There is nothing that tastes like fresh from the garden, nothing, not even produce purchased at a garden stand. I picked two huge collanders of pole beans yesterday, and the butternut squashes are tremendous. I tried something this year with the winter squash, and it may sound crazy, but there is an insect called the squash vine borer, its a beetle. I have, as a prepper, a case of those survival "blankets", when the plants were young, I put those down under the vines and leaves, it reflects light, so the plant is getting "extra sun", it also confuses insects, makes them think there is nowhere to land. It worked, not a bug to be found on the plants, the pollinators still visited the flowers and did their thing. Onions and garlic are a staple in all of my cooking.Unfortunately I have some rogue hens that got to several gorgeous beefsteak tomatos this season, but I still have a dining room table full of them.
You don't need pesticides for healthy, sustainably-grown plants.
If insects ate healthy plants, there would be no life on this planet. They are designed by God to only kill and eat plants that do not have proper nutrition and need to be recycled into the ground.
This is why for example a mealy, wrinkled apple with a boron deficiency is likely to have insect activity, and why boron in its crystalline state- like the sodium salt borax or boric acid are such excellent insecticides despite being wonderful nutritional supplements for humans. Boron is essential for building rigid cell walls in plants, and why mealy apples are not enjoyable to eat. Look at your contact solution, it has borax (sodium borate) and boric acid in there. Every animal study looking at the effects of boron supplementation uses borax because it's cheap, half as toxic as table salt, and it works very well for quickly reversing boron deficiency.
Fertilizer does not necessarily mean the soil is healthy! A thriving bacterial and fungal microbiome is essential, as is normal insect activity. If insects are eating your plants, you should not be eating them yet. If animals are eating them, they are probably good to eat.
Food plants need more than just NPK 13/13/13 fertilizer. Boron is one element, and there are many more that contribute to vitalizing particular foods!
Same story here. I couldn't believe my tomato yield from all varieties. We canned down so many into sauce. I did install raised beds this year with an organic compost soil I made over the winter. When I was getting a ton of garden mushrooms come up in the spring I knew we were in good shape. Squash and Zukes werent as stellar and in my zone I heard the same from many others. Lower Michigan.
7 years ago partner and I knew we needed to grow stuff not just for us but our family. What a lifestyle change. We now know a whole community of like minded people who share seeds knowledge etc i have even developed a very real appreciation for the Amish. Not changing my dress sense though.
I hope it wont take that long, the pineapple was the only thing, not actual trash, it came from a nursery which means hopefully they didn't use a pineapple top.
Any kind of fruit trees will take a few years. I have a couple of lemon trees I started last year, and just set out a couple of persimmon trees. It's still up in the air whether anything will bear fruit, but it's fun starting something from seed.
Do they really regrow? I thought it was just the greens. This type of onion looks to be only greens basically, but with regular onions I don't think you ever get the actual onion part regrowing, do you? I've never had luck regrowing onions... they just die after a little growth whenever I try.
Green onions (aka scallions) do in fact regrow, but like others have pointed out, if you are havesting in-ground green onions for immediate use, you should leave them in the ground and just cut off the portion above ground so they can grow back again. I have not yet tried with regular onions, but if I ever succeed in GROWING those in the first place (epic fails so far), I am going to try that also.
Simple home gardening is such an enormous threat to the new world order.
It fucks over the chemicals industry, the pharmaceutical industries, AND the centralized globalised food industry.
It fucks them up so hard when people grow their own food, and they can't barely propagandise against it because it sounds so mild, harmless, and wholesome. It's kryptonite to the globalists.
Last year I had a tomato plant that self seeded in our mulch, I assumed it was courtesy of bird droppings. It yielded about 26 2 inch tomatoes. So this year I planted two in a similar area, with the tomatoes on the vines and flowers I counted at least 36 potential tomatoes in various stages. We enjoyed two and were waiting for others to ripen. Unfortunately two weeks ago, during the night, the deers decided to dine. They ate the green tomatoes, the leaves, and most of the flowering buds, in addition to partaking of the dropping crab apples which they always adore! They have to eat too, and they might become food for someone too! The funny thing is these tomato plants were literally 2-3 feet from our house. Oh well, I hope they enjoyed them! Lol.
