeners Mar 15, 2022

Last week we talked all about what goes into creating and managing your compost pile and then we talked with Stan Slaughter who gave us even more info and talked a little about how beginners can get started composting. Now that we know what the essential components are for an effective compost pile, let’s talk about the different types of compost systems that are out there. Whether you opt for a pile in the corner of the yard (which is still a totally viable option!), or a fancy tumbler, or a vermicomposting system, or something somewhere in between, there are a lot of options. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of each one, the differences in costs and setup, and their level of effectiveness so you can find a system that works with your lifestyle and your gardening style. So, let’s dig into the different backyard systems for creating our own compost.

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Ep. 81 - Talking Compost with Stan "The Compost Man"Slaughter Mar 11, 2022

Kansas City based artist and educator Stan Slaughter has been traveling the country singing songs and sharing stories with kids and adults since 1987. Stan helped create the very first Earth Day celebration in Kansas City and has made “Every Day is Earth Day” his motto ever since. Speaking at Master Gardeners’ groups, teaching adults in compost workshops, singing at water festivals and zoos, and doing thousands of assemblies for more than 400,000 students, Stan takes his message to both kids and grownups - and makes it fun along the way.

Stan has a passion for life and for this beautiful planet, and loves sharing that passion with others through his songs and presentations. He has a master's degree in biology, is extraordinarily educated on soil microbes and what they can do for our gardens, and currently works as the director of education for Missouri Organic Recycling, the largest composting facility in the Kansas City region. In my interview with him today, we talk about his background, his accomplishments and accolades (including an invitation from HRH Prince Charles) and, of course, compost. Stan has some great insights on what makes a good compost pile, why it's important, and how gardeners can get started in their backyards and even their basements. Join me as I interview Stan "The Compost Man" Slaughter.

Green Living Made Simple | Green Living Made Simple (stanslaughter.com)

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Ep. 80 - Creating and Managing a Compost Pile Mar 08, 2022

Right now, many of us are getting our garden beds ready for the gardening season or if you’re in a warmer climate, your beds may need a refresh before moving on to your next round of planting. In either case, you know I’m going to recommend the use of compost. Not only is compost great at adding nutrients and increasing the soil organic matter, but it’s also a great way to feed the microbiota in the soil that make those nutrients available to your plants and it can act as a fabulous mulch for keeping weeds out. I’ve had a compost pile ever since I started my first garden 18-plus years ago. I haven’t always been super successful with getting the piles to actually compost because, at first, I was just tossing stuff into the pile and letting it sit and do its thing without giving it any thought or effort. Yes, eventually that stuff would break down into something useable but once I paid just a little bit of attention to what I was doing with it, a little effort went a long way toward making the process more efficient and much more beneficial to my garden. On today’s episode I’m going to walk you through the bare minimum of what you need to make a successful compost pile and then the little extra things that can catapult your efforts into compost stardom. We’ll talk the ingredients, ratios, air, moisture, and dos and don’ts of composting. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

This Podcast is a Proud Member of Positively Farming Media

Resources:

University of Florida Extension: Composting Guide

Composting Dairy Products

Turning Compost by Temperature

Composting to Kill Weed Seeds

EPA: Composting at Home

Ep. 79 - Planning a Children's Garden Mar 01, 2022

I started gardening when some of my kids were fairly young. The youngest was in kindergarten, but the oldest was already a freshman in high school. But, my mom had my brother and I in the garden when we were still in preschool. In fact, that cover photo for this episode is my brother and I in our backyard garden in Colorado. I don’t remember a whole lot of specific things about being in the garden, but I do remember snippets. The joy of pulling something whole and edible from the dirt, the fun of being in the sunshine and getting dirty with mom’s approval to get dirty, and the satisfaction of eating something I could say I grew – even if I didn’t really do much of the actual work of growing it. Sitting on my back porch, dipping rhubarb in a bowl of sugar and munching on the sweet and sour snack is a very vivid memory and that rhubarb came from the plants in our garden. I feel so strongly that everyone should grow a little bit of something for themselves, and I feel just as strongly about children getting into the garden. But, like with everything, it can be difficult to get children engaged and keep them involved, especially when so many other things are vying for their very short attention spans. And even though I didn’t get started as young with my own kids, I’ve helped many customers plan garden spaces for their own kids and my grandkids are starting to learn now, too. Today I’m going to walk you through some tips for how to plan out a vegetable garden specifically for young children, what plants to include or not include, and some advice about how to keep them coming back for more garden time with the parents or grandparents. Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

