A Great Idea To Do With Your Kids While At Home!

Back in World War I and World War II, the American public was asked to grow a garden in their yards and in public places. The purpose of the gardens was to help supplement the family’s food rations and to make them feel like they were helping out the war effort.

These special gardens were called victory gardens. I remember my Dad telling me the story of his victory garden. He was 8 years old and tended to the family’s garden for several years. He was doing his part to help win the war. As a result of his gardening years, he developed a love for organic gardening that lasted him a lifetime.

I started helping out in our family’s garden at age 6 and have been gardening ever since. That little victory garden affected my father, me, my kids and now I am sharing my gardening with the world. And all this started as a war effort victory garden.

The nation is taking a timeout for the Coronavirus to pass by, this is the perfect opportunity to start a victory garden at your house. The Coronavirus is going to leave in its wake a nation that is economically stressed and a food system that is stressed. The stores and the food supply chain have shown how weak it can be.

I don’t want to worry about where my food is going to come from and I made sure my kids had the life skill to always put food on the table. Now is the perfect opportunity for you to do the same for your kids or grandkids. If they never learn to play the piano it is not life threatening, if they never learn to garden it could affect their life and generations to come. Just like in World War II, our country needed us to grow food to feed our nation while we shipped supplies to the troops. Our country is going to need us again!

As a professional grower, I know how fragile the food system is. I bet all of you have seen the 3 days worth of stuff at the grocery store disappear. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of a long food crisis. Not only is food production disrupted in our country but foreign imports will be disrupted too. I would rather hedge my bets on growing some food then to be short or pay over inflated prices. I also want to be the person giving away food in a crisis then having my hand out to receive food.

These days, we are finding a lot of parents don’t know how to garden either. That is okay, as a garden educator, I’ve got that part covered. I can teach you and your kids how to garden successfully in one season.

3 Steps to a Successful Garden the First Year

#1 Use a new method of gardening called High Performance gardening

This system is very different from the traditional old row garden that your grandma used. A High Performance Garden is 10 times more efficient, requires no tools and is virtually weed free. We have all updated our computers, cars and phones and now it is time to update our gardening system to one that fits into our busy lives and yields more food. Teaching your kids in this system is one of the secrets to success. If you can read and lift 16 pounds you can do this system. We have been teaching this garden system to beginners for years with lots of success. If you would like to see this garden in action, we have a ​free​ online show that demonstrates how to grow a High Performance Garden. There are over 132 free episodes online for you and your kids to start to learn this new gardening system.

Go to ​the High Performance Garden Show.

#2 Timing is everything!

In order to have a successful garden the first step is to plant at the right time. Too early and the plants die and too late and you could miss out on your crop. Here are the months that you start a garden according to your zone.

If you don’t know your zone, look it up.

Zones 9-10 you can garden all year round
Zone 8 you can start your garden in February
Zone 7 you can start your garden in March
Zone 6 you can start your garden in April
Zones 4 and 5 you can start your garden in May
Zone 3 you can start your garden in June

If it is not quite time to start your garden, you can be getting ready by getting your education and building your garden beds.

#3 Keep it small

When teaching your kids to grow a garden, keep it small and give them their own garden bed. A High Performance Garden is so efficient that you can get a lot of food from a tiny garden. We can grow over $2500 worth of food in 128 sq. ft. ( the size of 3 king size beds) with only a 15 minute a day commitment. This is enough to feed 2-3 people. It is not hard, all it takes is the right education and you can do this too.

For your kids or grandkids, I suggest a 4 ft. x 8 ft. garden of their very own to start. Here is a list of some of the easiest (and most kid friendly) vegetables to grow, as well as some kid garden plans. Try these out for size!

The best vegetables to grow in a kid garden are:
● Tomatoes
● Cucumbers
● Lettuce
● Green beans
● Kale
● Swiss chard
● Zucchini squash
● Summer squash
● Butternut squash
● Pumpkin

When looking at these gardening plans it is very important that your child has ownership of the project. This is ​their g​ arden. Involve them in all of the planning and in the garden chores. It will make a garden victory that is much more exciting when they have earned it themselves. To make sure that they don’t feel overwhelmed by the garden, keep it to 4 feet by 8 feet. It is big enough to grow 5 different plants but not so big that they grow tired taking care of it.

