About US

Hi, I’m Luke Harrison — and if you caught me on a Saturday morning, I’d probably be out back with dirt caked under my nails, losing an argument with a squash bug I’ve named at this point out of pure frustration.

I spend my 9-to-5 teaching high school biology here in Denver, Colorado. But the thing I actually think about most days — the thing that’s quietly taken over my yard, my weekends, and a concerning chunk of my garage — is growing food in a climate that fights you every step of the way. This site is where I put nine seasons of trial, error, and stubbornness into one place.

How I got hooked

It started with a tomato plant that had no business surviving.

Back in spring 2017, grocery prices were annoying me enough that I figured I’d try growing my own vegetables. I put four tomato starts in the ground, planted two of them before our last frost date because I didn’t actually know what that meant yet, and lost them within a week. A third got hit with blossom end rot I didn’t recognize until the fruit was already ruined. The fourth one, somehow, survived — and gave me about a dozen decent tomatoes by the end of summer.

That one surviving plant taught me more than any article I’d read that spring. I went back and actually learned our frost dates, learned what blossom end rot even was, and started paying attention to the specific conditions in my own yard instead of following generic advice written for a different climate entirely. By year three I’d built two raised beds. Now I’ve got six beds, a cold frame made from an old window I never returned to the hardware store, and a running feud with the squirrels over who the strawberries belong to.

Since then I’ve killed more plants than I’d like to count, gotten decent at the ones I haven’t, and talked more neighbors out of buying the wrong fertilizer than I can track. I’m not a horticulturist, and I’m never going to pretend otherwise. I’m the guy who learned by losing plants — so you lose fewer of your own.

What I actually know

Here’s where I’ve got real, dirt-under-the-nails experience — not stuff copied from a seed packet:

Timing plantings around a short, unpredictable season — Denver’s frost dates move around enough to ruin a whole spring if you guess wrong.

Getting a real harvest out of small spaces — raised beds and backyard plots, not acreage.

Organic pest control that actually works — row covers, companion planting, and knowing when to just accept a loss.

Building soil that holds moisture — our native clay does nothing for you on its own.

Reading a plant before it’s too late — spotting nutrient deficiencies and watering problems before they wreck a whole bed.

Last season our beds covered a real chunk of what our family ate through July and August — not because I’m especially talented, but because I finally figured out what actually works at this altitude.

And where I don’t have real expertise — greenhouse growing, anything at commercial scale — I’ll tell you straight instead of guessing out loud.

The gap that made me start this site

Every time I went looking for gardening advice, I ran into the same walls:

Guides written for gardeners in places with actual rain and mild summers — advice that just doesn’t hold up against our sun, our dry air, or our elevation.

University extension PDFs from a decade ago, technically accurate, painfully hard to actually use.

Two-paragraph blog posts that read like nobody involved had grown the thing they were writing about.

Zero acknowledgment that altitude changes everything — watering, sun exposure, even how fast soil dries out.

What I wanted, back when I was losing tomato after tomato, was one honest source written by someone who’d actually lost plants to our exact conditions and figured out what to do differently. I never found it. So I built it.

My promise to you

Here’s what every guide on GardenExpertHub is built on:

I test before I publish. If a guide says something works, it’s because I did it, in this climate, more than once.

I show the whole picture. What worked, what failed, and what I’d do differently — the failures are half the lesson.

I account for real conditions. If altitude, sun, or dry air changes the advice, I’ll say so instead of giving you something generic.

No filler. I’m not padding guides with stock advice to hit a word count.

What you’ll find here

GardenExpertHub is built for backyard gardeners, especially people dealing with a tough or unfamiliar climate who are tired of advice that falls apart the second they step outside. Everything’s organized around four areas:

Garden Setup — raised beds, small-space layouts, and getting started from scratch.

Seasonal Planting — what to plant and when, based on our actual growing season, not a generic calendar.

Organic Pest & Soil Care — keeping plants alive without reaching for chemicals.

Budget Gardening — growing food without dumping money into it every spring.

New guides go up most weeks, with real photos from my own yard — including the ones where things clearly didn’t go as planned.

Let’s get growing

The answers I spent nine seasons hunting for are finally landing in one place — for you. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been fighting a difficult climate for years, you’re in the right backyard.

Start with our guide to setting up your first raised bed, and if something in your garden isn’t working, drop it in the comments — I read every one and usually have an opinion, even if it’s not always right. You can also reach me directly at gardenexperthub.com.

Let’s keep it growing. 🌱

— Luke Harrison