Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure
We're learning how to live more sustainably at home in the suburbs. Come along and learn with us!
Category: Gardening
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You Have to Spend Money to… Save Money?
It’s the last day of April, and we’ve been hard at work on our spring garden and spring foraging. It’s been busy and fun, and as usual, hard work. We decided this year to expand the garden again (if you can really call last year an expansion – it was the first year we really
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Season of Renewal
When I started this blog, my goal was to update it weekly in the hope of building a following. But life got messy, and I told myself monthly would be okay. But life got messier, and here I am, not having posted since October. The truth is, my inspiration has been low. We’ve continued to
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Bittersweet Day in the Garden
Well, today’s the day. The low tonight in our area is forecasted to be around 35 degrees and there’s a freeze watch. So we spent the morning harvesting anything that was ready to eat and likely wouldn’t survive a freeze in case we do get one. The harvesting part is fun of course. We got
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September Garden Update
I’m really enjoying September in the garden. Granted, we had a serious heat spell early in the month that threatened my fall plants, but with some shade and lots of water, the broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage survived. I should have taken a picture of it but forgot… but we had a beach umbrella in the
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Getting Creative with Container Gardening
If you’ve seen any of my previous posts on gardening, you’ll know that this is our first year of really going all in on planting. The goal was to save money on groceries and to learn a new skill. However, saving money during your first year (or really any year) gardening, takes a lot of
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August Garden Update!
A lot has happened since our July garden update. It’s weird that I don’t feel like we’ve gotten a ton to harvest, but when I was collecting pictures for this post, I realized that really, while we haven’t had an abundance of anything in particular, we have indeed eaten a lot of different things that
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It’s the Season of Cucurbits
Can you tell I only learned the word “cucurbit” this past year? These are the plants that make up the gourd family, including things like zucchini, summer squash, watermelon, cucumbers, and winter squashes such as spaghetti and butternut. Here in late July, they’re also the plants that are requiring the most effort for me. I’ve
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Cute lil’ Harvest & Garden Pupdate
I was about to write, “we finally did some harvesting from the garden!” But really, it wasn’t our first harvest. Just our first big(ish) harvest. Before today, we picked some sprigs of rosemary, mint, and parsley, some sweet peas, and enough lettuce and kale for a couple small side salads. But it doesn’t feel like
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June Garden Update
Patience, patience, patience. A necessary trait for home gardeners, especially if you’re starting from seed. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’m learning here in our first year of gardening. Things are growing, but slowwwwwly. The weather has been a challenge, and apparently many gardeners in my area (Pittsburgh) are experiencing similar problems. We had
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The Good, The Bad, & The Bugly
We knew that there was going to be a learning curve during our first year gardening. Learning where to put plants, how much to water them, when to harvest, what temperatures they like, what diseases they can get… There’s a lot. One thing I didn’t anticipate being so much of a theme was garden bugs.
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 