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: 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...
Gardener Story: Fernanda Dezta
Our family is happy to be a part of the Build It Up program and the opportunity to create abundance for our home. It was our first year gardening and we were excited to experiment and learn. The experience came with many high points and some low points that allowed...
Gardener Story: Tara Swiger
This is our first year having a garden. This is also our first summer in our first house. We’ve had tomatoes and basil plants on the porch of rentals, but we’ve never had SPACE the way we do this year. The hardest part was deciding what to plant! We poured...
Gardener Story: Kayla Sanchez
I am a city girl. I’ve lived in apartments almost all of my life and I had never considered growing a garden. I was not a fan of the outdoors, sweating, dealing with bugs...nope it was not for me. In 2020 we got locked down and my daughter was BORED. I was trying to...
Gardener Story: Kirstin Blackburn
Gardening always brings certain thoughts to my mind. Mostly, thoughts about my ability to survive in pioneering days. I always wonder if my vegetable patch would be enough to feed my family of six, or if we would succumb to starvation and dysentery, like in the old...
Gardener Story: MeMe Ansbro
Thyme to Turnip the Beet! My name is MeMe and I’m 34. I am from Northern California but I’ve lived in East Tennessee for 13 years on one and a half acres of farmland on the Greene County line. I am a stay at home mom and caregiver to a niece and nephew. I’m pretty...