I'm so glad you found your way to my site! You're clearly here to learn more about gardening and I am so excited for you. A garden is a wonderful thing and there are endless options of what you can grow both inside and outside your home. But before we dive into all that, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I grew up in Baltimore, MD. My family has always had a garden, my mom loves florals, and my dad's focus was on the edible plants that he has always referred to as his "crops." My grandparents we're kids of the depression in rural PA so having a garden for them wasn't a want, it was a necessity. My grandmother canned or preserved everything they grew. When cooking at their house, we never went to the grocery store to get things, it was always "grab two jars of tomatoes down in the cellar."

I have carried this mentality of "eat what you grow" for my whole life. Even living in major cities like Washington, DC, Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Long Beach, the need for a garden was very prevalent. At my apartment in Long Beach, we had a tiny balcony. There was barely enough room for two chairs but I packed as much as I could into that space. I grew all sorts of herbs, along with peppers and tomatoes. I'm sure from the street below, it looked like a hoarders apartment but I have always been determined to have something growing.

In college, I got my degree in Graphic Design and worked in the tech world for many years. I lost my job during the pandemic, so my fiancé and I moved up to his family cabin in Lake Arrowhead. It was the first time I lived anywhere that had any sort of land to put a garden. Us both being unemployed meant that there wasn't any extra money to put into a garden. So, I used what we had on hand. We had taken out an island in the kitchen, so the wood from that became the first two garden beds. That fall, our neighbors were replacing the windows in their home, so I used their old ones to build a greenhouse. Once I started working again, I wasn't in my garden as much as I wanted to be. I found myself spending pretty much all my spare time either in the garden, thinking about the garden, or planning new things for the garden.

Like so many people up here in the San Bernardino Mountains, during February of 2023, we were snowed in. We had people up at our house for the weekend who ended up staying for 3 and a half weeks because we couldn't get out. There were plenty of things to worry about during that time but unlike most people, I wasn't worried about food. Despite having 5 extra people in the house, and the roofs of grocery stores collapsing, we ate incredibly well. I froze everything I could from the garden so our pantry was very full.

I got laid off during the last round of the big tech lay offs. It felt like a nasty case of deja vu, but it meant I got to be in my garden more. After many months of applying for jobs with nothing panning out, I had a realization. Why am I trying so hard for something that is not how I want to be spending my time? And thus Propagation Station Gardens sprouted.

As produce gets more expensive and less nutritious, I want to help everyone localize more of their food supply, and you can't get more local than your own backyard. Growing food in the mountains is difficult to the point that I have heard people refer to it as combat gardening. There is always something that wants to eat what you've grown. Not to mention that sunlight is usually also a problem.

But there is always a solution to be found, wether you only have space on a deck to grow, or you're only planning on growing inside your home, let's get growing!