0:00

Treltseeker, and welcome to another exciting

0:02

episode of the Learn True Health

0:04

podcast. This one is fun and

0:07

light and informative and inspiring. I

0:10

really enjoyed this interview that I did,

0:12

and when we did it, it was

0:14

actually right at the end of fall.

0:17

And so I timed... publishing

0:19

this because we talked

0:22

about gardening zones and

0:24

when certain zones fall

0:26

into the appropriate time

0:29

to plant certain crops.

0:32

And so now's the time that

0:35

most of the United States, well,

0:37

there's a big cold snap happening like

0:39

next week, but because people will listen

0:41

to this a week from now, a

0:43

year from now, 10 years from now,

0:46

just know that you have surprisingly

0:49

a larger window for

0:52

gardening than you imagined

0:54

than you thought especially if you're

0:57

new to gardening I was quite

0:59

surprised that in my zone and

1:01

I live very close to the

1:03

Canadian border just north of Seattle

1:05

and I found out that in

1:08

the late fall I could grow

1:10

fresh greens fresh delicious salad greens

1:12

and right now in my area

1:14

I can plant the fresh salad

1:17

greens and kale and there's certain

1:19

even winter crops that you can

1:21

grow really interesting to get to

1:23

know your zone. Now

1:26

most people that are listening to

1:28

this probably don't garden but there's

1:30

something incredibly healthy

1:32

and beneficial to

1:34

starting even a small

1:36

garden. If you have

1:39

an apartment and you have

1:41

just a indoor space, we

1:43

talk about how you can

1:45

do some form of growing

1:47

food that increases those live

1:49

enzymes and those beautiful vitamins

1:52

in you. But

1:54

there's something emotional,

1:57

something spiritual to

2:00

gardening that increases our joy

2:02

and happiness. It's

2:04

proven. It's scientifically sound. If

2:07

you've had a garden, maybe you

2:10

have a yard and you have

2:12

some flowers or some bushes, you

2:15

can grow easily. For

2:17

example, potatoes. Potatoes are so easy to grow

2:19

that I accidentally grew a bunch of potatoes

2:21

once in my compost pile. It's just, it

2:23

was kind of hilarious. I was like, what

2:25

the heck? What the heck is this? And

2:27

it turned out, I like,

2:30

for free made 12 beautiful potatoes out of

2:32

like half a potato I'd thrown out six

2:34

months before. And I got

2:36

really excited and started growing potatoes. And

2:38

it's so easy to grow potatoes. You

2:41

just go to the store, get organic

2:43

potatoes, and then put them

2:45

in the ground, spread them out, don't throw

2:47

a bunch in the same area. And

2:50

one potato is going to make

2:52

12 to 15 more potatoes. And

2:56

it's so easy. It's so beautiful.

2:58

They grow beautiful flowers, and you

3:00

can even cook the greens or

3:02

edible. A lot of the foods

3:05

that you make, for example, you can take

3:07

garlic, a big head

3:09

of garlic, break it up into

3:11

the little cloves, and

3:13

pop them in the ground. This

3:16

is now the perfect time. Spring is the

3:18

perfect time to do that. Your bulbs should

3:20

go in the ground in fall or spring.

3:22

So right now is the perfect time. But

3:25

again, people might be listening to this in

3:27

the summer, in the winter, and really just

3:29

get in, dive in, pick an area. After

3:31

you listen to this episode, he gives some

3:34

great advice for exactly where in your yard.

3:36

If you do have a yard, where in

3:38

your yard you should pick. But if let's

3:40

say you don't have a big yard, you

3:42

can get a planter pot, grow something in

3:45

that planter pot. You can actually grow amazing

3:47

vegetables right there. in a

3:49

planter pot or some herbs

3:51

and just have that healthy

3:53

emotional experience of doing it.

3:56

And if you have kids, it's amazing.

3:59

When kids participate in growing food,

4:01

they will eat that food. They

4:04

have a much more strong connection

4:06

with that food and they want

4:08

to eat it. So it's a

4:11

very healthy experience. But in

4:13

this episode, you'll learn where to garden. And

4:16

where would be an optimal place to put your

4:18

garden if you have a yard, a front yard,

4:20

or a backyard? And

4:22

for those garlic, little garlic cloves

4:24

that you plant a few, you

4:26

know, weeks or months later, they

4:28

have these beautiful big green shoots.

4:31

You can trim those shoots and chop them

4:34

up and put them in a stir -fry.

4:36

It is so delicious. It's like cooking with

4:38

spinach, but it's garlicky. It's delicious. You could

4:40

do the same with chives and the onion

4:43

greens. So there's...

4:45

ways of growing that

4:47

become fun, delicious, nutritious,

4:50

but my, out

4:52

of all that, all those things

4:54

are good. And my most important

4:57

point is to get that emotional,

4:59

mental and spiritual healing that comes

5:01

from cultivating your food, that comes

5:03

from start to finish, you know,

5:06

farm to table experience in your

5:08

own yard or in your own

5:10

patio. or in your own

5:12

kitchen if you're growing sprouts or microgreens,

5:15

but that experience and your hands -on

5:17

experience, your hands -on being in the

5:19

soil and it doesn't take that much

5:21

work. If you haven't

5:23

done it before, I just highly recommend

5:25

checking out obviously all the information that

5:28

my guest shares today. He's got a

5:30

free weekly webinar. He invites you to

5:32

come hang out with him. They're not

5:34

charging you for it. They just want

5:36

to invite you and they share and

5:38

they teach their... They're really giving back

5:40

to the community and wanting to help,

5:42

especially people who maybe have had a

5:44

bad experience with gardening and they're like,

5:46

oh, everything I plant dies and they

5:49

want to help you. They want to

5:51

help you to overcome that. So they

5:53

have a wonderful free community of weekly

5:55

Zoom calls you can join. And

5:57

then I also highly recommend checking out

5:59

on YouTube. It's a free documentary and

6:02

it is so beautiful. It's

6:04

called Back to Eden Gardening

6:06

Documentary. And the man lives

6:09

not far from me, and I actually talked to

6:11

him for 90 minutes on the phone once. He's

6:14

incredible. He doesn't have any technology.

6:16

I wanted to do an interview with him,

6:18

and I'd have to go drive out to

6:20

swim. It's a ferry ride,

6:22

but it's not that far away. But

6:24

I'd have to go drive out and

6:26

bring a mic to him, basically, because

6:29

he has a landline. He doesn't even

6:31

have a cell phone. The whole documentary

6:33

is about how he created this amazing

6:36

garden that requires almost no weeding. almost

6:38

no maintenance at all and no watering.

6:41

And he shares the science behind it. And

6:43

so it's a beautiful documentary. And then in

6:46

the documentary, people around the

6:48

United States in different gardening zones

6:50

recreated his system and showed how

6:52

different ways of troubleshooting it. I

6:55

did it in our old house that we lived

6:57

in for seven years. And

6:59

we had a huge garden.

7:02

And it was amazing. It was such

7:04

a cool experience. And my son, who

7:06

was like a taller at the time,

7:08

walked right into the garden. The first

7:10

thing that had fruit on it was

7:12

the zucchini plant. And my

7:15

son had never seen anyone pick a zucchini plant.

7:17

And he walked right out and he

7:20

grabbed the zucchini. He twisted it off

7:22

the plant. He just intuitively knew

7:24

to twist it, pull it and immediately

7:26

started eating it. I was just like

7:29

standing there. I wish I had

7:31

recorded it. I just didn't know he was

7:33

going to do that. And he would just

7:35

sit there in the garden munching on the

7:37

food. And it was the coolest thing to

7:39

watch. Children love it. But

7:41

adults love it too. So I

7:43

know you're going to love today's

7:45

interview and share this with a

7:47

friend who would be benefited by

7:49

increasing their joy. There

7:51

is something that happens when we

7:54

garden. It increases our joy. It

7:56

actually helps with our microbial health

7:59

in our gut, eating freshly, literally

8:01

seconds before you pick it from

8:03

the garden and immediately eat it.

8:06

You are getting a tremendous amount

8:08

of healthy probiotics from the garden

8:10

that inoculate your gut in a

8:13

good way and bring diversity, microbial

8:15

diversity to your gut. I have

8:17

several interviews about this. You can

8:20

listen to, for example, the two

8:22

interviews I did with Sarah Casernhaus.

8:25

But if you type in probiotic,

8:27

for example, go to learntruehealth .com,

8:29

search probiotic. You're going to have

8:32

dozens of really cool interviews with

8:34

gut doctors, naturopaths, and experts on

8:36

gut health where we dive in

8:39

and talk about this phenomenon. We've

8:42

lost this as a society. We used

8:44

to do this, right? Think about your

8:46

grandparents or great -grandparents had access to

8:48

fresh... Food. Everyone had gardens. In World

8:51

War I, everyone had victory gardens. We

8:53

all had access to fresh food. You

8:55

don't have to eat 100 % of

8:57

your food from your garden, but just

8:59

inoculating your gut and having that experience

9:02

with something you grow with your own

9:04

hands in your own soil makes such

9:06

a huge difference on a physical, mental,

9:08

emotional, and spiritual level. So please share

9:10

this episode with a friend who you

9:13

know would appreciate this boost to their

9:15

mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. And

9:17

I want you to know that on

9:19

my website, I've, I don't know, if

9:21

you've been listening for a long time,

9:24

you may have noticed my website's been

9:26

over time evolving. We've been

9:28

investing a lot of time

9:30

and energy into evolving the

9:33

website, LearnSureHealth .com. And

9:35

at the very bottom, there's a

9:37

new banner and it's, I have

9:39

a brand new newsletter. So

9:41

you may have joined my newsletter in the past

9:43

and this is a brand new newsletter. A

9:46

lot of people who think they're

9:48

still on my newsletter are actually

9:50

not anymore because we had to

9:52

switch systems. Point being, come join

9:54

the newsletter. I have been spending

9:57

the last several weeks researching and

9:59

writing newsletters designed to support your

10:01

optimal health. And I know

10:03

you, my listener, is

10:05

listening because you want to achieve optimal health,

10:07

because you're sick of being sick or you

10:10

want to take your health to the next

10:12

level. So I've dug deep into these topics

10:14

of what it takes. One of the very

10:16

quick things that give you the biggest bang

10:18

for your buck, the activities or the foods

10:21

and the nutrition, that is going to elevate

10:23

your health to the next level, take your

10:25

health to the next level. And that's what's

10:27

coming out in my new newsletter. I won't

10:29

spam you. You're going to receive one to

10:32

maximum three emails a week, probably more like

10:34

one or two emails a week to get

10:36

on it. Go to LearnToHealth .com,

10:38

scroll to the bottom, you'll see a

10:41

banner. that says join the newsletter. And

10:43

I also give you some freebies, some really

10:45

cool videos. So check it out. Let

10:48

me know what you think. You can always reply to those

10:50

emails. If you reply, it goes straight to me. So

10:52

you can say, hey, Ashley, love

10:54

your podcast. Yeah, if you have any feedback

10:57

or questions, just let me know.

