Before I took the Seed to Table course I felt overwhelmed and discouraged with gardening. I didn't look forward to spending time in my garden. Each day, after I'd leave with little progress, I'd leave feeling terrible about myself. By August, I would spend less and less time there, until finally I just stopped going and would give up for the season. It was all very depressing.

​

The weeds were winning and I was losing. There was no time to prune, so plants just grew into bushy masses. Depending on the crop and my familiarity with crop killing diseases or certain pests and how to combat them, some were able to roam and destroy at their leisure. There were no defined areas, no defined walkways, no thought to what systems could be installed that would lesson the burdens that come with gardening. There was just free range growing, of both wanted and unwanted plants. And the result was a gardener that was feeling burned out and defeated. The only thing that kept me going was a strong desire to become self sufficient and produce my own food. I wanted to rely on myself vs. a grocery store to provide for my nutritional needs. I had to find help... There had to be a solution... I NEEDED to get better at this!

​

Seed to Table has been a blessing! The course gave me the knowledge and skills needed to take back control of my garden. I feel empowered. I feel equipped. I no longer feel overwhelmed. Intentionality in a garden redesign has alleviated many of the problems I was struggling with and saved me precious time. Weeds are at a minimum. Time can now be spent tending to the plants. Plants are healthier because I know what kind of soil I have and what the plants need to better grow. I have skills in pruning, trellising, pest management. I know how to assess how much I consume and intentionally plant how much is needed to support that consumption so that food doesn't go to waste.

​

Seed to Table has put the JOY back into gardening! I feel good about my garden and what I'm able to produce and preserve. I'm able to grow more than I have ever in the past. So much so, that now I'm able to share my beautiful harvest with my family and friends. And there has been much joy in being able to share homegrown food with others. People are so thankful and appreciative. They love to eat what I've grown. So much so, that they will text me pictures of the food they make with the harvest. These are new, first time, joyful moments in gardening and I owe it all to the Seed to Table instruction I received that equipped me to be a better gardener.

​

If you're on the fence as to whether or not to take the class, TAKE IT! Invest in yourself! Give yourself the knowledge and skills needed to be equipped to be a successful gardener. If you're feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, this course will be just what is needed to turn things around for you. Don't miss this opportunity to find joy in gardening again!

Jared is an excellent instructor! The content he shares is well written and thought through. His presentations ADD content to the workbook vs. just repeating the content covered in the worksheets. It is obvious by his instruction and in field videos that he has a wealth of knowledge and is an accomplished gardener. But MORE importantly, Jared enjoys interacting with his students. He works hard to help his students improve. He wants his students to have success. He makes himself available for personal gardening questions of his students, putting time into researching and troubleshooting solutions, even if it's something new to him. Jared is the best kind of teacher to have because it's obvious from his instruction and interaction with his students that he LOVES to LEARN! And this love for learning not only makes the content he shares richer, it motivates his students to also learn.

Cynthia Monk

We are more organized with our garden planning and planting schedules. That was a significant change that took out a lot of the guesswork this year. Our harvesting is more scheduled and less sporadic, and our storage systems (hopefully!) will be improved. I do a lot less time researching - I can trust that Jared has done the work and just need to reference his resources. That's huge! I'd much rather watch a tutorial and head out to confidently prune my peppers than waste precious time in my garden looking things up on my phone, getting it dirty, and hoping that it's a reliable source.

Terri Lynn Friesen

The Seed to Table Course was outstanding. It was amazing to see all the incredible knowledge Jared had to pass along. It totally changed the way I garden, leading to way less work and incredible harvests. Everything was very well explained and the videos were very helpful. The question and answer sessions were very helpful and the monthly training sessions were very interesting. I highly recommend this course to anyone that wants to take their gardening skills to the next level.

Brian Thorstad

I was a different student as I have a small hobby garden, despite not having the same volume of plants as many of the others participating, I found that I received great information on how to get the most out of my garden, and make it what I want. Having the ability to ask questions weekly on any issues, and asking for suggestions in developing my new garden was a great resource. I felt that I learned a lot, increased my production output of my small garden, and would very much recommend this class to anyone who loves growing vegetables.

