Gardening with Sara

As we entered college, our gardening took the backburner, although Sara does recall picking up container gardening during the six months she and I lived together in Los Osos during her senior year.

After she graduated though, Sara and her husband Justin moved north to Grass Valley, California, and lived and worked on a homestead called Fox Hollow Farm with two folks who dubbed themselves “The Hippies.”

There they learned how to compost and grow their own food (among other things). 

“It was the most beautiful garden, and I’ll never forget the joy I got from walking out of my cabin into [my backyard] and ‘shopping’ for my dinner that night. We spent hardly any money on food because literally all of our vegetables came from the farm.”

Sara took what she learned from The Hippies and all these years later is sharing that knowledge as a garden coach. Her goal is to bring that same joy she felt living on the farm with The Hippies to all of her clients.

“There is no such thing as a black thumb. If you think you have a black thumb, it just means that you need to learn more!”

What are your suggestions for “rookie” gardening in containers and favorite soil mediums?

• Lettuce is the best place to start and they can be grown easily in containers. Click HERE for Sara’s blog post on choosing lettuce varieties.
• Squash and Tomatoes are super easy and can be grown in containers! 
• Radishes are also easy in containers.
• Favorite soil mediums: Fox Farm products are amazing

Best garden orientation/location: North, South, East, West side of the house?

• Typically the south-facing side of your house is the best site for your garden.
• Keep in mind what might be shading that spot though. Spend a day or two watching how much sun your prospective location gets--remember, light is one of the most important parts of gardening.
• Also, keep your taller crops like tomatoes on the northeast side of the bed, so that they don’t shade everything that’s in front of them.

Can I grow my vining watermelons and pumpkins up a trellis?

• Yes! You just have to make sure to support the fruit when they start growing. You can use pantyhose or old t-shirts or rags, you basically just need to make a little hammock for them.

Pesticide for yellow squash and tomatoes?

• Neem oil and a little Dawn dish soap mixed with water and sprayed directly on the foliage works wonders. However, make sure you don’t spray this on your foliage when the sun is up, or you will burn and kill your plants. Sara recommends spraying at dusk.
• But first, keep in mind that plants that have a pest problem are very likely stressed. So placing a layer of compost on top of the soil surface on top of the roots of the plant can help them build their immunity to pests and diseases. Healthy soil will fix a multitude of sins!
• Also, keep in mind that when you use pesticides you will also be killing beneficial insects--do your best to only use them, therefore, as a last resort. Remember, in order to have beneficial insects, you must have pest insects too.

What are easy indoor plants?

• Philodendron and Snake Plants are very easy and don’t need much natural light!
• Indoor plants are very easy to grow, you just have to make sure you don’t overwater them.  Benign Neglect is the name of the game, we have a tendency to love our plants so much that we kill them by overwatering.  For these plants, let the soil dry out almost completely before watering again.  The Philodendron will tell you it's ready for a drink when the leaves begin to droop a bit.