Plan #1

Plan #2

Plan #3

As our nation recovers from the virus and we work to get our economic and food system rolling again, let’s all be a part of the solution and help out by growing our own little victory garden. As the number of people grows on this planet, this will not be the last biological outbreak that will disrupt our lives. Take this time that we have been given and teach your kids how to grow some food. Their future may depend on it.

Give a child a carrot and they eat for a day. Teach a child how to grow a garden and they eat for a lifetime. – Lynn Gillespie

Lynn Gillespie, 34 year professional regenerative farmer, is the creator of the High Performance Garden system and is the Greenhouse and Garden Advisor for The Grow Network.

Learn more about the High Performance Garden system.

Connect with The Grow Network, the premier food and medicine growing community.

Watch the High Performance Garden Show.

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Spring has officially started and so has the High Performance Garden Show 2018! Sign up for the show if you have not done so already.

It is free and online. Once you are there you can follow along with us in 2018 and you can watch the 2016 and 2017 years as well.

If you are signed up log in to you account to watch the first episode.

Log In Now

We have a fun and delicious line up for you this year. If this is the year you want to grow the garden of your dreams, join us as we show you everything that we do in our high performance garden.

Until next time may your garden be easy, fun productive and always organic.

Lynn

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Here are the fundamentals that we work with in a High Performance Garden:

• In harmony with nature
• disease and insect resistant
• weed free
• very little time
• very little input
• few tools
• well planned
• succession planting
• extend the growing season
• utilize all the space
• creates huge yields
• fun

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Barbara, what were some of your gardening triumphs?

I had no tomato worms! Amazing!! There was great productivity for such a small area. Abundance in cucumbers, beans, tomatoes….in fact, everything was quite abundant (except the plants that didn’t make it, due to operator error-see below)

How has your garden affected those around you?

Myself and my husband, Jeff, learned the difference between contained space/well-made soil/organic supplementation and just using the ground soil to grow plants and even with supplementation, seeing the dramatic difference between Cinder Block Garden produce and in the ground produce.

I shared pictures of the garden to anyone who would show interest. My physician’s husband is a stay-at-home-dad and he especially liked the concept and the idea. Many people did.

I think our son and daughter were really impressed…I’m sure they’ll be doing this next year.

What has been your favorite produce out of the garden?

We eat Kale in our smoothies almost everyday. Next season I’m adding a 4×8 Cinder Block Garden JUST for greens! And the CELERY! OMG! People can’t believe I grew celery—and that it was so beautiful! For the first time in 40 years I really got good carrots (they’ll be even more beautiful and large next year) The herbs in the holes of the cinder block garden are doing great! The Basil, Rosemary, Dill, Lemon Verbena, Parsley, Oregano are all fantastic!

What was your greatest challenge?

I lost the cauliflower because it was too crowded and shaded by broccoli The cabbage got worms and destroyed before I realized what was going on. :-/  Keeping up with each particular pest was a little consuming. Once I realized that it was spider mites on the cucumbers, I had quite the problem to eradicate. But each remedy has worked! My biggest pests have been: roly-poly bugs and grasshoppers which I still can’t figure out how to capture—Jeff says “get a net”! What a simple solution for next year.

One challenge was putting too much in each section! I’ll be building 2 more 4×8 sections for next year (plus a separate section just for the garlic—that will be a wooden box about 12’x8’…This year was not so good for garlic and the onion maggots were awful! So we’re going to cut down on the amount of garlic and do it in a container just to see how much easier and more robust it can be—we’ll keep you posted!)

What are you thinking of growing next year?

A whole section just for Kale, Swiss Chard and maybe Lettuce. And More Beets!! More Celery! More Carrots!! I’d like to have more variety in the garden as well as room for cabbage. I grew one for our neighbor’s 3rd grader—Put it in a separate pot next to the Cinder Block Garden—It thrived! I might do a bunch in their own pots—I think keeping it isolated but well supervised helped it do really well.

Next season I will NOT put sunflowers in the holes of the cinder block garden. They were so BIG and got in the way. I thought they were a dwarf variety—maybe so, but for my space and ease, not a good idea—but they were gorgeous.

