Please tell us a little about yourself, your publication The Naturally Sweet Life and the story behind your vegetable garden.
My name is Lisa and I am an avid baker with a passion for sharing recipes for baked goods that use natural sweeteners. My husband and I started our homestead in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2021. When we moved to our new home, the land was just grass but we have been hard at work planting fruit trees, berries, vegetables, and herbs; and raising chickens, sheep, and bees.
How long have you been growing your own food and what does your garden look like today?
I started growing my own food in 2021 when we moved to our current property. We started with just a few raised beds and have expanded from there. We also planted a little orchard with various fruit trees and we have turned the front of our house into an edible garden with blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry plants.
What varieties of vegetables and/or fruit do you grow?
We grow quite a variety and we usually change up the rotation a little bit each year, but some of the mainstays are potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, cabbage, and peas.
What food do you grow that you are unable to find in the shops?
We just started growing sunchokes this year, which isn’t something I can find in any grocery store around us.
What has been your biggest growing success and/or disaster?
We have had quite a lot of success and each year our harvest grows bigger and bigger. Potatoes and onions are a couple of our favorite crops to grow because you are almost guaranteed success with those and then you can store them and keep eating them for months after harvest. We haven’t had a disaster really but weather, weeds, and pests are always challenging to deal with - this year has been especially humid so we have had to deal with some fungal diseases that have never shown up before in our garden (like corn smut).
Which crop do you grow every year, and what is your favourite dish to make with it?
We grow berries every year - it’s hard to pick one favorite dish but I love to use the berries in my baked goods so you’ll find a lot of berry-related recipes on my substack/website like mixed berry coffee cake, strawberry cookies, and strawberry muffins. We also grow zucchini every year and I love to come up with creative ways to bake with zucchini so you’ll also find quite a few zucchini-related recipes on my substack/website like zucchini chocolate chip cookies and zucchini brownies.
How do you plan your meals around the produce you grow?
We don’t really plan our meals too much in the summer since we tend to just cook what we have on hand (and what is closest to going bad). So we tend to make dishes that are easy to incorporate a lot of vegetables into like stir fries and hashes.
How do you manage a glut of produce, what do you make?
One of my favorite recipes to make with a glut of produce is okonomiyaki - a Japanese veggie pancake dish. You can switch up the vegetables you include and my favorite combination is zucchini, cabbage, and carrots. I don’t follow a specific recipe (but you can search online to find one) - it’s just generally the vegetables combined with flour and eggs though.
Do you have a compost? If so, what is the best way of getting the most out of composting and do you have any tips?
Yes, we have a compost system we made using wooden pallets and it’s divided into 3 sections so we can let one of them rest and still be adding to the other 2. My top two tips are to make sure you are turning your compost pretty regularly and to also make sure you are watering it every now and then.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to start growing their own food?
Only grow what you want to eat! A lot of people say this but it’s very true - it’s not worth the time to grow something that you don’t absolutely love eating, so don’t aim for a large variety of produce but really just the produce that you actually want to be eating all season long.
Thank you for sharing your vegetable garden with us lisa. Visit and subscribe to Lisa’s publication The Naturally Sweet Life.
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