Hello ! My name is Larry Bailey and I will try to give you a little background on my love of gardening. I probably started getting in the dirt when I followed my parents and grandparents into their gardens when I was two years old. That was 70 years ago. I helped them in their gardens till I married and started my own gardens. Actually I continued to help them even when I had my own garden. I learned things from anyone, magazine or book on gardening. We have always grown vegetables and fruit for our family and shared with friends. We can freeze and dehydrate produce. My wife shares my passion and much of our time is spent planning, preparing, planting, caring for, harvesting, cooking and preserving our fruits and vegetables. We also love flowers, so we have a lot of those too. It's challenging for us to maintain everything because we have two farms 385 miles apart. We both lost our spouses and remarried (We grew up together). One farm is in Tennessee and the other is in WV. We love to pass along what we have learned to others and are always learning new things ourselves.
I’m Emily, writer, gardener, almost 74 years old, but nobody thinks I look it (despite the road miles). I can’t do the heavy stuff anymore and have support once a week from a burly local landscaper named Brad. I grow a substantial amount of my own fruit and veg, all organically, giving space and support to wildlife and pollinating insects. I garden with the clear knowledge of climate change, warming temperatures, and potential for wildfires.
I grow only what I like to eat. I’ve stopped growing tasty things that cause acid reflux though. My veg area is essentially raised beds using Charles Dowling’s “do dig” method, laying this year’s compost and goodies on top. Soil is key, so is rotation of what I grow, companion planting, heritage seeds varieties, wise use of water. I recycle and reuse poles, PVC pipe lengths, netting, and Enviromesh. My main issues are pigeons, roving domestic cats, leaf miner, cabbage white moths. I mulch, mulch and mulch for water conservation (water to roots in the morning). Have a small mini-orchard of dwarf fruit trees that I call my food forest.
Things looking beautiful, very important to me. So, I use a French potager approach, mixing flowers with my veg patch (dahlias, sunflowers, marigolds, etc.) Growing your own is experiencing a revival during a time of pandemic and lockdown. It makes us look at our lives, our places of sheltering. But it is much more than that.Mental health experts agree that gardening, growing food, and nature will cause our blood pressure to fall, our minds to lift. The brain chemicals that underlie the feeling of happiness will outweigh the chemical of flight and fear.
Our old normal was dependence on supermarkets for our food, mostly grown by far-flung conglomerates. Food’s getting more expensive and uncertain during these virus times. Even a small container on a balcony can grow lettuce. Get your kids involved as they instinctively love dirt. Put a container or raised bed on the lifeless concrete or lawn. Watch a seed unfurl, burst into leaves. Growing your own fruit and veg will be far more flavorful and healthier. I don't have food miles, but foot feet.
If you don’t use pesticides, wildlife will return to fascinate you. You can encourage them to stay with bug hotels, untidy areas with leaves and fallen limbs, pollinating flowers, dwarf fruit trees, bird boxes, a small pond, and so forth.Your outdoor surroundings will be far more beautiful, and you will want to spend more time there. Nature will calm and enrich your life. Share your discoveries with others. Without a lecture from you, they will discover the healing power you’ve found—in a sense, you will pay it forward. My neighbor reimagined cucumbers after she ate one of my homegrown ones.
My husband and I have been "preppers" of sorts for a while now. About a year ago I became interested in growing and storing my own food as well as becoming sustainable in other ways. I started to watch Youtubers and even went to my first Homesteaders of America conference in 2019. It took some time and elbow grease but my garden is up and growing. I'm learning a lot and making mistakes, but as Justin Rhodes once said "Just Plant"! I started following Victory Gardens Revival on Tiktok and was inspired to start my own Tiktok page too share my garden tips and tricks and also some laughs. My page is @growingthroughtheweeds
I think everyone should start a garden even if you just have a small space. Why have a front lawn, when you can have a food forest. Im grateful that along my journey I have been able to get friends and family to start their own gardens. I never thought I would be giving advice on how to grow food. I am so loving spending time in the garden with my 4 year old and teaching him all about how food grows.