In the Vegetable Garden: My Nature Sticker Activity Book

Resources:

11 of the Best Gardening-Themed Books for Children

David’s Garden Seeds Lettuce Butterhead Little Gem

David’s Garden Seeds Carrot Parisian

‘Tiny Tim’ Dwarf Tomato

Burpee ‘Sweet Hearts of the Patio’ Cherry Tomato

Johnny’s Selected Seeds: Mini Head Lettuces

Ep. 78 - Seed Starting Mix vs Potting Soil, plus How to Make Your Own Feb 22, 2022

When you walk into the garden center, that potting soil aisle can be absolutely overwhelming. Potting mix, potting soil, seed starter, soilless medium; the variety and possibilities are endless. Which do you choose? And does it really make a difference when you’re starting your seeds indoors? The answer, like most everything in gardening, is … maybe. Today I’m going to talk about the difference between soilless seed starting mixes and regular potting soil and give you the information you need to determine what works best for your unique growing situation. It all comes down to how long your plants are going to be in the starting medium, how often you plan to water, your fungal disease pressure, and maybe just how many seeds you intend to start. And if you want to make your own seed starting mix or potting soil, I've got that for you, too!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 77 - Five Tips to Successful Seed Starting Feb 15, 2022

It is time, my gardening friends! Many of us are getting our spring seedlings going as we speak. Now whether you’ve been starting your own seeds indoors for years or you are new to getting a jump on the gardening season in this way, it can sometimes be a challenge. One year you may have beautiful, strong plants that take off the moment you put them outside in the garden and the next year you may have spindly weaklings that seem to struggle from the get-go. What gives? There are a lot of factors that go into starting seeds indoors and growing them in a way that makes them strong and healthy enough to go outside and really do well. Some factors are beyond our control but today I’m going to give you five things to incorporate into your seed starting procedures to help you get your gardening season, and your seedlings, off to the strongest start possible.

Affects of pH on Nutrient Availability

Ep. 76 - Managing Soil pH in Your Garden Feb 08, 2022

I talk all the time about the importance of soil testing and usually we’re chatting about the nutrient deficiencies that can be discovered and amended through those test results. But what we don’t talk about as frequently is one other result you get from a soil test and that’s your soil’s pH. Most garden vegetables do best in a soil pH that’s slightly acidic, generally between 5.8 and 7.0, with a few notable exceptions. But what does that mean? What is soil pH? How does it affect plant growth? And what can we do if our soil is too acidic or too alkaline to grow the garden plants we want to grow?

This episode we’ll dig into the basics of soil pH, how to prevent your soil from becoming excessively acidic or alkaline, and what we can do to safely adjust our soil pH, when needed. Let’s dig in!

Soil Acidification

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Greencast Soil Temperature Maps

Ep. 75 - Timing Your Warm-Weather Seed Starting Jan 25, 2022

Last week we talked about timing your seed starts for your cool weather crops and that was based mainly on the last average frost date in spring for your area or your average daily temperatures, for you warmer climate folks.

But, what about the warm-weather plants? If you determined to save some money in the garden this year by starting your own summer crops from seed instead of buying starts from the local nursery then that is fantastic! Keep in mind a lot of those summer plants take longer to get to the right size for transplanting so you’re going to be growing a lot of these alongside your early spring plants and then continuing to grow them inside after those early plants have gone into the ground. If you have limited space for starting plants indoors, which is most of us, the timing and spacing of having all these plants going at once can become an issue. So, you’ll need to plan and prioritize. Part of that is knowing exactly when your warm-season plants CAN go into the ground and when they SHOULD. There is a difference, and that difference can mean a couple weeks of leeway in your seed starting schedule.