Cheers! To Lynn and her Green Heart and dirty fingers 🙂

Barbara

It’s incredible to see how far Barbara has come. In the beginning she jokingly called the garden a test between her and her husbands gardening methods. Today her garden is better than either of us could have imagined. I am so proud of her! Each of our students have beautiful gardens to share with the world. It is our mission to empower people by teaching them the life skill of growing a high performance garden. This next season I look forward to teaching many new gardeners how to boost their productivity and enjoy the best harvest possible. If you would like to begin learning this lifechanging gardening system take a peek at our Abundance Garden Online Course or read the High Performance Gardening eBook. There is no time like the fall season to prep your beds for the coming spring. Beginning your gardening education today is the best time.

I look forward to helping you and many other new gardeners boost their productivity in enjoyable high performance garden systems, like the Abundance Garden System.

Until next time, may  your garden be easy, fun, productive and always organic.

Lynn

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Linnie’s first year in the Abundance Garden Course has been a beautiful success. As all of our first year students in the Abundance Garden Course have come to their fall harvest we asked if they would share their gardens on our blog. Linnie is one of our Oregon first year students, so she has the ability to grow her garden through the fall and winter as a cool season garden. We caught her as she is considering her transition. Join us learning more about Linnie’s first year in the abundance garden course.

What were some of your gardening triumphs?

To my surprise the onions grew to the size of softballs. It is the first time I have ever tried growing onions. I wouldn’t have thought of it if it weren’t for your class.

The most prolific vegetable is the lemon cucumbers. I only grew three plants. Every morning for most of the summer I have found two or three ripe cucumbers waiting for me to eat, Only that’s more than I want. So I have shared them with anyone who will take some; even some of my clients went home cucumbers. They have been so sweet. And still coming on.

The tomatoes also have been most prolific. Again I only planted three plants, 2 Early Girls and I don’t remember the other one. However, in addition to salads and other tomato dishes I have canned 16 pints and 2 quarts of tomato sauce. I made it in combination with some of the onions and also some green peppers which I also grew.

I grew Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. We call them garden candy. I have shared them with all the neighbors and especially my mother. They are one of her favorite foods.

Who did you teach in your garden?

My family has been following this adventure very closely. The whole neighborhood has been watching the project. There were several comments about the expense. Now they realize I have more than made up for the price in vegetables. The green beans alone produced about a pound a day.

I get a lot of questions about what is the secret to all this success. I tell them it is in the soil. But I don’t give away the secret.

I have posted some of my success on Facebook. People have asked all kinds of questions. I always refer them to your website.

What has been your favorite produce out of the garden?

That is a hard question to answer. One of my favorite vegetables is green beans. I like to grow the Romano beans, also known as Italian green beans. I cook them with onions and garlic, all out of the garden. However, this year I would have to say the cucumbers. I have never been too fond of the things. They have been so tasty. I have been eating them diced and with a good spoonful of cottage cheese to go with them. They are much lower in sugar than canned pears or peaches that I used to eat with cottage cheese. Now, I much prefer the cucumbers.

Daily romano bean harvest starting in late July and still happening

What was your greatest challenge?

I had two major challenges. Both the cucumbers and the squash plants, zucchini, patty pan and spaghetti were constantly troubled by mold. You told me what to do and when I had the time I sprayed. But summer is my busiest season and I didn’t often have the time for spraying. It didn’t slow down the cucumber harvest, but I know it affected the zucchinis as they were not very prolific this year.

My second problem was the bug infestation on the cabbages. I couldn’t keep up with the needed spraying. I have harvested three cabbages, all a little on the small side, but very sweet and tasty. I have a couple more to harvest.

I just thought of another problem. A couple of crops had to be planted two and three times. I finally discovered birds were eating the seeds shortly after I planted them. Then in one of your segments you mentioned mulch as a solution to that problem and it worked just fine. I used grass cuttings.

The garden the last week of July.

What are you thinking of growing next year?

I plan on building more raised garden beds. I want to grow corn. A squirrel planted a corn seed in one of my gardens. It grew quite tall and produced two ears of feed corn. The squirrels have loved it. The potato harvest was good for the size of the bed, but I would like to grow more.

