Matt Miller Biography

My name is Matt Miller, and I have lived in San Jose, California my whole life. I don’t have a whole lot of experience in the garden. When I was younger, my mom and I always used to try to grow tomatoes, but the squirrels would always eat them, so that was never success. My grandmother and grandfather have a lot of experience growing food. When they lived in Los Angeles up to a few years ago, they had a huge garden, where the grew all sorts of food: lettuce, tomatoes, a pumpkin, you name it. But since they moved up here, their garden hasn’t been close to what size it was, but its still big enough to grow some tomatoes and lettuce. It seems like every week they bring over a couple of huge tomatoes or other food they grew. My mother uses this as her inspiration to use part of our backyard for a big garden. But our whole family is busy with school, work, sports, other activities, that every year, we never get to it. But, when I grow up and have my own house, I want to try to successfully grow a garden. Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed reading about Marie, Teo, Elysa, and myself!

Elysa Dombro Biography

      My name is Elysa Dombro, and I have lived in San Jose, California all of my life. I have gardened food before, and usually do every year. At my house, we have a small garden where we grow a variety of plants, such as tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, various kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, and artichokes, to name a few. Our garden is very successful, and to this day my family is still using vegetables from our garden in meals. Although I'm not the main gardener in the family, I do help out, especially in summer when we are growing the most. Sometimes when my dad comes home from work, we go out and pick tomatoes and cucumbers. It's fun to snap off the stems and avoid the prickly parts. I also love going to the nursery at the start of the season to buy plants and seeds. It's like deciding what you're going to be eating all year. And it really is all year; recently, my mother has begun making pickles from our cucumbers, and the kitchen has smelled like vinegar since. I love helping out in the garden, but the real gardeners are my mom and dad. My mom knows a ton about plants because of what her father taught her. I think she's the one who started our garden in the first place. She's the kind of mom who, for her birthday, is thrilled to receive a fancy composter. I always look up to her Eco-friendly decisions. My dad is the one who's taken over the garden. He makes sure the plants are watered and are picked at the right time. I love helping out with him in the garden, and I'm super excited to do more gardening.

Marie Coates Biography

     My name is Marie Coates and I have lived in San Jose, CA my current entire lifespan. I have attempted gardening in my preteens, but I failed miserably every time. I have attempted growing a sunflower a few months ago just for the heck of it and now it is growing in my backyard. Actually, nevermind, I can’t find it. My mom probably moved it somewhere… I have quite a few family members that know how to make food from scratch, farm, and garden. They generally consist of my family members in Virginia, the Philippines, my parents, and my grandma. My family members in Virginia (and in the other various east coast states) and in the Philippines know quite a bit about farming, gardening, and making food from scratch. My parents and grandma know how to garden, but my dad has his dream on getting a ranch and farming, so I am pretty sure he has studied up on that subject. Another person I knew was my science teacher from 8th grade, Doc Chock (the man in the top right picture), who had a PhD in marine botany and a BA in Botany. He was one of the coolest teachers I ever had. He definitely knew tons about horticulture, gardening, and plants. Anyway, that’s me in a gardening perspective nutshell.

Teo Martinez Biography

     My name is Teo Martinez and I have lived in San Jose my whole life. I have some experience with gardening, for I volunteered at a summer camp to garden and work at farms. My grandfather, who I live with, has a garden in our backyard, and many of our fruits and vegetables come from our own garden. We grow many things like tomatoes, green beans and squash. We didn’t always have a garden, and we’d often go to the farmer’s market to get our foods. I don’t often participate in the actual gardening, sadly, but occasionally I help out in the garden. My grandfather, however, does most of the garden work, and has plenty of knowledge of the foods we grow.