I had issues with deer eating my ripe tomatoes for a couple years. I even used deer netting with poles to keep them away, but they walked right through it, knocked over the poles and ripped the netting. After much research I started putting down some wire fencing / chicken wire flat on the ground in front of the area with the deer netting. It's about 3-4' width of that fencing with weed fabric under it. They don't like walking on it, so they stay out of that area now. It worked so well last year, I set up a second area for growing more stuff this year. It's a hassle, but worth it!
I read that the organic fertilizer, Milorganite, will keep deer away. It's a bit expensive, but it's easy to just throw out on the ground. It's safe for vegetable gardens.
We moved into our new house in the country last year, and it was nothing to take the dog out at night, and see 5 or 6 deer in the yard. I spread Milorganite out in the yard to fertilize it, and didn't see anymore deer for quite a while.
I guess just about any organic fertilizer would work.
Also, putting out cut up chunks of Irish Spring soap is supposed to work. Anything that smells offensive to them will keep them away.
I like the idea of the chicken wire and fabric - makes sense.
I've shelled corn until my thumb blistered. That was one of my jobs when I was a child. My parents would save a really nice collard plant and let it go to seed. Then they'd pull a paper bag over the top to gather thousands of seeds. They put them in a cloth bag and hung it on the wall in the house.
Growing up, I would help my Dad tend 2 gardens in our backyard, as well as 2 and sometimes 3 down at my Grandma's house in the country. Unfortunately, he never cared about saving seeds. He would just run up the road to Scott Seed Co. and get what he wanted. This was well before the big box stores shut down all the smaller hardware and gardening supply stores.
Well done! We’ve been “practice gardening” since we moved to FL, the heat and rain have presented problems for some veges, but eggplant, peppers and herbs have been great. Getting ready for real food shortages to come. Would love to figure out why tomato’s and cucumbers don’t grow here for me. Up north I had so many I was giving them away! Enjoy your harvest!
I hope you are a fan of Wild Floridian and David the Good.
Tomatoes and cukes aren't going to grow in the summer. Your Spring and Fall gardens are where those will be best. I got my last tomatoes from blistered plants at the beginning of July this year. Here's my Fall Garden list:
What do you do with that many spring onions? (Assuming all the stuff in the ground is them too). Do you dry them? I absolutely love them fresh but haven't got around to drying any yet...
Started my garden in the spring, but had little friends come and dine. They did leave my tomato plants alone. I researched what vegetables that the little friends didn’t like and replanted zucchini & onions. It worked, I am enjoying a big harvest! 👍
Only half of what we started as seeds grew big enough for transplant.. Of that though, everything did really well.
I bought seeds for a southwest Asian zucchini, in Arabic it's called kousa, but that basically translates to zucchini - it grew well in Michigan.
Okra also did well, again, another southwest Asian variety.. It starts off green and becomes reddish
Our best crop was these miniature cucumbers.. I lacto-ferment them.
...corn, well, we planted a Hopi blue meant for flour that I was planning to nixtamalize for tamales, but raccoons apparently had other plans. Completely destroyed our crop. Next year they get to feel the excitement of climbing over electrified wire mesh.
Beets, red and golden did ok, not enough to do much with - we'll eat the reds but the golden get fermented.
Carrots, onions, spinach, most tomatoes and hot peppers failed.. An Egyptian spinach called molokhia failed. Did get a few peppers from purchased plants.
I'm most proud of our potatoes, which we cloned from store bought by cutting off slivers with eyes from them when prepping lunch. They grew superbly, had one that came up at 1lb. 12oz. Not too shabby for a Yukon gold.
We got 15 spaghetti squash from s volunteer plant that came up from last year's compost pile.. I Always love the volunteers.
I have corn seeds going in the dirt today, and tomato seedlings in maybe a week (still a little too hot). Banana melons have sprouted and I'm kind of afraid of what the future holds for my passion fruit vine as it grow incredibly fast.
