Build It Up Blog
The Build It Up Blog includes entries from our gardners discussing their gardening journey and guides from our program staff regarding when to start your seeds, when to put transplants in the ground, when to fertilize, and more!
Gardener Story: Kirstin Blackburn
Anxious hopeful anticipation. That’s what I always feel at the May stage of the gardening season. You’ve prepped the soil. You’ve pulled weeds, added compost, and dug holes. You’ve made your garden plan by researching and selecting your plant and seed varieties....
Gardener Story: Justin Delp
We are so excited for the garden this year. We loved starting our garden last year and we’re excited to try new things with it. We have already expanded it by two rows so we can add some fruits and some flowers.Another big change we made that will make a big...
Gardener Story: Felicia Echols
Gardening has brought some unexpected challenges but most importantly some unexpected memories. I have a 7 year old, 5 year old, and 3 year old and they keep me on my toes! In the hustle and bustle of life, working, homeschooling, homemaking, and frankly surviving the...
Gardener Story: Nancy Eddins
Last year as a first time gardener was probably the most exciting thing ever. To grow things with my own work was amazing. The knowledge provided me by the ARCD was excellent, they were able to teach me to grow things. Mind you I had killed cactus plants before....
Gardener Story: Opal Frye-Clark
The outdoors and gardening has always been essential to my life. Like several in this area, I grew up on a farm. With my grandparents, we would plant a huge garden every year. Most of our fresh produce came from the results of that garden and I have very few...
Gardener Story: Laura Ciccone
We are a military family who retired from a duty station in upstate NY. It took us a couple of years toresearch our forever home leading to us moving to eastern Tennessee. Once we got here, we noticedimmediately there were some stark differences between what we were...
Gardener Story: Emily Brown
Black Thumb? No More! I suppose I can’t say I have a black thumb anymore! Hello out there! I’m Emily and I have a moderate sized garden in my backyard, inside the Johnson City limits. I’m a long time organic farmer’s market shopper and before this experience, I...
Gardener Story: Jason and Krystal Smith
Gardening For Our Family, Community, and Our Sanity We have been growing food for a lot of years now. We garden to feed our family with nutritious foods, create healthy natural ecosystems, build healthy soil, and build community in our surrounding areas. Each year we...
Gardener Story: Block Family
Before we started the Build it Up program, we had taken a few stabs at having our own gardens, with very little guidance, very little yield and a whole bunch of frustration. We could never figure out why our zucchinis rotted, our cucumbers died and we got very few...