As inflation and the scale-back of pandemic-era boosts to SNAP and other government food programs threaten access to healthy food, school lunches matter more than ever. 

Modern Farmer talked to school staff in Texas and Alabama about why food–and the funding for food–is so important for communities and students. Here are four reasons why you should care about school food: 

Food is a learning tool

Children spend most of their day and year at school. It’s also where many children consume most of their daily nutrition. Whether it’s a lunch from home or a lunch from the cafeteria, school is where students learn about why the food they eat is so important. 

Teaching students about nutrition is linked to better long-term health outcomes and better performance in the classroom, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Health class is required in American schools in 46 states and is often the first place children are exposed to information about how what they eat affects their long-term health. The school lunchroom is just one place where health education can leap from the textbook to the real world. 

The number of schools providing nutrition education fell from 84.6 percent to 74.1 percent from 2000 to 2014. Not providing nutrition education is linked to lower academic performance at school.  

“We want to give these kids good food because it’s important to fuel their day. They can’t focus in the classroom if they’re hungry or if they’ve been working hard in football practice and not eating,” says Lisa Quinn, director of nutrition at Deshler High School. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends schools include nutrition education throughout the school day from school gardens and farm-to-school lunches in addition to in-classroom learning. 

Food is a community resilience tool for students and for farmers

Putting local food on school lunch plates is good for farmers and for students. 

A school’s big purchases can support the local economy, turning money that previously had been funneled to producers far away, into fuel for the nearby community. That gives schools an opportunity to vote with their dollar, spending money where they want to see the economy grow. In that way, schools can use their budgets to support the public good. 

Programs  the National Farm to School Network can connect local agriculture to school classrooms, giving students an opportunity to learn about agriculture in their communities and giving farmers local business opportunities. 

Including locallysourced food (and education about where it came from) can also make students more likely to eat their greens, according to research from Saint Louis University. 

Food insecurity is a national threat

The ability to obtain healthy food is getting harder and harder for American families. In 2024, 47.4 million Americans, including 13.8 million children, live in food-insecure households, according to data from the USDA’s Household Food Security report published in September. The data shows an increase of 3.2 million people compared to 2022 and a 13.5 million increase since 2021. 

Researchers with the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) cited inflation and the rollback of COVID-19 pandemic relief programs that had provided temporary boosts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as factors that contributed to the increase in food insecurity. 

Shoring up these programs, FRAC believes, will help to quell the threat food insecurity poses. 

“We have the tools needed to end hunger. It’s time to wield them and finally make hunger in America a thing of the past,” says Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of FRAC.

The now-expired bonus funding for SNAP gave schools the resources to provide free meals to students at no charge. This gap in funding highlights the important role schools play in providing essential nutrition to American children. 

“SNAP is our nation’s first line of defense against hunger, but the benefit levels are too low. The 2021 adjustment to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to determine SNAP benefits, was an important step in increasing benefit levels, providing more resources to participants to purchase the food they need. Yet, despite an increase in food insecurity nationwide, rather than invest more in SNAP, several lawmakers seek to cut nearly $30 billion in SNAP benefits over 10 years,” said officials with the Food Research & Action Center in a press release on the 2024 report. 

How you can take action for better school food

Support efforts such as the Healthy School Meals for All initiative and the Good Food Purchasing Program 

If you want to learn more about organized efforts to make school food healthier and more accessible to all families, visit the Healthy School Meals for All, Good Food Purchasing Program and CDC Healthy Schools websites. 

The Good Food Purchasing Program has an action planning toolkit you can use to gauge how you can make an impact on your local food system and how to take action. 

To really dig into the organizations taking this issue seriously, check out the list of 1,400 organizations that signed this July 2024 letter asking Congress to protect SNAP. Find which organizations are in your area and get involved with their efforts. 

Contact your local representative

Call your local lawmaker and ask them to support efforts to improve nutrition education and connect local agriculture with the school lunchroom. 

Support local agriculture through SNAP

Instead of buying food at the grocery store, consider visiting a local farmer’s market. If you receive SNAP benefits, you may be able to double your food-buying power through the Double Up Food Bucks program. The program matches every SNAP dollar spent at farmer’s markets, doubling your purchasing power at the local farmer’s market. 

Spending SNAP benefits with farmer’s markets tells government funders that Americans want more access to locallygrown food. 

