Home Gardener’s
Weekly
Issue
No. 57
January
5, 2024
This Week’s Feature:
👩🏽🌾 Thriving Farmer Vegetables Summit 👩🏽🌾
Maybe you want to have your own garden to feed your family fresh healthy food. Maybe you want to start a side business selling produce to your community. Or maybe you want to be prepared for whatever may occur in today’s world by knowing you have the skills and knowledge to provide for your friends and family should the need arise.
If any of these ideas sound like you, Grow Your Own Vegetables has a friend that you should meet. Michael Kilpatrick is a farmer, homesteader, entrepreneur, and host of the popular Thriving Farmer Podcast.
We’re excited to introduce to the Grow Your Own Vegetables Community our friend Michael Kilpatrick, who is a farmer, homesteader, entrepreneur, and host of the popular Thriving Farmer Podcast. He has organized the Thriving Farmer Vegetables Summit, which features 27+ expert speakers—including Grow Your Own Vegetables’ own Stacey Murphy!
These speakers have gathered together in order to share with YOU their best advice on how to grow and sell more vegetables fresh from your own garden!
Join the Thriving Farmer Vegetables Summit—at no cost—on January 11-14, 2024.
In case you have missed our Grow Your Own Vegetables vegetable styling of the Twelve Days of Christmas these past twelve days, you can view the entire video from the link below. Which day’s gift was your favorite? Let us know in the comments for the video on YouTube. While you’re there, click the SUBSCRIBE button, if you don’t already follow us.
Weekly Garden Tip
Many people want to wait to start planning their 2024 garden season, but if you get a jump on it NOW, you’re going to feel much more relaxed when the season begins. Do your crop planning NOW.
Plus! There are thousands of unique varieties only accessible to us growers. If you start working on your crop plan now, you’ll get first dibs on the seeds you want! 🥳
✅ Free Resource: Stage 1 Mindset Checklist
MINDSET is the eighth step in the Circle of Awesome. To help you achieve success, discover the key mindsets to growing an abundant garden in this week’s free resource. It all starts with TIME.
Have you missed any of the Stage 1 Checklists? Below are the links to download any that you missed.
✅ Step 1: Climate
✅ Step 2: Soil
✅ Step 3: Compost
✅ Step 4: Plant It!
✅ Step 5: Water
✅ Step 6: Pruning & Trellising (combined with Harvesting Checklist)
✅ Step 7: Harvesting
🛍 Product Feature:
Easi Grip Long Reach Tool Set
It’s a new year and time to start prepping for your next garden planting. We have found some great gardening tools that are lightweight and have upright soft grip handles. The Easi Grip Long Reach Garden Tools Set of 4 includes a trowel, fork, cultivator, and hoe—all with longer handles than normal gardening tools. These long garden tools are ideal for light-digging and cultivating the soil. The added length is perfect to reach the back of beds or garden plots. The ergonomic handles allow the wrist and hand to be held in a neutral position, resulting in a firmer grip with less wrist strain. The stainless steel tool glides smoothly through soil even when wet.
What's Happening in Harvest Club
This week, the 2024 Harvest Today 1st Quarterly Newsletter is released! In this Quarterly Harvest Today, you’ll:
🧡 Discover the amazing varieties and our top Heirloom varieties for 2024
🧡 Learn how to identify and manage the Colorado potato beetle
🧡 Discover why the USDA is changing your Growing Zone
🧡 Learn about salt-tolerant edibles
🧡 and much more!
Log in to your Harvest Club portal to download.
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.
👩🏽🌾 Garden Kids:
Inspiring the Next Generation of Vegetable Lovers
Many of you may not realize that our very own Grow Your Own Vegetables Master Garden Instructor Stacey Murphy is the author of three children’s books. The books combine imagination with the love of vegetables to create dinosaur-vegetable tales that teach kids about the different roles that vegetables and herbs play in a healthy lifestyle.
This week’s featured blog article highlights the benefits of adding Stacey’s three books to your children’s library. The books are a great resource for parents to use in helping their children to gain a deep appreciation for vegetables and pass along their love of vegetables and gardening to the next generation.
Dear Arti,
Question: It’s about compost. I have started a compost bin with two bays made of wood pallets, as described in the GYOV course. Should I protect it from rain so it doesn’t get soggy? – Barbara M.