10:59

Enjoy today's episode. I know you will. Welcome

11:02

to the Learn True Help podcast.

11:05

I'm your host, Ashley James. This

11:08

is Episode 540. I'm

11:13

so excited for today's guest.

11:15

We have Troy Smotherman from

11:17

Start Organic. You can go

11:19

to his Instagram and Facebook

11:22

at Start Organic or his

11:24

website, startorganic .org. If

11:26

you've been a listener for a

11:28

while, you know I'm a big

11:30

fan of eating organic, but you

11:33

might not know that I absolutely

11:35

am obsessed with gardening and growing

11:37

my own food. And

11:39

even when you don't have space for

11:41

a garden, there's a lot of fun

11:43

things you could do inside your home.

11:45

I teach that in my workshop, the

11:47

Learn to Health Home Kitchen, where we

11:49

even grow our own sprouts in your

11:51

own. That's why I'm growing right now

11:54

downstairs. I'm growing sprouts. I'm eating living

11:56

food. I just love the idea of

11:58

eating living food. And Troy

12:00

has been doing for. what, 14 years

12:02

now or 14 years now teaching people

12:05

and also teaching businesses how to have

12:07

amazing gardens to support health, but it's

12:09

not just physical health. There's something emotional,

12:12

mental and spiritual about getting in the

12:14

dirt and being part of the process

12:16

of growing your own food. So I'm

12:19

really excited to talk about that today

12:21

with you, Troy. Welcome to the show.

12:24

Hey Ashley, thanks. Good to be here. Yeah,

12:26

absolutely. So, I

12:29

guess mutual, mutual contacts told us that

12:31

we should hook up and chat. So

12:33

this is fun to have you on

12:36

the show. When I saw what you

12:38

do at startorganic .org, I was pouring

12:40

through your website and you've got, you've

12:42

got some fun stuff for, for regular

12:44

folk who want to learn a free

12:47

starter course and you're going to be

12:49

launching more courses in the spring. Um,

12:52

but you also right now focus on

12:54

something really unique. And I was surprised

12:56

to see. that you have a B2B.

12:59

And I'm really curious to get into

13:01

that. But before we do, tell

13:04

us about Start Organic in the

13:06

last 14 years. What have you

13:08

guys been doing and how did

13:10

this come to be? And

13:13

also, I want to know the kind of

13:15

impact that your business has had on people's

13:17

lives and their health. Yeah,

13:20

absolutely. Thanks. So I

13:22

was raised in San Jose,

13:24

California. And for most

13:26

people out there, they don't know

13:28

that this area used to be

13:30

called the Valley of the Hearts

13:32

Delight. It was the agricultural capital

13:34

of California. It was full of

13:37

orchards. And then a

13:39

couple of guys in their backyard started making

13:41

computers in their garages. And

13:43

it became it became the Silicon

13:45

Valley kind of overnight, really big

13:47

transformation for the area. So.

13:50

You know, I was raised with the idea that you

13:53

could grow your own food. We had gardens and stuff

13:55

growing up. But really

13:57

this idea took shape with

13:59

my college friend. My

14:02

friend Josh Levine is co -founder of

14:04

Start Organic. We went to college together

14:06

at UC Santa Barbara. And

14:08

we really didn't become friends until we went and

14:10

studied abroad in Spain. And

14:13

we just really bonded over there.

14:15

We're soccer buddies. And

14:17

both of us came back into the real world

14:19

after graduating college. And we both

14:21

kind of had these ideas of just bigger

14:23

things and our own thing. And we always

14:26

wanted to start our own business. So

14:29

in the summer

14:31

of 2010, my

14:35

folks had a house in

14:37

Lake Tahoe. And we got

14:39

this opportunity. We got this really cool opportunity. It

14:41

was a foreclosure house. It needed a bunch of

14:43

work. And I said, I'll go

14:45

live there. And I'll bring my friend Josh.

14:48

And we're going to hash out ideas for

14:50

a business. So we went out there. And

14:52

we came up with this idea pretty quickly.

14:55

Another friend had kind of posed the idea,

14:57

hey, what happens if we start gardens in

14:59

people's backyards? And so we

15:01

thought through the idea. We started doing

15:03

all the background stuff, getting the LLC.

15:06

And we started our first round of

15:08

plants in the laundry room. We

15:11

were one of the only people,

15:13

probably the only people in that

15:15

area growing plants indoors that weren't

15:17

growing pot plants. So

15:20

we had all of our tomato starts

15:22

and some peppers and things. And

15:24

those plants became the first plants that

15:26

we planted at client's places back in

15:28

the Silicon Valley back in the San

15:30

Jose area. I had a lot of

15:32

connections there growing up there so we

15:34

thought that would be a perfect place

15:36

because it's really a big kind of

15:38

suburban sprawl. There's a lot of potential

15:40

houses to work with. I had some

15:42

connection through my mom's athletic club she

15:44

worked at so those were our first

15:46

rounds of clients just word of mouth.

15:48

Hey would you want a garden in

15:50

your backyard? So Josh

15:53

and I took my pickup truck.

15:55

And we started building gardens, and

15:57

then we developed a whole range

15:59

of services from those. And for

16:01

the first 10 years, from 2010

16:03

to 2020, we did

16:05

nothing but backyard vegetable gardens, one

16:07

client at a time, one family

16:09

at a time, picking the right

16:11

locations and getting people on the

16:13

path to growing their own food.

16:16

And then along that way, you know,

16:18

with the pandemic and some changes that

16:21

happened before then as well, we wanted

16:23

to branch out. So we really started

16:25

shifting towards being an educational company instead

16:27

of just a garden installation company. So

16:31

we, you know, we got online

16:33

and we started making online courses. And

16:35

then we found our first corporate. client.

16:39

We started working with eBay and that was

16:41

actually they just celebrated, they just celebrated 10

16:43

years. So there was a lot of overlap

16:45

there. So they just celebrated 10 years. The

16:47

program is now with PayPal. They

16:49

have a garden on their campus and we've

16:51

got a couple hundred people that come out

16:54

on a daily basis. They harvest their own

16:56

produce. They learn from us with our classes

16:58

and they take home everything they grow and

17:00

it really kind of changes the way that

17:03

they act at work. So

17:05

there's that's kind of the the abbreviated

17:07

story of the kind of origin story

17:10

of story again It's just two guys

17:12

in a house in Tahoe with a

17:14

grow room in the in the laundry

17:16

room. Oh My

17:18

gosh, so how many years have you been

17:20

helping eBay with their garden? So

17:22

pay eBay and PayPal eBay was

17:25

created as a the commerce and

17:27

trade and the PayPal was the

17:29

payment portal That was we started

17:31

with them ten is over ten

17:33

years Nice. Okay. So you were working

17:36

with them for over 10 years. I

17:38

know eBay and PayPal split, but they

17:40

originally started as one. My

17:42

husband and I, just a little side

17:45

story, we used to

17:47

live off of an eBay business. We

17:49

ran an eBay business and that was

17:51

our 100 % of our income. This

17:54

is ages ago, but we for three,

17:56

I think three and a half years

17:58

or close to four years, we where like

18:01

100 % of our income came from

18:03

from eBay and it was it was

18:05

a lot of fun. It was crazy.

18:07

It was wild. It was the wild

18:09

days before being a parent and before

18:11

like getting into holistic health stuff before

18:13

discovering it. But actually it was while

18:15

I was posting on eBay that I

18:17

listened to a podcast with The Nature

18:19

Path that had me go, oh my gosh,

18:21

this is what I need. This is

18:23

what I've been searching for and had

18:25

me do 180 degrees and and get

18:27

my health back and then and then

18:29

start this podcast. So it was

18:31

while we were doing the eBay business that it all kind

18:33

of took off for us. But I

18:36

love that, that imagining eBay workers

18:38

and PayPal workers like going out

18:40

there to their garden at work

18:42

and bringing home dinner, bringing home

18:45

fresh, organic, like

18:47

still living foods. You just pulled

18:49

it out of the ground as

18:51

a good, healthy gut bacteria attached

18:54

to that food because it was

18:56

freshly picked. and there's

18:58

no chemicals. That's

19:00

amazing. How long does

19:02

each person on average spend out

19:05

in the garden there at work?

