Home Organic Gardens - Design • Installation • Coaching Love & Carrots is a DC-based sustainable urban farming company specializing in custom vegetable garden installation, maintenance, and coaching.
We accomplish this through:
-Customizing each garden to succeed
-Utilizing proven, organic gardening techniques
-Empowering customers with expert gardening advice
Let us help you realize your growing potential!
Operating as usual
#throwbackthursday to this dreamy rooftop garden we installed for @timberpizzaco. The garden has since passed to new owners, who appreciated the unique space and were inspired to hone their gardening skills through seasonal coaching visits 🥕
Love & Carrots could not exist without our incredible clients! We love growing with you, getting our hands dirty, and working along side you and your family members of all ages to create beautiful garden memories 🌱🥬 thank you for supporting us!
Happy Earth Day from all of us at Love & Carrots 💚🥕 As another Earth Day comes to a close, it is important to reflect on the path forward. How can we be better stewards of this land? Space, land, fruit, flowers, seeds - they are all precious gifts we must take care of and respect 🌎
Growing food is just one step in the process, and you don’t need a sprawling urban farm to do so. Start with an herb pot on your balcony, or an in-ground bed in your backyard! 🌶 We will continue to help transform your yards, patios, and rooftops to thriving growing spaces 👩🏼🌾
Creating the perfect garden space can involve more than just plants! Stone pathways are a great way to improve a backyard space. This recent stone pathway installation helps elevate an otherwise empty portion of an existing landscape. 🌼 We can’t wait to see this space flourish as everything begin to bloom!
Repost from @chaiatacos
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There's a true sense of satisfaction in eating food grown in your own patch of soil. You can also help save the planet by eating more vegetables - harvested at home or cooked at Chaia!
National Gardening Day is today, April 14. The objective is to encourage gardeners - and would-be gardeners - to pick up a shovel, plant some seeds, and kick off a healthy, productive hobby - and habit - to make our relationship with our planet a greener, healthier, and more rewarding one.
In collaboration with our longtime garden partners at @loveandcarrots, we have created a downloadable Spring Planting Guide (check out our Bio for the link). L&C is a women-owned, DC-based, sustainable, urban-farming company specializing in vegetable garden installation, maintenance, and coaching,
Our first introduction to L&C's founder Meredith Sheperd was back in 2013 when Suzanne and Bettina had organized a walking tour of urban kitchen gardens to support and raise funds for a local non-profit. Several of the plots in the outing were designed by Meredith. When we built out our first shop in Georgetown in 2015, we knew that we wanted a "green roof" designed, installed, and maintained by L&C - and, at our downtown shop, we asked them to source and design the greenery for our interior space.
💚 🥕
#NationalGardeningDay
Into the ground go a rainbow of potatoes! Magic molly purple, Adirondack red, and German butterball. 💜❤️💛🥔
We took cuttings of seed potatoes, making sure each piece has an “eye” (sprout), and planted them around 4” deep and about 12” apart.
When your potato plant is about a foot tall, be sure to mound the soil up around it until the top 3 inches of the plant poke up. When you bury the axil of the plant, or where stem meets a leaf, more potatoes will form at this node. This act of “hilling” also protects the potatoes from sunlight, which can induce chlorophyll production and render the potato slightly toxic 😮
As we finish up our spring plantings in the next couple weeks, it’s time to start thinking about summer crops! These peppers were seeded in late February/early March and have been staying nice and warm under grow lights inside 🫑 in the last couple weeks, they made their way out into our greenhouse to strengthen up and acclimate to the outdoor climate. Manuel, Ruby, Leah and Silver potted the pepper babies up this morning and they’ll start to go into your gardens next month! 🌶 ☀️
We do more than just veggies - we have four wonderful landscape designers on staff that can transform your space into an oasis for both you and the pollinators! 🌸🌻🌼🐝 email [email protected] to set up a consultation!
With spring planting sessions in full swing, we’re filling lots of gardens with many different types of brassicas 🥦
The brassica family includes many of your favorite spring vegetables, like arugula, broccoli, collards, kale, and radishes. They are native to the North Atlantic coast of Europe, where they adapted to the cold, salty spray of coastal habitats. They developed waxy, thick green leaves, which you’ll notice is a common characteristic to this family! Since brassicas evolves in cool weather, they perform best in the spring and fall 🍂🍃
Brassicas are prone to a handful of pests, including aphids, cabbage caterpillars, slugs, and harlequin bugs, among others. The best way to manage these pests is to cover your beds with reemay fabric right after planting, spraying the leaves with BT**, or handpicking directly off the plant! 🪲
** When spraying Bacillus Thuringiensis, be careful to only spray on the brassicas. While BT is helpful to get rid of harmful caterpillars, it can also harm beneficial caterpillars on your other crops!
If you grew greens over the winter, it’s time to do one last harvest before the temps creep up and crops start to flower! 🌡🌱 this spinach and mache are ready to go into a delicious early-spring salad 🥗
It’s spring planting time!! Whether you’re having Love & Carrots plant your garden, or doing it yourself, now is a great time to get some seeds in the ground for a bountiful spring harvest 🥕
We’re seeding the following crops while our transplants finish filling out in our greenhouse:
🌱peas
🌱arugula
🌱lettuce
🌱radishes
🌱turnips
🌱beets
🌱carrots
🌱cilantro
Be sure to plant a seed twice as deep as the diameter of the seed! This is true for all shapes and sizes. Water with a watering can and not an open hose! 💧
The season has officially begun!! We are SO jazzed to be back in your gardens, seeding spring crops and getting ready for another great year of growing 🍓🍅🍆🥦🥬🥒🌶🫑🧄
Here is Manuel and our new urban farmer Emma installing a trellis at a recent build. Trellises are great additions to garden beds and will support peas in the spring and other climbing crops like cucumbers and vining squash (tromboncino and butternut) in the summer ☀️
If you’re looking to install a garden this year, consider growing in your front yard! 🌱🏡
When designing front yard gardens, we like to incorporate brassicas with big, thick green leaves like kale, collards and broccoli. Try planting a few varieties with differing colors, like red curly kale!