The post Here’s Why School Lunches Matter appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As the dietitian and marketing coordinator for Lake Travis ISD, Bell is responsible for ensuring students have medically and culturally appropriate foods to eat from the school cafeteria. This means ensuring meals are safe for students with allergies and dietary restrictions, as well as appropriate for students with religious and cultural restrictions on certain foods. 

While many of the pandemic supply issues have been resolved, there are still hiccups in the food chain. Lisa Quinn, director of child nutrition at Deshler High School in Tuscumbia, Alabama, says many schools are still dealing with this problem. 

“I may order wheat bread, but they ship us white bread or no bread at all,” she says. “That forces us to either change our menu or go to a local grocery store with a purchase order to get what we need to meet those government nutrition guidelines.” 

To deal with these ongoing challenges, Bell’s school district decided to join a local nonprofit called the Sustainable Food Center and the Good Food Purchasing Program, which allows smaller schools to join together, pooling their resources and purchasing power. 

Bell says the school’s big purchases can support the local economy, turning money that previously had been funneled to producers far away from Texas into fuel for the nearby community. 

“We’re spending lots and lots of money as a school district on food compared to a family that goes to the store. Schools have the opportunity to really use their big budgets for public good.”

While the benefits of buying local help school staff do their jobs better, there are also benefits for students. These benefits go far beyond putting calories in kids’ stomachs. 

“School food is a huge lever for change, because almost everyone goes to school. Our most vulnerable populations are funneled through the school district at some point, and it’s an opportunity to capture those students and make sure that they have the same access to healthy and good food that everyone else has access to. It’s really a foundation of health equity,” says Bell. 

She remembers an encounter with a student at the grocery store after one of the school’s regular fresh fruit and vegetable tasting days in the lunchroom. One of the vegetables offered for students to try was sugar snap peas. 

“I heard these little footsteps running up to me, and one little girl just jumped right in front of me, and she said, ‘I saw you today, and we were tasting fruits and vegetables and guess what? I’m here to buy sugar snap peas,” says Bell, describing a student interaction at the grocery store. “That was probably the most enlightening moment I’ve had in this role thus far. These kids, they go home and they bring it to their families, and it changes family dynamics. That’s the potential of this.”

While changing school food at Lake Travis has been beneficial for both students and the school, Bell says there’s a long way to go to making school lunch more sustainable and more nutritious. 

The regulatory barriers in place keep schools from being able to simply buy food from local farmers. For Lake Travis, this means buying food in collaboration with other local school districts. This way, schools can get bulk discounts on foods and ensure that the food they are buying meets regulatory standards. However, this method of purchasing limits the school’s options. 

“Larger school districts can specify things like a geographic preference, or somewhere within a certain mile radius, or they can ask for organic options. In our situation, if we’re the only school district asking for that option, and among 100 other school districts, that product is not going to make it on the bid,” says Bell. 

Looking forward, Bell says the school will continue to interact with community farmers about becoming school food suppliers and working with organizations such as the Good Food Purchasing program to meet those regulations. 

“We find that a lot of the local vendors also support these other values in the Good Food Purchasing program. And it’s easier to justify the local purchase because it’s an initiative of the government,” she says. “Until the system of purchasing changes, or until our regulations allow us to prioritize local purchases, it’ll be programs like Good Food Purchasing that’ll be really what helps us get it on the menu, but we still have a long, a long way to go.”

Quinn hopes to receive more funding to buy and prepare delicious homemade, healthy meals for students. She says she hopes Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promise to “get processed food out of school lunch immediately” will lead to more funding for food and more employees in school lunchrooms. 

This school year, Quinn has challenged her staff to pitch one new homemade meal every week and to create a plan for how to prepare it for school lunch. 

“I have them tell me one meal every week, and then we decide who will be in charge of the meal,” says Quinn. “They tell me the ingredients they need to prepare it and I make sure those ingredients get purchased.”

The post Spotlight On One Texas School District Revolutionizing School Lunch appeared first on Modern Farmer.

However, if you want to start growing more of your own food, many kitchen staples such as corn, beans and potatoes can be grown at home. 

Here are ten calorie-dense crops you can grow at home to turn your hobby garden into a more sustaining one. Data was collected from the United States Food and Drug Administration (USDA) and nutritionix.com and is based on the recommendation for a 2,000-calorie diet. Here, I list calories, carbohydrates and protein. Fats were excluded from the guide as most vegetables don’t produce much if any fat. 

