Author Archives: Lori
Food Security Starts at Home: What a Garden Can and Cannot Do
Food security can feel like a huge, heavy phrase. It belongs in government reports and public health conversations, but it also belongs much closer to home: in the kitchen, in…
About This Garden
About This Garden Welcome! I’m the gardener behind Growing My Dinner — some folks call me Plant Lady — and this site is for people who feel a quiet tug…
The Best Nitrogen to Phosphorus Ratio for Growing Kohlrabi
Kohlrabi can look extremely confident from above. Big leaves. Strong stems. A plant that appears to know exactly what it is doing. Then you move the leaves and find the…
How to Grow Sweet Potatoes for Slips, Vines, and Storage Roots
Sweet potatoes feel like one of those crops that should be harder than they are. The vines are dramatic, the harvest is hidden underground, and the curing step sounds a…
Indeterminate Tomatoes: What They Are and How to Grow Them
Tomato labels can be oddly intimidating. You go looking for a plant that will give you tomatoes, and suddenly you are asked to understand words like determinate, indeterminate, semi-determinate, heirloom,…
How to Grow Runner Beans for Food and Beauty
Some plants earn their place in the garden twice. Runner beans are one of those plants. They climb. They flower. They feed pollinators. They make a trellis look alive. And…
How to Grow Eggplants in a Home Garden
Eggplants look a little dramatic before they ever reach the kitchen. The leaves are broad. The flowers are pretty. The fruit can be glossy, purple, white, striped, round, long, tiny,…
Chlorine for Plants: The Micronutrient Gardeners Rarely Need to Add
Chlorine is the nutrient name that causes the most confusion. Plants do need chlorine, but they take it up as chloride, not as pool chemical, bleach, or chlorine gas. Chloride…
Nitrogen for Plants: Leafy Growth, Deficiency, and Too Much of a Good Thing
Nitrogen is the nutrient that makes a garden look awake. It is tied to the green color in leaves, the proteins and enzymes plants use to grow, and the steady…
Zinc for Plants: Growth, Micronutrients, and Soil Testing
Zinc is a small nutrient with a big influence on growth. Plants use zinc in enzymes, growth regulation, protein production, and chlorophyll-related processes. When zinc is short, plants may stay…