Here's a sneak peek at the 2017 Kitchen Garden Tour

It’s only once a year that you get the opportunity to sneak into your neighbor’s backyard — without fear of getting in trouble, that is.
Dirt magazine’s fourth annual Kitchen Garden Tour returns Sunday,Aug. 13, giving ticket holders the opportunity to explore incredible kitchen gardens and learn from local green thumbs throughout Orange and Sussex counties.
This year’s troupe of gardeners is especially unique. There’s Ken, a veteran in Sparta, N.J., who has been tending and building his garden since he left the navy 40 years ago. He grows veggies: carrots, beets, cabbages, and more. Just last week, he picked a whopping 30 pounds of string beans from his own backyard.
Another sweet stop on the tour: Erin’s garden in Warwick. She is a pro when it comes to fruit farming; she produced 24 cans of jelly from a single grapevine last year. Her backyard is home to more than 50 blueberry plants, nine fruit trees and a bunch of hens that snack on garden scraps. Her six-year-old, Benton, knows the backyard like the back of his hand and loves giving tours.
Caravan over to Monroe and you’ll find Joely’s masterful backyard, where she’s harvesting honey, raising chickens, composting and growing countless fruits, vegetables, and herbs in a vertical garden and raised beds. She’s been doing it for years, and yet her work has just begun; she’s planning to build an aquaponic garden to raise fish and build a greenhouse this summer.
Sign up for this year’s Kitchen Garden Tour to meet these backyard food growers, learn their gardening secrets, and then spend the evening at Mohawk House in Sparta for a farm-fresh celebration complete with hors d’oeuvres, unlimited beer and wine, and live music.
To get tickets, learn more about the event or enter your garden, visit: www.kitchengardentours.com.