My husband and I purchased a dilapidated, uninhabitable house because of the land it sat on last August. When we first set our eyes on the one-acre of cleared, flat land, I knew that this would be where we would literally set our roots. I once learned from another gardener that the garden and land come first before the house. I have always known that the more you spend on the land, you and the land will become acquainted with one another and you will live harmoniously with the soil and the soul of the land. I planted edible trees and bushes first. Then, came the raised beds for our kitchen garden. In went lettuce, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, bok choy, carrots, squash, beans, and many more! As I dug into the earth, I felt its pulse. It was alive and welcoming me to use its rich nutrients to feed myself and my family. I couldn’t stop at vegetables. I've expanded to a medicinal herbal garden and a pollinator garden, knowing that I can provide health for my family and sweet nectar for the bees. We often hear guided meditations softly asking us to visualize growing roots, but gardening for me is the most grounding, spiritual experience. I embrace the pull of the moon and its effects on the soil and the harvest. I embrace the directions and welcome the slow, rising sun in the East and the warm goodbye as it sets in the West, kissing my plants in different ways. I invite the rain, as it helps my garden thrive. Gardening is more than just sowing seeds and watching things grow. It has taught me that patience has its rewards and has given me hope for a better tomorrow.
In the midst of this pandemic, I felt the pull to be self-sufficient even more. The notion of a victory garden began before we even found our property. To be able to mostly feed ourselves from our land and the animals that we raise is a very empowering feeling, knowing that we can take the middle man out of the equation for survival, in cases when there is a disruption in our food supply. Biting into a juicy watermelon that you grew from seed is both satisfying and motivating. You’ll be motivated to sow more crops and store-bought produce will never taste the same again. Starting a victory garden takes work, but the reward comes back ten fold. All you need are seeds, rich soil, sun, water, and good humor to get you through the many adventures of gardening. Before you know it, your lawn will be an abundant source of nourishment for you and your family.
Best,
Sophia Collett
Holly Springs, NC
I’m an artist that moved from New York to Tennessee in the summer of 2019 to pursue a more naturally connected and peaceful life. I was born and raised in Chicago, so the big city is all I’ve ever know. Once I started visiting my partner in Tennessee when he moved to expand his business, I finally got my first taste of sweet country life. As an artist, I also felt my work was being forced into something that didn’t align with who I was, simply to meet the demands of the industry in New York. I felt that moving to the country was my opportunity to not only reconnect with nature, but with my spirit as well. I was being called to it.
When I was little, I remember just how much I loved nature and wanted to immerse myself in it as much as I could. But as the years went on, school and city life took hold and those visions faded. Now I feel my inner child reawakening and my work is finally aligning with that connectedness with nature I was missing.
The pandemic really sparked something within me to take that connection even further and learn how to live in harmony with the land. Humanity has completely taken advantage of Mother Earth and has exploited her to her limit. It’s vital that we learn how to lead a sustainable life, that we learn how to grow our own food, and that we control what we consume. We literally are what we eat, so it’s our responsibility to know where our food comes from and what we are putting in our bodies. The best way to do that, is to grow that food yourself!
Now I’ve awakened to a much deeper purpose in educating and guiding people to a more sustainable lifestyle. The start of my Victory Garden has sparked such a beautiful and essential journey into restoring balance with the Earth and within ourselves.
To the future generations, I implore you to remember the traditional ways of working with the land. Don't let the illusion of convenience and comfort cloud how much our planet is hurting. It's our responsibility to restore balance and it starts in our gardens and within us.
I want to thank you so much again for giving me the opportunity to share my garden and my story with you love and light!
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Hello, my name is Caleb Saul. Thank you for the opportunity to share my family’s victory garden.
I started this as a family project, much like the victory gardens during WWII, as a small way to give back to the community and provide for my family. This is my first venture into raised bed gardening, and after viewing several posts, and how to videos I designed a raised bed trellis garden that would suffice my families needs for years to come. I settled on a 6ft by 6ft, one foot deep box with a six feet trellis for vining plants.