I tried growing a few tomato plants in some big patio-type pots this year. (a cherry and two "regular" types) I had to buy some chicken wire fencing to keep squirrels and chipmonks out, and bird netting over that. Lousy Home Depot charged something like $60 for about 30 feet of the chicken wire! With this, and other costs, and the cost of the tomato plants (started late), I was down about $80! Before I even got the chicken wire up, squirrels (or chipmonks, not sure), already ate the ripe cherry tomatoes that came with the plant I bought. I got all the protective measures in place, and happily watched as a new crop of the cherry tomatoes came in, and other tomatoes too. Just a couple of days before I was ready to harvest the first regular tomato (I had at least enjoyed a few of the cherry tomatoes along the way (sungold; delicious if you haven't tried them!)), I wanted to wait until it was so red it would hurt your eyes to look :) , the vermin broke in again, and ate a huge chunk of the tomato, and whatever cherry tomatoes were ripe! I cut out the bite chunk and still ate the rest, but it wasn't as ripe as I wanted. I then further "vermin proofed" the setup by adding dirt around the bottom of the chicken wire (more than I had originally put down), and secured the bricks on the dirt. I waited for the 2nd big tomato to ripen, AND THE VERMIN GOT IN AGAIN! So now, I've moved the pots to a concrete patio (they had been on grass), so there is no way for chipmonks to burrow under, and believe it is totally sealed from other entry. I now await the one last regular tomato to ripen (it's pink now; woo hoo!) and hope there is enough sun and warmth for the small crop of remaining cherry tomatoes to ripen. Next year, I'm planting a real garden inside of our above ground pool which I have drained. I'm getting some kiddie pools to put in there and fill with soil. It should keep deer, squirrels and chipmonks out, and I'll probably put bird netting over the individual kiddie pools.
I'm glad I stocked up on chicken wire a few years ago when it was a lot cheaper.
If you buy indeterminate tomato varieties, they will grow and produce as long as the temperature is warm enough. I've actually had tomatoes freeze on the vine in December. I was still picking them up to then.
I was visiting my son over near PA last weekend and his inlaws have a huge garden and we were given a bunch of tomatoes, zuchini, corn, beets, and for my wife, kale. It's hard for me to tolerate buying the gassed tomatoes in the store; it would be like buying oranges that are orange, but not ripe. Those sungold cherry tomatoes are like grapes they are so sweet!
I do not buy raw tomatoes at a store. If I don't grow them, some are given to me by neighbors. Store bought tomatoes taste like green tomatoes that have been dyed red.
Hmmm. It strikes me that growing our own government (government of the people, BY THE PEOPLE and FOR THE PEOPLE) could be thought of as being a lot like gardening and growing your own food.
Requires continuous personal participation & stewarship? CHECK!
Runs the risk of unwanteds trying to steal the harvest? CHECK!
Benefits from constant, loving prayer, overwatch and community engagement? CHECK!
I'll bet you see the parallels and can add your own... :)
One thing to try if you're starting out anew is to drive around and see who else has really good gardens. You can stop and ask them about their gardens and how they make them grow so well. Then you might ask if they have any extra seeds to share. I have shared tons of seeds with strangers.
There are a number of seed providers online, but supplies are getting short. Look for heirloom varieties, as you can save seeds and get the same varieties. Hybrids are either sterile or give you seeds that are one or the other of the hybrid's parent varieties.
When you grow your garden, save seeds from the best plants. After a few years, you will have vegetables that are tuned to the microclimate of your garden.
Amen! We have a huge garden full of produce and invested in a grow tent so that I can grow year round in the garage. We went a step further and actually quit our corp jobs and started an organic plant food business...the entire family now works here. Kids pack orders after school! We love it. If you ever need a great all-natural plant food check us out - Organic REV - discount code: KEK will get you 15% off!! Keep on growing everyone. When you become self-sufficient and debt free you win! Take a way their ability to control you one juicy tomato at a time!!
There is nothing that tastes like fresh from the garden, nothing, not even produce purchased at a garden stand. I picked two huge collanders of pole beans yesterday, and the butternut squashes are tremendous. I tried something this year with the winter squash, and it may sound crazy, but there is an insect called the squash vine borer, its a beetle. I have, as a prepper, a case of those survival "blankets", when the plants were young, I put those down under the vines and leaves, it reflects light, so the plant is getting "extra sun", it also confuses insects, makes them think there is nowhere to land. It worked, not a bug to be found on the plants, the pollinators still visited the flowers and did their thing. Onions and garlic are a staple in all of my cooking.Unfortunately I have some rogue hens that got to several gorgeous beefsteak tomatos this season, but I still have a dining room table full of them.
That’s so true. My potato’s carrots and onions are so crisp and fresh compared to any bought ones.
You don't need pesticides for healthy, sustainably-grown plants.
If insects ate healthy plants, there would be no life on this planet. They are designed by God to only kill and eat plants that do not have proper nutrition and need to be recycled into the ground.
