This year, I’m excited to focus on growing more pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and corn. Last year’s harvest was incredible! There’s something so rewarding about having an abundance of food to share with neighbors and friends. I’m particularly proud of still having frozen bell and sweet peppers in my freezer.
The Build It Up program came at the perfect time for me and my family. Equipped with new information and resources, we made our first garden plan. The program helped us create and maintain a planting schedule, and an ambitious garden layout. Factoring in watering needs, sun orientation, and soil conditions, we started to really learn more about our land. And though it required a lot of hard, consistent work, we have been rewarded each day with progress.
Each workshop begins with an invitation to connect with someone you do not yet know. We are asked to spend a few minutes learning about their experiences, challenges, and goals. These simple conversations feel like planting seeds of friendship and collaboration. They remind me that growing food and growing community are not separate things. They are the same practice.
So while we wait for our gardens to take off later in spring, we may as well go ahead and eat the wild and free greens that are so readily available all around us. Wild greens can be used to create vibrant salads, they can be juiced, given to chickens as a treat, or they can be used in a variety of other creative ways.
By Meisha Turner As we start the third year of building a garden at our home, we’ve definitely learned a few things along the way. Some things, we got right on the first attempt. Others… well, we’re still figuring it out. But, by now we’ve had a few opportunities to...
In these uncertain times, I believe the ability to grow our own food is a powerful tool for resilience—both for ourselves and those around us… Gardening is a big task, especially if you’ve never done it before. But the truth is, this program is designed for people like us — novices, dreamers, and doers who want to make a difference in their own lives and communities.
I have four kids, a four month old baby, a 3 year old girl and two boys, 5 and 8 years old. Part of my intention in joining this program was to learn enough about gardening so that we could start a successful garden this year and so the kids could feel more connected with the source of their food. I had no idea, but we got to learn so much more and became part of a supportive community that will be there long after we graduate.
Our family moved to the area about a year ago. That means we had to start our garden over from scratch. It also means we had to adjust to different types of garden bugs, both pests and beneficial bugs. Luckily, we learned about many of the local pests from one of the Build It Up workshops, and we had our Build It Up binder that contains so much useful information about identifying and controlling common garden pests. Despite having some losses due to pests, we now have a game plan for how to manage garden bugs starting in spring.
What summer vegetable tastes like no other, and is so incredibly delicious, because the real ones are grown and harvested only during the summer…the one season, out of the entire four seasons of the year, that we cannot wait until the first one ripens, and this juicy summer delicacy, finally does appear?
You guessed it…Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.
Then our hardest battle yet came with the summer heat and dry weather. We had caught hundreds of gallons of rain water to help water the garden but it wasn’t enough for how hot and dry it was this year. Luckily we learned from the class that mulch works great to help hold moisture for the plants.