Just Grow Something | The "Why" Behind the "How" of Gardening

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:

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:

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:

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:

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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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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!

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:

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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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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!

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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!

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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