It’s been a warm & busy spring! A majority of our backyard gardeners have already started planting in their established gardens. Others are still building out their grow spaces, taking advantage of our long growing season and taking in as much as they can at the monthly classes before they take their first whack at gardening.


Michael & Sarah have been working on building a greenhouse out of all repurposed materials to begin their gardening journey.


Linda has some successful gardening experience under her belt, and hopes to grow a large amount of food for her family this season.

We had a well attended Garden Planning class & workshop in March, with our home gardeners eager to learn where they should start. Giant graph paper, notebooks, calendars, and seed catalogs are some of the basics needed to plan a garden while waiting for the warmer growing season. Sow True Seed gave us a generous donation of strawberries, and Cooperate WNC provided us with organic bulk seed potatoes for early spring planting. Though we’re starting to see a few Colorado potato beetles & aphids here and there, we’re confidently hoping with proper pest management that we’ll all end up with a bountiful harvest.

The Garden Planting class and workshop in April was taught by local farmer Abby Gage, who taught successful seed starting and transplanting tips and tricks. Not everyone has access to seed starting trays or other fancy equipment, so showing how to upcycle items like plastic egg cartons, salad clamshells, and take-out containers to use as humidity domes for starting seed was very useful. Rabbit Den Farm grew our cool weather transplants of buttercrunch lettuce, lacinato kale, and Georgia collards. We’re all about ready to harvest & enjoy some spring salads and nutritious stewed greens!

As we discussed pests & pathogens in our most recent Organic Garden Maintenance class, we all learned some interesting tips & tricks! Who would have thought spraying milk on foliage effectively treats powdery mildew? Rose, one of our home gardeners, used her own goat milk and saw it work first hand. Apparently a 2:3 ratio of dairy milk to water sprayed on plants at the beginning of the growing season or with the first signs of mildew can do the trick! Could be changes in pH, could be growth of beneficial microbes…either way, I’m excited to try this out on my bee balm patch, which usually is covered with powdery mildew by the time I’d like to harvest for tea. Fungus gnats are always an issue this time of year too, and L.O.T.U.S., one of our local farm & garden stores, sells rice hulls as an affordable top dressing to mitigate fungus gnats. Backyard gardeners took home diatomaceous earth & dusters, stirrup hoes, hand hoe/excavator (quite possibly the best garden tool ever!), bypass pruners, pruning snips, and gardening gloves to tackle the growing season!

We sourced warm weather transplants of tomatoes, peppers, and herbs from our friends at Grateful Roots. Theres something for everyone, from perfectly spicy jalapenos to sweet Italian corni de toro peppers…heirloom slicer tomatoes like Mortgage Lifter & Cherokee Purple to perfect bite-size cherry salad tomatoes. And don’t forget to companion plant the basil & cilantro!

Appalachian Seed Growers Collective has supplied us with a variety of locally grown & regionally adapted seeds. Our group is excited to grow out Appalachian heirlooms such as North Carolina Candyroaster Winter Squash, Grapevine Greasy Beans, and Maggie Flowers Six-Week Pink Bush Beans. There’s also some unique varieties of much-loved garden & kitchen staples that have proven to produce well in our region, such as Blue Ridge Butternut, Suyo Long Cucumber, Wandering Purple Tomatillo, and Puerto Rico Everblush Okra.

Some of us have already experienced losses in the garden, with lettuce planted at the garden’s edge just a little too tempting for the critters not to nibble on, tomatoes eagerly planted during the recent 80 degree days succumbing to our last cold spell, and the brassicas…oh, the brassicas! Loved by all, especially the aphids & cabbage worms! This is a “high-input” hobby/job/lifestyle, but also very high-reward if we’re doing what we love. What could be better than those first fresh-picked sun-ripened berries?! The slugs & the birds agree. Our relationships within natural systems can define our perception of success or failure. We hope to encourage home gardeners to connect & engage with their immediate ecosystems, so that the more observations we make, the more understanding we will have of its needs.