Elisabeth Dalcin

The Seed to Table course is taught by a REAL local vegetable farmer. He is methodical, organized, and data driven. I appreciated and valued his experience and expertise. He's been there, done that and has amazing results. He even has logged/written data and pictures/videos to prove it!

Debra Laulainen

We’ve grown a garden here for 30 years, zone 4B with a short growing season.

We’ve never grown a corn crop of any note before. This year we did.

The course provided an understanding and an interest in the variables affecting a plant’s life cycle. The knowledge we gained and the access to online tools and reference material, helped with not only a successful corn crop this year - but the entire garden.

Jared articulately and generously shares his vast knowledge of vegetable gardening in the well-planned Seed to Table course. Knowing we have life-long access to recordings of the course sessions is huge.

During the course Jared encourages participants to ask pretty well any garden related questions that they have. If he doesn’t have an answer, which is rare, he’ll research and find the answer for you.

The Vegetable Academy community added richly to the experience. Seeing and hearing how other participants were managing their gardens was encouraging and informative. It takes a village to raise a chard.

Duncan and Lee Bedford

As we were just getting our gardens established this season, we were feeling very overwhelmed with the design and planning of it all. The primary reason I joined the Seed to Table course was to learn from Jared's experience and not have to learn by trial and error for every aspect of our garden set-up. I was not disappointed. The course was invaluable in guiding us through infrastructure decisions, soil building and of course all things planting. I am confident we will refer back and use the teachings from Seed to Table in the seasons ahead, as we continue to expand, and make adjustments to our seed selection and planting.

I now understand the importance of planning, especially when it comes to timing of seed starting and planting outdoors. And also, that there are preferred harvest times for crops...longer is not always better. This has helped me to wrap my head around succession planning and getting the most out of our bed space. The teachings on sunlight/shading and light intensity have also been invaluable. With this information we were able to learn about where to best plant certain crops and will be better positioned for success next year!

Krista Robertson

Not to sound cliché, but Seed to Table was life changing for us. It gave us the philosophical shift we wanted to dive deeper into sustainable living (in our own little way), and we learned and challenged ourselves consistently along the way thanks to the long-term, weekly-checkin format. The course ended up being exactly what we needed it to be: it was a motivating, driving force for us to keep working, and we explored more new stuff thanks to it than I'm sure we ever would have done on our own.

It was hands down worth the money for us—I wouldn't even consider the cost a factor, in retrospect. And even though we've never actually met you, Jared and Rachel, we are beyond inspired; you two should be incredibly proud of what you have built together :) " -

Murray and Elayna Rowan

Jared is knowledgeable in the material taught through study and personal experience. The ‘ah-ha’ for me is that gardening is much more than putting seeds in the ground and my success in my garden from the knowledge gained is reflected in the bounty received. I received far more from the course than I ever imagined in knowledge, community and bounty. It’s time well spent. I looked forward to each class and the Q/A was terrific for answering my questions on anything and everything.

Barbara Winter

I grew up around gardens, and thought I knew a thing or two about gardening. I refer to Jared as the Gardening Guru to my friends and family, and he elevated my gardening knowledge. His passion for and knowledge about growing food comes through loud and clear during the Vegetable Academy course. He wants you to be successful in your garden, and gives you ample opportunity to ask your questions -- during a class, during a Q & A Saturday session, or in the Classroom forum. Thank you, Jared. I loved this course.

Jennifer Ward

This course completely changed the way my family gardens and grows food in the best possible way. After implementing some of Jared's top recommended strategies and practices, the results clearly spoke for themselves: best quality and production we have ever had this year for everything from root storage vegetables to leafy greens, to tomatoes, to strawberries. We look forward to continuing to add more of what we learned in this course each year going forward.

This course was without a doubt worth the time and resources we invested into learning all that Jared meticulously taught. Before taking this course I would spend a lot of time researching online or reading gardening books at the library. It was difficult to find relevant material specific to my zone that was accessible to a beginner gardener. This course and community quickly became my go-to one-stop resource for all my garden needs and questions. Thank you. Thank you!

Carla Dombowsky

In previous years I have typically only planted one crop in any one area of my garden, but this year, with the planning tools provided, I have been able to plant two, sometimes three, crops in the same area. I also put up a lot more trellising, growing pole beans and smaller trailing winter squash vertically, taking up a lot less garden space.