Corn 

Corn is an American classic. Cultivated by native Americans, corn is present in so many hearty meals and has a variety of uses. You can eat corn right off the cob, pop it up in some oil over a fire or cook it and grind it into cornmeal to be used to make breads, tortillas and other tasty corn treats such as tamales. 

The possibilities are endless for corn: From the fuel in our vehicles to the fuel in our bellies, it’s one of most widely cultivated and consumed crops in the world. 

Corn’s time to maturity can get tricky based on the variety you’re growing and how much you want it to dry. A good rule of thumb is about 120 days, so plant your corn about two to three weeks after your last frost to ensure there’s enough time to harvest. 

Corn contains about 100 calories, 22 grams of carbs and 3.5 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Beans 

Beans are one of the first crops kids learn about in school. If you didn’t get to have the bean germination experiment at school, I’m sorry if this reference is lost on you. 

Beans germinate very quickly and are extremely easy to grow in your home garden. They thrive in the ground as well as in raised bed and container gardens. 

Most beans will reach maturity between 45 and 60 days. Beans are a quick crop, easy to grow, and they can help make your soil more nitrogen-rich for whatever you’re planting next in your garden.

Red beans contain about 135 calories, 24 grams of carbs and 9 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Winter Squash 

Winter squash deserves a place on this list due to its growing habit and role as a great companion plant for beans and corn. It’s also delicious roasted and eaten as a side dish with your fall dinner or cooked into a soup for a warm winter meal. 

Winter squash can take between 60 and 110 days to reach maturity. It is ready to harvest once the rinds are full of color and firm enough that your thumbnail won’t make an indention in the rind. 

As for nutrients, winter squash contains about 45 calories, 11 grams of carbs and one gram of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Potatoes 

I said beans were easy, but potatoes might be even easier. Just bury the potato and then water it. Soon, leaves will grow up from the soil, capturing the light needed to make more potatoes. 

Potatoes take between 60 and 130 days to reach maturity, depending on the variety you’re planting. If you’re planting potatoes right now, keep an eye out for that last frost date for your region. You want to harvest your potatoes before the last frost, so keep a watch on the weather before you plant your tubers. 

Potatoes contain about 80 calories, 17 carbs and two grams of protein per 100 grams. 

Beets 

Beets aren’t just the favorite vegetable of Dwight Schrute, their high nutritional content makes them a superfood. Beets are a spring crop with a quick harvest time of 55 to 70 days to maturity. Unlike potatoes, beets are a root vegetable that you don’t want to leave in the ground, as over-mature beets can become tough or woody (aka not the most delicious). 

Aside from being nutritious, beets also provide essential macronutrients. Beets contain about 50 calories, five grams of carbs and two grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Lentils 

Lentils are great for making hearty soups or replacing meat in popular American dishes such as sloppy joe sandwiches. They’re one of my favorite vegetables thanks to their versatility and delicious flavor and texture. 

Lentils are a summer crop and should be planted around late April to early May or whenever temperatures are consistently above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Most varieties take about 100 days to reach maturity. 

Lentils contain about 115 calories, 20 grams of carbs and nine grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Chickpeas 

Whether you prefer to call them chickpeas or garbanzo beans, they do belong to the legume family. They’re delicious as a meat replacement and a staple in Asian cuisine as the star of Chana Masala (one of my favorite Indian dishes) and the star of everyone’s favorite dip: hummus. 

Chickpeas take around 100 days to reach maturity, so follow the same guidelines for growing lentils. 

Chickpeas contain about 160 calories, 27 grams of carbs and nine grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Jerusalem Artichokes 

Jerusalem artichokes are one of my favorite misunderstood vegetables. I feel like people often put artichokes in a category with things such as olives or water chestnuts, which tend to attract the “love it or hate it” type of attention typical of uncommon vegetables in the United States. 

Jerusalem artichokes contain about 77 calories, 18 grams of carbs and two grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Sweet potatoes 

Unlike potatoes, sweet potatoes aren’t members of the nightshade family. They’re actually a member of the morning glory family, making the sweet potato more closely related to your grandmother’s favorite flowers than the humble russet potatoes she’s baking up for dinner. 

Instead of using a seed potato to grow sweet potatoes, you have to buy sweet potato slips, which are tiny sweet potato plants that have some small roots, which will turn into sweet potatoes. 

