So you want to grow your own food. Maybe you scrolled past one too many “farm to table” posts on Instagram. Maybe you’re tired of paying five dollars for a single bell pepper. Or maybe you just want to know where your food actually comes from. Whatever your reason, you’re in the right place.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
Pezza starts the book by making a simple but important point. Gardens aren’t just about making your yard look pretty. For most of human history, gardens existed for one reason: food. Flower gardens and decorative landscapes came later. The original purpose was survival.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
Before you buy a single seed or touch any dirt, Pezza wants you to sit down and make a plan. And she’s right. The number one mistake new gardeners make is jumping straight into planting without thinking about what they actually want. Then they end up with thirty zucchini plants and no idea what to do with them.
You know what’s going to happen in this chapter. You figured out where your garden goes. Now you need to figure out what kind of garden it actually is. And there are more options than you might think.
So you’ve got your garden type picked out. Now comes the fun part: deciding what to actually grow in it. And this is where a lot of first-time gardeners overthink things.
You’ve planned your garden, picked your type, and decided what to grow. Now it’s time to actually build this thing. Chapter 5 of Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza gets into the hands-on work of creating your garden from the ground up.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
So you’ve got your garden planted. Seeds are in the ground. Now what? This is the chapter where Pezza gets into the daily grind of keeping a garden alive. And honestly, this is where most beginners either level up or give up. Maintenance isn’t glamorous, but it’s the whole game.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
You did it. Your garden produced more food than you can eat this week. Now what? This chapter is all about making that harvest last. And if you end up with way too much, Pezza even covers how to sell it.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
The growing season ends. That’s just how it works for most of us. But ending well matters as much as starting well. What you do now sets up next year’s garden. Pezza dedicates this chapter to closing out the season the right way.
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
We’ve gone through the whole book. From the history of vegetable gardens to planning your layout, building your soil, planting seeds, fighting weeds and pests, preserving your harvest, and putting the garden to bed for winter. That’s the full cycle. So what’s the verdict?