So, let’s talk about the different techniques we can use to determine when to start our heat-loving garden plants.

Let Soil Temperatures Guide You When Planting Vegetables

Average Weather by Location

Johnny’s Seed Planting Schedule

---------------------------------------------------

Free Garden Planning Primer

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

First and Last Frost Dates – Almanac.com

Ep. 74 - How to Time Your Spring Seed Starting Jan 18, 2022

The start of the new year in the northern hemisphere often turns us toward thoughts of our garden already. Those seed catalogs start rolling in, the days slowly start to get a little bit longer, we start to get a little restless, but it really isn’t time to start those seeds just yet in most areas. This will depend on your growing zone, of course, and when your last spring frost date is, but it will also depend on what you’re planning to grow. So, this first episode of the new year I’m going to talk a little bit about some techniques you can use to determine when the best time is for you to start your spring seedlings, and how to time them accordingly. So, let’s dig in to how to perfectly time starting your seeds indoors.

Johnny’s Seed Planting Schedule

Free Garden Planning Primer

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

https://www.herbazest.com/herbs/broccoli

All About Broccoli (Replay of Episode 12) Jan 11, 2022

Hello my gardening friends. I hope you are having a wonderful start to the new year thus far. Right now, I am working on all kinds of new things for the second season of the Just Grow Something podcast along with some other projects all designed to help you get the most out of your garden in 2022. Because of this, I will be taking a few weeks off from recording new episodes and, instead, will be replaying a few of the most downloaded episodes from season one. Hopefully, these episodes will get you pumped up and imagining your dream garden even while we’re still in the throes of winter here in the northern hemisphere. And I will be back in no time at all with all new episodes and other goodies to help you be the best gardener you can be. So, enjoy this replay episode and I’ll talk to you again soon!

....

Nutritionally, broccoli is a powerhouse. Just 2.8 ounces or 80 grams of broccoli counts as a full serving because it’s so nutritionally dense. It’s low in calories (35 calories per serving) and carbohydrates and provides good levels of protein, fiber, and essential minerals. The entire plant is edible, including the leaves (use like kale or spinach), and all the parts contain the antioxidants and anticancer compounds.

The majority of broccoli cultivars are cool-weather crops that do very poorly in hot weather. This, plus its nutrient requirements and pest issues, makes broccoli one of those crops folks have a difficult time growing. So, let's dig in to everything you would ever want to know about broccoli in the garden.

....

Resources:

http://www.stuartxchange.org/Broccoli

https://www.almanac.com/plant/broccoli#

https://firstsaturdaylime.com/

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/disease/white-rust-disease.htm#:~:text=The%20secret%20to%20how%20to,the%20disease%20the%20following%20spring.

https://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/disandpath/oomycete/introduction/Pages/IntroOomycetes.aspx#:~:text=The%20oomycetes%2C%20also%20known%20as,foliar%20blights%20and%20downy%20mildews.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Seed and Plant Selection (Episode 6 replay) Jan 04, 2022

Hello my gardening friends. I hope you are having a wonderful start to the new year thus far. Right now, I am working on all kinds of new things for the second season of the Just Grow Something podcast along with some other projects all designed to help you get the most out of your garden in 2022. Because of this, I will be taking a few weeks off from recording new episodes and, instead, will be replaying a few of the most downloaded episodes from season one. Hopefully, these episodes will get you pumped up and imagining your dream garden even while we’re still in the throes of winter here in the northern hemisphere. And I will be back in no time at all with all new episodes and other goodies to help you be the best gardener you can be. So, enjoy this replay episode and I’ll talk to you again soon!

.....

So, after listening to the first couple of episodes. let’s say you’ve figured out what types of plants you want to grow, how much space you’ll need to grow it, where you will grow it, whether that’s in ground, in raised beds, or in containers, and you’ve determined how many seeds or plants you’ll need.