19:08

You know, we aren't asking for a

19:10

lot of their time because it is,

19:12

I mean, it's a professional workplace. So

19:14

we ask that they come out there

19:16

just between five and 10 minutes twice

19:19

a week. That's really, and

19:21

that's, you know, for all the home listeners

19:23

that are wanting to get into gardening. if

19:25

you set up a garden properly you can

19:28

get away with just a few minutes like

19:30

twice a week maybe that third time a

19:32

week if you want to do more harvesting

19:34

but really we're asking them to come out

19:36

on a lunch break and just kind of

19:38

interact with the plants you know observe a

19:41

little bit see if there's you know new

19:43

pest problems happening or what's their next harvest

19:45

going to be or did the garden get

19:47

water is a big one You know, we

19:49

do automatic irrigation in all of our corporate

19:51

garden setups to make things a little easier

19:53

for people, but sometimes those systems malfunction or

19:56

there's some sort of work being done and

19:58

that system is turned off. So there are

20:00

eyes and ears there. We're kind of all

20:02

working together as this collective where we all

20:04

just want each other to be able to

20:06

harvest the best produce. So,

20:09

you know, if one person's having a problem in

20:11

the corner of the garden with a squirrel, They

20:13

let the whole group know, then more people are

20:15

coming out. They're like, oh, I'm going to take

20:17

this time slot to get out there and clap

20:19

and chase this squirrel out of here. You

20:21

know, and so we can we can make this

20:24

group effort. So yeah, really not a lot of

20:26

time, you know, five to 10 minutes, two

20:29

to three times a week is really all

20:31

you need to be a successful gardener. I

20:34

love it. I love it. What

20:37

other give a can you drive

20:39

any other examples of businesses that

20:41

you've helped? successfully set up a

20:44

wonderful garden for the employees. Yeah.

20:47

I mean, we have garden

20:49

installations into it. We've worked

20:51

with Apple. We

20:53

just started a new one at a company

20:56

called Zoara. These are Bay Area companies because

20:58

we happen to be close, but we have

21:00

actually done a bunch of work for companies

21:02

that are out in the Midwest, over on

21:04

the East Coast. In addition to

21:06

actually setting up physical gardens, we

21:08

do a lot of online kind

21:11

of virtual engagements. You know,

21:13

we'll do like one -off sessions where we do

21:15

like an Earth Day special and we'll teach people

21:17

how to start a garden from anywhere. These

21:19

are like via Zoom, right? So,

21:21

you know, we branched out and

21:23

really sprawled out and it's weird

21:25

because we're a gardening company. We're

21:28

deep rooted, right? But we're also

21:30

in the cloud. Which

21:33

is just this weird concept, right? It's like,

21:35

how can you actually get there and help

21:37

people grow their own food? It turns out

21:40

if you can give people the background, that

21:43

gardening 101 information that is so important

21:45

to setting up a successful garden, if

21:47

you're armed with that and then you

21:49

have someone kind of there to just

21:51

hold your hand or even just answer

21:53

questions on a regular basis, you'd be

21:55

surprised at how much success people have.

21:58

Right? We're so

22:01

disconnected in society from

22:03

our food. And

22:05

it's kind of odd to think about. There's

22:08

been times when our food

22:11

supply has been threatened. So

22:14

I think natural disasters or

22:16

even the early 2020 when

22:18

transportation was challenged or we've

22:20

had... Maybe truckers go on

22:22

strike or I don't know

22:24

some kind of like some

22:26

kind of transportation goes on

22:28

strike or something. It's just

22:30

and to think about I

22:32

Hold my kale and I

22:34

think about how many hands

22:36

had to touch this so

22:38

I think about the the

22:40

farmer I think about the

22:42

the person Cutting the kale

22:44

and putting it the wrapping

22:46

the band on it and

22:48

throwing it in the the

22:50

crate and then the distribution

22:52

This is like this middleman

22:55

between the farmer and the

22:57

grocery store sitting in a

22:59

warehouse somewhere and then getting

23:01

distributed to my grocery store

23:03

and then the employees at

23:05

the grocer, you know, handling

23:07

it and stocking the shelves.

23:09

And we're just very disconnected. And how

23:11

many days ago was that cut from

23:14

the ground, right? And then when I

23:16

grew my own kale, it was like,

23:18

you don't even have to, you could

23:20

just like lean down and start eating

23:22

like a deer. You know, you could

23:24

just start like nibbling on the plant

23:26

while it's still attached to the earth,

23:28

right? Like you don't even have to

23:30

pick it. And like how fresh can

23:32

you get with your own garden? And

23:36

it's that relationship we used

23:38

to have. And it's only

23:41

broken. in the last

23:43

like three generations. I

23:45

used to be super

23:48

into like canning and

23:50

preserving our food and

23:52

like studying it. This

23:55

was years ago, but I started,

23:57

you know, when I came across

23:59

like the victory gardens that we,

24:01

it was like, I think it

24:03

was like mandatory. It was like,

24:05

it was super encouraged. It was

24:07

really like frowned upon if you

24:09

didn't have a garden. in your

24:11

front yard or your backyard during

24:13

the war because so much of

24:16

the resources needed to go overseas.

24:18

It was called a victory garden

24:20

in that we were wanting victory

24:22

for our troops and so to

24:24

support our troops we would be

24:26

growing our own food at home

24:28

so we could be self -sustainable.

24:31

And where has that gone? Where

24:33

is that urge? Even the government

24:36

like encouraging us to be self

24:38

-sustainable. It's really

24:40

disappeared of what now we are

24:42

encouraged to be is completely reliant

24:44

and and and so being completely

24:47

reliant is the most vulnerable we

24:49

could ever be It is so

24:51

strange right because it's it's like

24:53

you just don't think about all

24:56

those moving parts until disaster strikes

24:58

and you're like right oh crap

25:02

The whole world had a oh

25:04

crap moment during the pandemic. So

25:08

I mean, going back to what you said

25:10

about food and the freshness of being picked, we

25:14

always have to have our finger on

25:16

the pulse of what's happening. We happened

25:18

across this Harvard study. This is a

25:20

number of years ago that said produce

25:22

that was picked up to 72 hours

25:25

ago has lost up to 50 %

25:27

of its nutritional value. And

25:29

that's massive when you're talking about the

25:31

difference between a you know freshly picked

25:34

item that you're going out there Harvesting

25:36

putting in your food that day eating

25:38

versus something that you're right. I mean

25:40

was picked Potentially longer than a week

25:42

ago had to go through many hands

25:44

even sometimes like some weird sterilization stuff

25:47

that you don't think of you know

25:49

You know some items are sprayed with

25:51

like an antifungal Even though

25:53

they're organic items they're arriving at your

25:55

grocery store and they're sprayed with something

25:57

that to make them not sprout for

25:59

example like potatoes They don't want them

26:01

to be sprouting in the stores and

26:03

they might spray something on them even

26:05

after the fact So you really I

26:07

mean there's really not a lot of

26:09

There's not a lot of truth there,

26:11

you know, you have so so taken

26:14

into your own hands is a big

26:16

deal Yeah, it's it is really something

26:18

that and then you mentioned the victory

26:20

gardens We actually

26:22

went through a kind of a few years

26:24

and again, when you have your own business

26:26

and you know if you're a self -made

26:28

business person, it seems like you are and

26:30

you've gone through the eBay days and stuff

26:33

too. You have to recreate yourself constantly. You've

26:35

got to be trying new things and seeing

26:37

which one works. We in

26:39

the 14 years that we've had, we've

26:41

gone through so many iterations of services

26:44

for Start Organic. One of the items

26:46

that we offered, one of the products

26:48

that we sold, you could say, was

26:50

a victory garden. It was

26:52

our lowest cost garden setup. It

26:55

was transforming any area of your

26:57

yard into a productive garden, just

26:59

adding soils, tilling, getting some water

27:01

to that area. And we were

27:03

talking unused side yards, small planter

27:05

areas and the front porch areas.

27:08

We called them victory gardens and

27:10

we charged a square foot amount.

27:13

So it was like... ever remember now,

27:15

so many years back, but it was

27:17

like, oh, I don't know, $5 a

27:19

square foot for us to add soil

27:21

amendments, till up that soil, and get

27:23

you some plants in there. Trying

27:27

to kind of, you know, recapture

27:29

that essence. But really, I mean, those

27:31

victory gardens, the reason they were, so

27:33

you could say popular, but they were

27:35

mandated, right? I mean, that was the

27:38

government's decision to say, hey, let's do

27:40

that. The government's done

27:42

a complete 180 since those days

27:44

and put a ton of money

27:46

into strange ways of farming. You

27:49

know, conventional farming is almost the,

27:51

you know, the norm now is

27:53

spraying something with pesticides or even

27:55

genetic modifications, stuff like that. I'm

27:59

a linguist. And so

28:01

like the Orwellian, you know, concept

28:03

of listen to language and how

28:06

manipulative it is to

28:08

just take the word

28:11

conventional and just to

28:13

accept it into the

28:15

norm is such a

28:18

blasphemy to nature because

28:20

the word conventional, think

28:23

about what the word

28:25

conventional means and what

28:28

they're actually doing is

28:30

poisoning, right? And

28:32

it's not conventional. It's

28:35

impressive. Conventional means it's the way we've

28:37

been doing it for a long time.

28:39

It's the gold standard. It's the way

28:41

it's always been. That's conventional. That's the

28:43

word means. But when they

28:45

say this is conventional, what's the opposite

28:48

of conventional? Organic. Organic

28:50

is how we've been growing our food

28:52

for 10 ,000 plus years or whatever.

