Man in Overalls

"So, I want a garden, but I was wondering if you could build and plant it using the principles of Square Foot Gardening?" Well, "um..." I squirmed. What was Square Foot Gardening ? This was back in 2009, just as I was  putting on my Overalls . Carol, a friend and the customer asking the question offered, "I've got a copy of the book. I can lend it to you to review, and then when you come tomorrow, you can put it into practice. Does that work?" Sure thing.  So, I read it. It took about 6 hours that night, and I was a convert. Mel Bartholemew, its author, made me smile with his writing, and his story captured my heart - plus, his intensive gardening style matched my inclinations, so it was a good match. When he first started gardening, Mel saw on a seed packet that he should plant lettuce every 6in in the row, with rows 18in to 2ft apart. So he did. And it worked. But, in the middle - in the open row, the pathways- he grew TONS of weeds, so he thought, ...

I want you to grow your groceries. Could you grow enough food to feed your family if you needed? Could we, as communities, sustain ourselves - even temporarily - if there was some major disruption like a cyber attack, supply chain failure, hyper inflation, economic fall-out, or - God forbid - war? Though I'm a fan of salads & tasty treats like sugar snaps, if you're hungry, those just won't cut it. It comes down to calories and protein. If you were gardening to keep your family alive, what would you grow?  This isn't about fear-mongering; it's about preparedness & keeping enough life-skills passing around in our networks so that, "if & when" we need them, those skills can be cultivated & shared . Even within a generally stable society, there are "minor" crises at the level of region, city, neighborhood, & family all the time that don't feel all that minor to the folks involved.  If you had to, could you grow enough energ...

  With this Arctic blast headed our way, I wanted to share a quick note with a couple resources. ​ Growing Year 'Round - video ​ ​ What To Do When It Freezes (pdf) ​ ​The main takeaways are: Most cool season crops should be fine; they'll freeze, thaw, and keep growing. It's the warm season crops growing out of season you have to worry about like... tomatoes, peppers... Make sure your soil is good and moist before the freeze; this prevents dehydration burn turn off your irrigation Friday evening so it doesn't run early morning Sat/Sunday when your plants are still frozen because "flash thawing" will hurt even the freeze-tolerant crops ​In parting, here are a few cool season crops that are more tender than the rest and may benefit from extra care (see What To Do When It Freezes) beyond watering the soil cilantro, parsley, celery, dill, fennel, nasturtium. ​Stay warm out there! As needed & helpful, our team looks forward to future opportunities to support you...

There's something about coming out of the cold, darkness of winter into the warm light of spring that swells our sense of the possible, and so spring is - universally- the most popular gardening season. And for good measure: potatoes, tomatoes , squash, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, pumpkins, melons and all those other frost-tender crops thrive in the early spring warmth - before the onslaught of heat and pests to come. :) Probably for this reason, as a kid, I only ever grew a spring garden, 10 years running from 8 'till I graduated and left home for college at 18. I started in March, just after the threat of frost had past and seeded seeds and planted plants in beds that I'd banked in leaves over the summer and winter to keep the weeds down and build up the organic matter. Now, that's not a bad thing to do if you need a break, but truth is, I just didn't know that we  could  grow 12 months a year in the Deep South. I didn't know The Game of Gardening Season...

Time to put on your overalls. If you've been waiting for a good opportunity to start growing food, now's the time. If you already know how, it's time you started extra seeds so you can get them to friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. And it's time you start posting and otherwise sharing your grocery growing hacks with anyone interested. Right now, food shortages are largely a phantom of over-buying and everyone stocking up, but with the spread of this disease, a decentralized food system is a resilient food system, a disease resistant food system. Not even in the aftermath of 2008 has a home garden looked so good. Not to mention, in the face of disease, health is paramount. My co-worker said, "What's terrifying and yet strangely beautiful about the current situation is that it reveals the amazing power of nature to grow and spread. But that same power is available to us"-- to heal, to grow, to feed. Time for us to grow a better future. In t...

“Why I Wear Overalls?”  or, more simply,  “Remember” 9. My grandfather was buried in overalls. His children placed seed packets in his breast pocket before they planted him. My mother, her bowed head dropping tears on his cold face, She tells me “He never wore a suit.” “Overalls everyday of his life.  Wore ‘em to church.” “Ain’t that the truth,” chimes my aunt.  “Clean shirt. Maybe some other shoes.” And my mother again: “Just didn’t make any sense burying him in a tie.” 8. Five days prior my grandmother was reselling Salvation Army china at the flea market. Granddaddy was waiting to go home. She found him slumped in the front seat of her van; Doctors said he’d had a stroke. I say, he caught a ride from St Peter back to the farm. 7. For decades he carried an inhaler. It helped him cope with the emphysema, earned, like his calluses, from a one-mule plow.  He carried the land in his lungs like gulps of oxygen. Every now and then, he r...

I've been rolling my #GrowCart through Jacksonville's streets to highlight the fact you don't need a lot of space to grow your groceries. In other words, you don't need a farm to have a garden -  which is worth celebrating! If you're like me, you'd love be able to pick something from your garden, more or less, everyday - something to base dinner on or something to give it that extra touch of flavor and the health that only fresh can provide. Growing your groceries gives you the freshest food money can't buy as I like saying. Unfortunately there's a deep seated myth in the American psyche about having a food garden. I can't count the number of folks I've met at workshops , calls and emails I've received, and Facebook comments I've gotten over the years from folks saying something akin to: "I'd love to have you out to help us start a garden once... we've got a bigger place" - or - "we move to the country....

I'm grateful because... Well, it started with my mother: when I was 8, she taught me how to turn over the soil with a shovel, how to sow seeds, how to break a little branch off a shrub and stake it over newly transplanted starts to lessen the brunt of the sun, how to thin carrots, stake tomatoes, dig potatoes, and crop collard greens. By and large, the basics, I learned from her. Without the fertile soil of those fundamentals nurturing my journey as a gardener and these days as an itinerant urban farmer I wouldn't have had those early seasons of (relative) success. I wouldn't have hung up my sign  as they say, and I surely wouldn't have made these how-to videos  with the FL Department of Agriculture in order to freely share those basic gardening skills with the state's children. I am Man in Overalls in no small part due to the many agricultural teachers I've had through the years. I am able to support folks like yourself in growing food for self and nei...

Welcome to mid summer in the Deep South! If you're anything like me, you're actively looking for excuses to avoid going outside this time of year. The heat doesn't so much radiate down from the sun as it seems to rise from the side walk. Rain helps- for about ten minutes- and then simply adds to the humidity as it vaporizes on the payment, so that it feels like you need a snorkel to make it from the house to the car, but of course, it only gets worse when you turn on the AC, and that first puff of hot air feels as though someone just wrapped your face in a plastic bag - not to mention that if you cut your grass yesterday, you're going to have to do it again... tomorrow. And, lets not even talk about how fast the weeds grow this time of year! Or the insects seem to multiply! Oh, home... :) Here's the good news: If your garden looks a little worse for wear, it's okay. Really. Mine does too. As much as I aim for- and largely achieve- a productive & beauti...