If you are also feeling some form of overwhelm, here is how I prioritize my time during the dog days of summer.

Daily Tasks

I harvest every single day. Pests are abundant in the heat, so anything that has blushed or is anywhere close to being ripe gets grabbed in the morning to ripen on my counter.

I check for disease every day and pull leaves that are dead.

I do some small form of food preservation every day, usually chopping some produce on my counter and freezing in small batches. It’s less overwhelming to do small groups at a time.

Weekly Tasks

Canning. I make small batches of canned goods throughout the week, then pull out the canning pot once a week to do a big batch. The pot takes forever to boil, so once a week is the most I can manage.

Ripping out anything that’s dead. I don’t have time to weed, but if something is completely dead, I'll rip it out once a week to give the remaining plants a chance.

Garden clutter piles up in the summer. Stray pots, extra shovels, bird netting, bamboo stakes, etc. Once a week, I’ll walk my gardens and collect a few items to put into storage for next season.

Buying whatever I can’t grow from the farmers market for freezing/canning.

What I’m Not Doing

Weeding. Nobody has time for that.

Pruning. We’re beyond the days of pruning, and everything is running wild from now until October.

Staking. If a plant needs more support at this point, it’s survival of the fittest.

Planting. I don’t plant anything in August because I have too much to maintain. All of my succession planting is paused.

Building any garden structures or fixing the pathways. It’s going to look like a mess until the fall clean up.

Hope some of this is helpful. Best of luck to you.

It’s been a busy year in all aspects, but especially gardening. I stepped away from regular newsletters earlier this year due to falling into a space of feeling like I have to be productive, but I found that I have enough going on that I’m excited to share with you.

Last year, I started a Facebook page for my gardening, linked here. It started as a fun photo diary, then quickly morphed into a business page when I started taking landscaping jobs from my followers. I now work a few hours a week improving the beds at different residences, and all of my jobs have come via word of mouth. I love sitting in the dirt, pulling the overgrowth, and making it a blank canvas for the owner to plant as they please. I have met many people and heard interesting stories, and it brings me a lot of joy.

My own garden is still a priority, obviously. After the worst weather I’ve ever seen to start the summer, the harvest is slowly rolling in. My days are all about pruning, watering, fertilizing, harvesting, and preserving. I preserve all of my food via canning and freezing, and I’ve started drying herbs for the first time. I have started succession planting as well for the first time, and have planted seeds consistently every two weeks. The amount of food I’m getting is overwhelming, but I feel really excited to fill my pantry. Hundreds of mason jars have been sterilized in anticipation. All of my beds show healthy growth and I’ve barely lost any plants this year.

Additionally, I’ve connected with gardeners in my region of Wisconsin and founded a coalition to support each other. We send updates for advice, but also meet up for produce exchanges and service projects. Bettering our communities is a core value of the coalition and I appreciate these relationships.

I plan to sell my excess canned goods at a makers market this fall, and prep for that will be starting soon. If you live local to Milwaukee, I’d love to share the information with you.

I’ve fully accepted the title of master gardener, after downplaying my skills for years. I know what I’m doing and my knowledge is extensive. I don’t diminish that when talking to people anymore. My dream is to live in the gardening space full time, but that will take a lot of creative planning. For now, I do everything I can to better the community I live in, connect with strategic partners already doing important work in urban gardening, and expand my knowledge of plants. I touch dirt every day and have no complaints.

I’m excited to be offering a virtual canning class this fall for anyone wanting to learn the basics of water bath canning. Drop your email in the comments for more information.

My husband and I have one daughter, and we’re thick as thieves, mostly because our daughter doesn’t believe in personal space. At home, that constant desire for connection can feel a bit suffocating because every other obligation screams for our constant, immediate, radical attention at the same time.

Then, we went on vacation, and I realized a few things.

Emma isn’t the problem. Of course she isn’t. She’s simply calling us to be our best selves: connected and in tune.

When we landed in Philly and headed to NYC and finished in Cape Cod and Boston, so many things became clear. One, that I am simply caring too much about all of the obligations at home. I’m in a competition with myself to prove I’m on top of everything: laundry, dishes, work, appointments, etc etc etc. Everything is done at a frantic pace to prove that I can move that fast and be “ok,” but much of what I do doesn’t require that speed. None of it does, actually. At home, I find myself prepping so things are easier “later,” but what is the point of meal prepping if that block of time could actually be restful or intentional? The food tastes the same.

I realized that the three of us are so good together. So, so good. Curt is the lighthearted presence I need, taking control of the tasks I hate (picking out restaurants, navigation, filling the itinerary, dragging the suitcases, acquiring the caffeine). Emma is the curiosity that challenges us to be uncomfortable, while simultaneously saying the funniest one-liners I’ve ever heard. And me? On vacation, my whole brain slows down. I look at what’s in front of me and nothing else. I don’t prep or plan anything. I simply look around and meander.

Obviously, vacation is less stressful than daily life. But certain concepts can be implemented at home. What happens if I prep less for the next crisis, and simply live? What if I let things go and admit daily tasks are morally neutral, not a report card?

I’m curious to dig into this more.

We have about four months left before my husband’s quiet season at work. I don’t feel motivated to pick up the pace of before. I’m curious what slow means here.

Anyone with skin can feel the difference in the climate this year. A winteresque cold snap in early May leading to a drought by the end of the month. Data centers popping up in every corner of the state meaning the price of water is going to skyrocket to the point of not being able to afford to water the large gardens I installed. The heat being too high too early, signaling a brutal summer with unpredictable yields.

It doesn’t take a genius to notice. I have no degrees in science or horticulture. We all see this, yet I can repeat myself over and over and behavior doesn’t change.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering where one goes from here. Do I continue to spend my time writing and educating when it seems nobody cares? About the earth we live on, the food we eat, or the way we care for our surroundings. Do I take my energy and funnel it into my land instead of wasting it here? I don’t know. Part of me feels a duty to share what I so readily know, as it was shared with me. But it gets conflicting when I hear and see public conversations so blatantly ignorant to the risks we are facing.

For years, my personal mission has been to keep my eyes on my feet as I forcefully place them, one step in front of the other. Control what I can control, and strive to do good wherever I lead. Change my corner of the world and hope it ripples out.

I’m feeling defeated. I see the land disappearing, the water disappearing, basic supplies becoming unaffordable. I know what this means for our cities, our towns, our families, and nobody seems to care.

I’m going to be taking a break from this space, because I’m honestly not sure what my expertise can do to change this. The burnout is real.

We all have natural gifts and talents, and miraculous things happen when you lean into them. I am naturally good at this, and the labor and struggles fire me up. It’s like a shot of the best espresso right into my veins.

So what are my goals and where am I going? I have plenty of ideas swirling around in my head, but I can share the rough drafts here with you.

I essentially want to share my expertise with my community, make some income for my skills, and connect with people passionate about fresh food. That means saying yes to whatever opportunities come my way to become a trusted community member. Right now, I’m taking on landscaping jobs for people who can’t get out in their yards for one reason or another. I grow when I chat with them, problem solve in their yards, and use my skills to serve God. I’m welcoming people into my backyard to answer their questions. I pack plant orders in my garage and serve my steadily growing list of clients.

I have pop up sales every week right now to sell my extra products. I communicate with community leaders who run their own gardens to eliminate food deserts all over Milwaukee. I schedule teaching sessions with kids who simply want to learn to grow their own food. I research and apply everything I learn in my own yard and turn around to give that knowledge to someone else.

I am walking into a season of valuing myself highly. That means not doing anything for free unless God nudges me to. That means being readily available for my community and their questions. That means taking risks and spending hours at my work station to plan the next step. It means daily growth.

It also means I’m open to criticism now. I’m putting myself out there in a major way, and that comes with some critiques. I get laughed at. My plants get made fun of (how funny is that?). “You seem addicted to this” someone said last week.

I take it as a sign that I’m on the right path. How exciting.

This is going to explode, I just know it. There are so many directions this could go and I get excited thinking about it. You get to watch me from the rough draft phase and I love you for it. Horticulture degree? Greenhouse installation? Farmers market booth? It’s all right there if I want to grab it. The most exciting place to be is at the intersection of God-given gifts and opportunity.

“A lament is a passionate expression of grief, sorrow, or regret, typically manifested as a mournful poem, song, or wailing sound. Its purpose is to mourn the dead, express deep regret, or process loss…it often acts as a ritualistic or artistic release of pain. Key characteristics include profound sadness, vocalized grief, and sometimes, a turning toward hope or trust.”

I have been looking for a formula this past week. Someone I would call a brother passed away after a horrific accident, and my husband and I have been tossed into the chaos of grief. Kyle was his best friend and a welcomed, treasured member of our chosen family. Word study is a great comfort to me, so I dug up a few definitions of lament and started there.

If the purpose of lament is to mourn, express, and process, it is my invitation to dig deep into that.

What does it mean to mourn? Well, for me in practical terms, it means to make a few people uncomfortable. People who want me to say ‘yes’ to something I’m going to cancel to take time to heal. People who want my lighthearted jokes and boisterous presence as I turn quietly inward. People who rely on all of the volunteering I do as I wipe my calendar of nonessentials. I’ve noticed in the western church, grief is not only not addressed, it’s completely bulldozed over by listing the character traits of God. I’ve been told God is sovereign. That God has a plan. That God loves Kyle and us, and He always knew this would happen. That nothing has changed in God’s plan. All of that is true, but it’s also untimely. Not only that, but it’s not conducive with lamentation.