Time to pick out the varieties of seeds and plants you want to grow. There is no shortage of places to get your seeds and plants and no end to the different varieties and cultivars of each. Before you begin, it may be helpful to know some definitions. First, let’s tackle the differences in some plant terminology, specifically with regards to plant names, and then we’ll cover some other plant and seed definitions.

....

Baker Creek Heirloom: Heirloom and open-pollinated seeds.
Botanical Interests: Heirloom seeds, some organic varieties.
High Mowing Organic Seeds: Heirloom and hybrid seeds, all certified organic
Johnny's Selected Seeds: Heirloom and hybrid seeds, some organic varieties
Seed Savers Exchange: All heirloom seeds
Seeds of Change: Heirloom and hybrid seeds and seedlings, all certified organic

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 73 – Soil Amendments to Add in Fall and Winter Dec 28, 2021

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: testing your soil is the best way to find out what is lacking in your garden as far as nutrients are concerned and the earlier you test it, the better. Testing your soil in the off-season before spring rolls around gives you an earlier start toward correcting any deficiencies. Fall and winter are the best times to amend your soil with organic components because they will have a chance to break down into the soil and incorporate themselves so they are ready to be absorbed by your plants come spring. But the plethora of amendments available to the home gardener these days can be overwhelming. How do you know what to add, when to add it, and how much? I’m going to spend this episode talking about some of the most popular and easily accessible amendments you can use on your soil right now to give you a better harvest next season and talk about how to determine how much of it to use, based on your own garden circumstances. Ready? Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 72 - Garden Wins and Lessons Dec 21, 2021

This episode let’s reflect a little bit on our gardens this past year. What went well? What didn’t? I refer to these as wins and lessons, not losses, because every activity in the garden is a learning experience. Some are just a little bit less pleasant than others. Even though they may not have been productive in the sense of producing a harvest, they will always be productive in the sense of bettering our future gardens and gardening experiences. Today I will happily review with you what went well in my gardens this year, follow up with the results of a few experiments we had going on out here, and talk a little about some of those more difficult lessons. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Episode 5 – Experimenting in the Garden

Episode 65 – Overwintering Plants Indoors: Production or Dormancy?

Johnny’s Seeds – Cegolaine, Rosaine, and Dragoon lettuces

Ep. 71 - Modern-day Slavery on South Georgia Farms Dec 14, 2021

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. If you saw my stories on Instagram this week you got to see my rant on this topic and, honestly, this story struck a real nerve with me, so I thought I would take the time to give it some attention here on the podcast.

For those of you unaware of what I’m talking about, two dozen defendants have been indicted on federal conspiracy charges after a three-year investigation into a human smuggling and labor trafficking operation that brought workers from Mexico and Central America to work and live in brutal conditions on several South Georgia farms.

Farm worker conditions is nothing new in the news. We’ve heard before of migrant workers who’ve come here illegally to work being subjected to horrible working conditions because there’s nobody to hold the employers accountable: long hours in scorching sun without breaks or enough water, no access to medical services, inability to get decent housing or a decent wage. The victims in these indictments suffered all that and more and what makes it worse is they were brought here legally, using a federal program that allows for temporary work visas for foreign agricultural workers on U.S. soil. But, no matter how they get here, the people who are responsible for harvesting much of what we eat here in this country are constantly facing brutal conditions and I want to take today’s episode to remind us all, including myself, what the unseen costs of our cheap food are and try to talk through what we can do about it.

Ep. 70 - Getting Started with Microgreens Dec 07, 2021

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 to get those greens to full size before your Persephone period hits and they stop growing. The answer to all of this is microgreens.

Microgreens can be grown year-round indoors with very little in the way of equipment or expertise. And there are so many different crops that make great microgreens, there’s bound to be some that fit the palate of everybody in your family. There is quite literally something for everyone. And not only are they delicious and versatile, they are exploding with nutrients. And they can add that nutritional value to so many foods – as a topping for pizza, a base for salad, added to pasta, in wraps and on sandwiches, and so much more.