This is why for example a mealy, wrinkled apple with a boron deficiency is likely to have insect activity, and why boron in its crystalline state- like the sodium salt borax or boric acid are such excellent insecticides despite being wonderful nutritional supplements for humans. Boron is essential for building rigid cell walls in plants, and why mealy apples are not enjoyable to eat. Look at your contact solution, it has borax (sodium borate) and boric acid in there. Every animal study looking at the effects of boron supplementation uses borax because it's cheap, half as toxic as table salt, and it works very well for quickly reversing boron deficiency.
Slugs ruined all my plants, they were very well taken care of and fertilized
Fertilizer does not necessarily mean the soil is healthy! A thriving bacterial and fungal microbiome is essential, as is normal insect activity. If insects are eating your plants, you should not be eating them yet. If animals are eating them, they are probably good to eat.
Food plants need more than just NPK 13/13/13 fertilizer. Boron is one element, and there are many more that contribute to vitalizing particular foods!
https://agriculture.borax.com/products
That would make ONE HELL OF A VEGETABLE STEW....WOWZA!!!!!!!
I canned another 6 quarts of tomato sauce from the garden yesterday.
Worst case scenario I won’t be calcium or vitamin C deficient while I eat tomato soup all winter lol.
Hopefully it’ll be used in pasta and chili.
Same story here. I couldn't believe my tomato yield from all varieties. We canned down so many into sauce. I did install raised beds this year with an organic compost soil I made over the winter. When I was getting a ton of garden mushrooms come up in the spring I knew we were in good shape. Squash and Zukes werent as stellar and in my zone I heard the same from many others. Lower Michigan.
Hint: Potatoes also contain Vitamin C.
But they don’t make a great tomato sauce
7 years ago partner and I knew we needed to grow stuff not just for us but our family. What a lifestyle change. We now know a whole community of like minded people who share seeds knowledge etc i have even developed a very real appreciation for the Amish. Not changing my dress sense though.
Amen! It’s a great time to talk and listen to God. I’m also convinced gardening keeps me feeling younger than my age.
Ditch onions! Love em.
I just started "trash gardening"
I love growing pineapples. My first took THREE YEARS though.
I hope it wont take that long, the pineapple was the only thing, not actual trash, it came from a nursery which means hopefully they didn't use a pineapple top.
Any kind of fruit trees will take a few years. I have a couple of lemon trees I started last year, and just set out a couple of persimmon trees. It's still up in the air whether anything will bear fruit, but it's fun starting something from seed.
Re-plant the stumps when you use them, I have a 2x2 area filled with those, they will regrow if you keep them watered!
Do they really regrow? I thought it was just the greens. This type of onion looks to be only greens basically, but with regular onions I don't think you ever get the actual onion part regrowing, do you? I've never had luck regrowing onions... they just die after a little growth whenever I try.
Green onions (aka scallions) do in fact regrow, but like others have pointed out, if you are havesting in-ground green onions for immediate use, you should leave them in the ground and just cut off the portion above ground so they can grow back again. I have not yet tried with regular onions, but if I ever succeed in GROWING those in the first place (epic fails so far), I am going to try that also.
Yes, actually yesterday I was just thinking that and that's what I'm going to do.
Simple home gardening is such an enormous threat to the new world order.
It fucks over the chemicals industry, the pharmaceutical industries, AND the centralized globalised food industry.
It fucks them up so hard when people grow their own food, and they can't barely propagandise against it because it sounds so mild, harmless, and wholesome. It's kryptonite to the globalists.
Don't pull them out of the ground. Just cut off the tops as you need them.
My dogs dug up my onions this year! Nice haul and you will only get better
Last year I had a tomato plant that self seeded in our mulch, I assumed it was courtesy of bird droppings. It yielded about 26 2 inch tomatoes. So this year I planted two in a similar area, with the tomatoes on the vines and flowers I counted at least 36 potential tomatoes in various stages. We enjoyed two and were waiting for others to ripen. Unfortunately two weeks ago, during the night, the deers decided to dine. They ate the green tomatoes, the leaves, and most of the flowering buds, in addition to partaking of the dropping crab apples which they always adore! They have to eat too, and they might become food for someone too! The funny thing is these tomato plants were literally 2-3 feet from our house. Oh well, I hope they enjoyed them! Lol.
