Jane Shellenberger

“Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ”Feed the soil not the plants.”

“There are many paths leading to a garden and many experiences awaiting those who venture in. No matter what your motive—whether to grow healthy, delicious food; spend time outdoors feeling more alive than your desk job allows; help save the planet; find relaxation, solace, or healing; meet your neighbors; get your hands in the sweet earth; or discover for yourself just how abundant and generous nature can be—a garden rarely disappoints. It’s a magnet for life in all its quirky, beautiful forms.”

“My first vegetable garden was in a hard-packed dirt driveway in Boulder, Colorado. I was living in a basement apartment there, having jumped at the chance to come out West with a friend in his Volkswagen Bug, fleeing college and inner-city Philadelphia. I was twenty, hungry for experience, and fully intending to be a ski bum in my new life. But it didn’t turn out that way.”