What a blessing the Build it Up Garden Program has been. I moved to Tennessee last October and by January I knew that I would be hosting a family from Ukraine who were arriving in the United States with just a couple of suitcases. More recently a student from Kenya...
This is our first year in the Build It Up program. Our past gardens have never panned out very well. The kids loved playing in the wild chaos, but we never managed a useful harvest. After discovering a food allergy that restricts ALL commercial preservatives, I was...
Our family of 4 moved to East TN last summer with the dream of having our own garden to start feeding our family with. Without much gardening experience under my belt, I struggled with where and how to get started, what resources to use for research, and felt stuck at...
This was our first year gardening, not just in Tennessee, but in general. Back when we were living in California, I asked my husband to pull the hedges in front of our condo so I could plant some edible plants for the kids. It was very small scale and most things...
My great joy in my garden, this year, has been the involvement of my youngest kiddo. Gardening with my three-year-old daughter amidst the challenges of deer nibbling and imperfect planting conditions has provided a valuable and enriching experience for her development...
When we set out on this journey, our goal was to grow as much of our own food as we could and preserve it to use during the winter months. We’ve had successes and failures alike. We are still relatively new to Tennessee and it’s climate. We come from a hot dry...
Why did this happen? We were not able to grow anything in Florida, where we lived for 19 years. Nor would we have known what to grow or had much room to grow it. As soon as we moved here, we began thinking of what to do with our land instead of having a big yard to...
Greetings from our humble garden. It’s early July as I write this and the plants seems to double in size after every good rain. I’m eyeing the hundreds of swelling green tomatoes and I know that life is about to get really busy in the kitchen. We’ve been toiling away...
I started gardening out of the need for more fresh foods for my children due to food allergies and sensitivities. This was the push I needed as I’ve wanted to garden since I was a child watching my Aunt put out a big garden every year. I want to create my own...
We moved to the Telford area in Sept. 2019 from SE NC. We tried growing tomatoes and squash the first couple of years here with moderate success. I established raspberries in 2020 and they do well and flourish with little help. I felt at a loss as to what would grow...