In this episode of the HobbyScool podcast, I chat with Karen Creel about how anyone can grow a backyard vegetable garden.

Karen is a certified garden coach with over 30 years growing backyard vegetable gardens. She provides garden tips, projects and recipes on her blog Gardenchick.

Wanting to share her knowledge and love of gardening, she started teaching local gardening classes and has a monthly garden meeting at a local non profit. Through her business,

Growing with Gardenchick, Karen now provides one on one coaching with clients, creates garden planting plans, and designs raised bed gardens.

In the episode, we discussed the basic steps to have a successful home garden and some tips on setting up your home garden for success.

Mentioned In This Episode

• How you can find Karen: Garden Chick website, Growing With Garden Chick Facebook group, Instagram, Facebook

• Don't forget to join our wait list for the next HobbyScool online learning summit. Our summits are free to attend and you can be the first to know when the next summit launches by getting on the wait list here.

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Transcript:

00:00:02 Dr. Destini Copp (host)

And my special guest today is Karen Creel. Karen is a certified garden coach with over 30 years growing backyard vegetable gardens. And today we're going to be talking about how anyone can grow a backyard, vegetable garden and Karen. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm very excited in this topic myself. I've actually dabbled in a backyard vegetable garden that quite frankly, didn't go as well as I expected, so I'm sure I did.

00:00:32 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
A lot of things wrong, but before we get started in the questions that I have for you today, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about you and how you help people?

00:00:44 Karen Creel (guest)
Yes, my name is Karen Creel. I live in Chickamauga, GA. I recently retired last year from 42 years of nursing, but I have always.

00:00:56 Karen Creel (guest)
As for as long as I can remember, I have had a backyard garden and I've had row gardens. In fact, with a friend of mine we did a community supported agriculture garden where we provided.

00:01:12 Karen Creel (guest)
Fresh vegetables to 7 different families and I'll be honest, I'll never do that again. That was a lot of hard work, but in the last few years I have started gardening in raised beds and that's really what I enjoy the most. You have a lot of control over a raised bed.

00:01:33 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
So when you were talking about Rose Gardens, and this shows you a little bit more about my ignorance here, I'm thinking of, you know, going out in the farm and there's like these rows and rows and rows of, you know, corn or whatever, they're growing. And that seems like a lot of work to me.

00:01:50 Karen Creel (guest)
Well, and actually for the backyard garden. It just means because we didn't have like a a huge garden. But it requires you know, bringing in a tailor. Ours was small but you till the garden and then you just have nice neat rows of vegetables and one of the things that I have found and has been supported. You know, in all the literature is tilling is really not good for your garden. It disrupts all of the I like to call it the Garden City.

00:02:21 Karen Creel (guest)
Underneath your soul you have bacteria and fungi and worms and beetles and spiders. All the things that we kind of consider yucky, but they're not. They're very important to how well our garden does, and that's one of the reasons I have chosen to do raised beds is, you know, once you get your soul, a good soil in there, there's no more tilling. Also, there's lots less weeding because when you do.

00:02:51 Karen Creel (guest)
A Rose Garden if you don't.

00:02:55 Karen Creel (guest)
Really like playing a plant. Something in between it or put lots and lots of mulch. You spend most of your time weeding, especially like the way it is now here for the July where I live. We it's raining right now and we have just had rain after rain and so it's almost impossible to keep up with the weeding so the raised bed gardens eliminate that. It also allows you to plant closer you I do what's called.

00:03:25 Karen Creel (guest)
Intensive planning, it's kind of a square foot garden method where just about every space in that bed is covered. That cuts down on weeds and also it keeps the soil covered, keeps the soil moisture is less watering, so that's why when you know when I talk about anybody can grow a backyard garden, you really can. You don't have to have a lot of space.

00:03:56 Karen Creel (guest)
And one of the things that I promote is just a few simple steps to grow your garden.

00:04:04 Karen Creel (guest)
Like you know, I retired last September and that, but that doesn't mean when you retire, you're not busy. I have, you know, started my business and also I teach gardening classes. I teach a couple of nonprofits gardening classes once a month, so I don't, you know, I don't want to spend all my time in my garden and a lot of families have young children. They're working and they can't put a lot of time in their garden, so.

00:04:34 Karen Creel (guest)
My philosophy is you want to enjoy your garden. I think it's to me, you know, I, I kind of counted as a Zen moment. It's my meditation time. Sometimes when I go in my garden because because I'm not thinking give me anything else but you know you, you want it to be fun. You want it to be relaxing. You don't want it to become a chore. So what I teach in my gardening class is is like I said, just a few simple steps, and those steps will.