So, this episode I’m going to dig in to what it takes to get started with growing microgreens, some of the easiest ones for beginners to grow, and what you need to know about selecting seeds to use for microgreens. Let’s dig in.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Assessment of Vitamin and Carotenoid Concentrations of Emerging Food Products: Edible Microgreens

Ep. 69 - What is a CSA? And how is it different from a subscription service? Nov 30, 2021

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 and, well, here we are 68 episodes later and I’m finally getting there!

So, what is a CSA? How is it different from a subscription box shipped to you from a company you found online or that found you through some data tracking algorithm? And why is a CSA a great way to support your local food system? We’re digging into all that and more on today’s episode.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Episode One – The Introduction

The History of Community Supported Agriculture

The Untold History of CSA

LocalHarvest.org

Ep. 68 - Invasive Plant Species in the Garden, Plus Five Plants to Avoid in Your Landscape Nov 23, 2021

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 may also be for curb appeal.

Unfortunately, there are many species that get planted that are considered invasive in areas. No matter where you are, it’s likely that your region has plants that were introduced from another continent or even another area of your country that have escaped cultivation and gone on to propagate almost uncontrolled in the wild. We regard these plants as invasive species and today I’m going to dig in to what defines an invasive plant species, why they are a problem, and what we can do to prevent the spread of them. Then, I’ll talk about five of the most popular ones here in North America that are STILL being sold at nurseries and what alternatives you can choose to plant instead.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Bradford Pear fact sheet – Clemson Univ. Extension

Invasive Plants – National Park Service

Invasive Plants – U.S. Forest Service

12 Common Invasive Plants

Native American National Day of Mourning – Live Stream

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates Nov 16, 2021

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 to get ready to plant. So, we will be enjoying the smell of the stinking rose this evening while we partake of a few glasses of wine and some sci fi.

Because of that, I thought it would be the perfect time to give you a little refresher on planting your own garlic. In most regions the timing is perfect and even if you think you’ve missed the window of opportunity in your area, you’d be surprised at how flexible garlic can be. We'll cover soil conditions and timing, plus I'll share some tips and tricks for those of you planting garlic in the Southern U.S. and other warm-weather climates. So, let’s dig in to when and how to plant your garlic!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Episode 40 – Growing Garlic

Soil Temperature Maps

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 66 - Three Tasks You Should Not Skip to End the Gardening Season, plus one bonus task Nov 09, 2021

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. These things are going to help you better prevent and manage pests and disease in the garden as well as helping build a better soil microbiome to improve your yield. And, I’ll finish up with one more thing I do here that many home gardeners don’t realize they can and should be doing in their own spaces, weather it’s in ground or in beds. So, let’s dig in to my three tasks you should not skip at the end of your garden season.

Positively Farming Media playlist

Cover crop seeds:

True Leaf Market

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Ep. 65 - Overwintering Plants Indoors: Production or Dormancy? Oct 19, 2021

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 keep them alive and ready to go back outside in the spring to get a jump on the season and start producing all over again.

Karin also has a challenge for you if you want to try this over the winter. Let’s dig in!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Overwintering Pepper Plants

Winter Growing Tomatoes

Ep. 64 - Cloning Your Most Productive Garden Plants Oct 12, 2021

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 and without having a greenhouse.

The process of taking cuttings from a healthy, productive plant and propagating a new plant is called cloning and it's much easier than you think. You may have actually done it before by accident. So, let's figure out which plants are best for this type of propagation and talk about the different ways it can be done.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 63 - Proper Seed Storage: Moisture levels, storage conditions, containers, and more Oct 08, 2021

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. Leftovers from spring? No problem. We’ll talk about proper moisture level for saved seeds and how to get them dry enough to store, and what the best conditions are for storing seeds whether saved from your garden or store bought. We’ll also talk about the types of storage containers and how long each type of seed can be stored, based on plant family. So, let’s dig in to storing your seeds, shall we?

Collecting and Storing Seeds From Your Garden

Resources:

Are My Seeds Dry Enough?

