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

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.

Meet GreenStalk and their amazing towers that make vertical growing efficient and exciting! We have been growing our strawberries in these towers for two seasons and absolutely love it! Check out their multiple tier design and get a $10.00 discount when you use the coupon code thelivingfarm!

Make more room in your garden with GreenStalk, engineered to grow!

Can you imagine a tiny container garden that has big production? There are seasons where it feels overwhelming to plant and build a raised bed garden or we are simply too busy. Don’t worry! You can start small, in fact, I encourage it! Imagine a garden that takes just 5 minutes a day and grows one of the most forgiving plants–leafy greens!

Sign up through May 8 for the Leafy Greens Container Garden Course and get $10 off the regular price of $49. Use the coupon code: LEAFY05

In this course you will learn how to:

• Build a self-watering container garden system.
• Grow new and unique leafy greens.
• Boost the nutrition and taste of the greens from the garden.
• Create a High Performance Garden that takes 5 minutes a day!
• Produce all of the leafy greens your family could ever need.
• Save $100’s off of your grocery total!

You will have access to:

• 3 Basics Modules
• Self Watering Blueprints
• 20 Leafy Greens Container Garden Episodes
• Bonus Frost Protection Training Video

“Your container course was awesome, very detailed. Thanks for the secret soil mix I’ve never had these kinds of results”. Steve P.

Meet Mesa, this one is a keeper!

We have birthed 89 lambs this season and the farm is bursting with new life and joy! With only 3 ewes left to birth and the bottle lambs sleeping through the night I can finally sleep fully through the night too.

Wow! It is so amazing to witness life come into the world again and again. 86 lambs have arrived to The Living Farm this season and 8 ewes are still pregnant. If you are interested in starting your own dairy flock contact me.

My flock is East Frisian crossed with Lacaune. Our sheep are friendly and handled a lot to create a flock that is easy to milk and fun to be around.

Have you heard of earthworm castings? It is digested compost naturally created by earthworms. Nature is amazing! I have been growing food for 33 years and use it in my gardens to add nutrients and microbial life to the soil and plants. I am excited to share VermisTerra with you; a high quality, certified organic earthworm casting product that will boost your garden and plant vitality. If you cannot find a good source of compost this is a totally safe alternative.

Get 10% off any VermisTerra product with the coupon code livingfarm. I assure that it will transform your gardening experience!

Benefits of VermisTerra:

• Improves Soil Structure and Fertility: Microbes have the ability to create pore spaces in the soil.
• Rich in Beneficial Bacteria and Microbes: High concentrations of exceedingly active mixture of bacteria and micro-organisms. Also contains earthworm eggs that will inoculate your soil with earthworms.
• Regulates Plant Nutrients: Humic acid in earthworm castings free up nutrients in the soil to make the nutrients immediately available for plants.
• Supports Against Pest: While plants remain healthy with the steady flow of nutrients from earthworm castings, plants can defend and build resistance.

It’s been very active around here! We have birthed 64 lambs so far and there are more coming! We have had a committed team working around the clock to ensure that the ewes have the support they need during birth. Stay tune to find out the final count!

In the video Planning Your Garden learn about High Performance Garden characteristic #7 A Well Planned Garden. Finding out which zone you live in to determine your last average frost date is key to your gardening success.

The baby chicks have arrived! The farm will grow over 3000 meat chickens this year on our back 10 acres of grass. The chicks will start in the brooder for 4 weeks then they will move to the mobile chicken pens and out to the pasture. The mobiles will be moved every day to spread the manure all over the field. The chickens will put down over 5000 pounds of organic fertilizer on the grass pasture this year.

The weather is warm then cold, then it snows with sunshine, sounds like spring! And that means baby lambs! Lambing has started and so has the night shifts. We give round the clock care to our birthing moms. We will be birthing almost all the pregnant ewes in the next 17 days. Our total lamb count should be around 100 this year depending on whether we birth twin or triplet. It is a very exciting time of the year!