So I mourn.

The expression piece of lamenting gave me pause. The original definition I’m working through says to express deep regret, or have an artistic release of pain. I’m a writer, a singer, a gardener. So those are my artistic ventures.

I’ve been out in the gardens more than usual, because life and death coincide in the garden. I get to participate in each stage and yes, it’s therapeutic to mourn there. I get to create and nurture and also witness when it fails. It’s a safe place to be angry. I release all of the emotions as I’m hauling dirt, loading, unloading, digging, spraying.

I’m also an English teacher by trade, so my degrees in journalism and education lend me to a deep word study. I love words. I love definitions. It anchors me to meaning. It’s how I read the Bible and stop to derive meaning.

A biblical context for lament is a prayer in pain, called a godly response to suffering. The purpose of biblical lament is to eventually lead to trust in God.

The prayers of lament in the Bible bring fear, anger, and hopelessness directly to the feet of God. I for one was never taught to lament, in fact, the churches of my youth wouldn’t allow lament. A person would barely be dead before we rejoiced in their reunion with Christ. We skipped the lament for the trust and rejoicing, but is it honest trust and true joy if we don’t feel the depths of our anger, pain, and hopelessness?

I would say overwhelmingly, the church has no clue what to do with grief. We don’t know how to sit with people in pain because it’s uncomfortable, so we rush a grieving human through the stages of grief in hopes that they land at acceptance sooner and we can all talk about normal things again. The biggest questions about faith and life come up during times of grief, so it opens the door for harder topics. If anyone is going to question God or his plans, it’s going to be during grief.

Does the Bible ignore grief? And what does the Bible say about pain, death, anger, and hopelessness? A lot, actually.

Some of the most famous verses in the Bible are about what happens at the tail end of hopelessness.

“Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest.” - Matthew 11:28

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand". - Isaiah 41:10

“God hears the righteous when they cry out, delivering them from all troubles, and stays close to the brokenhearted, saving those crushed in spirit.” - Psalm 34:17-18

But in order for God to give us rest, for God to strengthen us and help us, for God to hear us when we cry out, we must experience heartbreak first.

It’s literally Biblical to be in pain.

We cannot receive the strength of God unless we’re broken.

What is there to uphold if we don’t need support?

So here I am, allowing myself to be broken. I have spent a week crying out. I have felt the depths of weariness.

The last piece of that definition calls me back as a reminder. “…sometimes, a turning toward hope or trust.”

I would be lying if I said I have hope or trust anywhere within me right now. I think it would be naive of me to force the emotions. A mentor of mine sat in the grief with me yesterday and shared a personal story. She said when her mom was severely ill she kept attending church but couldn’t sing during worship. She said she showed up out of obedience and because she didn’t know where else to go, but the lyrics of worship were too raw for her to sing them. This person is someone who is deeply in love with Jesus. She is a long-term student of the Bible. She knows more about scripture than anyone I’ve ever met, and hearing her share this experience just cracked open a well of relief within me. I sat in worship on Sunday not able to sing a single word. Not because I don’t have faith, but because I can’t sing lyrics that are a lie in the current circumstances. I think sitting/standing there and crying is the most I can handle right now. Not because I doubt who God is, but because I need to be honest in my grief. I see God’s faithfulness in my life, but He chose to uphold me during my medical trauma and let Kyle go. I don’t require an answer from God to still trust Him, but I’m not at understanding or acceptance yet.

If we want unbelievers to desire a relationship with God, we have to be honest and allow ourselves to struggle too. There are millions of people asking God “why” on a daily basis, and we aren’t salt and light if we pretend that we’ve never asked the same question.

So here I am. Grief on full display, not rushing the process. I have full access to the character of Christ and I participate in the holy process of lament, following his example.

So here’s the plan. I call it a Preservation Plan.

First, I listed every product that my family eats throughout the year, not just ingredient. For example, we eat both ketchup and sun dried tomatoes. Two different products, same ingredient from the garden. Every product gets its own line.

Now it’s time for math. I calculated how much ketchup my family eats in a YEAR. Then, I decided how I plan to store it: am I freezing it? Am I canning it? How big of jars am I going to put it into? According to my very rudimentary math of how much we consume per week x 52, my family needs 16 pints of ketchup for a year. That number, form of preservation, and measurement unit goes in my spreadsheet. Now, when my tomatoes are coming up, I can check my spreadsheet and see what I need to make. I might have enough tomatoes for 2 pints of ketchup in one batch. The date of completion and the amount goes in my spreadsheet, and I know I have 14 pints to go.