28:56

Whenever we started taking seeds and going,

28:58

I'm going to plant this myself instead

29:00

of let nature do it. you

29:03

know, on purpose grow food and they say we started

29:05

doing that about 10 ,000 years ago. But, you know,

29:08

we didn't have, we don't have

29:10

any proof other than, you know,

29:12

theories, right? So I'm not, I'm

29:14

not going to get into like

29:16

whether it was 7 ,000 years

29:18

ago or 5 ,000 years ago,

29:20

but they say they think around

29:22

10 ,000 years ago we started

29:24

to farm and, and cultivate our

29:26

own food might have been 20

29:28

,000 years ago. Point being it's

29:30

only been in the last. three

29:32

generations that we've completely disconnected, like

29:34

fully disconnected from, from, from food.

29:36

And, and, and this concept of

29:38

conventional is less than a hundred

29:40

years old. And, and, and then,

29:43

and it makes you think just

29:45

like with going to a doctor,

29:47

Oh, well there's the MD and

29:49

that's conventional. And then there's the

29:51

alternative, right? So alternative is

29:53

like, well, that's sort of less than the

29:55

word alternative. So you have

29:57

to listen to the linguistics. because

29:59

actually that all those quote

30:02

-unquote alternative doctors were here

30:04

long before drug -based petroleum

30:07

drug -based allopathic medicine even

30:09

existed. So

30:11

the word conventional means

30:14

you are eating poison.

30:17

Yeah, that's an impressive shift,

30:20

right? I mean, that's the

30:22

power of money and the

30:25

power of propaganda. Yeah,

30:27

oh, absolutely. It's PR. It absolutely is PR.

30:30

But who doesn't like the

30:32

convenience of just like bloop,

30:34

bloop, bloop, kidding the buttons

30:36

on your phone and having

30:38

groceries delivered, right? Or

30:40

just go to the grocery store, pick up

30:42

a few things. Or

30:44

just go to a restaurant or

30:47

just get some takeout. And there's

30:49

even further disconnect from your food

30:51

when we do that. And there's

30:53

more hands that have to touch.

30:56

There's more cogs in the wheel,

30:59

and it complicates things more. So

31:01

when things break down, like a

31:03

natural disaster, an example being it

31:06

wasn't really a natural disaster, but

31:08

when I lived on the East

31:10

Coast around 20 years ago, Niagara

31:14

Falls, which powers most of

31:16

the East Coast and up

31:19

into Canada for electricity. shut

31:22

down for about a week or so, and

31:24

we didn't have power. I don't know if

31:26

you remember that, but we did not have

31:29

electricity, and luckily my

31:31

friends and I were super into camping,

31:33

so we had camping supplies, we had

31:35

a generator, we had canned food,

31:37

and we all just, all of our

31:40

friends came together, found each other,

31:42

and we all just huddled together for

31:44

a week, but those

31:46

kind of things can happen.

31:48

We can have an earthquake.

31:50

We can have giant hurricanes.

31:53

We've seen it. But there's

31:55

so many ways our food supply

31:57

can be harmed. What if there

32:00

was, God forbid, right now we're

32:02

actually coming into, not to be

32:04

a fear monger, but we're coming

32:06

into a heat, a more intense

32:09

cycle for the sun. There's

32:11

solar cycles. We're coming into a very

32:14

hot solar cycle. And so we're gonna

32:16

see more and more activity

32:20

coming from the sun and

32:22

if it hits the earth

32:24

just right, it can blow

32:26

out the electrical grid. It

32:29

can disrupt, it's like an EMP almost,

32:31

it can disrupt electronics. So

32:33

imagine if we get hit with a

32:36

solar flare in one region and maybe

32:38

it's not even your region, but that

32:40

region is what's between the farmer and...

32:42

the food comes from or something, right?

32:45

So there's so many ways that

32:47

we could have our food chain

32:49

disrupted. And that's why I think

32:51

knowing how to just even have

32:53

the knowledge to grow food and

32:55

even especially having a garden is

32:57

so important. Even if you're just

32:59

growing potatoes, for example, potatoes are

33:01

so easy to grow. I accidentally

33:03

grew potatoes in my compost pile.

33:06

Like I'm like, what is growing out of

33:09

my compost pile? I was like, it was

33:11

like some half rotten potato I'd thrown out

33:13

the year before. And it was like all

33:15

a sudden made 24 more potatoes in my

33:17

compost pile. And so you can accidentally grow

33:19

potatoes. They're so great. And they're a really,

33:22

really good source of energy, just thinking from

33:24

the survival standpoint. Um,

33:26

and then, and then there's that, like I

33:29

talked about emotional, mental and spiritual aspect of

33:31

just getting in the dirt. It's like earthing

33:33

or grounding. And, um, There's

33:35

maybe you want to talk about about

33:37

this, but there's something that happens when

33:40

we inhale the scent of Plants they

33:42

they've seen this it's called forest bathing,

33:44

but in Japan they're really into it

33:46

They actually doctors will prescribe it because

33:49

something happens when we inhale the Particles

33:51

I don't want to say like pollen,

33:53

but like because some people go I

33:56

don't want to inhale pollen, but like

33:58

the the scent of plants the

34:01

nervous system and decreases stress I

34:05

mean, what I can't speak to, and it sounds like you

34:07

said you're an avid gardener. You had grown some of your

34:09

own food, too. That's always a question that I like to

34:11

ask is, you know, what's your experience with growing food? There

34:14

really is this indescribable feeling of

34:16

planting something, caring for it, and

34:18

then being there for the harvest,

34:20

getting it and then eating it.

34:23

It's this like, it's

34:25

indescribable, true connection to nature that I

34:27

just... That's the reason that we're still

34:29

at this, you know, with a small

34:31

business is there's big ups and big

34:33

downs, you know, as my partner and

34:35

my friend Josh and man, we've been

34:37

there for each other in some big

34:39

ups and big downs. But really what

34:42

gets us is we're still avid gardeners

34:44

ourselves. You know, I went out to

34:46

my garden today, check on things. I

34:48

have new rounds of things coming because

34:50

we're having kind of a very warm

34:52

late summer. So I'm like, oh, wow,

34:54

you know, my, my, uh,

34:56

my delay of changing my season

34:58

over, which I could have totally

35:00

planted my winter crops already. But

35:03

because I got lazy and I

35:05

just decided to wait, I've got

35:07

a whole new big round of

35:09

sprouts coming out, you

35:11

know, more, more zucchini, more squash, more

35:13

cucumber, peppers. And

35:16

that feeling and seeing, especially for

35:18

us, you know, this is why

35:20

we're still doing this, seeing people's

35:22

first reaction to getting to kind

35:25

of have like a small journey with

35:27

them. And the shortest journey you can

35:29

do is like a radish. If

35:31

someone's never grown any food before, you could

35:34

plant a radish seed in the ground in

35:36

the middle of summer or early summer, springtime,

35:39

and it's 30 days. You

35:41

can plant a radish seed and 30 days

35:43

later, you can get that full -size radish

35:46

to pull, cut up, and eat inside of

35:48

a salad or however you want to do

35:50

it. But you, like, that's a short journey,

35:53

right? And so we I mean,

35:55

normally we do, you know, obviously

35:57

a bit wider range. Not everybody

35:59

likes radishes, but things like tomatoes.

36:01

Tomatoes a little bit longer journey,

36:03

more like a hundred days, you

36:06

know, at least at least

36:08

that three month period, even for

36:10

things like early girls and stuff.

36:13

So seeing people who have, they

36:15

have labeled themselves a brown thumb,

36:18

right? They had one

36:21

bad experience. and

36:23

they probably just had had something along

36:25

the way of how they set up

36:28

the garden or their crop selection or

36:30

the way that they were watering or

36:32

something in that fundamental understanding was was

36:34

tweaked was off just a little bit

36:36

and they go well I'm a brown

36:39

thumb I'm never doing this again and

36:41

so it was really important to us

36:43

is to make sure that people have

36:45

a success their first time, even if

36:47

that's just a radish or just an

36:50

indoor basil plant, whatever it is to

36:52

make sure that you are successful that

36:54

first time. So you have something to

36:56

build on. So you have this positive

36:58

reinforcement. You did it. I did it.

37:01

You get this like, it's

37:03

more than just accomplishment because it's

37:05

accomplishment with this natural connection that

37:08

like that's why I say it's

37:10

indescribable. It's this it's this word

37:12

that no one's made up yet.

37:14

That means you know what it

37:17

is. Yeah, what would you got?

37:19

It's pure dopamine, baby. I

37:21

just I get a pure dopamine hit

37:24

I'm like I'm like ADHD like just

37:26

high off of gardening. It's a huge.

37:28

It's a huge I don't know whether

37:31

it's serotonin or dopamine or like in

37:33

whatever kind of endorphins you're getting but

37:35

there's some neurotransmitter you get you get

37:38

filled with like tingly happy sensation and

37:40

it definitely becomes like a good addiction

37:44

there's it's it's a it's a lot like

37:46

parenting or maybe if you don't have kids

37:48

like taking like raising a puppy and then

37:51

training it and then been like there's times

37:53

when there's frustration and then you go online

37:55

and you learn stuff and then you implement

37:58

that and then you see the puppy like.

38:00

taking on the training and then you're

38:02

like, oh, wow. And then you get

38:04

proud of both the puppy and yourself

38:07

for accomplishing and working through those challenges

38:09

together. And it's like a relationship you

38:11

have with your garden. I talk to

38:13

my plants. And

38:16

there's been so many studies about

38:18

how plants listen. Oh, really good

38:20

book. You probably know this one.

38:23

I love the audiobook version of this,

38:25

because I like listening to it on

38:27

walks is the secret life of plants.