In spite of the cabbage discouragement, I would like to grow broccoli next year. I tried carrots in the holes in the cinder blocks. The tomatoes took over and blocked the sunlight. I would like to grow carrots in a garden of their own.

I will be planting spinach and lettuce this weekend. I have even considered trying cabbage, as the winters are so mild here nowadays. I have talked to other people who have successfully grown lettuce and spinach outdoors year round.

Thanks a million, Lynn. This has been the most successful growing season I have ever had. Thanks to you, I look forward to many more.

-Linnie

Each of our students have beautiful gardens to share with the world. It is our mission to empower people by teaching them the life skill of growing a high performance garden. You can learn more about the Abundance Garden course or begin developing your garden by reading the High Performance Garden eBook this season. There is no time like the fall season to prep your beds for the coming spring.

Until next time, may  your garden be easy, fun, productive and always organic.

Lynn

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 Generally greens are not my favorite but I know that they will protect my health and super charged nutrient dense greens will be even better. Dallas and Melissa Hartwig in their book “It Starts with Food” had a sentence that keeps ringing in my head, “If you don’t like to eat vegetables, get over it you are a grown up!” I love vegetables but some of the greens are quite simply too bitter. Those greens were too bitter until I read Dr. Terry Wahl’s book “The Wahls Protocol“. She recommended sautéing the greens in coconut oil to reduce the bitter flavor and she was right! I can now eat kale and bok choy sautéed in coconut oil no problem! Even if the greens are still not my favorite part of the meal- I think of them as my vitamins and enjoy them that way. Mark Sisson (from Mark’s Daily Apple) says everything is better with sauce on it. My daughter who would not eat greens before will now suck them down when I put my magical “sauce” on it! I’ve included the recipe below to help you get started on eating your greens.

It is so important to begin eating those leafy greens today. My mother left my life when I was 39. She died of breast cancer and missed meeting her youngest two grandchildren. They are really missing out on an amazing person. I miss her and 39 is too young to lose your mom. I know diet was a big part of her getting cancer. My goal is to meet all of my grandchildren. I want to run and play with them. My grandmas were wonderful ladies and very influential to my life. They both lived long lives of 84 and 95 years old. If eating my nutrient dense leafy greens from my garden brings me the health so that I can enjoy my grand-kids then bring, them on! The magic vegetable sauce will simply make them more enjoyable!
So, here is to all the grandparents and grandchildren that get to frolic together! It’s time for you to eat your greens!
Enjoy the recipe below and learn more about the  Leafy Greens Container Garden on our website. Growing up to 3 cups of greens a day has never been easier thanks to this new course. So start getting excited for this brand new high performance gardening educational program!

The Leafy Greens Container Garden Course will teach you how to grow 3 cups of the rare, nutrient dense and multicolored greens that you will find nowhere else in this easy self watering system!

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Barbara’s Abundance Student Garden

“I’ve been conventionally gardening for most of my adult life— the typical, large, family backyard garden—“organic” but not realizing the deep importance of soil health. I’ve been a Flowerchild of the 60s, Mother Earth News addict, Rodale subscriber, and “foodie” most my life—having said all that—I must tell you that I’ve learned more from you and the CBG(cinder block garden) course because you’ve made it “hands on” and “here’s the reason for doing it this way”….so I’ve  gotten the rationale and the application all along the way….My beautiful CBG is proof for me and my family that it really is “all in the soil”.  

You’ve helped me make it “possible”. I’m used to gardening large plots of ground that are poorly nourished— so I’d have inconsistent results and increasingly poor outcomes. Seeing and doing the CBG has given me a new perspective that makes sense and makes results….You’ve helped me find a way of gardening that WORKS—with ease.

(I fully intend to add additional CBGs each year—they are a beautiful addition to our home—And a great conversation piece! Inspiring to everyone who’s sees them.) And the lettuce! It’s gorgeous! I’ve never been able to grow such luscious lettuce. Between you and Johnny’s Seeds, I’m sure it’s the quality of the terrain and the seeds that are going into it that are making this such a satisfying and exciting adventure.

I’m having a ball caring for the garden.

I have a HUGE spider living in one of my cabbages…She comes out when I water in the am and pm….I’ll send you her picture :->

Everyone seems happy—-plants, critters, and me.

Bless you Lynn….and keep on keeping on.