Next year, I will get to combine my three separate community garden plots into one big one, so will be better able to rearrange the space with the knowledge gained from the course (bed alignment, row spacing, etc). I feel as though the course has given me planning tools and knowledge that I'll be able to use in my gardens forever!

Rosalyn Steele

We are not new to gardening, but our efforts/successes were always random. We felt frustration at never really knowing what we were doing. We were devoted to growing a garden, but it always felt stressful. I wouldn't say that it isn't stressful when it doesn't rain and it's over 30 above day after day, but after taking this course, we felt we had a much better grasp on not only what to do, but WHY we were doing it! It was our first season of incorporating many of the concepts we learned, and we feel it was a vast improvement on other years, in terms of organization, streamlining our work, and our veg production. Sooo many questions got answered over the duration of this course, not only by the course content but by the gardening community that we met along the way. The interaction was priceless for us. Also, we trusted the content of the course implicitly. We know that Jared has put in countless years of intense gardening experience, with thoughtful, diligent research into the hows and wherefores! YouTube videos are fun to watch but the trust we built in Jared's information made him our go to guy every time. Also, we deeply appreciate his approach to gardening without herbicides and pesticides and he and his wife's philosophy of growing and eating one's own food. It resonates with all our gardening principles of working with nature, not against her. We highly recommend this course. We are sad that it is over! It was the highlight of every week for many months!

Donna Hagel and Mike Feldman

Everyone can benefit from this course, if only to appreciate how empowering growing your own food can be and how it is not magic but science and attentive care that create results. I have a plan and action steps that lead to immensely better success in my gardening experience. I have the confidence that I can feed my family and not rely on grocery stores to fill out bellies. I know it is possible to be more self sufficient, and also realize that I still have lots of room to grow/learn but I have the resources to achieve success from the seed to table course.

Another amazing result is from the community created through attending this course with my fellow Seed to Table students and learning from their questions and challenges and successes! If you are a beginner or seasoned gardener, everyone can achieve results from Jared's extensive knowledge and experience. I would do this course over and over again! This course made my year and garden amazing. Thank you Jared and family!

Paige Goebel

I bought my 1/2 acre property 3 years ago. The first season we put in the garden with no real plan. We double dug up some beds in the front yard, tilled in some nice topsoil and haphazardly planted starts from a local nursery. It did okay but not great. My OCD kicked in and I started to research.

First came lasagna gardening. Next sheet composting methods, then no-till methods, biointensive methods, books and YouTube video after video. Somewhere in the middle of it all I stumbled on a video of Jared's low tunnels right around the time he was launching the Vegetable Academy. I was in. A stone in the foundation. I had found a mentor.

Seed to Table taught me how to be a thoughtful gardener. It showed me how to plan and to organize my season. To create standards so that the infrastructure I built for the garden was versatile. To create SOP so that my time is well spent, crops get planted and harvests are bountiful. It helped me efficiently run a CSA this year and gave my family plenty of healthy fresh food and food for storage. Jared even sent me a few video messages during our brief spring break which made me reflect on my path and discover the new direction I want to take in my garden.

I can't sing the praises of the Seed to Table course enough!

Chris Randall

I've been gardening for many years and yet have had so many questions about how to improve upon my garden's productivity and make that consistent. For the past several years I was wishing there was someone that could provide me with those answers and this course did exactly that. It answered many questions, but better yet gave me the resources to continue to find the answers in the future as well.

Michelle Fishman

Starting my seeds indoors this spring made ALL the difference! If there is frost forecasted in the province we will get it, so starting early gave us such a head start. We also built a number of low tunnels to prevent frost and they were like our crop insurance. This was where the Vegetable Academy really gave us a leg up, we used your tutorials, and have purchased soil blocks and irrigation systems to help these efforts even more next year.

If anyone is considering signing up for any of the VA courses, DO IT! Jared helps you design for your needs and he has tried and tested the best garden infrastructure so you don't have too! This can shave years off of your trial and error in the garden to reach something that works for you. I took his course in 2020 and now we are eating something we grew in the garden everyday! Zone 4

Anna Mathis