Sweet potatoes have a longer time to maturity of about 100 days, so keep the first frost in mind when planting your tubers. 

Sweet potatoes contain 86 calories, 20 carbs and two grams of protein per 100 grams. 

Mushrooms 

Mushrooms are one of my favorite things about nature. Neither plants or animals, mushrooms are fungi, and their growth conditions make them a perfect crop to grow for calorie and nutrient density. 

Many mushrooms can be grown indoors, allowing you to grow mushrooms year-round. Some of the mushroom grow kits give you everything you need to start growing your own lion’s mane or oyster mushrooms at home, with an expected harvest time of about 30 to 40 days. 

Mushrooms aren’t the greatest when it comes to calorie-density, but they do pack in the protein. Mushrooms contain about 25 calories, four grams of carbs, 3.6 grams of protein and 0.5 grams of fat per 100-gram serving.

The Three Sisters garden 

One smart way to grow beans, squash and corn is to plant a three sisters garden. By planting these three crops together, they benefit each other and create a self-sustaining, relatively low-maintenance way to grow all three crops. 

The corn won’t be competing with the squash or beans due to its fast, straight-up growing habit. Beans will use the corn stalks for support so they can grow tall without the need for a trellis. Squash’s vining habit and large leaves will protect the soil below the corn and beans to ensure weeds can’t thrive and the soil stays moist and protected from the summer sun. 

Check out this guide from the Farmer’s Almanac to learn how to maximize your three sisters garden. 

Looking forward

Whether growing food is your hobby or your livelihood, knowing how to grow more nutritious and macronutrient-dense crops can help us better appreciate the food we eat every day. 

While it’s too late to plant a three sisters garden in Tennessee, I’m going to start planning now for how to maximize my garden to make it more sustainable and nourishing for me and my family. 

The post Growing a Survival Garden: Ten Calorie-Dense Crops You Can Grow at Home appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This guide uses data from national surveys on American spending and data from reviews of major, nationally available dog food brands to help you make a sustainable choice for your pet.

What is sustainability?

First, let’s talk about what sustainable means and how that can apply to dog food. Sustainability has become a bit of a buzzword in our daily lives and is a topic plagued by greenwashing—when tricky marketing makes a product look more sustainable than it actually is.

Shopping sustainably means buying items with a minimal impact on the environment and supporting brands that are committed to reducing waste and sourcing ingredients that support the environment instead of robbing it of resources needed to keep making that ingredient.

This article also includes some money-saving tips and practical advice for making your dog more sustainable. It’s important to keep finances and practicality in mind when considering what is truly “sustainable” for most people.

Know what matters to you when choosing a food

When it comes to nutrition, please follow the advice of your veterinarian or other trusted pet nutrition source when choosing a food or managing dietary restrictions and food allergies.

If you’re new to digging into pet nutrition or looking to broaden your understanding of pet food regulations, the Pet Nutrition Alliance is a great place to start. The PNA provides a lot of resources on pet nutrition and pet food quality on its website.

Be sure to look for the nutritional adequacy statement listed on the food. This statement ensures the food contains adequate nutrition for your pet as set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials’ Model Bills and Regulations. This ensures your pet’s food meets the minimum requirements for health.

What is it made of?

Choosing a sustainable food means choosing a food made with sustainable ingredients. Look for brands sourcing ingredients from responsible farmers and meat producers. Pet food makes up 30 percent of all meat consumption in the United States, so it’s important to choose foods made of sustainably farmed animals.

Animal agriculture contributes to climate change and can impact the environment through pollution and poor land management, so it’s important to select foods that use meat raised in a sustainable way.

Here are a few lists of sustainable dog foods from popular pet blogs:

* 25 Sustainable Dog Food Brands (Eco Cart)

* 9 Sustainable Dog Food Brands Making Every Bowl Eco Friendly (Sustainable Jungle)

* Best Sustainable Dog Food 2024 (Dog Food Advisor)

Where did it come from?

Considering where you get your dog food and how it gets to your pet’s bowl is an important aspect of sustainability. With transportation relying on fossil fuels to get products across the nation (and sometimes the world) to your doorstep, that balance can add up quickly.

Freight transportation contributes approximately eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Add warehousing operations and this figure inflates to 11 percent, according to data from the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. 

