Grow Your Own!

We create a beautiful vegetable garden in your yard, and help you learn to grow nutritious food and herbs while building the soil fertility and conserving our resources.
In our great grandparents time, every household had a kitchen garden that was planted with hearty greens, salad fixings, and herbs. They were usually situated in the backyard, near the kitchen so the cook could quickly step outside to pick fresh food and herbs to liven up the meal. Our aim is to recreate those kitchen gardens and help you eat healthy vibrant food from your own yard, and eventually get you growing on your own.

Join Good Food Gardens and keep it real local- your backyard!

What do you get from Good Food Gardens?

You enjoy fresh, vibrant veggies and herbs weekly.
Your farmer comes to you.
You receive recipes weekly.
You know your food source intimately.
Your household can learn as we go.
You get a cool, back yard retreat.

What Good Food Gardens provides:

We use crop rotation and improve soil nutrition.
We provide the appropriate plants and seeds through the season.
We provide the expertise & hard work.
We tend and harvest the farms weekly.

We do all the work, you enjoy your Good Food!

We have different plans to choose from:

The Full Meal Deal- Installation & Weekly or Monthly Maintenance:
Once a week (or month) we tend your yard, harvest your veggies and healing herbs, and leave them in a basket on your doorstep ready to eat. You and your family are encouraged to harvest from the garden the rest of the week, picking the freshest possible vegetables for every meal. At the end of the season, we will leave your yard in a cover crop to enhance next year's soil.

Help Yourself! Consulting: Maintaining a garden takes skills, time, and organization. Many people have the time and energy to maintain a garden, but don't know when to start and how to plan for the full season. This is the service for you! You do the work, and learn different aspects of farming in your unique ecosystem each month. We will provide the plant starts, or we will help you start them yourselves! Everyone in the household can join in the consultation. Eventually, our goal is to teach you how to plan for and create a system that works in your garden, and for your household.

Stephen Colbert promotes Grow Your Own

Check out this funny video from Stephen Colbert about growing your own herbs on the Grist webpage- it is a reaction to an ad for "Survival Seeds" that was being advertised. I agree with the Grist writer who prefers organic seeds from a supplier like Territorial Seed Company or Seed Savers, or Horizon Herbs- all can be found at Peaceful Valley Farm Supply.

Start a Community Garden in your Yard!

We are very passionate about helping people grow food for themselves, and locally sourcing other foods they can't produce on their own.   Even though we create gardens for personal use in your backyard, we are also interested in developing community projects for people to share their food and gardening experience.  Jayne helped start Longfellow Creek Community Garden in her neighborhood, and so far we have grown a lot of food there.  Jenn planned and supervised the planting of the Food Bank garden and farm space on Vashon Island.

Today I (Jayne) came across a great site at communitygarden.org  that shows you step by step how to create a community garden. This year, I am planning the plot (on Longfellow Creek) and I hope it will be even easier to grow and harvest food there. Since we already have the site already prepped and some of the seeds, we have a head start. I plan to use the site through the season to ask questions of veteran community gardeners about the plan, the food, organizing community members, and whatever else comes up for us. I think it will be useful for inspiration this year. We have been wanting to grow food specifically for the food bank, and to grow enough to put some away for the winter. I hope this is the year we can make all of that happen- My winter food bills are way too much!
I hope to be included in a grant to create 4 more community gardens for low income folks in the Delridge area of Seattle. The criteria for having the garden at your house depends on the grant, but you have to share the produce, and maybe the work with your neighbors. If you have a large, sunny garden that you would be willing to transform, please contact us at goodfoodgardens@gmail.com so we can look at your space, decide how many people it could feed, and give you a quote on the hours/ money it would take to transform it into a Mini Farm or see if you are eligible for participation in the grant!

Seedlings in Frosty Weather

I started some seeds on a heat mat inside the house a couple of weeks ago. I was keeping them under lights, but off the heat mat once started.   I went out of town last weekend (to snowboard at Crystal Mountain!) and I didn't have anyone to watch them. I could not get the automatic timer to work correctly, so I decided to put them on the porch for the weekend. They are doing much better than I expected. The lettuce in the original pot is hanging on, but not thriving- the ones I transplanted into the garden bed are gone (either to the birds or slugs). The herb seeds, however, seem to be doing fine in this cool weather. They like to come up naturally, I think.  The beets, onions, and pre-sprouted peas, that I planted outside are not even poking up out of the ground yet. I keep reminding myself that they know what they are doing. We will see how they do as they grow through the season. I will start more seeds next week when this crazy night time frost is over. I like to check Cliff Mass' blog, Cliff is a UW professor and meteorologist and he always has something interesting to say relating to weather and lately he is on a crusade for better math books and teaching in Washington Schools.

Other Gardening/Food Information

The Grist Food Page is always good for some hard core information about the food we eat. I read it as often as I can. I especially love to see what Garden Girl is up to next. She has a cool set up for her chickens in a video posted last year sometime, She has beds that are all the same size, and a coop that sits on top. When they are done in one area, she moves the whole coop to the next bed. I would make the roost higher- chickens like to fly and be up high, and this works because she has so many beds (you can see them in the background of this video if you look for it).

Soil Nutrition Equals Food Nutrition

I came across a great article about the loss of food nutrition from food grown using conventional practices.  This is a great reason to build your soil's fertility and regenerate the nutrition lost from overworking the area! So get your worms growing by eating all your food leftovers, and add all that great compost back to the soil to complete the circle.  Cover cropping with clover in the fall,and tilling/turning  them 2-3 weeks before planting allows them to bring up the nutrients from below the topsoil. Leave a few clover plants in the ground to harvest from. After you harvest the flowers, you can chop in the leaves back into the soil for more plant available nutrition. You can get a few batches of clover flowers through the season, and just adding 3 or 4 of the flowere (fresh or dried) makes a delicious, vitamin enriched, sweet tea without sugar. The article is at Kitchen Gardeners International, check out their other great resources while you are there.

Herbal Landscaping Class at South Seattle Community College!

Herbal Landscaping
6pm to 8pm Tuesdays - 3 sessions starting April 13, 2010, ending April 27, 2010

I will be teaching an herbal landscaping class at South Seattle Community College starting Tuesday, April 13 through April 27th. I will give info about some useful & decorative herb plants that grow well here, as well as some of the benefits of leaving your "weeds" in place so you can harvest them. We will draw out a plan of your garden and make a unique design that fits into your space and your lifestyle using herbs you can harvest and make home remedies from in the future. We will make plant divisions and start seeds for you to take home and plant in your garden. Hope to see you there, or if you are interested in a private consultation, please call me, and we can work together to make your yard a beautiful healing space.
Valerian: