About Us
Our Mission
Our mission is to educate about environmentally-friendly gardening practices and the health benefits of growing your own food. Gardening started out as a hobby to create beautiful outdoor spaces as an extension of our home and grow our own food. The more we learned, the more we became aware of how large of an impact gardening, and on a larger scale, agriculture can have on the environment for better or for worse. Now it’s our passion to grow organic food for our family in a sustainable way. We aim to inspire and provide you with the knowledge to grow an organic edible garden and make healthy choices for your family and the environment.
Our Knowledge
From success in our garden, we’ve realized that we don’t need any of the mass-marketed N-P-K fertilizers to grow large, healthy plants. We only need to feed the soil by adding amendments like manure, compost, and wood chips. To be sure, there’s a complex system of microorganisms at work in the soil that do so much of the work for us, and many questions of their intricacies remain unanswered by scientists. But the simple answer is that you need a basic understanding of how the living soil works, and you need to feed the soil to keep it not only living but thriving.
But why should you trust us? Because we do the research. We can’t simplify gardening without an understanding of all the complexities involved. We see what others are doing and sharing. We watch documentaries. We read about growing experiments universities have done. And we even read some really difficult to understand science journal articles about studies done on very specific microorganisms or nutrients or the like. This allows us to answer questions like not only what nutrients the plants need, but how to get those nutrients in the soil, and how the plants get those same nutrients from the soil. We still don’t know everything, but you can trust that our methods are backed by scientific research.
Our Values
Sustainability
Growing healthy food in a sustainable way has always been central to our philosophy. Agriculture is one of the largest industries contributing to climate change. Although our garden may not make an impact on its own, we wanted to focus on how to grow food in a way that actually fights climate change. And our goal is to get others to join us because collectively our gardens can make a difference.
We’ve watched numerous documentaries that help explain agriculture’s role in climate change and encourage you to check them out on our Resources page. Feeding the soil, eliminating gardening products and practices that contribute to large greenhouse gas emissions, and eating more plants are central to fighting climate change. We’re not sure if anyone can claim to be fully sustainable in our current world, but we’re doing our best to be more sustainable with each passing day.
Limitless
We’re also extreme growers…or at least trying to be. We live in a Zone 6a (lows of -10°F to -5°F) climate, and while we’re lucky enough to have lots of sunshine and some rather warm days throughout the colder seasons, we also have extreme weather.
We usually get snow from October to May–that’s 8 months out of the year! We have hail nearly every Spring and Summer. In January and February the highs for some days may only be only in the single digits (fahrenheit), and we have nights with negative temperatures (fahrenheit). And even throughout the summer, the nights are frequently in the 50′s (°F).
Our goal is not to have a short growing season as many in our climate profess to have but to extend it year round. While you can never control Mother Nature, we can show you what we’re doing to keep plants growing despite extreme weather.
Wellness
We believe in taking care of our bodies as well as our planet. Gardening is such an amazing activity for keeping your body active and moving, and the benefits on your mental health are abundant as well.
Growing your own food also makes it easier for us to make healthier meal choices. Nothing is better than eating the freshest just picked food right from your own garden. Not only is it healthier for you, it also tastes better straight from the garden.
By growing your own food, you also know exactly where it came from. It’s absolutely incredible how many produce recalls occur because of E. coli or other contaminants. And because the cost is higher for organic produce, many of us our forced to chose between buying produce which has likely been sprayed with pesticides at some point or forking over more of our hard-earned money. With a home garden, you no longer have to make that choice.