Ep. 62 - Properly Saving Seeds in Your Garden Oct 05, 2021

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 following this simple method can absolutely mean you’ll have beautifully preserved seeds that have fantastic germination the next season and yield a bounty of exactly what you thought you were planting, it’s equally possible that you’ll open the seed packet the next season to find fuzzy gray fungus or black moldy growth on your seeds, or nice looking seeds that don’t sprout properly, or maybe they sprout and you get midway through the gardening season and the fruit on the plant look nothing like the ones you saved the seeds from.

What seems like it should be a straightforward process actually requires a little finesse. So, this Garden Talk Tuesday I’m going to dig into which plants you should and shouldn’t be saving seeds from, how to properly collect, clean, and dry those seeds in order to best guarantee your success the next season, and what to do with certain seeds to hedge your bets against carrying disease over from one season to the other. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Hot Water Treatment for Seeds – Louisiana State University

Resources:

How To Save Vegetable Seeds – Farmers Almanac

Ep. 61 - Can You Dig It? Lilies and Saving Seeds Oct 01, 2021

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 Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 60 - Fall Planted Strawberries Sep 28, 2021

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 difference between the strawberry plant types, and more. Check the links below for sourcing rooted strawberry plants for your fall garden planting and follow the link to the Facebook group if you have any questions!

Strawberry Varieties: The Complete Guide (Updated 2021) (strawberryplants.org)

Resources:

Growing Fruit: Strawberries [fact sheet] | Extension (unh.edu)

Strawberry Plants for Sale Online: The Complete Guide (Updated 2021)

Ep. 59 - Garden Notes to Make Now for a Successful Season Later Sep 24, 2021

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 rely on hindsight to give you an accurate portrayal of what happened this year so you can make corrections next year. So, let's dig in to what the most important garden notes to be making right now.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 58 - Mum's the Word: Growing mums in the garden. Sep 21, 2021

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 difference between a garden or hardy mum and a nursery or florist mum is going to make all the difference here. So, we’ll talk about propagating your own mums, whether it’s from seed or from cuttings, when and where it’s possible to plant potted nursery mums in the garden and have them be perennial, overwintering your mums and we’ll talk about what’s different about Belgian mums.

So, for this week’s episode, mum’s the word!

Secondary metabolites of Chrysanthemum genus and their biological activities

Resources:

History of the Chrysanthemum – National Chrysanthemum Society, USA

Chrysanthemum

Growing Garden Mums for Fall Sales

Ep. 57 - When to Pick Your Pumpkins and other winter squashes (and how to make them last!) Sep 17, 2021

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 too long and the bugs or ground rot gets to it. So, today we’re going to talk really quickly about the best time to harvest your winter squashes, including pumpkins, how to properly display them so they don’t go bad so quickly, and how to store them long-term so you can enjoy them all winter.

Episode 34 – Winter Squash

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 56 - Row Covers, Frost Covers, Insect Cover and Shade Cloth Sep 14, 2021

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 just laying around your home.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Resources:

Johnny's Selected Seeds

AgFabric

Gurney's

Ep. 55 - Identifying Insects in the Garden Sep 10, 2021

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 in the garden.

BugFinder Insect Identification Tool

Resources:

Antman's Hill on Facebook

Peterson Field Guide to Insects North of Mexico

Pest World Pest Guide

Insect Identification Forum

Insect Identification Key

Ep. 54 - Arugula Sep 07, 2021

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 completely different so I thought it deserved its own episode. Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of arugula in the beginning. In fact, I had no idea what it was when customers began to ask me if I grew it. And for the first few years I grew it but didn’t really use it myself. Now that I’m more familiar with some great uses for it and at what stage of growth I prefer it, it’s become a favorite early spring and late fall or winter addition to my leafy mixes and even as a topping for my pizza or pasta. You can even grow it indoors as both a leafy green and as a microgreen.

So, let’s talk arugula!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Eruca versicaria subsp. sativa

Resources:

Rocket, Garden

Tradition, uses, and biodiversity of rocket in Israel

Arugula

Eruca versicaria

Growing Arugula

Ep. 53 - Persephone and Pruning: Can You Dig It? Sep 03, 2021

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 of your summer garden plants.

