Meet the Vegetable Gardener
I am a vegetable gardener and my mission is to encourage everyone who wants to grow vegetables to do so with confidence and skill. I created this website to inspire and help others to start growing their own vegetables.
I live in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. I grew up on a farm in Northern Alberta, Canada where growing vegetables was a necessity in order for us to have fresh, healthy food. I was in my late 20's before vegetable gardening became my passion.
in 2000, after six years of gardening in my backyard I decided to make a lifestyle change. I had a plan - completed a business plan for a small scale organic vegetable farm. Knowing I had the experience of growing vegetables in our backyard but no vegetable farming experience, I was a bit hesitant to up and leave my full time job. The question now was how do I get experience growing on larger scale?
The idea of WWOOFing came about through our market research. WWOOF – acronym for Willing Workers of Organic Farms was started back in 1972 by a group of British environmentalists. Their aim was to create a program that enabled travelers to gain first hand experience of organic farming in exchange for free room and board.
Consequently, in the spring of 2000 I sold my house and left Canada for a 6 month trip in Europe where I “woofed” on 6 organic vegetable farms - 2 in England, 3 in France and 1 in Germany. It turned out to be a fabulous way to earn my “apprenticeship”, meet the locals and see the sights.
On my return to Canada I started All Organic Market Farm. Over the next eight years I gained an immense amount of knowledge and experience growing a variety of different vegetables in small and large quantities providing my CSA customers with fresh organic on a weekly basis. At this time I also had the opportunity to teach vegetable growing skills through courses in our local community.
In 2007 I started this website to encourage more people to grow some of their own veggies. Since then I have answered hundreds of questions from gardeners all over the world and have had great feedback from my readers.
In 2010 my first book "The Everything Grow Your Own Vegetables Book was published. "The Everything Root Cellaring Book" was published in 2011, "The Everything Small Space Gardening Book" and "The Year-Round Harvest" were published in 2012. Also during that time I wrote several ebooks which are also available from my website.
I believe one of the best things in life is having the opportunity to grow and eat my own fresh vegetables. This has increased my desire to share information with all of you.
Vegetable gardener photo gallery.
Please feel free to contact me with your questions or with your suggestions for new pages. I would love to hear from you.