00:05:04 Karen Creel (guest)
Help keep weeds down. They'll have you start out with healthy plants. Of course I grow organically, so that is another way to.

00:05:16 Karen Creel (guest)
And have a healthy garden. And when you have a healthy garden, you don't have a lot of pest you have. You know good plants that produce good vegetables and then my other philosophy is I don't use a lot of fertilizer and I find that you don't need it if you start out with a good healthy garden.

00:05:36 Karen Creel (guest)
And the other thing I also do and I really started this last year. It's not been a practice that I've done for a long time, but I do a lot of companion planning plant lots of flowers for the pollinators, lots of herbs and flowers to attract beneficial insects. That way you have nature doing your pest control for you so you're not out there fighting bugs on your garden if you will, you know just.

00:06:06 Karen Creel (guest)
Apply a few simple steps.

00:06:09 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Well, you definitely have sold me on that of doing a raised bed. I think when I had tried this before it was it definitely wasn't a race bet. I didn't even know anything about them. So let me ask you this. Let's assume you can use me as you're getting pig here because I don't know anything about this. Assume that I do want to get started. What are the steps or what? What do I need to do next? I want to, you know, grow some vegetables, you know, and you can tell us what would be the perfect kind to grow in.

00:06:39 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Something like this? Grow some vegetables and just you know really, dip my toes into a raised bed garden. Where would I start and what are the steps to go through that?

00:06:50 Karen Creel (guest)
One of the first things I also designed raised bed gardens, so one of the things I I tell people. I just recently designed one for a nonprofit.

00:07:02 Karen Creel (guest)
And you know their purpose was not to feed their whole residence at that. It's a alcohol and drug rehabilitation. So their goal was not to provide all of the food for that. And that's one of the things I encourage them, because when you were first starting out, and I would tell you destiny to start small to start small, but dream big because if you do too much, if you go out there with the vision that you're going to feed a family of four.

00:07:33 Karen Creel (guest)
That you're going to can. You're going to, you know, be able to feed your family all winter. You're you're going to be disappointed. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to start small. There's many ways you can create a raised bed. My beds are made out of treated lumber, but there are still beds that you can make you at one of the nonprofits that I do. A weekly garden class. It's a community garden. And there's.

00:08:03 Karen Creel (guest)
Actually made out of cinder blocks, just cement, cement blocks. So you can build it out of anything that you want. I wouldn't, you know, people build them out of pallets. I wouldn't grow them. Make them out of like the old railroad ties that you still see on the side of the road because those are treated with some pretty ugly chemicals. So, you know, I wouldn't do that, but generally you can make a raised bed.

00:08:34 Karen Creel (guest)
You can have pretty brick raised beds.

00:08:37 Karen Creel (guest)
So my recommendation is you don't want to make your beds for me any longer than six feet. Anything after six feet, especially if you're using boards, they may have a tendency. The weight of the soil to make them bow out. Plus, I just think they look nice and they're more manageable. My beds are all four by six, which they're 4 foot wide, and they're 6 foot long. You want to limit the width to 4 foot.

00:09:08 Karen Creel (guest)
Why? Because as you know, your arms can only stretch about 2 feet, so you don't want to have to climb into your bed to work this way. You can, you know, reach 2 feet all around. And then my other recommendation is you want to make it.

00:09:25 Karen Creel (guest)
Anywhere from 18 inches to 2 foot high mine are 18 inches right now.

00:09:32 Karen Creel (guest)
And the reason for that is if you're going to grow herbs or you're going to just grow, like maybe a spring or fall garden that has lettuce and spinach and things like that in it, you don't need a deep bed, but all of your summer vegetables, your tomatoes, your eggplants, your Peppers, all of those things need a good deep root system, so don't make it wider than 4 foot wide.

00:10:00 Karen Creel (guest)
Have it about 18 inches to 2 foot.

00:10:05 Karen Creel (guest)
You need to have a good soul. One of the things I purchased in mine is one of my local nurseries has something called a planters mix which is a mix of topsoil and some compost.

00:10:20 Karen Creel (guest)
You if you don't want, you know if your area doesn't have like a planters mix. One of the things that you can do is you can create your own. You can go and you can get topsoil.

00:10:32 Karen Creel (guest)
Compost and then you want to add some sand and I usually do that. I tell my clients to do a third of topsoil, 1/3 of sand and it's not the sand like you get to make the play boxes for your kids. It's called a builder sand and it's much more coarse. And then the third thing you want to do is a compost. And of course you're going to have some space left over, but that's where I add things, like when I plant.