Alliums make great bordering plants for the brassicas. Items like garlic, leeks, onions and scallions produce beautiful upright, long green blades and can also repel certain pests that target brassicas 🪲
Front yard gardens can be visually appealing but they are also great community builders. We encourage you to share or swap some of your bounty with your neighbors 😊
The snow has melted and we are back in action! With spring garden preps nearly complete, it’s time to start installing gardens again 🥰🏡🪚
This build happened for an existing client of ours. This area previously had in-ground beds, but our clients wanted to make the space easier to garden in, combat erosion in the area, and create a more polished look!
We love how the beds turned out, and can’t wait to continue growing in this space 🌱
Do you have landscaping or construction experience and want to work on a tight-knit crew building gardens around the DC area? If so, you might be the perfect candidate for our installation crew! 💪🏼🛠 Visit love and carrots.com/get-involved to learn more and apply 👩🏼💻🧑🏽💻
If you're starting your own broccoli transplants, now is the time to get them started! 🥦 Broccoli is a trickier vegetable to grow at home - start early, so the plants mature in cool weather.
When sowing broccoli seeds directly into the garden, be sure to give them a solid 18" of space. They need lots of room to grow!
Feed the plants with a nitrogen fertilizer at 3 times during the plants life cycle. We use liquid fish emulsion which feeds the plant without altering the nutrient content of the soil. 🐠
Last week marked our first seeding of the new year! Alliums are staying cozy under grow-lights indoors, while annual flowers are getting started in our greenhouse! 🎻🌸 These little guys are covered, and live on heat mats for now, to maintain a warm temperature while they begin to sprout.
Later this week, we will begin seeding brassicas (broccoli, kale, kohlrabi) 🥦 We can’t wait to get growing!
Our ‘Spring Awakening’ garden visits are in full-swing! We have been making our way out to all of our clients to top off their gardens with fresh compost and soil amendments, removing spent crops, and mulching pathways so they are ready to be planted in starting in March! 💚 We’re very excited to continue gardening with the folks over at @thenicholsonproject - an awesome artist residency that works to support artists and service as a creative and innovative cultural hub 🖼🎨📷
We may be in the middle of winter right now, but spring is just around the corner, so now is the perfect time to purchase seeds before the days turn warmer and the rush for garden supplies begins.
We recommend the following companies for your seed purchases, which offer a variety of high quality options:
🌱 Southern Exposure
🌰 Johnny’s Seeds
🌱 Fedco
🌰 High Mowing
We’re excited to trial some new seed varieties at our headquarters this year, such as Burmese okra from @southernexposureseed, Nassau Cubanelle peppers from @johnnys_seeds, and Pink Lady Slipper radishes from @fedcoseeds(pictured in slide 3) 🩰
We are still searching for a new landscape designer to join our team 💜✍🏼
Our landscape projects focus on native and flowering varieties that will:
🌸 Thrive in our local climate
🌼 Promote and sustain local pollinators (butterflies, honeybees, and more)
🌸 Compliment the natural landscape and habitat
🌼 Function alone as a beautiful, environmentally friendly space or as a great compliment to your vegetable garden
To learn more about the landscape designer position, and how to apply, visit loveandcarrots.com/get-involved
Flashback to this project we completed in December! What you see in the back corner is a tomato house 🍅 It will keep critters out and keep the foliage dry, which helps with blight. To further avoid blight, we install irrigation so the plant is watered at soil level.
Did you notice the wheel on the gate? These clients are avid bicyclists, and wanted to add a personal touch to their garden. We love adding custom elements to home gardens to make them feel extra special 😊🚲
WE ARE HIRING 🪜Love & Carrots is seeking full or part-time installation crew members to join our team. To learn more about the position, visit loveandcarrots.com/get-involved.
We also want to give a shout-out to our crew member Freddy, pictured above, who has been with us since March 2020 and is an integral part of our team. We’re lucky to have you Freddy! 👏🏼💚
Happy new year and happy snow day! A perfect day to stay inside and reflect 😌❄️ What are your garden goals for 2022? Are there new crops you’d like to try, or new techniques you’ve learned from our farmers? We’re looking forward to getting back into gardens…just not today 😉
We hope you are all having safe and restful holiday season! We may be on winter break, but we can’t wait to get back to new and exciting garden projects in 2022 💫
This gorgeous garden (or should we say mini-urban farm!) is home to 19 raised beds within hog panel fencing, and a variety of flowers, shrubs, trees and berries. This client also participates in our garden coaching program to learn the necessary care for this abundant space. Check out the before and after in the last 2 photos!
It is a pleasure to create spaces such as this, and even more of a pleasure to work along side you all in the garden each week. To learn more about our maintenance and coaching program, email [email protected] 👩🌾👨🌾
Love & Carrots wishes you a safe, healthy and happy holiday season! Our office is closed for two weeks so our team can take a much-needed (and well deserved!) restful break. We’ll see you in the new year 👋🏼🥳
Washington D.C., DC
20010
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