QUAKER CITY, Ohio – When Jim and Mary Competti started Old World Garden Farms in 2010, their neighbors told them they were crazy. Jump forward 16 years and they have both retired from their day jobs and have six websites with a little more than 15 million monthly viewers, a podcast, and followers from over 246 countries. They have written books and travel the world talken ing to people about gardening.

They recently received the Eastern Ohio Development Alliance Tourism Excellence Award, and they received notice from Good Pods that their podcast, The Simple Garden Life, is No. 2 in the gardening category.

In 2010, the Compettis were living the suburban lifestyle, Mary said. They had four kids from 5th grade to just beginning high school. They didn’t feel that their kids were learning about gardening and how to grow food.

“We decided to have a garden and some chickens,” she said. “Everybody thought we had lost our minds; they thought we were going off the grid and going to homestead. We both had pro-fessional jobs. We decided to start a website, a blog, so that our family and friends across the country could follow what we were doing.”

First, the family learned how to start a garden system and how to build a chicken coop. That all went into the blog. Mary started to include recipes for things like salsa, pasta sauce and pickles using garden produce.

“Then Jim woke up one day, and said, ‘somebody is following us (their blog) from North Carolina that we don’t know. Why would anybody care what we are doing?’” Mary said. “That became our first follower, and that was 2010. By 2011, we had thousands of followers. People just resonated with trying to get back to a more simple life.”

The duo began writing three blog articles a week. The Old Garden Farms, about gardening, was the first. Then Mary added a recipe blog. On Sundays, they would do the Sunday Farm Update. People were always curious to know what they were doing next and would follow along.

Mary retired in 2017 to keep up with the writing, and Jim followed in 2018. By then, they were doing gardening talks all over the country, and people wanted to visit their gardens and see their gardening system, but they didn’t have enough room.

They found an overgrown piece of property with trash everywhere, mobile homes that had col-lapsed, and worse. But they liked it, and it was close to their family. They took all of 2021 to clear the 20 acres. They have since added on to that and now have 46 acres.

They built a house in time for their daughter to get married there in 2022. They have turned the place into an event center with many spacious seating areas, complete with fire pits and water features. And they finally had gardens and space that large groups of people could visit and see their system.

“It’s a no-till gardening method using all organic materials,” Mary said. “It is a whole cycle of the year, always keeping the ground covered, we have very few weeds, we spend less than 10 minutes a day in our garden. We have growing rows, walking rows and planting zones.”

The walking rows are filled with mulch about 4 to 6 inches deep. The growing rows have mulch – they use straw with soil on top, and always keep that covered. If they plant tomatoes or peppers, they mulch them immediately.

“Mulching does a lot of good things in gardening,” Mary said. “It keeps the soil moist, and it keeps weed seeds out. People always complain about weeds; our system allows very few weeds. When fall comes, we put a cover crop in so it stays completely covered.”

They have tried many cover crops, but their favorite is oats. They plant them in September, and they will grow about a foot tall. The oats die off completely after the first hard freeze.

“It covers your soil for the winter,” Mary said. “In spring, we generally plant right through it, so you never have to disturb the soil, and it acts like a mulch. It’s the best secret. Bare soil is bad soil. All of the weeds can come in. People who turn over their soil are just planting the weeds that are on top. This way, you never disturb the soil.

“Our gardening skills have progressed over the years,” Mary said. “Everyone can have a back-yard garden. So now we talk about bucket-container gardening, raised beds, three-tier planters and patio boxes. All of these things that you can do to make gardening fun and easy, because nobody wants to spend hours in a garden.”

Their next venture is establishing a grassland garden, which will be open to the public. Because they share their land with deer, grasslands – rather than botanicals – seemed the way to go. They hope the grassland gardens will help to make the place sustainable.

“This is a garden that, after we’re gone, can still provide an income and keep going on,” Tom said. “That’s what we want.

“We will have 9 acres of ornamental grasses,” Tom explained. “We have 42 or so varieties now, all in their baby stages. We started planting them last year and then took our first division this year. We have another 3,000 plants coming in May.”

They plan to put a three-quarter mile walkway through the grassland garden. It is native grasses except for a few potted ornamentals. They are including a Japanese rake garden, and there will be a miniature outdoor train.

“When it is done, we will have birds and all types of animals, but also sustainability to the envi-ronment,” Tom said.

The grassland garden will eventually be open six days a week. They like being able to share their property with people who don’t have an opportunity to sit in their own backyards.

“People ask, You have a farm, what do you grow? We grow fun,” Mary said.