I’m doing that for every single gardening product my family uses.

The initial calculations are in my journal, and the final numbers are in my spreadsheet. I’m going to go through every product and calculate it out to see how much we use in a year. Preservation plan.

I’ve decided to go this route for several reasons:

1. Less plant waste. Every year, I end up over-buying plants or seeds and simultaneously have whole corners of my garden filled with vegetables my family actually doesn’t eat. This year, not a single plant is going in the ground unless I know I’m going to use it to make something we actually eat. I put in 4 new garden beds this year, and I’m not going to waste that space growing something that we don’t actually like (have I mentioned how much I hate kale?).

2. Less overwhelm once harvest hits. I touched on this already, but once the garden starts producing, it’s easy to get lost. I might end up chopping a bunch of carrots that I actually wanted to shred and freeze. I might give away something I thought was excess. I might stare at the 3 tomatoes I have and not remember what I needed them for. None of these are “problems,” but I have lofty goals for feeding my family and like to know where things are going.

3. I can make extra money. I sold a ton of products at the end of the season last year, and I’ve calculated that into my planting this year. I’m growing large enough quantities to make these products and sell the extras.

4. I can feed my family. I have a goal of producing all of our vegetables, spices, and sauces for the year as long as it grows on my property. Why? Because I can. Because I’m good at it. Because it tastes better. Because I want to…

5. More space for generosity. I LOVE giving food to my friends, I just want to make sure it’s actually excess and not a key ingredient. If I use 6 gallons of minced garlic per year, I know that anything above that goes to my friends. I feel confident that our needs are met and my generosity is purposeful.

6. Spreadsheets are sexy. I love a spreadsheet.

This approach is probably going to be offensive to people who garden for the love of gardening. That’s ok. There’s no right or wrong reason to be in the dirt. I’m not going to meet my preservation goals this year, but if I track it, I’ll know where to learn more next year.

Comment your questions!

Spacing

I have never followed spacing rules. I threw 12 tomato plants in a bed last year and while it was chaos, nothing died. I pruned my life away and made it work.

Seed packets will tell you how everything must be spaced out and I take it as a friendly suggestion. I throw in whatever I want and pull out what looks overcrowded. But truly, I don’t pull much.

Companion Planting

Every once in a while, I’ll google something like, “do potatoes kill cucumbers?” But that’s as far as I go with companion planting. Horticulturalists will say that vegetables should rotate beds every few years to not suck the nutrients out of soil, or that every plant belongs next to one specific plant. I plan my garden based off of spacing and how big everything grows. If they fit together, they go together. I haven’t had anything die yet and haven’t poisoned the earth.

Weeding

I don’t weed. Mostly because I don’t have the time. If I’m out pruning or harvesting and notice something huge crowding out my plants, I’ll yank it, but that’s truly as much as I do. I don’t put down weed barrier. I don’t mulch anything. I don’t prevent anything and I barely address it when it pops up. I will say, weeds in raised beds are a lot less prevalent than in the ground, so it works out.

Buying Fancy Equipment

Any gardening videos will have cedar beds, pebbled pathways, solar ground lights, matte black trellises, etc. Everything is bought at once for a cool price of $5,000 and it all matches perfectly.

My garden is one piece at a time. All of my trellises are sticks or metal that probably would have wound up in the garbage if I didn’t rescue it. My beds don’t match, my pathways are mostly landscaping fabric because I don’t have enough gravel to do it all at once, and my gravel doesn’t match. My pots are decades old and look like a metaphor for exhaustion.

I don’t garden to spend, and I don’t garden to look good. If I can build it myself, I will.

Stressing Over Soil

Everyone loves to get upset about soil. Apparently, using Miracle Gro will fast track you to a date with the devil. I personally think overspending on soil is the weirdest way to garden. Do you know how much money garden companies make by taking crap, wrapping it in plastic, and calling it organic? I drive to my department of public works’ compost pile to fill my beds, fishing out the garbage as I shovel. I buy 2-3 bags of $2.99 soil from the grocery store for the top layer so I’m planting in something slightly level, but I’ve never been one to spend a fortune on literal dirt. It’s dirt.

Following a Fertilizing Schedule

People love to gripe about feeding plants every ____ days with fertilizer (and people can’t even agree what the right fertilizer is). I mix fertilizer into my soil before planting, and add a few fertilizer stakes once it gets warm. That’s it. Water and sunlight, baby.

In short, gardening is not complex. People go down the rabbit hole because it’s fun to learn more and try new things, but it really is not complicated. Dirt+seeds+water+sun=food. Have fun, and take the pressure off.