Some manufacturers focus on offsetting their impact on the environment by using environmentally friendly energy. For example, pet foods such as Only Natural Pet use wind energy and carbon credits to completely neutralize its carbon footprint.

Look for foods produced close to home to minimize the impact of transporting the food to your front door. Investing in smart stewards of your local or nearby community can help you make an impact on keeping your local environment sustainable. A quick Google search can help you find local producers. Residents of Nashville can purchase food from Wet Nose Dog Food, which makes homemade human-grade dog food from real ingredients you can recognize.

For anyone interested in where our food comes from Marion Nestle’s Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine is a must read. It’s an investigation into the pet food recalls of 2007 and their implications for the health of dogs and cats, but also for the FDA, food safety policy in the United States and China, international food trade, and the pet food industry itself.

What does it come in?

What’s inside the bag is important but so is what the bag is made of. Landfills are finite spaces. All the trash we create on the earth is going to have to stay here. In the interest of saving space and keeping our environment and waterways clean, reducing packaging waste is essential.

Ordering dog food online is a popular choice for many pet owners with the popular pet supply site Chewy boasting 20 million active customers. That’s at least 20 million boxes used to ship dog supplies to your front door. Shopping for your pet food in-store at the same time as you buy your other home goods is one way to use less cardboard packaging.

Plastic is another major issue. Americans use around 100 billion single-use plastic bags every year, and single-use plastic bags continue to be one of the top 10 items found along beaches and waterways, according to data from Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. 

When considering the actual package containing your pup’s food, go for products that use biodegradable or recyclable materials. CarePac creates sustainable pet food packaging that’s safe and durable.

If you don’t see labeling on your food that lists it as biodegradable or sustainable, a simple glance at the type of plastic used will help you know if it’s recyclable. If the pet food bag is labeled as plastic #2 or plastic #4, it can be recycled with other plastic bags if it is clean and dry, according to RecycleMore.

Pet food that comes in a can is also recyclable. Just remove any labels and rinse and dry the can before tossing it in the recycle bin.

Is the brand trustworthy?

Major corporations are no saints when it comes to trustworthy business practices. The chances your dog food is produced by a major corporation are very high, unless you are making your dog’s food at home (we’ll address that later).

The Pet Sustainability Coalition works to make sure the pet industry is following sustainable practices. The organization lists its highest rated member pet food manufacturers on its website. It’s an easy way to check if your pet’s food is listed or what brands you should consider when shopping for more sustainable food.

Dog food should be safe and free of contamination and it should contain what the package says it contains. If you bought a can of black beans and opened it to find red beans, you would be confused and upset. Just like with our food, we want our pet’s food to contain what it says it contains.

Pet food recalls are common, just like human food recalls. You can check for pet food recalls through the US Food and Drug Administration and American Veterinary Medical Association.

Make your own pet food

One way to avoid the research and time required to find the perfect, sustainable dog food is to make your own dog food. Feeding your dog home-prepared food may seem overwhelming, but there are a lot of resources online for how to make your pet food from raw ingredients you can buy at your grocery store.

Some pet owners have even saved money by smartly sourcing their pet food components. If you have the time to dedicate to making your own dog food, this is a great way to control exactly what goes into your pet’s food and eliminate food safety concerns.

Here are a few guides to making your own dog food:

* Vet-Approved Homemade Dog Food Recipes (The Spruce Pets)

* Homemade Raw Dog Food (Canine Bible)

* The Ultimate Homemade Dog & Puppy Food Recipe Book (The Dog Nutritionist)

Practical advice if changing your pet food isn’t an option

Inflation is impacting a whole lot of us, with 89 percent of Americans saying they changed their spending habits in response to inflation, according to data from Statista. The cost per unit of dog food has also gone up considerably just like the cost of the food we eat. So, the common folks bottom line is important. And I think it’s important to include in conversations about sustainability because, let’s face it, smart spending is a sustainable practice.

If switching pet food isn’t an option for you, here are some tips for making your dog more sustainable:

Check your calorie needs

A majority (61 percent) of domestic dogs are obese, according to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, so you may be overfeeding your dog. Making sure you’re feeding your dog the right number of calories is not only better for your dog, but it could also be easier on your wallet. One of the main principles of sustainability is consuming less. Feeding your dog less could be better for your dog, your wallet, and the planet.