38:30

Hmm. Yes, I have. Yeah, that

38:33

is, it's a really good book

38:35

and there's a lot of scientific

38:37

studies showing that plants perceive you,

38:39

that they actually, they

38:42

know you're talking to them, they perceive

38:44

you, they even get excited like when

38:46

you're with them, if you're the person

38:48

that comes and hangs out and they

38:51

can, plants can differentiate between people. There's

38:53

something, there's something cool to build that

38:55

relationship with your garden. And I'm all

38:58

about the health aspect, so I'm seeing

39:00

the mental health. Scientifically, too. I

39:02

mean, the interconnecting, if you're talking

39:05

like fungi, right?

39:07

I mean, it's tangible that connectivity.

39:10

I mean, one, mycelium network

39:12

is literally connecting plants

39:14

to other plants and

39:17

sometimes into other sources

39:19

of nutritional abundance, right?

39:22

These... entire forest up kind

39:24

of not far from where

39:26

you are supposedly in not

39:28

that long ago they discovered

39:30

the world's largest living organism

39:33

which is a fungal mass

39:35

underneath a forest in Washington.

39:38

Love it. They're saying that there

39:40

is an indistinguishable genetic material from

39:42

the forest or this fungal thing,

39:44

connecting all of the trees underneath

39:47

the forest. So all of that

39:49

is literally one organism and they've,

39:51

they had to upgrade that from

39:53

like the whale, right? They're saying

39:55

that this, this living organism is

39:58

the largest living thing on earth

40:00

because it's, it's connecting an entire

40:02

forest floor. That

40:05

is so cool. Yeah. I

40:07

love, I love getting into

40:09

studying fungi and how they, they

40:11

do. Like you said, they will

40:13

actually deliver nutrients. From

40:16

one area to another that they

40:18

they they are the go -between

40:20

for plants And they talk to

40:22

each other that then they have

40:24

this wonderful relationship with plants. It's

40:27

so cool It's just and then

40:29

and then to talk about the

40:31

microbiome of the soil That's another

40:33

thing is that this our garden

40:35

represents our gut health and we

40:37

have about three three to four

40:39

pounds of bacteria kicking around in

40:41

our gut. It could be good

40:44

bacteria. It could be bacteria we

40:46

don't want. It depends on how

40:48

we eat. And

40:50

that is a direct reflection of

40:52

the food we eat and the

40:54

health of the garden. And then

40:56

in the soil, there's healthy bacteria.

40:58

And they have a relationship with

41:00

the garden. Do you ever get

41:02

into the science of the microbiome

41:04

of the garden? Yeah, nerd out,

41:06

pretty good. I've

41:09

taken myself, I've dived into some

41:11

higher learning. There's

41:13

a Dr. Elaine Ingham has

41:15

these soil biology, they're basically

41:17

soil biology courses, but it's

41:19

about, because that's

41:21

probably the most misunderstood part

41:23

of organic gardening is how

41:25

to build healthy soil. People

41:28

just kind of go, yep,

41:30

I threw some chicken manure down, or

41:32

I turned the soil up and But

41:35

the reality is you're growing bacteria.

41:38

If you can grow bacteria and

41:41

fungi, you want to grow fungi

41:43

in your soil as well. If

41:45

you have the right ratios of

41:47

those living organisms and you have

41:49

a diverse variety of bacteria in

41:51

your soil, it will produce excellent

41:53

food. And not only that, your

41:55

plants will have this natural immunity

41:58

to pathogens, diseases, because they're pulling

42:00

from this diverse, really rich bed

42:02

of nutrition. And so

42:04

yeah, I, you know, I've gotten

42:06

as far as like looking into

42:09

microscopes, counting bacteria in soil samples

42:11

and stuff, just, you know, because

42:13

I, at one point, and again,

42:15

small business thinking about branching out,

42:18

we were talking about potentially offering

42:20

compost tea. Compost

42:22

tea is just, it's.

42:24

water with compost in it

42:27

that's agitated and you feed

42:29

the microorganisms and after 72

42:31

hours, they've duplicated so much

42:33

that you have this trillions

42:36

of organism water. It's like

42:38

brown water, not for human

42:40

consumption. You know, don't drink

42:42

compost tea. But if you water it

42:45

onto your plants, they have the ability

42:47

to unlock nutrients that were already in

42:49

the soil. So instead of having to

42:51

add more soil or... fertilizer or anything

42:54

else, you can essentially boost your plant's

42:56

immunity by watering on this tea. And

42:59

it's really easy to do at home with

43:01

a compost tea brewer. So, man, that was

43:03

one point. I almost went out and bought

43:05

this, you know... truck with a 500 gallon

43:07

compost tea brewer attached to it with a

43:09

hose you could go deliver this out into

43:11

farms and and right at the time I

43:13

almost did it but right at the time

43:16

California passed all these diesel laws outlining some

43:18

vehicles and stuff so it just kind of

43:20

squashed the idea because the vehicle was no

43:22

longer going to be road worthy so it

43:24

was like okay maybe I'll skip that and

43:26

that kind of you know, petered out and

43:28

you know, so we're, I mean, we're doing

43:30

what we're doing and really happy doing it,

43:32

but that was one of the offshoots we

43:35

were thinking about doing at one point. Oh

43:37

my gosh. You talk about,

43:40

you've mentioned tilling a few times

43:42

and I'm curious because a lot

43:44

of gardeners I know are really

43:46

anti -tilling. They're more

43:48

into biodynamic, that concept of you don't

43:50

disrupt the microbiome by tilling. What are

43:52

your thoughts on that? I

43:55

think, and I always run our

43:57

I run everybody through this very like simple

43:59

test. If you go out into your garden

44:01

and you can't dig in your garden with

44:03

your bare hand or just with a glove

44:06

on, if you can't dig past your knuckles

44:08

or get down to your wrist with digging

44:10

with your bare hand, you do need to

44:12

soften that soil up. Roots

44:15

need soft enough soil to

44:17

grow wide enough to pick

44:19

up more nutrition. So

44:22

if that soil is rock

44:24

hard, you're not going to

44:26

get there. by planting a seed. You're

44:29

going to have this tiny little root ball that just

44:31

had nowhere to go. It's like sitting in a clay

44:33

pot. So there's

44:36

the simple test. If you can dig in

44:38

your soil with your bare hand to your

44:40

wrist, then don't bother tilling your soil. You're

44:42

fine. There's other ways

44:44

to soften soil. If

44:46

you have a really hard patch and you

44:49

don't want to go digging as much, you

44:51

can put you know six inches of mulch

44:53

on top of it and wait a year

44:55

and that mulch will start to degrade at

44:58

that bottom level it will soften up you'll

45:00

have or maybe cardboard on top of the

45:02

soil then mulch and now you'll start to

45:04

see earthworms come up and they'll make the

45:07

soil softer for you but that does take

45:09

a long time if you want to grow

45:11

this season right it's September you're going into

45:13

winter season you want to plant your winter

45:16

crops in the next few weeks You should

45:18

probably turn that soil up and maybe add

45:20

some nutritional, you know, just

45:22

add some organic compost and organic compost to

45:25

chicken manure to it. Got it. Yeah.

45:27

When I started my garden, it's, um,

45:29

I got really lofty goals. It was

45:32

a hundred feet by 50 feet. And

45:34

my husband begged me to just do 50 feet

45:37

by 25 feet. I'm like, Oh, we have the

45:39

space for doing it. And, um, I

45:41

had just watched the free documentary on

45:43

YouTube called back to eating gardening. And

45:46

that is a man local to us who

45:48

started his garden, I think like 30 years

45:50

ago. And now he hasn't been to a

45:53

grocery store in over 12 years. He

45:55

just eats off of his land and

45:57

I think I saw that one too.

46:00

Yeah, it's awesome. So he, he recommends

46:02

getting free wood chips from Arborists and

46:04

then mixing it with either cow or

46:06

horse manure, like whatever you can get

46:08

access to for free. You got to

46:10

kind of, depending on your area, you

46:12

kind of go, got to go around

46:14

and see if you can find someone

46:17

who has. Manure they want to give

46:19

you and then you mix it like

46:21

a like a one -to -one race

46:23

You kind of mix it and you

46:25

throw it on top of newspaper like

46:27

so you put the newspaper or cardboard

46:29

on top of the grass And then

46:32

you do like eight or more inches

46:34

of that and then for his first

46:36

year Because anything decomposing really quickly like

46:38

the mulch would be it would suck

46:40

nitrogen out of this So you have

46:42

to replace the nitrogen so organic blood

46:44

meal which really was great because it

46:46

smells like death and because it is

46:49

just it is death. And but it's

46:51

pure nitrogen. And what's great about blood

46:53

meal is that it scares off the

46:55

animals because they think that there's like,

46:57

I don't know, a predator feasting on

46:59

death, right? And that that made all

47:01

of the deer and the bunnies and

47:04

everything not come near my garden for

47:06

the first two years. And it was

47:08

wonderful. Yeah. And then I stopped

47:10

using blood milk because I didn't need to. And

47:12

that's when I lost my garden. We didn't have

47:14

a, we didn't have a fence. Uh,

47:18

and the, the, yeah. We always

47:20

say, we always say first, first

47:22

year's free because they don't know

47:24

it's there yet. Yeah. Yeah. The

47:26

animals, uh, they're on, they have

47:29

a pattern. They do the same.

