Home Gardener’s
Weekly
Issue
No. 43
September
29, 2023

Weekly Garden Tip
As wood, straw and other carbon-based mulches break down, they steal nitrogen from the soil. So if you use a carbon-based mulch and notice your vegetation wasn’t as green as it could be, it may be because your mulch was stealing nitrogen! Try adding a liquid kelp regimen or other organic nitrogen source for your plants to ensure they get enough nitrogen.

Free Resource: Tasty Recipes for Preserving Your Harvest
Preserving doesn’t have to be hard! Enjoy this guide with free recipes for you and your family to try.
Discover how to:
🥒 Make an essential pickling solution to keep on hand so you can pickle that extra harvest anytime, anywhere.
🥒 Execute a fabulous fermented tomato sauce recipe.
🥒 Make a delicious fruit-infused vinaigrette without all the added sugar.
🥒 Properly char veggies to really bring out their savory, sweet, and spicy flavors
🥒 + much, much more!




Your Weekly Video
You’re planting lots of food in your garden, specifically greens… and all of a sudden there’s someone else eating all your food before you have a chance to harvest it… ARG! Here’s 5 (actually 6) of the most common culprits and how to tell which one you have.
Ferment, Ferment, Ferment!
The gut has even been called your “second brain” because it’s got the highest concentration of nerves in your body outside of your brain. 🧠
What is one way to improve your gut health and immunity? Eating fermented foods! 😋
Fermented foods are delicious, nutritious, and full of healthy probiotics, bacteria, and enzymes. They aren’t just good for the gut, they can help improve our health in numerous ways…
😋 Fermentation breaks down the starches and sugars in your vegetable, improving digestion and allowing you to absorb more nutrients.
😋 Provides healthy bacteria to improve the proper balance of bacteria in your gut.
😋 Fermented foods are high in enzymes that your body needs to adequately digest, absorb, and utilize the nutrients in your food.
😋 Increases the levels of certain vitamins in vegetables and fruits like B-12, riboflavin, folic acid, and biotin.
😋 Makes raw vegetables safer to eat by creating lactic acid that kills harmful pathogens like e-coli.

What's Happening in Harvest Club
This week’s newly released resources include video Q&A clips on what’s happening if your tomatillo’s aren’t looking good or setting fruit, the relationship between heat and pollination, and adding perennials in your crop plan. Plus, articles on spacing your drip irrigation and tree lice. All inside your Harvest Club portal.
Not a member of our garden membership Harvest Club? You can get a one-time complimentary two month membership with any of our courses. Harvest Club has tons of resources to help you thrive. Plus, you get access to ongoing garden support through email. Learn more here.
The Benefits of Fermentation
Explore the timeless art of fermentation, a practice deeply intertwined with human history. Fermentation is a fun way to preserve your food that adds flavor and health benefits! For example, fermentation enriches soybeans into miso, infusing complex flavors and beneficial bacteria that promote gut health. This process extends far beyond miso, shaping foods like chocolate and kimchi. Join us on a journey of flavor, preservation, and microbial wonder, and embrace the magic of fermentation experimentation.


Dear Arti,
Question: I started an indoor garden in trays in my basement in about Feb 2023…I transplanted everything to my outdoors raised bed garden. I had garlic about 12 inches high indoors and some carrots about 4 inches tall as well as some spinach (not showing up as yet). Now (a month or more later, I have almost nothing growing, the carrots are maybe 1 inch tall. The garlic is just about 1 inch tall and 1 inch thick. Even my potatoes (in a separate bed) are showing only one plant growing and the rest of the garden is a disaster. I am frustrated! It is such a mystery because the plants did well indoors but almost died out of doors. Why??? – Wilfred B.
Answer: Hi Wilfred, so glad you reached out! There may be multiple factors involved here, but a few notes on the indoor plants you moved outdoors.
First, I’m not sure if you took this step or not, but did you harden off your plants before moving outdoors? If not, this may be why some plants didn’t make it. Hardening your plants off is a process of moving them in and out over the course of a few weeks, each day increasing the length of the time they spend outdoors. This gets them used to the outdoor climate.
Also, root vegetables typically don’t like to be transplanted. In fact, beets are really one of the only root vegetables that will tolerate transplanting.
One last note: Based on when you sent in your question, it looks like you moved the garden outdoors in mid July sometime. If you live in a temperate climate in North America and July is your summer season, then it was way too hot for these crops. Garlic, spinach, and carrots are ALL cool season crops. Garlic (Hardnecks) require a winter to form bulbs. If you live in a climate with mild winters, you’ll want to grow softneck varieties.
For further help with your garden, you might consider the Garden Freedom THRIVE Micro Course. This course can give you a good foundation for gardening so that you can avoid the common mistakes new growers make and get started off right! You can register for this course HERE.
Grow Your Own Vegetables CEO, Denise Beins, shows her healthy kale plant still growing strong in her garden.
She harvested several leaves and dehydrated them to make kale chips (as shown here). She also plans to make kale powder to add into smoothies, stews, soups, and sauces for an extra veggie boost during the upcoming winter months.

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