Limit your pet-related errands

If you’re already planning to get out of the house to buy groceries, buy dog food on the same trip. Buying food for the humans and dogs in your household in the same trip will not only save you time, but it will lessen your impact on the environment by taking fewer trips in your car. If you have roommates or close friends you like to run errands with, consider taking a carpool grocery trip.

Ship smart

If you buy your pet food online, consider bundling it with your other deliveries. If buying from Amazon, it’s pretty simple to bundle your shipments so delivery drivers are making fewer trips for your house. Next time you’re buying something on Amazon, think about your pet food, too. Online pet shops also will bundle items, so consider buying your pet food and other necessities in one order to minimize the number of shipments to your home.

Buy in bulk

Anyone who has shopped at a store such as Sam’s Club or Costco knows the savings you can enjoy by buying in bulk. While buying in bulk will be more expensive on the front end, you’ll save in the long run by getting the product for a cheaper price per pound. Try to buy the largest available size of your pet’s food, which is often cheaper per unit. You can do a simple calculation with your smartphone calculator to determine the unit price of the food. You can also use this website to determine the unit price.

Sustainability is about ensuring you and your dog’s vibrant life can continue on. Making smart choices can help ensure that the relationship between dogs and humans can continue on for decades to come

The post Is My Dog Food Sustainable? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

I’ve been gardening at my home in the Nashville area (Zone 7b) for three years. I’ve learned a lot, but clearly not enough to be able to grow a decent Cherokee Purple tomato. 

Here are 10 tips for a better garden sourced directly from my own garden fails.

1. Set a watering schedule

This one sounds simple because it is. Water is crucial for a successful garden, but not every plant likes the same watering schedule. The bottom line is that you need a schedule and a plan for watering.

Factors like rainfall, humidity and temperature can change how you approach watering, so this skill does take some time to develop. If you’re unsure if your plants need water, using a simple moisture meter can help you see visually how moist your soil is. You don’t want your soil to be too moist, either, as this can also create an environment ripe for pests and disease. 

Inconsistent watering can also leave your plants more vulnerable to disease and pests. Both disease and pests are opportunistic and love to take advantage of a plant that’s struggling. For example, my first attempt at growing big heirloom tomatoes was thwarted by blossom-end rot. I had initially attributed this to a lack of calcium in the soil, but the real culprit was inconsistent watering. Without consistent water, it’s difficult for plants to use the fertilizers you put into the soil. Check out this guide from Water Use It Wisely to get started.

2. Smart staking

When you think about staking your garden, most of us think about tomatoes. While tomatoes are going to be addressed here, there are many other crops you should be giving some extra support. 

The first thing to think about with staking is how the plant grows. If the plant  has a vining habit like cucumbers, squash and some varieties of beans, you’ll want to have supports ready before the plant needs support. Direct contact with the soil can make the plant more accessible to bugs and other pests, so keeping the vine tied up and tidy will keep your plant healthier and promotes its natural growing habit. 

The best advice I have for staking is: don’t use a tomato cage for tomatoes. Tomato cages are often made of thin, flimsy wire that holds up circles of wire around the tomato plant. While the cage may work well for supporting branches, it’s not giving the tomato the support it needs around the main stalk. I’ve found that providing rigid support to the stalk is the most important part of keeping your tomatoes happy and upright. 

A more robust version of a tomato cage like this one sold by Ultomato is a much better choice for an easy assembly cage that will actually provide solid support for your tomatoes. It also works great for other crops like pole beans. I used one of these for my pole beans and it’s doing fantastic. 

3. Choose your varieties wisely

The biggest mistake I made this year was planting Sungold tomato starts, an indeterminate variety of tomato, in a small pot with merely a wire tomato cage for support. I didn’t even stake the thing. 

Indeterminate tomatoes grow more like a vine compared to bushier determinate tomatoes. (You can learn more about the difference through this guide from Bonnie Plants). The difference is that indeterminates will keep growing and produce fruit consistently throughout the season compared to their determinate cousins, which set fruit all at once. Without proper support, they will become an unmanageable jungle of 10 to 15 foot vines. If I had known this, I could have created a better plan for my tomatoes informed by their growing habit. 

Some varieties of crops are hybridized to protect against certain pests or diseases. If you’ve battled powdery mildew in your garden, choose a plant variety that’s resistant to powdery mildew. 