47:31

If you track your animals going

47:33

around, they do almost the exact

47:35

same things every single day. So

47:37

that's another reason why pattern disruption

47:40

is so important. Why establishing a

47:42

human presence in the garden is

47:44

so important. When I

47:46

tell at our corporate gardens, I say, we

47:48

are all in this together. I don't want

47:50

all of you here for five minutes. I

47:52

want you here for five minutes, and then

47:55

you here for five minutes, and then you

47:57

here for five minutes, and if anything comes,

47:59

you're disrupting that pattern. could be the first

48:01

person that that squirrel runs into, and if

48:03

you're sort of mean, if you charge it

48:05

and clap or whatever, that squirrel's gonna be

48:07

like, maybe I should go the other way

48:10

next time, you know? And

48:12

that pattern's disrupted. So hey,

48:14

you know, but you got your two years. Your

48:17

first year, usually first year is free, you

48:19

got two. Okay, so you must be a

48:21

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TakeYourSupplements .com. a

49:14

place to garden so I've got

49:16

this tiny little porch that I

49:18

have some potted plants and you

49:20

know growing some fun stuff in

49:22

there like kale and potatoes and

49:24

then I've got my sprouts inside

49:26

so I'm still I'm still doing

49:28

something but I long I yearn

49:30

for the day that I get

49:32

my giant garden back again but

49:34

with fun fun things that happen

49:36

to the garden like potatoes or

49:38

sorry tomatoes um I didn't plant

49:40

seeds after year two and in

49:42

year three uh how good quarter

49:44

of my garden was potato tomatoes.

49:47

Tomato plants had seeded from the

49:49

previous year and it just boom

49:51

volunteers yeah oh yeah it was

49:53

amazing it was so cool and

49:55

what's cool about that the more

49:57

you do that the more the

49:59

seeds are acclimated to your climate

50:01

and so it's like the best

50:03

thing you can do is get

50:05

seeds from a fellow gardener in

50:07

your region so that they're They're

50:09

acclimated, right? Have you seen that?

50:11

That there's a difference between if

50:13

you got seeds from Tennessee and

50:15

you tried to plant them in

50:17

California versus seeds that plant for

50:19

generations had been in California, is

50:21

there much of a difference that

50:23

you notice? It's all

50:25

about growing zone, really, when you're

50:27

talking about seeds. I looked up

50:29

your... zip code, right, or whatever

50:31

I could find public information. I

50:33

was like, okay, she's up in

50:35

Washington. All right. So you're actually

50:38

really lucky. You're in, you're in

50:40

zone eight. I'm in

50:42

zone eight, eight A or

50:44

B. So even though we're

50:46

far apart, they're in also

50:48

if you look over on the east

50:50

coast, you know, South Carolina is going

50:53

to be in the similar north and

50:55

South Carolina are going to be really

50:57

close. So it's really all about you're

50:59

picking these seeds based on there's a

51:01

USDA growing zone. map. It's a hardiness

51:04

zone. So anyone who wants

51:06

to know, and this is a really

51:08

good step for any first time gardener,

51:10

go online and you just type in

51:12

USDA hardiness zone and then type in

51:14

your zip code. And it

51:16

will spit a number out. That number is going

51:18

to be between, I mean, if

51:20

you're in the US, it's going to be somewhere

51:22

between four and 11. Okay,

51:25

and that tells you what seeds to be

51:27

buying if you're going to start your own

51:29

seeds, which is already I don't

51:31

know, when I talk to a lot

51:34

of beginner gardeners, I think starting things

51:36

directly from seed is a second level

51:38

gardeners move. I typically say, let's get

51:40

your garden prepared really well, get the

51:42

soils prepared well. Let's get you some

51:45

starter plants your first year. Some nursery

51:47

starts. Let that nursery grow them from

51:49

seed until they're six weeks or two

51:51

months old. Then you buy those for

51:53

really cheap and you bring them home

51:56

and you plant those just to make

51:58

sure you're successful that first time. But

52:01

it really has to do with your zone.

52:03

So you and I actually are in really

52:05

similar zones. I was surprised to see that

52:07

because I saw the Washington Zipco and I

52:09

was like, there's no way she's going to

52:11

be above, you know, six and a half,

52:13

six B maybe, but you get some, you

52:15

get some warmth. And what it really means

52:17

is you don't get snow. You

52:20

don't really get like snow. Not, you

52:22

might get a frost or a couple

52:24

of frosts through your winter, but you're

52:26

not getting standing snow, which means. Ashley

52:28

James you can grow a winter garden

52:30

out there and your kale. I mean

52:32

your kale is gonna last year -round

52:34

Mm -hmm, you know, so it's it's

52:36

true. Yeah, this area is wonderful Don't

52:38

don't tell anyone there's almost no mosquitoes.

52:40

I get like maybe three mosquito bites

52:43

a year It's the snow is super

52:45

pretty here because it just like falls

52:47

and then it's like gone by the

52:49

next day Every like maybe five years

52:51

we might have like two inches of

52:53

snow that lasts for like a day

52:55

or two, but that's it. The

52:57

ground doesn't freeze here, and

53:00

it is so beautiful. It

53:03

is more sunny than it is rainy. I

53:05

know everyone thinks Seattle is rainy. It

53:07

is so beautiful here, and the air is so

53:10

clean here, and I love it. It's always green,

53:12

it's evergreen state, right? And

53:14

it's wonderful for gardening, but no

53:17

matter where you are, there's

53:19

ways to grow a garden,

53:21

right? There's

53:23

challenges, of course, but there's

53:26

always a way around it.

53:28

Absolutely. To be able

53:31

to grow your own food. And

53:33

I just really believe in that

53:35

emotional healing aspect of growing your

53:37

own food. Also, kids love it.

53:40

My son, when he was a toddler, would run out

53:42

into the garden. I didn't even teach him how to

53:44

do this. And it was our very first zucchini. And

53:47

I was with him. He ran

53:50

out. He grabbed the zucchini. He

53:52

twisted it. He pulled it and

53:54

he took a bite and I'm

53:56

like, like that is in his

53:58

genetics. He knew how to harvest

54:00

food. I didn't have to teach

54:02

him. And I thought that was super cool.

54:04

And then he actually knew it was edible

54:07

and he just started eating it. He loves,

54:09

he would sit there. I grew, I grew

54:11

him beans, like different kinds of beans, like

54:13

snap peas and beans. And he

54:15

sat there. I should go see if I can

54:18

find a picture of him. Cause I have it

54:20

somewhere of him just sitting there, just picking them.

54:22

and eating them, picking them, eating them, picking them,

54:24

eating them. And kids love

54:26

it. They absolutely love being part of that

54:29

process. He would run around, catch bugs, and

54:32

he just wanted to be with

54:34

me in that environment. Get

54:39

off the screens and grow your food, right?

54:41

That's a big win for parents. A lot

54:43

of parents are like, I can't get my

54:45

kids to eat anything. Broccoli,

54:47

yeah, right. But man, if

54:49

you're growing it, it tastes completely different.

54:51

Broccoli is my favorite thing to grow.

54:54

And you get the kids out there, oh, we're going

54:56

to cut this little tree right here. And we're going

54:58

to eat this part. And you can eat it right

55:00

here right now. We don't have to take it inside

55:02

or anything. And you

55:04

can eat the leaves, too, right? Yeah,

55:06

that's why broccoli is my fave is

55:09

you can literally the like all the

55:11

way down where I'm talking I eat

55:13

the leaves in between eating florets of

55:15

broccoli pieces you get that big head

55:17

feeling to that like big harvest first

55:19

you get florets until the end of

55:21

the season you're eating the leaves you

55:23

can then take the stock cut the

55:25

stock off boil it down and make

55:27

a broth out of the stock so

55:29

like the entire plant is edible That's

55:33

something it would be wonderful because I

55:35

know that you're doing more at online

55:37

education for growing and I I do

55:39

online education for like teaching people how

55:42

to cook whole foods like whole plant

55:44

plant -based whole foods It'd be wonderful

55:46

to like to combine that to like

55:49

here from garden to table like okay,

55:51

you've got this stock Like the stock

55:53

of the like you don't to waste

55:55

it right like let's go. Let's go

55:58

make that broth I'll

56:00

peel the skin off of the

56:02

stalks and get the nice insides,

56:05

chop them up, put them into

56:07

stir fries, because they're delicious too.

56:09

I even just slice them really

56:11

thin, the stalks, even just toward

56:13

the top, not the bottom, the

56:15

bottom gets really woody. But

56:18

the tops, even right after you cut your

56:20

broccoli, no matter deciding how low to cut

56:22

it down, but you can slice that stalk

56:24

really thin and they're like chips. They're

56:27

like the perfect crunch. For

56:29

just rotten eat them raw. Oh my

56:31

gosh, you're giving me an idea. I

56:34

love it. That's great Tell

56:36

us a few more recipes from

56:38

the garden Well, my favorite one

56:40

for because in the summertime zucchini

56:42

is the one that just goes

56:44

nuts, right? So because you can

56:46

eat there's a national leave a

56:48

zucchini on your neighbor's porch date.

56:50

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Every single person

56:52

that came to visit, they would

56:54

leave with a bag of zucchini.

56:56

And then my garden got so

56:59

crazy that I started feeding my

57:01

zucchini to the local food bank.

57:03

I would just bring boxes of

57:05

zucchini to the local food bank.

57:07

And I did summer squash too.

57:09

I did like a mixture. That

57:12

felt really good, you know, like here have my

57:14

produce. Yeah. And

57:16

that's like another level. of

57:19

that dopamine you were talking about. Yes,

57:22

exactly. you find that you're not

57:24

only successful, that you didn't just grow

57:26

food for yourself and feed yourself or

57:28

your family, you have this abundance that

57:31

you can now share out. And

57:33

it's just a whole other level

57:35

of feel -goodness, right? Right.

57:39

So those zucchinis, one, inevitably,

57:41

you're going to miss one. And one of them

57:43

is going to be like the size of a

57:46

baby. Yes, hey my

57:48

favorite a monster, right? And most people

57:50

are like, I don't know what to

57:52

do with this So we just chop

57:54

them in half long ways so you

57:57

can split it long ways Scoop out

57:59

the the stuff in the middle scoop

58:01

out all the seeds put some olive

58:03

oil on there bake it and while

58:06

you're baking it make any kind of

58:08

stir -fry with anything else that could

58:10

be a meat stir -fry or anything

58:12

else make that on the side get

58:15

it all ready almost like tells ready

58:17

to eat maybe like take it off

58:19

two three minutes before you would have

58:21

to serve it scoop that into the

58:24

middle of that half baked zucchini and

58:26

bake it again with cheese on top

58:28

and then you can serve you can

58:30

serve like 10 people because like monster

58:33

zucchini slices with this stir -fry in

58:35

the middle I love that so this

58:37

is like 30 years ago I was

58:39

introduced I was in Mexico and mutual

58:43

friend or like you know friend of the

58:45

family she was we were hanging out and

58:47

she was like let's go make zucchini boats

58:49

and I'm like what yep and she did

58:51

it was with regular zucchini sizes though and

58:54

then and she would scoop out the seeds

58:56

and put in mozzarella. Insane

58:59

I mean I'm not I'm not I'm

59:01

not a dairy person anymore, but I

59:03

still like it stuck with me I

59:06

still remember it 30 years later. I

59:08

could still taste it. It was amazing

59:10

What I like to do with the

59:13

the the giant zucchinis that take over

59:15

the garden With the shell being like

59:17

too hard really I will cut them

59:20

so not long ways like you had

59:22

mentioned like the boat zucchini boat I

59:24

will cut them so they're rounds like

59:27

to an inch and a half, two

59:29

inches, and I will bake them on

59:31

parchment paper with some steak seasoning, so

59:34

like Montreal steak spice, and

59:36

we will eat them, so

59:38

my husband, he's vegan,

59:40

I'm whole food plant based, but he's vegan,

59:43

and so he says it was like eating

59:45

steak, right? It was

59:47

just like steak, it had that meatiness

59:49

to it, that richness. Perfect

59:52

texture. Vegan

59:54

steak it was so good There's so

59:57

many things you can use you know

59:59

like it's just it's kind of it's

1:00:01

just you know getting those basics down

1:00:03

so that you You don't label yourself

1:00:05

a brown thumb That's that's the biggest

1:00:07

part is is just overcoming that first

1:00:09

little hurdle and I just wish I

1:00:12

could like take everyone out there who

1:00:14

like Has this idea that they're a

1:00:16

brown thumb and I could just be

1:00:18

like no just like come to our

1:00:20

free happy hours and I'll show you

1:00:22

how to do it. Like I want

1:00:24

you to have that experience. Let's

1:00:27

talk about that. How do

1:00:29

people attend your free Zoom

1:00:32

calls? So

1:00:34

yeah, on this last year. we decided to

1:00:36

do kind of a give back and also

1:00:39

just see what kind of people we can

1:00:41

interact with because most of our services now

1:00:43

are our four big businesses, right? These are

1:00:45

these are companies that want to give their

1:00:48

employees a chance to grow food. So for

1:00:50

the individual, we started out as an individual

1:00:52

company, one garden at a time. I literally

1:00:55

went to 10 ,000 people's houses. We built

1:00:57

thousands of gardens, got families on track to

1:00:59

growing food. And I kind of miss that

1:01:01

experience of that like one on one, you

1:01:04

know, Oh, you know, the

1:01:06

James family just grew this epic zucchini

1:01:08

and they're making zucchini boats. You

1:01:11

know, this like really cool individual feel.

1:01:14

So now this year, we started

1:01:16

playing around with doing just a

1:01:18

Zoom call once a week. It's

1:01:20

4 p .m. Easter Pacific time

1:01:22

on Zoom. If you want

1:01:25

the information, you got to join our newsletter.

1:01:27

So you got to go to startorganic .org

1:01:29

and join our newsletter. And we send out

1:01:31

the invites to everyone on the newsletter. You

1:01:33

come in there. We have a topic every

1:01:35

week. We call it business time.

1:01:37

where we will time as in like the

1:01:39

plant time we you have to get it's

1:01:41

a we we really strip it down and

1:01:43

make a lot of fun out of it

1:01:45

usually we have a drink of some kind

1:01:47

we have a short topic that we present

1:01:50

and the rest is just Q &A and

1:01:52

story time from anyone who attends and this

1:01:54

is just our way of seeing what is

1:01:56

happening also letting people know like hey we

1:01:58

just passed the fall equinox you should be

1:02:00

doing this in your garden this is something

1:02:02

to look out for in the next couple

1:02:04

of weeks depending on what growing zones you're

1:02:06

in Until

1:02:09

next spring, we don't have an offering.

1:02:11

We're not going to have our online

1:02:14

courses available for individuals. So we decided

1:02:16

we still want that individual interaction. So

1:02:18

we're doing it for free. So

1:02:20

for the rest of this season, throughout

1:02:23

the whole winter time, we'll be talking

1:02:25

about broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage, kale,

1:02:27

salad greens, how to

1:02:29

prep your garden between the seasons. We're going

1:02:31

to do another one tomorrow. We'll

1:02:34

be going every Wednesday just about, and

1:02:36

you'll see the invites on our newsletter

1:02:38

list, but we love to hear everyone's

1:02:40

stories. Share your triumphs, and

1:02:42

most importantly, share your most embarrassing gardening moments,

1:02:45

because then everyone gets to learn from your

1:02:47

mistakes, and they don't have to do the

1:02:49

same mistakes. I love that.

1:02:51

So it's every Wednesday. It's 4 p .m.

1:02:53

Pacific, which is 5

1:02:56

p .m. Mountain, 6 p

1:02:58

.m. Central, 7 p

1:03:00

.m. Eastern. Yeah, I wanted

1:03:02

everyone to get there on the other right

1:03:04

time, but if they sign up for your

1:03:06

newsletter Yeah, because we send out the email

1:03:09

and we just say hey, we're gonna do

1:03:11

it this week There's a very rare occasions

1:03:13

that we don't do them, but most of

1:03:15

the time it's like clock clockwork every every

1:03:17

4 p .m. Pacific time Wednesdays so duck

1:03:20

out of it's like our you know the

1:03:22

work week is Over we say over because

1:03:24

it's it's hump day. You're at the end

1:03:26

of the day duck out early Grab a

1:03:29

drink and just talk gardening with us to

1:03:31

to transition into the we're calling it our

1:03:33

extra long weekend. So you know, it's Wednesday

1:03:35

afternoon. I

1:03:38

love it when I was

1:03:40

Delivering my zucchinis the excess

1:03:43

excess zucchinis and summer squash

1:03:45

to The local food bank

1:03:47

I would drive by, I

1:03:50

don't know, at least three

1:03:52

churches. I mean, there's so

1:03:55

many churches with huge lawns,

1:03:57

and this is out in

1:03:59

the Snohomish County, just

1:04:02

a little bit outside of Seattle,

1:04:04

so there's more, just everyone's got

1:04:06

more space, and these

1:04:08

churches have like an acre

1:04:11

or more, and it's

1:04:13

just monocrop, it's just green lawns,

1:04:15

and it... really frustrates me because

1:04:17

I look at how many churches,

1:04:19

not so much in the city,

1:04:21

it's a little harder in the

1:04:23

city, they don't have giant lawns,

1:04:25

but how many churches have a

1:04:27

half acre to an acre or

1:04:29

more? That is someone's mowing

1:04:31

a lawn and watering a lawn and no

1:04:33

one's using it. It's not like the church

1:04:35

is using it, not like kids are running

1:04:37

through the lawn. No one's using

1:04:39

it, it's just for looks, but it could

1:04:42

be feeding the homeless. And

1:04:44

you think about all the

1:04:46

trees and all the gardening

1:04:48

that this every single city,

1:04:51

every single city, your tax

1:04:53

dollars go to manicuring crops

1:04:55

that don't produce. It's

1:04:58

not a crop. It's just plants

1:05:00

that don't produce crops. And I

1:05:02

know they've talked about putting in

1:05:04

more fruit trees to help the

1:05:06

homeless in our region. But what

1:05:09

if instead of just... bushes look

1:05:11

pretty like we put in you

1:05:13

know fruit and we put in

1:05:15

fruit and vegetable gardens that we

1:05:17

like put in the work that

1:05:19

the work we're already doing right

1:05:22

and I get that I would

1:05:24

that would just obviously need to

1:05:26

take more money and and and

1:05:28

new they'd have to their new

1:05:30

problems would come up I understand

1:05:32

but just think about how how

1:05:35

many opportunities there are to help

1:05:37

those in need. How many it's

1:05:39

you know, it's excellent idea. I

1:05:41

mean, it's it's about planning really

1:05:43

the reality is that lawns are

1:05:45

Equal or more work than a

1:05:48

veggie garden and they are more

1:05:50

water Yep, so you can get

1:05:52

it because because because you're not

1:05:54

planting every square foot you end

1:05:56

up like making rows out of

1:05:58

it. You have to have somewhere

1:06:01

to walk in between the rows.