• Carrots

• Beets

• Snap peas

• Potatoes

• Spinach

• Lettuce

• Bush Beans (a bit of a gamble)

A few quick tips. If your garden is too big to open all at once, start in the areas that will hold your cool crops. Cool crops are any plants that can tolerate a light frost, also called “frost tolerant” or “frost hardy.” Check the back of a seed packet if you’re unsure, all seeds are labeled by season. None of these plants like to be started indoors, they prefer to be direct sowed, meaning seeds are going directly in the garden. Some people start pea plants indoors and do just fine, but I don’t like messing with delicate root systems.

Wisconsin has been weird this year. Normally, you can plant 4 weeks before last frost with these, but at the risk of flooding, I held off. These plants don’t need a ton of water, and they don’t like a ton of water. I don’t plan to water any of them unless we hit really hot temps and the dirt cracks. They like it dry and loose in the soil until they germinate and get a solid amount of growth.

Squirrels and rabbits love these plants, so stick some plastic forks around your baby seeds to protect them. Bird netting also works really well but is a pain to move back and forth.

Plant now and have some veggies in a few weeks!

Subscribe now

Miss Liz

I needed some logs to fill my raised beds and ran out of material in our yard, so I posted in a Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Miss Liz responded that she “had wood.” I got her address, and Emma and I stopped by one afternoon to grab whatever she had for us. I was shocked when she let us into her yard. Logs of every shape, size, grain, etc was methodically laid out in the yard, under an awning, in a wood shop, and in a 3 seasons porch. Her husband was a woodworker, she said. Retired Navy. He’d just passed and she didn’t have any way to use all of it and the thought of moving it out overwhelmed her. She apologized for “the mess,” even though I felt like a kid in a candy store. I chatted with her for 30ish minutes while I loaded the trunk. She was the director of food services for Milwaukee Public Schools so she asked where Emma was going to go to school. Obviously, being a former teacher, I had a lot to ask her. I wouldn’t say she was warm, but she was definitely lonely. I already have a date to go back and see her next week.

Lynn

My favorite garden store is about 2 miles south of our house, and my favorite cashier is Lynn. She has thick, white hair that she always wears in some form of a braid. She has a silver nose ring and the warmest smile. Most people direct questions to my daughter before realizing she has no interest in talking to strangers, but Lynn waits patiently for Emma to share when she’s ready. Emma told Lynn today she’s going to plant corn in her garden while we were checking out. Lynn has the coziest sweatshirt collection and almost always is by the front door when we arrive. I love seeing Lynn and asking her advice.

Mr. Mark

Our next door neighbor doesn’t know shit about plants. Moreso, he doesn’t even pretend to care about them, but he lets me jabber on and on about them. “What are you doing now?” he grumbled as I was emptying my trunk with all of the logs from Miss Liz. “Come see!” I yelled enthusiastically. I never expect him to follow, but he does. He gripped one of my new beds, testing the strength of the material. “Nice,” he admitted. I try to limit my words with Mark because his time is always short, out of discomfort from not knowing anything about plants. I asked him what his favorite vegetable was because I’ll have a couple hundred pounds of produce looking for a home this summer. He admitted he doesn’t have one, and I reminded him about the importance of keeping him alive. A few more moments of discussing the weather ends with an abrupt, “Well, see ya.” He waves with one hand held up as his back disappears into the alley. I won’t see him outside again for a few weeks I’m sure, but I’ll have something to share by then. And don’t think I didn’t notice the affectionate squeeze he gave Emma on the shoulder on the way out.

Signal Chatters

It all started in a Facebook group, but then shifted into a Signal Chat. I posted in a Wisconsin Resist Facebook group a few months ago looking for likeminded gardeners who wanted to use our skills for good. That since evolved into hundreds of comments from Wisconsin gardeners looking for a place to connect, share knowledge, and lament. 18 of us are active daily, and I’ve already learned so much. I installed my very first rain barrel per the advice of Erin, who lives in a small town by Beloit. I’d never have had the confidence to try that without her mentoring. The more I learn, the more I realize I really don’t know a whole lot about gardening, and speaking with people who share the same purpose in gardening means the world to me.

I can’t wait to see who I meet next.

1st Layer: Cardboard

You need some kind of weed barrier to go down first, and landscape fabric can be costly. I use cardboard that I stored in the garage over the winter.

2nd Layer: Logs, Sticks, And Leaves

The idea is to have a support system for the dirt. If you have a strong layer on bottom, when the dirt compacts over the season, you won’t have to refill as much. My beds compacted a fair amount last year, so you’ll see me rebuilding them here:

Once the big supports are in, layer in leaves and branches. This builds a net to hold up the new dirt that will go on top.

