Nicky and Dave Schauder are passionate about helping families grow their food, and medicine and find God in the garden
Take time to draw your garden
Take time to draw your gardenInspired by Lara Call Gastinger's "Perpetual Journal Practice" and the works of Roger Tory Peterson, I started capturing my garden in this way. And I hope that despite the heat, and perhaps the mosquitoes this summer, we can all still find time to observe nature and perhaps draw it. Drawing forces you to truly look at something. And in a world of digital distraction, may very well be the last bastion of focus. That and prayer, I suppose. And there are similarities between the two practices. That kind of observation is the same instinct behind succession planting, honestly. You can't tell when a bed is ready to turn over unless you're paying close enough attention to notice it's slowing down. Summer Planting & Planning Ahead for the FallIf you missed our webinar on Succession Planting in Summer, or want to sit with it again, we turned it into a full written guide with our actual raised beds, what's planted in each one, and what to plant next as the season moves towards fall. The replay is there too, if you'd rather watch Dave walk through it live.
or watch the replay Grow abundantly! PS. I'm so curious to know what's growing in your garden this time of year, Reader? Send us photos or better yet, drawings of what you see! |
Dave & Nicky Schauder
Nicky and Dave Schauder are passionate about helping families grow their food, and medicine and find God in the garden
Hello, Reader, We are beyond grateful that right now on our farm, we're getting the following from our garden so far: 1 lb of beans/day 5 lbs of tomatoes/day cucumbers blackberries raspberries peppers corn small Japanese tiger melons and we're spoiled for herbs on top of it. Pro-tip: Harvest tomatoes at first blush. They tend to produce more that way. I was out weighing today's tomato harvest from our research beds, where we've been comparing compost tea, organic fertilizer, and an untreated...
"If it has lived, it can live again." — Geoff Lawton, permaculturist Hello, Reader, How to Compost Correctly Last Sunday, right after liturgy, Dave and I taught a quick composting workshop for our church's volunteers ahead of our annual Middle Eastern Food Festival. I filmed it and put it on YouTube 👇, in case you'd like to sit in. Composting with Worms... and a Fly That Barely Lives a Week The company that composts our festival's waste, Future Acres Urban Farm, uses Black Soldier Fly larvae....
Hello, Reader, We have honey! The tomatoes are still green but growing really well right now. Yes, there are still things that are getting eaten by deer (like potatoes and every unprotected sunfower and zinnia on our property). But we've got beets coming in so fast we're having a beet salad every other day! This abundance is exactly the "problem" we set out to have when we started growing our own food eleven years ago. Back then, we had a tiny suburban backyard, six kids, a health crisis, and...