I had issues with deer eating my ripe tomatoes for a couple years. I even used deer netting with poles to keep them away, but they walked right through it, knocked over the poles and ripped the netting. After much research I started putting down some wire fencing / chicken wire flat on the ground in front of the area with the deer netting. It's about 3-4' width of that fencing with weed fabric under it. They don't like walking on it, so they stay out of that area now. It worked so well last year, I set up a second area for growing more stuff this year. It's a hassle, but worth it!
The netting at least keeps other critters out.
I read that the organic fertilizer, Milorganite, will keep deer away. It's a bit expensive, but it's easy to just throw out on the ground. It's safe for vegetable gardens.
We moved into our new house in the country last year, and it was nothing to take the dog out at night, and see 5 or 6 deer in the yard. I spread Milorganite out in the yard to fertilize it, and didn't see anymore deer for quite a while.
I guess just about any organic fertilizer would work.
Also, putting out cut up chunks of Irish Spring soap is supposed to work. Anything that smells offensive to them will keep them away.
I like the idea of the chicken wire and fabric - makes sense.
Save some seed from the volunteer plants. You know they are survivors.
I didn't pick all my peas one year, and almost the whole row came back from seed the next year. I saved a bunch of seeds from those plants.
With what's coming in our future, knowing how to save seeds is just about as important has knowing how to raise a garden.
I've shelled corn until my thumb blistered. That was one of my jobs when I was a child. My parents would save a really nice collard plant and let it go to seed. Then they'd pull a paper bag over the top to gather thousands of seeds. They put them in a cloth bag and hung it on the wall in the house.
Growing up, I would help my Dad tend 2 gardens in our backyard, as well as 2 and sometimes 3 down at my Grandma's house in the country. Unfortunately, he never cared about saving seeds. He would just run up the road to Scott Seed Co. and get what he wanted. This was well before the big box stores shut down all the smaller hardware and gardening supply stores.
Congrats I find it rewarding to receive the bounty God has provided.
Well done! We’ve been “practice gardening” since we moved to FL, the heat and rain have presented problems for some veges, but eggplant, peppers and herbs have been great. Getting ready for real food shortages to come. Would love to figure out why tomato’s and cucumbers don’t grow here for me. Up north I had so many I was giving them away! Enjoy your harvest!
I hope you are a fan of Wild Floridian and David the Good.
Tomatoes and cukes aren't going to grow in the summer. Your Spring and Fall gardens are where those will be best. I got my last tomatoes from blistered plants at the beginning of July this year. Here's my Fall Garden list:
Tomatoes
Mature Peppers
Beans (don't transplant - direct seed)
Corn
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Pumpkin
Strawberries (maybe - they are better for winter)
Basil
What do you do with that many spring onions? (Assuming all the stuff in the ground is them too). Do you dry them? I absolutely love them fresh but haven't got around to drying any yet...
2 things on my to-get list - a dehydrator and a vacuum sealer.
Started my garden in the spring, but had little friends come and dine. They did leave my tomato plants alone. I researched what vegetables that the little friends didn’t like and replanted zucchini & onions. It worked, I am enjoying a big harvest! 👍
Congratulations! Home grown does taste better and is better for you!
Only half of what we started as seeds grew big enough for transplant.. Of that though, everything did really well.
I bought seeds for a southwest Asian zucchini, in Arabic it's called kousa, but that basically translates to zucchini - it grew well in Michigan.
Okra also did well, again, another southwest Asian variety.. It starts off green and becomes reddish
Our best crop was these miniature cucumbers.. I lacto-ferment them.
...corn, well, we planted a Hopi blue meant for flour that I was planning to nixtamalize for tamales, but raccoons apparently had other plans. Completely destroyed our crop. Next year they get to feel the excitement of climbing over electrified wire mesh.
Beets, red and golden did ok, not enough to do much with - we'll eat the reds but the golden get fermented.
Carrots, onions, spinach, most tomatoes and hot peppers failed.. An Egyptian spinach called molokhia failed. Did get a few peppers from purchased plants.
I'm most proud of our potatoes, which we cloned from store bought by cutting off slivers with eyes from them when prepping lunch. They grew superbly, had one that came up at 1lb. 12oz. Not too shabby for a Yukon gold.
We got 15 spaghetti squash from s volunteer plant that came up from last year's compost pile.. I Always love the volunteers.
I have corn seeds going in the dirt today, and tomato seedlings in maybe a week (still a little too hot). Banana melons have sprouted and I'm kind of afraid of what the future holds for my passion fruit vine as it grow incredibly fast.
I tried growing a few tomato plants in some big patio-type pots this year. (a cherry and two "regular" types) I had to buy some chicken wire fencing to keep squirrels and chipmonks out, and bird netting over that. Lousy Home Depot charged something like $60 for about 30 feet of the chicken wire! With this, and other costs, and the cost of the tomato plants (started late), I was down about $80! Before I even got the chicken wire up, squirrels (or chipmonks, not sure), already ate the ripe cherry tomatoes that came with the plant I bought. I got all the protective measures in place, and happily watched as a new crop of the cherry tomatoes came in, and other tomatoes too. Just a couple of days before I was ready to harvest the first regular tomato (I had at least enjoyed a few of the cherry tomatoes along the way (sungold; delicious if you haven't tried them!)), I wanted to wait until it was so red it would hurt your eyes to look :) , the vermin broke in again, and ate a huge chunk of the tomato, and whatever cherry tomatoes were ripe! I cut out the bite chunk and still ate the rest, but it wasn't as ripe as I wanted. I then further "vermin proofed" the setup by adding dirt around the bottom of the chicken wire (more than I had originally put down), and secured the bricks on the dirt. I waited for the 2nd big tomato to ripen, AND THE VERMIN GOT IN AGAIN! So now, I've moved the pots to a concrete patio (they had been on grass), so there is no way for chipmonks to burrow under, and believe it is totally sealed from other entry. I now await the one last regular tomato to ripen (it's pink now; woo hoo!) and hope there is enough sun and warmth for the small crop of remaining cherry tomatoes to ripen. Next year, I'm planting a real garden inside of our above ground pool which I have drained. I'm getting some kiddie pools to put in there and fill with soil. It should keep deer, squirrels and chipmonks out, and I'll probably put bird netting over the individual kiddie pools.
I'm glad I stocked up on chicken wire a few years ago when it was a lot cheaper.
If you buy indeterminate tomato varieties, they will grow and produce as long as the temperature is warm enough. I've actually had tomatoes freeze on the vine in December. I was still picking them up to then.
I was visiting my son over near PA last weekend and his inlaws have a huge garden and we were given a bunch of tomatoes, zuchini, corn, beets, and for my wife, kale. It's hard for me to tolerate buying the gassed tomatoes in the store; it would be like buying oranges that are orange, but not ripe. Those sungold cherry tomatoes are like grapes they are so sweet!
I do not buy raw tomatoes at a store. If I don't grow them, some are given to me by neighbors. Store bought tomatoes taste like green tomatoes that have been dyed red.
They turn red without dye, but they use acetylene gas to cause them to turn red, appearing to be ripe.
Hmmm. It strikes me that growing our own government (government of the people, BY THE PEOPLE and FOR THE PEOPLE) could be thought of as being a lot like gardening and growing your own food.
I'll bet you see the parallels and can add your own... :)
Oh yum ,looks awesome.
I'll be starting soon. About to settle into a new home with property so I'll be able to start soon. This is giving me much needed encouragement.
Make sure to dabble in greens like borage, sorrel, and comfrey - things not normally found in supermarkets. There is a reason why they don't sell them
Where did you get your seeds? Anyone else feel free to chime in on good sources
One thing to try if you're starting out anew is to drive around and see who else has really good gardens. You can stop and ask them about their gardens and how they make them grow so well. Then you might ask if they have any extra seeds to share. I have shared tons of seeds with strangers.
There are a number of seed providers online, but supplies are getting short. Look for heirloom varieties, as you can save seeds and get the same varieties. Hybrids are either sterile or give you seeds that are one or the other of the hybrid's parent varieties.
When you grow your garden, save seeds from the best plants. After a few years, you will have vegetables that are tuned to the microclimate of your garden.
Those onions look great!
Amen! We have a huge garden full of produce and invested in a grow tent so that I can grow year round in the garage. We went a step further and actually quit our corp jobs and started an organic plant food business...the entire family now works here. Kids pack orders after school! We love it. If you ever need a great all-natural plant food check us out - Organic REV - discount code: KEK will get you 15% off!! Keep on growing everyone. When you become self-sufficient and debt free you win! Take a way their ability to control you one juicy tomato at a time!!