Answer: Hi, Barbara! That’s a very good question. It really depends on how much rain you get.
I recommend protecting your compost pile from rain under the following conditions: if you live in a climate that gets more than 1 inch of rain per week or if your compost pile is sitting on the ground. If, however, you live in a dry climate or your climate gets a little more rain than 1 inch but your compost pile is off the ground and gets good drainage, you can probably get away without covering it.
If you live in a place that gets cold, it can’t hurt to cover the pile with a dark-colored thick tarp to keep the pile a bit warmer. This can help the microorganisms stay a bit more active.
I hope that helps, Barbara!
🏡 In the GYOV Yarden
This week, Garden Trainer Crystal Meserole, our in-house Commercial Microgreens Grower, shares a beautiful picture of her basil microgreens growing well in the dead of winter. Don’t they look yummy? 😋 Despite her grow room not being fully insulated, the warmth from fluorescent lighting on the shelf below keeps the tender greens warm.
🌱 Microgreens are a great way to have fresh greens to eat all winter long. These microgreens will be ready for harvest within a week, and Crystal will be delivering them to a local chef in Western North Carolina.
If you’re interested in growing your own microgreens, check out Crystal’s Grow Microgreens Anywhere Micro Course from the Grow Your Own Vegetables course catalog.
Just for Fun!
Have you taken any of GYOV Friend Kami McBride’s herbal classes? The info will definitely be handy for this week’s quiz, which is all about herbal teas. See how much you know about these healthy drinks.
Let us know which fact surprised you in the Facebook Garden Group.
Garden Events for You!
FREE SUMMIT:
Live Long and Thrive
WHO: Brian Vaszily
WHEN: January 17 – 23, 2024
WHAT: The Live Long and Thrive Summit has been organized by Brian Vaszily, a widely respected natural health advocate and researcher for well over 20 years.
Brian has gathered 22 world-renowned and legendary MDs and researchers, each from different specialty areas to reveal the widely unknown yet proven most effective steps of all that you must take to avoid and overcome disease, live longer, and truly THRIVE.
The specialty areas include
✅ Gut, Brain, Heart, and Eye Health
✅ Cancer, Diabetes, and Autoimmune
✅ Pain, Anxiety, Sleep, Mobility, Energy, and Resilience
✅ Food and Nutrition
✅ Ancient and Herbal Medicine
✅ Toxins and detoxing
The Live Long and Thrive Summit promises to be anything but the “same old, same old” health advice you’ve heard before.
EARLY REGISTRATION:
Joyful Gardener Docuseries
WHO: Grow Your Own Vegetables
WHEN: February 20-27, 2024 !
WHAT: The Joyful Gardener Docuseries is upcoming next month. Reserve your spot during our early registration to the 8-episode virtual event.
During the week-long event, you will discover what makes some people grow WILDLY abundant vegetable and herb gardens even in their first year…no matter where they live…no matter how small their garden is!
Learn about these garden essentials:
💚 Mindset
💚 Climate
💚 Soil
💚 Compost
💚 Plants
💚 Water
💚 Tending
💚 Harvesting
And most importantly, learn about the joy of gardening!
Growing vegetables and herbs can be easier than you think. Discover the secrets to more harvest and less stress at the Joyful Gardener Docuseries Event.
FREE ECOOKBOOK:
20 Unique, Delicious & Incredibly Nutritious Salad Recipes
WHO: Brian Vaszily
WHEN: Available NOW
WHAT: The 20 Unique, Delicious & Incredibly Nutritious Salad Recipes eCookBook is filled with easy new plant-based recipes that feature the most potent superfoods for your health.
Each recipe includes:
🧑🍳 Nutrition Facts
🧑🍳 Preparation Time—many as little as 10 minutes
🧑🍳 Ingredients—most you can grow in your own garden
🧑🍳 Gluten- and vegan-free options
Don’t miss out on this free eCookBook filled with a wide range of delicious healthy salad recipes!
On a lighter note…
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This page may contain affiliate links. If you click and take action, Grow Your Own Vegetables LLC may be compensated. We only recommend events and products that we love and that we know can be helpful to you as a gardener.