I’m one enthusiastic fan!

Barbara”

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While the farm has literally been bursting with life we also had a surprise burst of song in one of our greenhouses. The Mighty Diamonds were in town for a concert at the beginning of the month. KVNF, our local radio station, filmed their second live Paonia performance in the Odyssey Greenhouse. We had the drummer perched on one of the high performance raised beds and the band spread around him. It felt almost tropical listening to their R&B infused Reggae in the humid warmth of the greenhouse. The camera crew filled every nook and cranny of the space with extensive equipment.

Here’s the video – join the live performance of the Mighty Diamonds in our steamy high performance greenhouse.

All of this abundance of life at the farm has inspired us to create empowering sustainable education and to share it with our global communities .

It’s the time to begin thinking about how you will eat locally. Spring is right around the corner and we want to encourage local eating. Our inspiring 2008 documentary Locavore is exactly the joyous message of eating locally that the world needs. This month Locavore has been updated and released for free! Become inspired this February to take on the Locavore Challenge today! Don’t forget to share the inspiration with your friends and family to excite the movement this spring. Our goal is to inspire one million people to make the world a better place one plateful at a time.

It’s also the time to become inspired about what your garden will look like this year. We have created a new interactive part of the website all about High Performance Gardening. (If you missed out on our February newsletter you can be caught up on what a High Performance Garden is by reading Lynn’s article.)  Take the test and find out if your garden is a high performance garden. Learn the 12 characteristics of a high performance garden and how to create yours in just one season!

February has been an inspiring month for creating sustainable education that will empower people. How and what have you been inspired to create? Share your inspiration on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #TLFinspire. We look forward to seeing what you have been creating!

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In 2007 we opened our education center and began our small scale farming program. The programs we offer create successful small organic farmers.  Our courses range from a 3 year intensive Professional Small Farms course to a short 8 week Farm Stay program. It is immensely satisfying to continue the practice of organic farming by creating more sustainable farmers; but everyone needs to be able to have access to truly nutrient dense, local, organic and fresh produce.

My little sister, who lives in San Antonio, began calling me for advice for her small backyard garden.  She had been gardening in her backyard for about 10 years with unpredictable results and wanted support. She asked me to teach her a better way to garden. Generally I garden in a space of 20,000 square feet so how could I switch from large scale production to such a small space? High performance gardening is high performance gardening whether it is on a large scale or small. A high performance garden was the only option that could fit in to my sister’s limited space and schedule and still produce enough to feed her family of five. After 28 years of gardening experience I had found the system that could work in any space, time constraints and planting zone.  

After being my sisters gardening coach for years I wondered if I could teach other gardeners how they could have a thriving garden. One of the keys that made me a successful garden coach was my relationship with my sister.  She would email me photos of bugs that were eating her produce or photos of failing plants and I could easily diagnose and give organic advice. It was enjoyable to empower her! For the local food movement to really work more people need to be empowered to garden, how could I provide the ease and enjoyment my sister was experiencing to other frustrated gardeners?

 The year of 2014, my husband Tom and I created a one of a kind course that would guide anyone in creating a high performance organic garden.  We filmed the 10 basic modules and followed a season of growing 12 vegetables week by week. The course was structured to support a community of gardeners at all stages and connect them with someone with the experience to answer any and all questions. The Abundance Garden Course was born in November of that year ready for the 2015 spring season.

With our goal of teaching everyone the life skill of vegetable gardening why are we selling these courses? It is important to have a value to education. When knowledge doesn’t have a value it can be misused and abused. Selling the course is our plan to create a positive change in our world through an empowerment cycle.  Our educational programs here on the farm are wildly popular and very successful; so successful that we have had to turn away 100s of potential students due to not having enough space to house more than a select few. It has always been my dream to teach everyone to garden. Those who have an Abundance Garden in their backyard become a part of a community of other backyard gardeners and support the future of more small organic farmers. Our goal is to have this course fund more housing so we can teach  more people to get outside and garden.

We can’t stop ourselves, even with providing so much content we wanted to share more with everyone. So we created our free webinar series that will also begin to teach you how to become a better gardener. Over the next couple of years we will continue to create more free content that will reach more and more people. Our hope is to educate as many as possible and we look forward to having you along for the ride.

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