The garden pictured is my first build and has been planted for several weeks now. During that time frame I’ve built two more gardens identical in dimensions for friends who’ve wanted to get into gardening themselves. Taking advise from my two aunts, both of whom are very seasoned gardeners, I chose to use square foot gardening and adapted that method to fit the space given and my family’s needs for produce. I also had several large pots from a previous container gardening venture from past years. Utilizing our new raised bed garden, and the container pots we had on hand, we’ve been able to plant several varieties of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, eggplant and herbs. More than enough to suffice my family’s needs. Doing so has given us an opportunity to not only provide for my family but also begin to give back to the community and friends.
What I gained is so much more than another source of food. It’s a sense of accomplishment and more importantly time spent with the family building and tending to the garden. I look forward to the fruits of our labor and being able to share with family and friends.
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Hello from Ottawa, Canada! When our schools were shut down mid-March, there was still lots of snow on the ground. My husband and I have an 8 year old son and twin daughters who are almost 3 years old. I thought I would buy plants this year simply because I didn't want my twins to throw dirt all over my house, but I was suddenly worried that nurseries and garden centers may not be available, so I started seeds. We also decided to add a 30ft by 4ft bed to our five smaller beds, all in a suburban backyard. We use as much free things as we can acquire. One bed is made from window wells, and a strawberry patch made from an old sandbox. We even acquired free rain barrels!
We have been so grateful to be busy in our backyard while practicing isolation. Our children love to help and try our harvested items. I have friends who live in condos with children going stir crazy. I hope to help these friends and neighbors with fresh produce. It is my hope that my children will look back at the pandemic of 2020 fondly as time spent outdoors with the family gardening.
- Tina Sapp
"Hi, I'd never had a garden before and this was my first time trying it! We've had a lot of success and it was a lot of fun for our daughter.
We wanted to grow our own food because of the high prices and low supply at the grocery stores. We wanted to have something fresh, local and organic with no chemicals!
I encourage anyone to start their backyard garden because of a few different factors.
1. You know what your getting
2. Low cost
3. Fresh
4. (For you moms and dads) It teaches hard work and responsibilities
5. It is absolutely rewarding
Good luck to all of you newbies like us! It was truly a blast!"
Daughter Sophie adds-
"The watermelon is the best!
We worked a lot on that garden.
It learned me how to plant."
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"Hello, my name is Virginia Harris. My family and I enjoy growing our own food. We have been growing our own food for a few years now, however we are more focused now than ever on producing nutritional, homegrown foods as a family.
We feel that during these times of uncertainty, it is more important than ever to know where your food comes from and how to grow it. Growing your own food in a sustainable way will not only provide you with an immense feeling of joy and pride that you have accomplished something great, but it also provides your family with nutritious flavor filled foods.
Although we only own one acre, we utilize most of our yard to grow food. We have two vegetable gardens and one large planter of tomatoes, and we also raise chickens for both meat and eggs.
Nothing goes to waste! We compost everything possible and reuse it to fertilize our gardens. Even our fencing, raised beds, and chicken coups are made entirely of reused or upcycled materials. I would say that starting a victory garden has really impacted our lives in a bigger way than I ever imagined it would.
We didn't just grow food, we grew our family's connection to each other and the world around us.
I would encourage anyone to grow their own food, even if they are just starting small, because small steps add up to big things!
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"I remember as a child the smell of peas when we snapped them, the taste of cherry tomatoes I would sneak into my mouth when she wasn't looking, and
reading books under her sassafras tree while sipping the tea she had made from the leaves we'd picked fresh that morning. Some of the fondest memories of my childhood were created in my grandmother's garden.
I had always hoped that one day I could create the same smiles that would turn into the same moments, enjoying the same smells and the same tastes I had cherished and still do, and so it seems it has started.
Pictured here is my daughter Alice Bell & she is learning to be patient and to nurture so that eventually she will be rewarded. Together we are making memories."
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