So, let’s dig in, shall we?

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Resources:

Find your Persephone Period: Sunset and Sunrise Times

Ep. 52 - Cabbage Aug 31, 2021

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.

The biggest problems people face when growing cabbage are twofold. Number one is the garden pests, and we’ll talk a little about how to manage those, but the real head scratcher is when the cabbage won’t form a head. So, we’ll talk about the importance of nutrients when it comes to cabbage and what to do when it just doesn’t head up like it should.

So, without further ado, let’s dig in to growing cabbage.

9 Impressive Health Benefits of Cabbage

Resources:

Episode 12 - Broccoli

Brassica oleracea

Properties of Cabbage

Stomach Cramps After Eating Cabbage

Midwest Vegetable Production Guide for Commercial Growers

Ep. 51 - Garden Myths, Part Two Aug 20, 2021

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 that episode, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

On this Focal Point Friday episode, we’re going to look at two things’ people do or are told to do in the garden to prevent weeds and pests and one topic that has confused many home gardeners for generations, including myself. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Episode 32 – Garden Myths! True, False, or … Maybe??

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Dawn Dish Soap Ingredients

References:

How Soap Works

Ep. 50 - The Dirt on Fall Garden Preparation Aug 17, 2021

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 the fall garden, there are few things you need to take into consideration prior to planting especially in terms of your soil health. Let’s dig in to what needs to be done to the garden beds before you plant your fall crops.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 49 - There is No Garden Perfection: Total Transparency and an Origin Story Aug 13, 2021

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 sense, right? As someone who wants to help people learn all about gardening, I want you to see all the great things in my gardens so you think, “Wow, okay, she knows what she’s talking about, look at that garden!” and then maybe you’ll lean further in to what I’m teaching you. But, I’m finding that can be very detrimental, both for you as a gardener trying to learn as much as you can for your garden, and for me as someone wanting to share my knowledge and what I’ve learned, but also me as a gardener.

Let's talk about why I have felt like a failure in the garden this year, how I've changed that, and what you can do when you feel like everyone else's gardens are looking great and yours doesn't match up.

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Ep. 48 - We Got the Beet! Aug 10, 2021

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. But elsewhere the root is usually referred to as beetroot, table beet, or dinner beet and the tops are just referred to as beet greens. Beets, both the root and the greens, have been used in traditional medicine for hundreds of years to treat a variety of maladies.

Beets like similar soil conditions to carrots, so nice light or loamy soil with lots of organic matter. Check out this episode to get more info on how to grow a successful beet crop.

Health Benefits of Beetroot

Resources:

Beetroot

Growing Beets

Beets – Texas A&M AgriLife Extension

Ep. 47 - Can You Dig It? Vol. 5: Mobile Farmers' Markets, Pollination Problems and Cabbage Loopers Aug 06, 2021

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 gardeners from all over to share ideas and ask questions. You can also share interesting food stories like the ones on today’s show by using the hashtag #canyoudigit when you share in the group. So, join us!

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Mobile Farmers’ Market offers fresh produce for Sacramento area’s low-income residents

Resources:

Farmers Market On Wheels – Sara Bernal

This Frozen Honey Trend Is Going Viral on TikTok—But Is It OK to Try It?

Ep. 46 - Growing Spinach Aug 03, 2021

This Garden Talk Tuesday we’re going to talk about another great fall crop: spinach. Spinach is another fairly easy crop to grow that's only slightly fussy about its growing conditions. It’s no diva, like carrots, but it can be a little finicky when it comes to temperatures and water. So, it really is best grown in the cooler shoulder seasons of spring and fall. And, what makes it a great fall crop is that it can not only stand up to a heavy frost, you can overwinter it with row covers and harvest off the mature plants all winter long. Then, in the spring, it will pick back up and begin growing again for a very early spring harvest before you’ve even finished planting your spring crops.