3rd Layer: Compost and Topsoil

My favorite is Black Cow manure compost. I put 6 bags in this huge bed directly on top of the leaves and branches. The compost will feed the plants from underneath and also help these branches to break down into natural fertilizer. Now, it’s finally time to fill in with soil. Notice how 80% of my bed is filled before I ever lift a single bucket of dirt? I’m not about to do back breaking labor if I don’t have to, especially since I have 7 beds to fill. This is what my bed looks like once the topsoil has been added in.

This is a bed that’s going to feed itself by breaking down the branches over time. One bed ready for planting….6 to go.

So what does this mean for groceries moving forward? I spend a lot of time researching just that, since I’m about to throw a bunch of plants in my backyard. According to my research, these are the items that are about to become scarce or astronomically expensive, and what I’m doing for my family.

First, the cost of fertilizer is about to become basically unaffordable. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iran are big global producers of fertilizer, and we use a lot of their raw ingredients to make our fertilizer domestically. We can make some more natural options to lower costs, but they aren’t as affective, so we’re going to see crop production drop anywhere from 30-40% in some climates.

I’m planning to buy my fertilizer for the entire growing season this week, but the bill is high and I am bracing for the pain. I’m just a backyard garden, so I can go lower on my applications, but it’ll be rough.

What you need to realize first is that all of our food needs are going to be ranked from most expensive to transport, to least expensive. Those that don’t take a lot of fuel to get to my local Aldi are going to stay roughly the same price and I don’t plan to stockpile those. I’m looking at the foods that are going to cost the most to move, and trying to grow them myself:

• coffee, tea, cocoa, and chocolate (due to all being imported)

• tropical fruits (bananas, mangoes, pineapple)

• off-season berries and vegetables (this is literally everything depending on calendar)

• seafood

• meat and poultry

You may be thinking, wow, Karen, you have a meat supply? No, I don’t. My husband and I have switched to ground turkey because ground beef is INSANELY high priced. We threw a bunch of seafood in our chest freezer. We ordered a bulk order of coffee last week. I grab a few cans of tropical fruit every trip and keep it in the basement. I can half of the fruit I buy each week and put it in the basement. I freeze berries that are on sale instead of eating them fresh. I have three garden maps written up and I’ll rotate through them so I’m getting a constant harvest. Continuous planting will be key this year. I grab two bags of rice and two bags of dried beans every grocery trip. Those go in the basement.

I’ve read about countries approaching a lockdown similar to COVID due to running low on fuel. I personally wouldn’t be totally surprised if that happened here as well. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared just in case.

Most of the people I talk to are aware of how bad this could get and how fast, but there are still a fair number of people acting completely unaware. I suppose that’s their right. I don’t have time to live like that, though. Keep on keeping on, pals.

Step 1: Gather all supplies

First, lay out your new pots and fill them with potting soil, not seed starting mix. I use the soil left in my beds from last year. Whatever container you use, make sure there is solid drainage at the bottom. Fully saturate the soil 2-3 times and let the excess drain. Label your new pots with the type of seed you’re transplanting. You also need some kind of skinny digging tool. I use a plastic knife. Let’s begin!

Step 2: Unearth your seedlings

Tip your original pot upside down into your palm and gently wiggle the plants out. If you must grip them at all, go high. Gently shake off the excess dirt and leave your seedlings laying on whatever table you’re using. Those fuzzy little hairs are going to become roots!

Step 3: Dig deep

You need the deepest hole you can dig in your pot. This is a good time to check soil conditions. If it’s dry at the bottom, stop, water again, and dig deep once drained. The depth of the hole is important for the next step.

Step 4: Hold and plant

Grab a seedling by the leaves and place it in the hole. Make sure you’re covering as much of the plant as possible with depth. Every skinny hair becomes a root when covered by dirt, so you need to plant all the way up until the leaves. Hold the leaves while you pack dirt evenly on each side.

Step 5: Admire your work, then place under a light source

Take your potted plant and place back indoors under a light source to continue growing until outdoor soil conditions are warm enough. Tomatoes and peppers need 60-70 degrees in the soil to thrive. My plants are chilling next to a sunny window until then. Water them anytime the soil looks dry, but they don’t need a whole lot at this point.

Remember, I’m selling half of my plants on April 25th. Come bug me for details.

I don’t use any pesticides, preservatives, or fertilizers on my plants, and each plant is going to be $3-4. Nurseries sell everything for $5 and up which I think is absolutely insane. Come get plants that thrive in our climate for a fraction of the price the big box retailers are offering.