00:11:03 Karen Creel (guest)
Like I may put worm compost in the hole or something like that, but you can make your own mix when you do the topsoil and the compost in the sand you have a good draining soil, and that's exactly what you want.

00:11:21 Karen Creel (guest)
The other thing is.

00:11:24 Karen Creel (guest)
With a 4 by 6 bed you have 4 * 6. Is this how you figure it? 4 * 6 is 24, so if you divide that into squares you have 24 squares to plan in.

00:11:38 Karen Creel (guest)
You can have all the spinach and lettuce and.

00:11:44 Karen Creel (guest)
Carrots all the small things for a spring garden. For your whole family that's plenty of room.

00:11:51 Karen Creel (guest)
You want to add a second bed, most likely for your summer vegetables because you still have those same 24 squares to plan in. But a tomato takes like two of those squares or sometimes almost three of those squares. A big squash plant put in the front of your garden is going to take about three of those squares because they get so big, and then you'll allow those to trail over one of the things I did this year.

00:12:23 Karen Creel (guest)
It's between my two beds. I added a an arch and then that arch has knitting over it, and I grew my cucumbers at the arch so you can really increase your garden space by adding trellises.

00:12:43 Karen Creel (guest)
In one of my garden beds when I grow sugar snap peas, I have a trellis and they grow up that and that gives me plenty of room in the front and plenty of room in the back to plant something else and then the other thing that I recommend for a successful garden is to add flowers and herbs to your garden. My garden had zinnias in one corner this year and it drew in the pollinators and the pollinators went to my cucumber.

00:13:13 Karen Creel (guest)
And squash flowers and pollinated it for something like tomatoes. I added basil because Basil will make your tomatoes taste better and they also ward off some tomato hornworms. The other thing I did is I planted a kind of a little known herb. Not everyone grows it when you think of herbs, you think of oregano and marjoram, and chives and that sort of thing, but it's called Borage Bora.

00:13:43 Karen Creel (guest)
GE has beautiful blue flowers, but it is a great companion plant for tomatoes because it does repel tomato horn worms and I'll be honest, I saw one hornworm this year. That's it and I picked it off and it was gone. And that's one of the things that I encourage people when you're garden organically, you're going to have some.

00:14:10 Karen Creel (guest)
You're going to have a little bit of a loss. You're going to have a few leaves with holes in them. You know when you see this perfect fruit in the grocery store, it's, you know, it's all been sprayed. They've kept every bug away from it. But when you spray to keep the bad bugs away, you kill the good bugs too. It's in discriminatory. It doesn't know the difference. So if you plant things to bring in bad bugs like I did this year, those bad bugs will fight your battle for you.

00:14:42 Karen Creel (guest)
And I started that practice really in earnest last year, and I have the only thing that I have had in my garden this year, and it's again almost inevitable is some squash bugs. And that's really about all that I've seen this year.

00:15:01 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Well, all of that just sounds super simple to me. Getting the lumber, getting the planters mix and even kind of doing it on your own if you want. And then you know, kind of figuring out what vegetables or or you know herbs and stuff that you're going to plant. And that's that's another question I have is how do you figure out what to plant in your raised bed?

00:15:28 Karen Creel (guest)
I have

00:15:30 Karen Creel (guest)
I have a blog and I I can't think exactly what what the blog post is but also.

00:15:39 Karen Creel (guest)
I have an online garden course and one of the things that I include in that is a plant size chart. So for example if I have 6 foot long bed.

00:15:55 Karen Creel (guest)
If I have a 6 foot long bed and I'm going to put tomatoes in that, I'm going to put a tomato at the back of that bed and it's going to take up three of those square feet, so I know that my big plants, my tomatoes, my Peppers, all of those things are going to go at the North End of my bed. Anything tall, any trellis they are placed at the North End of your bed because.

00:16:25 Karen Creel (guest)
Anything behind it will be shipped will be.

00:16:31 Karen Creel (guest)
Blocked from the sun so I put my tomatoes at the North End of that bed. I put two tomato plants and then I start looking. What can I put in front of that bed? So then I start looking at OK? What are the medium size plants and some of the medium size plants in the summer? Maybe a little banana pepper?

00:16:55 Karen Creel (guest)
So a banana pepper. I have 12 squares so I can put three banana Peppers. Those are going to go in it. OK? I need something short now to go in front of those.

00:17:09 Karen Creel (guest)
Plants, So what can I plant that's short we don't think of a squash plant as short, but it really is. It's it's it's wide, so you could put two squash plants in front of it so at the back you have tomatoes. The tall plants.

