Turning a Flowerbed into a Vegetable Garden, Part 2: Healthy Soil Makes Healthy Plants

You probably have heard the phrase, “You are what you eat,” but I would like to take that a step further and ask you to consider the phrase, “You are what you eat eats.”  Generally, we humans eat plants and animals, and the animals we eat eat plants.  So what do the plants eat?  They eat what’s in the soil.  So it’s extremely important to spend a considerable amount of time deciding if the soil in our gardens have enough good nutrients for the plants to eat.  That’s what I want you think about for a bit because, in my … Continue reading

Turning a Flowerbed into a Vegetable Garden, Part One

I’ve been a little busy the last couple of weeks.  When the weather is good in the Pacific Northwest we go outside, and that is where I went.  One of my goals this year is to transform my backyard flowerbed into a vegetable garden.  My backyard flowerbed is nicely sized and should make a very nice garden, but it is terribly overgrown with buttercups, weeds, out-of-control ajuga and lemon balm, wild salmon and black berry bushes.  Due to a foot problem that I had for about five years and having to work part-time for almost 3 years to pay for … Continue reading