I’m selling these plants:

Roma Tomatoes

San Marzano Tomatoes

Sandwich Slicer Tomatoes (bigger heirloom variety)

Beefsteak Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Jalapeño

Anaheim Chili

California Wonder Bell Pepper

Long Sweet Pepper

Multicolored Bell Pepper

Probably a few more that I forgot and lost in the mass…. :)

If you want to be notified of my address the week of the sale, let me know in the comments and I’ll add you to my email list. I already have 30 names on the list and don’t expect the plants to last long. No holds, sorry!

But what do you do first?

I hate to break it to you, but the opening of a garden is the least exciting thing you’ll do all year. Here are the tasks I do long before I plant a single seed. You’ll want to start this process a full month before you plan to plant anything because it takes a lot longer than you think it will. I started today.

Walk the Property

Before you do anything, you need to take a walk around. Did something break over the winter, even if you live in milder climates? Did trash blow in? Did invasive weeds sprout up anywhere? Did any of your garden beds fall apart? Before you make any plans, you need to look over each area of your property with a close eye to see what needs to be cared for first.

Remove Debris

I start by clearing away random crap that blew into our yard over the winter and hid under snow. Broken toys from last year that my daughter left outside. Trash clean up usually takes me an hour or two. Broken shovels that I somehow left in the grass (oops). Anytime I think I did a great job cleaning in the fall, the spring kicks me in the face.

I also remove old yard waste. Any plants that sprouted over the winter that clearly aren’t viable. Random pine needles that blew into my garden beds (acid isn’t great for soil). Rocks that squirrels dropped into my dirt. I pile it all up in my yard waste bins for the first pickup in April. I restack the firewood that fell over in the winter. Super exciting stuff.

Survey the Growing Spaces

Now is the time to make improvements to the areas surrounding your garden beds before you do anything to the actual beds. You’re not going to have any time once growing season starts to make improvements. Or you’ll be doing these construction projects while trying to harvest and weed and hating yourself.

I have some gravel around my existing beds that I need to add to, so i’ll be getting some gravel to fill in the walking paths. I need to put landscaping fabric down in the areas where weeds love to grow and fill on top of it. I want to paint my wooden beds to match my newer beds. I have a few bushes to rip out to make space for a new berry patch. Lots and lots of grunt work.

Organize Your Storage

Wherever you keep your tools, seeds, soil, etc needs to be glanced at again. Throw out anything that looks broken or about to break. Take stock of your inventory so you don’t overbuy the first time you go to the garden store. Give away anything you know you don’t need this year. Again, once you start buying plants and getting dirt, you need a wide open space for the work of planting. I will also buy any new tools I need at this point, but I’m pretty sure I’m set.

Karen….are we getting any closer to plants?

No, sorry.

Install New Garden Spaces

Are you adding any beds this year? Are you building any new trellises? Are you trying container gardening?

Once your yard is clear and ready to go, lay out your new gardening spaces to see how much dirt you’re going to need.

For me, I’m installing four new raised beds this year. That’ll involve building the new beds, laying them out for spacing, digging into the ground to level them, and surrounding them with some kind of material to keep water from gathering (probably gravel). I’ll check my trellises for breaks and repair anything needing it.

This is also when I pull out all of my pots from last year, line them up to see if I have enough space for them, and check each pot of hole or cracks. Don’t waste your time filling a container that will break.

Install Soil

For me, I fill half of each bed with cardboard, sticks, and logs to cut down on how much soil I need for each bed. Once my beds are half full, I take many trips to the dirt pile to fill up all of my beds, all of my pots, and to top off my beds from last year. The last thing I do before planting is add some compost and fertilizer.

NOW you’re ready to plant. I’ll go into each step in detail in additional posts, so stick around!

Subscribe now

Things this year could not look any different than they did last year.

Suffering. That’s a strong word, but 2025 was a year of suffering for us. Physically, as my body broke down twice. Mentally and emotionally. A lot of the joy of my personality was squeezed out as life pressed in. We were surrounded by the most incredible people who wanted the best for us, but the best kept eluding us. Worse, it seemed like we didn’t even had access to good anymore. After so many different deliveries of bad news, Curt and I went into survival mode and forgot how to just have fun.

Relief has come our way finally with some lingering side effects.

One of my absolute favorite things about the character of God is that nothing is wasted with him. He uses every moment. Not always for our enjoyment, but always for our good. I have seen how he has taken the worst and turned it into something I can use and build off of.

I appreciate my husband a lot more. I’ve sat with him in the discomfort and it reaffirmed my desire to do life with him forever.

I emerged on a gentler path.

I left spaces where I wasn’t being heard.

I started to forgive people I never thought I could. I asked for a lot of forgiveness too.

I somehow gained the most amazing relationships by letting go. I have never in my life had so many deeply intuitive, steadfast, patient, wise friends and mentors walking the same direction as I am.

“You’ve really had a year,” my boss said at our end of the year check in. The further we got into the year, the clearer it became that I was at a tension point and needed to make a choice. I could continue in my ways of powering through things, or I could release.

There is a peace in being tired, but not being discouraged. Parenting solo for 21 days will obviously make you tired, but I’ve felt a lot of peace this time around. I’m seeing in real time the product of letting a lot go.

I don’t think we fully understand our behaviors and habits until we’re in the crush of bad circumstances. I think we tend to power through when the day to day is easy, even if powering through includes bad habits. I had to let bad habits go last year just to make it through and through that release, I feel completely different. My faith feels honest. By dropping my need to be liked by everyone and understood by everyone, I have margin. I don’t perform. I don’t do things because I feel like I should. I do what fits into our family, our rhythms, our ministry.

I’ve grown in love for our home and the people we live among. I’ve seen ways I need to grow and started pursuing them. I’ve seen ways I need to heal and enlisted help. There’s a distance between who I was and who I am that won’t close and I feel good about it.

So this year is different. I’m thankful for it. There is abundance on the horizon and hope in the present.

Our bedroom stresses me out. We live in an older house with smaller spaces, so they become easily cluttered or overwhelming. The previous owners painted the walls a gray that gives off ‘doctor’s office’ vibes and our room is small enough that I didn’t want to tackle shifting everything over a few days to reach all of the surfaces.

But this is the first project of 2026. I wanted to bring the outdoors into our room. Here are some inspiration photos of what I’m going for:

I’m realistic in the sense that the room itself will evolve over time to complete the transformation, and I’m not in a hurry. I just wanted a solid base. What I did first was paint the room the loveliest shade of green. Having a very tall husband is helpful for ceiling painting.

I wanted all of the accents in the room to be wooden to keep that outdoor vibe, so we ordered a new wooden bed frame, and my friend painted the most gorgeous watercolors for me to hang in wooden frames.

The green reflects the light so much that overhead lighting is too harsh, so I bought rechargeable lamps and will slowly add more small lamps over time. Our room only has outlets on one side, so cordless lighting is really important.

Lastly, there’s an alcove next to my side of the bed that has held different purposes over the years. My goal is to find an intentional purpose for that space that doesn’t add clutter. Hopefully having a lamp, a candle, and a journal will keep it really simply and intentional. I think it will eventually hold some kind of coffee station.

Lastly, the room itself needs to have minimal furniture to keep it clutter free. My favorite piece is the cedar chest at the foot of our bed that belonged to my grandma. I’ll be emptying out my closet soon and sorting every little thing to only keep what matters most to me.

Each room in our home is getting a little refresh this year. I’m excited to keep going.

not much happened. In fact, almost all of the seeds under the grow lights developed mold or didn’t germinate at all. The ones that survived were leggy (very tall, thin stalks that won’t survive in the wild because they were too far from a solid light source in the early stages of growth). 5 tomato plants survived. Whoop dee doo.

Subscribe now

This year, I decided I wouldn’t start any seeds at all. Then I came across a TikTok video about a seed starting technique so simple, it couldn’t possibly work. On a whim, I dragged an end table underneath my kitchen window and copied the video. 10 days later, I had germinated seeds. Then they kept growing. I now have dozens of seeds in some stage of growth and most of them seem healthy. Here is the step by step for you:

1. Take a red solo cup and cut two drainage holes at the bottom with a knife.

2. Fill the cup 3/4 of the way with regular dirt (I grabbed it from my garden beds. If your ground is still frozen, any kind of potting soil works).

3. Fill the top 1/4 of the cup with seed starter mix from your local garden store.

4. Completely saturate the dirt with water and let all of the excess drain out of the bottom

5. LABEL YOUR CUPS with seed variety and date of planting, or you’re going to have a bad time in a few weeks sorting green from green. I use a sharpie on the cup.

6. Dig about 1/4in into the dirt with your finger, drop 3-4 seeds of the same variety in, and gently cover them back up with the dirt.

7. Place on some kind of tray to catch excess water as close to a sunny window as possible.

That’s it.

Subscribe now

I’ve used a mister to gently water each cup about once a week, sometimes less. The dirt can be on the dryer side because you don’t want mold to grow. So far, I have 44 cups in some stage of germination and I plant 5-10 more each week.

Don’t waste your time with plastic containers. All of my seeds died in them. Don’t buy the fancy pots. Egg cartons even carry lingering bacteria that kill a lot of varieties (though some thrive there). Just grab solo cups.

Once I run out of room upstairs, I’ll move the healthiest plants underneath my basement grow lights that are currently very unused. I’m hoping to host a plant sale in May to sell off my excess plants. I’m excited to see what grows!