00:17:25 Karen Creel (guest)
In the middle you have. I could also have some basil there to go with my tomatoes. And you want to put something shorter. And in this list of plants, when I give you the plant heights, I give them as large.

00:17:39 Karen Creel (guest)
Medium and small other small things are things like. Now these are summer vegetables so remember I live in the hot S so in the summer I'm I can't put little lettuce leaves which are very small because it's too hot for those. Those are cool season but I can put things like the little green onions.

00:18:00 Karen Creel (guest)
That you know, we love to pick and just eat them while they're small. I can. I can pop some.

00:18:09 Karen Creel (guest)
Flowers in there in one corner. I may have some chives, so that's how you plan your garden and I do again on one of my.

00:18:21 Karen Creel (guest)
One of my blog posts. I do a garden plan and that's the one of the things my business actually does. Is I say what? What kind of what? What do you want to plan in your garden? And then I plan the the bed for you and that's one of the things I do with my one-on-one coaching is and also in my local gardening classes we have a class in February or maybe March where we actually draw out our plan on graph paper.

00:18:51 Karen Creel (guest)
And we say, OK, we we're going to. We won't let us here. So this is this is a spring garden so all of that lettuce will go in the front and my big plant for that bed in the spring would be my sugar snap peas on the trellis and that trellis would be at the North End of that bed. So I guess that's how you do it. You stack them. You start with the tallest. You move down to middle, then you move down to small. The other thing that I do and I do this in my garden.

00:19:23 Karen Creel (guest)
It's what's called succession planning. When I planted my first squash plant in May, I actually purchased two plants, so after that got started good and it started to flower and another one of my beds I planted.

00:19:42 Karen Creel (guest)
22 Heels, you know, you plant squash and heels two heels of squash. So now that my first squash plant has given me all the squash, it's going to give me it's beginning to look a little rough after the hot weather.

00:19:59 Karen Creel (guest)
My second squash plant now is producing, so that's how you keep.

00:20:06 Karen Creel (guest)
A succession of plants, so I always encourage everyone to have at least two beds. That way you can. You know you may not have much growing in one bed, or you may just have you know some some plants, but it gives you an opportunity when you take out that lettuce from the spring because now it's bolted. The weather's gotten hot, you take your lettuce out, you amend it with some compost and you do your second planting of either.

00:20:36 Karen Creel (guest)
Cucumbers or squash or I'm always poking in little green onions because we, you know, we really like those. I also encourage people when they decide they're going to plant a tomato to go to the nursery and look at the tags on the plant.

00:20:53 Karen Creel (guest)
And and notice that one of those tomato plants may not give you any tomatoes for 90 days. That's a long time to wait on the you know tomato plant, but little salad tomatoes will give you tomatoes in 60 days, so I've been eating salad tomatoes for quite a while before my my I think I I planted an heirloom called mortgage lifter that takes forever to give you tomatoes so that way I wasn't waiting on tomatoes.

00:21:23 Karen Creel (guest)
For a long time, so I encourage people to plant things that come in. I guess the word would be come in at different times. Also, I don't plant all of my lettuce at one time. I plant a couple of squares. I can put 20 lettuce seeds in one square foot, so I'll plant 20 lettuce seeds and two of those squares and I'll leave one of them. I'll leave two squares blank.

00:21:52 Karen Creel (guest)
And then in about 10 days I go back and plan that way you you know you don't have to try to eat salads every single day and then give salad away. You have a continuous crop of salad.

00:22:04 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
You know, and that's such a great tip, and one that I've never even thought about.

00:22:08 Karen Creel (guest)
Is that way you know you don't have? You know how the all the jokes about zucchini have people run when they see this way, you don't have a glut of things just like that. I don't do zucchini, but I do yellow squash so this way I'm I'm through with one plant that my other is just starting. I fact I went out there today and they'll probably be ready in a couple of days, so I really didn't have a long waiting period between that time.

00:22:33 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Well, Karen, can you tell people where they can find you in a little bit more about? I know you have a course that they can learn more about it and you also do some one-on-one.

00:22:42 Karen Creel (guest)
Services, yes, that's one. Probably one of the things I enjoy the most. I'm currently working at a with a client and this is a little new to me, but she wants to.

00:22:54 Karen Creel (guest)
She wants to take all of the grass out of her backyard and she wants to do.

00:23:01 Karen Creel (guest)
Kind of like a food garden back there. She wants vegetables and fruit trees and all of those things. So what we're doing, she's local, so we are both. We are working 101, have a coaching package so I provide one-on-one services and you know that that coaching package you know she chose three, but sometimes it's just you know one time and if you're out of locally where we can't meet personally.