You can find information about disease, deer and pest-resistant varieties of plants on the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences website. If you’re new to disease resistant varieties, this is a great place to start learning.  

4. Spread out

Make sure your plants have enough space to grow and thrive. The seedlings we transplant into the garden are so tiny, and it will initially feel weird to see so much space in the garden. Part of my Sungold tomato failure could also be blamed on my decision to put two plants in one 12” pot. It was too much for the pot, which is why it fell over, killing my tomatoes. 

Be sure you check your seed packet or this chart from Mary’s Heirloom Seeds for accurate information about how much space to give your plants. And trust the information. Your garden is not an anomaly where plants can magically grow closer together. 

5. Use a garden planner

There are lots of resources online for planning your garden. Timing is everything with growing annual plants. For my fall garden, I’ve been using Smart Gardener. What I like about this tool is the built-in reminders based on the time of year. Be sure you’re putting those plants in the soil at the right time. 

It’s easy to think that early planting equals early yield and a longer growing season. However, research and years of experimentation has shown that’s simply not the case. Minding the time of year and your plant’s preferred growing season is key to a healthy crop.

6. Plan for pests

Prevention is better than the cure, especially when it comes to garden pests. Pests can shorten your harvest, cripple your plants’ production potential and double your garden chores. 

Some common pests that set back my garden this summer were squash vine borers, tomato hornworms and birds. Other gardeners in my area have battled powdery mildew, potato beetles, aphids, and deer. 

Constructing simple fencing can help keep rabbits away and planting good companion plants like marigolds can go a long way to keep unwanted critters away from your precious plants. 

7. Organize, organize, organize

Having an organized and tidy space to keep your seeds, tools, fertilizers and other garden implements you’ll be using every day will make keeping up with your garden easier. If the space is chaotic, you’re going to be far less likely to spend time there and less likely to complete your garden chores. 

If you need a hoe or a spade to prep your garden beds, but you can’t find either one, or they’re spread out throughout the garden, your chances of completing the task are going to be far lower. If the water hose is hard to access, you’re going to be less likely to follow your watering schedule.

Do yourself a favor and spend some time organizing your space to maximize both you and your garden’s potential. 

8. In the way, on the way

This advice came from one of my favorite local content creators, Anne of All Trades. The advice is simple: if you know you’re going to need a specific tool or implement to complete your daily garden tasks, put it in a spot where you can’t miss it. 

Plan the shortest or most convenient route to your garden and put all your tools or things you will need along that path.

9. Know your growing zone

If you don’t know your growing zone, there’s an easy way to find out. Simply type in your ZIP code into the USDA Plant Hardiness interactive map and voila! Knowing your zone will help you know how long your growing season is and is a critical tool used by many gardeners to plan when they start and close their gardens. 

The zones and growing seasons are mainly determined by your first and last frost date—the last frosty day of Spring when there’s morning frost and the first frosty day of Fall. 

10. Follow other gardeners in your growing zone

Now that you know your USDA zone, search on your favorite social media site for other gardener content creators who live in the same zone. I’ve found a wealth of information through YouTube by searching “Zone 7 gardening.” There are many growers and content creators in Zone 7, where I live, so there is no shortage of gardeners to learn from. If you live in one of the more extreme zones, here is where following other creators can be especially useful. 

Don’t be afraid to follow gardeners across the pond too. I’ve learned a lot from growers like GrowVeg and Gaz Oakley, who both live in the UK, but are in the same zone. Once you start searching, you may be surprised just how many gardeners are posting about their successes and failures. 

One of my favorite resources for finding growers is Epic Gardening. While Kevin, the founder of Epic Gardening, lives in San Diego, California, (Zone 10), he’s taken care to showcase gardeners in other growing zones across America to ensure folks are getting well-rounded advice. 

Looking forward to fall

It’s August, which is prime time for starting a fall garden in Tennessee. I’m taking all my lessons learned from this spring and summer and I’m applying that knowledge to my fall garden plans. 

I’ve never grown a fall garden. While many gardeners pack up shop after the summer harvest is done, there is still plenty of time to grow crops that enjoy cooler weather. I just planted Danvers 126 carrots, Lacinato kale, Seven Top turnip greens, Purple-Top White Globe turnips, Catskill Brussels sprouts and Early Golden Acre cabbage. The tiny cotyledons just popped up out of the soil today, so I’ll be looking forward to chronicling my fall garden journey. 

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