So, let’s dig in to growing spinach.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Medicinal Plants: Spinach

Resources:

Spinach

Cornell Vegetable Growing Guide: Spinach

Ep. 45 - The Epidemic of Farmer Burnout Jul 30, 2021

Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by your summer garden? The overwhelm you may be feeling in the garden is a good indication that you’ve pushed yourself pretty far in terms of your commitment to your garden, the hard work you’ve put in, and you may be having difficulty managing the stress that hits in the middle of the heaviest part of the harvest when it seems like everything needs to be done at once and NOTHING is cooperating.

Unless you are relying on your garden for all of your family’s sustenance, that it’s okay to have those failures in the garden. It’s supposed to be something you enjoy. And once you get through those few weeks of frustration and exhaustion, hopefully you’ll be able to look back and see everything you gained from that garden and happily be able to move forward into the cooler fall season with your head held high.

Now, what if your garden was your job? What if it was the way you fed your family, both figuratively and literally. How you paid the bills. What if your garden was a family legacy passed on to you or one you wanted to pass on to your children? What if paying your mortgage or your rent relied on how well you did in the garden?

That’s the life of a farmer. The people who put the food on our tables and in our grocery stores contend with this stress on this level every single season. As consumers, we don’t see it. But stop for a minute and think about the number of items on the grocery store shelves. Think about the variety of foods we get to choose from. Whether it’s a fruit or vegetable, a bean or a grain, a meat or an egg, a dairy product or a boxed good, every single item on those shelves has a component that needed to be grown and cared for by somebody. And those somebody’s are burning out.

This episode we talk about the epidemic of farmer burnout, how prevalent it is, what's causing it, and what we can do about it.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Midwest farmers face a crisis. Hundreds are dying by suicide.

Resources:

Farmer Burnout in Canada

Frequency of Burnout in the Swiss farming sector

Burnout and hopelessness among farmers: The Farmers Stressors Inventory

Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases

Burnout Prevention and Treatment

5 ways to detect and combat burnout

Food Prices and Spending

How Much Should I Spend on Groceries?

Ep. 44 - Caring for Your Garden in Extreme Heat Jul 28, 2021

We covered ways to help you continue to work in your garden during the heat of the summer in episode 41, but what about your garden? Many of you have already been facing extreme heat this year, so let’s talk about what to do to help care for your garden when you experience extreme summer heat conditions.

Episode 41: 6 Ways to Beat the Heat in the Garden

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

Ep. 43 - Succession Planting, Relay Planting, and Interplanting: Increase your garden yield without increasing your space Jul 23, 2021

We’ve been talking about fall gardening over the past few weeks and some of the techniques I’m going to talk about fall right in line with planting for fall, so now’s a good time to cover some of the terminology and the differences between and benefits of each. These are all techniques we’ve used a lot on our farm and in our gardens and they work well no matter how much garden space you have. In fact, these techniques can actually increase the yield of a small garden space substantially. So, without further ado, let’s dig in to succession planting, relay planting, and interplanting.

Ep. 39 – Gardening As Therapy

Ep. 42 - Just Grow Carrots Jul 20, 2021

Carrots are divas! Carrots can either be a complete failure or a rousing success and 90% of that depends on your soil composition. One little bump in the road and your carrot will do a quick swerve and you end up with wonky roots. No worries! On today's episode we'll cover how to amend your soil to perfect diva status, how to grow carrots in containers, what diseases and pests to watch out for, harvest tips and more. So come one, let's grow carrots!

The Gardening as Therapy episode has been corrected, too. The link below takes you to the Anchor page for the corrected audio.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group

A Look into the Powerful Medicinal Properties of Wild Carrots

Resources:

Carrot – Botanical.com

Carrot Nutrition Facts

Carrot Growing Guide, Cornell University

Ep. 41 - 6 Tips for Beating the Heat in the Garden Jul 16, 2021

Working in the garden in the heat can not only be dangerous if you’re not careful, but it can also make it difficult to stay on track with what you’re doing. It can be a bit of a distraction, we don’t work nearly as efficiently, it can be an actual health risk. So, here are 6 ways you can beat the heat in your garden this summer.

Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group