00:23:32 Karen Creel (guest)
I do have an option that we can do a Virtual Console to. I think it's 30 minutes for like $25. You can do a lot of you just before you schedule.

00:23:45 Karen Creel (guest)
Your meeting on my calendar. I'll send you an e-mail and say what would you like to get out of this console. What do you want to talk about? And I've done lots of those, and people just come with their questions and we knock it out in 30 minutes. The other thing I do, like I said, the one-on-one.

00:24:07 Karen Creel (guest)
I also do garden plans where?

00:24:12 Karen Creel (guest)
I get your dimensions. We look at where you know the sun is located and I draw up those beds for you. The other thing I do is garden plans. You say, Karen? I want to do a summer garden. These are the vegetables. I like you tell me how many the plant where to plant them.

00:24:32 Karen Creel (guest)
But I was unable. You know, I do a lot of local gardening classes, but I really did want to reach a larger audience. So that's when I developed my online gardening course. It is for beginners, I guess you would say. That's my niche. I do work a lot with beginning gardeners and I launched that last January and I'm it will be relaunched again in 23 and I'm adding lots of new stuff to it. I'm very proud of it.

00:25:02 Karen Creel (guest)
I think it's not. You know, it's kind of a start from scratch nut to bolts. It's not a lot of fluff in there, but it will get you started and help you grow throughout the gardening season. The other thing with that is I do offer with that course which is unique for me. I mean unique for any course that I know of. You get a free 30 minute video conference from me anytime during.

00:25:32 Karen Creel (guest)
The year or the next year, whenever you want to do it and bring with me any problems you're having, I have a you can find all of that on my website. It's called garden check, www.garden, chick GARDEN chick.com and on the sidebar you can click on my.

00:25:58 Karen Creel (guest)
Umm?

00:26:00 Karen Creel (guest)
You can click on the online course and I think there is a coupon there so that you can. I think you get about $50.00 off of that. I haven't looked at it for a while.

00:26:12 Karen Creel (guest)
And then if you want to look at any of my other garden services, there's a tab on my website that will say services again, I'm not looking at it, I almost forget and it will take you to my.

00:26:29 Karen Creel (guest)
It will take you to my calendar page.

00:26:32 Karen Creel (guest)
The other thing that website is a blog. I do try to post on their monthly and I'm really trying to increase my posting on there. I encourage everyone to sign up for my newsletter. You do that right on my website when you sign up for the web. Excuse me when you sign up for my newsletter. You get my free 15 page ebook on inviting beneficial insects into the garden and then I'll give you lots of ideas.

00:27:02 Karen Creel (guest)
We're starting starting to use companion planning and flowers to attract beneficial insects.

00:27:12 Karen Creel (guest)
I have a private Facebook group. I have like 250 people in there and I post in it about twice a week and then there are several people in there that I know there's I'm zone 7 in Georgia, but there's a a girl who is in California and she often pops in to give advice, especially for people who are in a, you know, one of those zones where they can garden year round. I have a friend who owns an art.

00:27:42 Karen Creel (guest)
Form she actually grows her own herbs, so anytime I people ask about herbs, you know we are quick to tag pat to answer those, but it's just it's.

00:27:55 Karen Creel (guest)
The Facebook group is called growing, GROWING with garden chick, so you can just go on facebook.com and it would be back slash groups and then back slash growing. With garden check. We'd love to see you there. We have, you know lots of interaction. You can post anything you want to there. Ask a question. Umm I generally check it once a day but on my phone I kind of have a notification that.

00:28:26 Karen Creel (guest)
This somebody has posted and I do try to get your question answered that day so I have all those things I'd love to. I'd love to hear from people. I love gardening and I I love to share it my my goal is to get everyone to grow. At least you know a small part of their vegetables. I have four beds so you know I don't grow a whole lot. I don't can. I don't put it up. I pretty much just grow seasonally and eat what is in my garden.

00:28:57 Karen Creel (guest)
And then when it's gone, it's gone.

00:28:59 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
Well, Karen, thank you for all of your tips today and I know you gave us a lot of information there at the end with the website links and and so on, but I will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. So anybody who's listening they don't have to remember to write down that you know they could just go to the podcast, show notes, or the your podcast web page and click on that and they can find you. But thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with us today.

00:29:27 Karen Creel (guest)
Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

00:29:30 Karen Creel (guest)
As you can see, I like to talk about gardening.

00:29:32 Dr. Destini Copp (host)
And I like to listen so.

00:29:34 Karen Creel (guest)
Thank you, thank you.