1:06:03

So you're kind of cutting down

1:06:05

that square footage. So you're not

1:06:07

trying to actually water every square

1:06:09

foot. So you end up saving

1:06:11

water. And if you do

1:06:14

it, you know, we always do like

1:06:16

crowd sourcing, right? There's this idea where

1:06:18

many hands make small work. If

1:06:21

you empower people and you give them like a

1:06:24

all of the educational parts. They just need

1:06:26

to know what to go do. People really

1:06:29

want to go do it. They just are

1:06:31

afraid to, you know, prune that tomato. I

1:06:33

don't want to cut it. If I cut

1:06:35

it, I might hurt it. But if they

1:06:37

know what to do, when the

1:06:39

right time is to do it and what to do,

1:06:42

you can guide them through even just a

1:06:44

season. If I was able

1:06:47

to guide some people through a season

1:06:49

and show them all the things that

1:06:51

can happen in the season and how

1:06:54

to care for these plants, they can

1:06:56

just duplicate that. for the next season

1:06:58

and the next season and then the

1:07:00

teacher the people who you taught can

1:07:03

become the teachers and it really can

1:07:05

be that easy um we're just locked

1:07:07

in you know we get even we're

1:07:10

in a drought zone or California is

1:07:12

constantly in drought and fires and and

1:07:14

we're still putting new lawns in Yeah,

1:07:17

that's that's just wild to me that

1:07:19

we could be especially if you do

1:07:21

mulch right which Locks in the moisture

1:07:24

and that's what we learn from that

1:07:26

free documentary back to Eden gardening is

1:07:28

that it requires a Significantly less watering

1:07:31

almost no watering when you do mulch

1:07:33

right right and so there's ways that

1:07:35

you can garden that preserve water, right,

1:07:38

but also we are we are feeding

1:07:41

people which is like, come on man,

1:07:43

we're feeding people. We're not

1:07:45

losing that 50 % of our nutrients.

1:07:47

I mean, 72 hours. Do

1:07:49

you think my kale at my

1:07:51

local grocery store was only picked

1:07:54

72 hours ago? Maybe, but

1:07:56

it could have been more. It could been more

1:07:58

than that. Kale really doesn't transport that well. You

1:08:01

know from your own kale. If you pick

1:08:03

your kale and you just put it on

1:08:05

your counter for three days. it's

1:08:07

going to look non -edible. So

1:08:10

they must have like flash frozen it

1:08:12

almost or it goes immediately into a

1:08:15

refrigerated truck or some way you can

1:08:17

even stick it in water again as

1:08:19

it transports and then it won't lose

1:08:21

its like rigidity. But the whole best

1:08:24

part of kale is that like crunch,

1:08:26

you know, that like really

1:08:28

fresh crunch. But anything that

1:08:30

you're getting, especially

1:08:32

it says like Mexico like me comes from

1:08:34

Mexico. I have no problem with you know

1:08:37

produce from Mexico. It's just How when was

1:08:39

that picked was that you know was that

1:08:41

picked over 72 hours ago or about 72

1:08:44

hours ago and then and then we're getting

1:08:46

50 % less nutrients we could have gotten

1:08:49

if we just got it out of our

1:08:51

own garden, right? And then there's the way

1:08:53

that when you get into gardening, you can

1:08:55

really mineralize the soil. You can add minerals

1:08:57

back to the soil like humic, shale, and

1:09:00

folvic acid, and you can really get into

1:09:02

that where now your plants are super mineral

1:09:04

rich and giving you nutrients you wouldn't get

1:09:06

from just grocery store bought food. But

1:09:10

imagine if every church, I do know

1:09:12

one church way up in like Marysville

1:09:14

that all the congregation gets together, they

1:09:16

have a huge community garden and they're

1:09:18

super into that. Imagine if every single

1:09:20

church, I mean every single

1:09:22

school, I know one school that has

1:09:25

a community garden, but imagine if every

1:09:27

single school had a community garden. Imagine

1:09:29

if every single business that had enough

1:09:32

space, either roofed off space or enough,

1:09:34

you know, a big yard beside the,

1:09:36

beside the business, if every single family,

1:09:40

business, organization

1:09:42

took this seriously.

1:09:44

We would end

1:09:46

hunger in our

1:09:48

country. Yeah, absolutely.

1:09:51

So we'd be exporting it to other countries.

1:09:54

We'd be giving Canada our zucchinis. You

1:09:56

know? Just

1:09:59

keep going north.

1:10:02

You get a zucchini and you

1:10:04

get a zucchini. Oh my gosh.

1:10:07

Our infrastructure is, it

1:10:09

really is impressive though.

1:10:12

It is impressive how you can

1:10:15

have foods imported from all over

1:10:17

the world and you have avocados

1:10:19

ripe every day of it. 365

1:10:21

days a year, you can go

1:10:24

into your grocery store and that

1:10:26

whole produce section just looks the

1:10:28

same. It's

1:10:31

amazing what we've

1:10:33

done to cut

1:10:35

off local gardening.

1:10:38

It's like all of that

1:10:40

effort, all that moving around

1:10:42

instead of just offering gardening

1:10:44

in schools and making sure

1:10:46

that kids from age, let's

1:10:48

say fourth grade, if fourth

1:10:50

through Even at high

1:10:53

school, pre -high school you had to

1:10:55

learn how to attend a vegetable garden

1:10:57

and at least every person in the

1:10:59

country would have that background information and

1:11:01

then at least you'd have Appreciation for

1:11:03

what you're buying at the store and

1:11:05

then you start to understand like what

1:11:07

you can do on your own too

1:11:09

And we're working on that we do

1:11:11

school gardens as well School gardens

1:11:13

are a constant difficult one because funding

1:11:15

is there and then it's not parent

1:11:17

volunteers are there and then they're not

1:11:20

So it really needs to be it

1:11:22

needs to be in the curriculum You

1:11:24

know and I'm pushing for that and

1:11:26

that's a it's a lifetime goal of

1:11:28

mine. I mean start organic is is

1:11:30

a business venture and I love it

1:11:33

and I love what I'm doing and

1:11:35

you know our our goal has been

1:11:37

keep it afloat and teach people to

1:11:39

grow food but if if I can

1:11:41

help be a part of building a

1:11:43

school curriculum and I can replace myself

1:11:45

if I no longer when I'm 80

1:11:48

years old need to teach adults how

1:11:50

to grow food because all of the

1:11:52

kids had been learning for all those

1:11:54

years and I can say good everyone

1:11:56

knows how to grow food I can

1:11:58

I could die in peace then that

1:12:01

would be my life goal. I

1:12:04

love that. I absolutely

1:12:06

love that. So what, you

1:12:09

know, given the average person that's listening,

1:12:11

you know, they have maybe some space

1:12:13

in their yard that they could start

1:12:15

playing with. Maybe some, maybe some people

1:12:17

listening have hookups to corporations or organizations

1:12:20

or churches. So speak to the

1:12:22

person who is interested in taking action. What are

1:12:24

some, what are some of the first steps that

1:12:26

they should take? Okay. Well, I'll

1:12:28

start with the. the business

1:12:31

side. I mean we're trying

1:12:33

to normalize health and wellness

1:12:35

and sustainability in the workplace

1:12:37

in a very real tangible

1:12:40

way. We found that the

1:12:42

best way is give people a chance

1:12:44

to grow food at work. There

1:12:47

is a four -year waiting list

1:12:49

for a community garden spot in

1:12:52

the Bay Area where I live.

1:12:54

Four years. Your company can shortcut

1:12:56

that list, provide employees with a

1:12:59

chance to grow something, cutting them

1:13:01

off from a four year waiting

1:13:03

period with an educational component. So

1:13:06

you're promoting true wealth and health, health

1:13:08

and wellness and sustainability at work. So

1:13:10

I guess my call to action for

1:13:13

anybody listening is if you work for

1:13:15

a company, if you're in a role

1:13:17

like employee engagement or you're in an

1:13:19

HR position or maybe you're a director

1:13:21

and you want to see that kind

1:13:24

of change on your campus, reach out

1:13:26

to us. It's just a conversation. It

1:13:29

doesn't work for all companies. Not

1:13:31

all companies have the space. Sometimes

1:13:33

companies are virtual only and we

1:13:35

end up doing really cool monthly

1:13:37

virtual classes for their countrywide employees

1:13:39

and we coach everybody in all

1:13:41

the growing zones how to grow

1:13:43

with just Zoom classes. But

1:13:46

start that conversation. Reach out to

1:13:48

us and if it works, it

1:13:50

works. You can only learn something

1:13:53

cool by having a half an

1:13:55

hour conversation with us. And if

1:13:57

you're an individual, my call to

1:14:00

action is grow something. I

1:14:03

mean, you have an apartment with

1:14:05

a window that faces southeast or

1:14:07

west. As long as you don't

1:14:09

have just a north -facing window

1:14:11

and you're anywhere in the continental

1:14:14

United States, you can grow something

1:14:16

in your house. And we can

1:14:18

coach you through that starting for

1:14:20

free. by joining our

1:14:23

newsletter, startorganic .org, and

1:14:25

coming to our happy hours that we do

1:14:27

for free at this point. But

1:14:30

grow something. Don't label

1:14:32

yourself a brown thumb, you're not. You

1:14:35

had one bad experience, maybe you had

1:14:37

two bad experiences, but the reality is

1:14:39

how you set up your gardening space

1:14:42

is gonna determine 90 % of your

1:14:44

success lifetime for your garden. And I

1:14:46

would be happy to walk you through

1:14:48

what it takes to set up a

1:14:50

successful garden. So no

1:14:53

excuses. Grow something.

1:14:55

Grow something. I love it.

1:14:57

What are like the easiest, give

1:15:00

us like top five easiest foods

1:15:02

to get started with people who

1:15:04

have never grown food before. Okay.

1:15:07

So seasonally, right? We're going into

1:15:10

winter. So I'm going to

1:15:12

go with winter selections then. So.

1:15:16

Chives or green onions are a

1:15:18

no -brainer for indoor or outdoor.

1:15:21

You can get seeds, you can plant directly

1:15:24

from seed, and as long

1:15:26

as you are even remotely attentive,

1:15:28

you can get green onions to chop up

1:15:30

to put in your meals. You can have

1:15:33

chives. That is a no

1:15:35

-brainer, easy one. Mint in

1:15:37

a container. And I stress heavily

1:15:39

in a container. Don't put mint

1:15:41

in your vegetable garden unless you

1:15:43

want a vegetable garden full of

1:15:45

mint only, because it does spread

1:15:47

around. But mint in a container

1:15:50

will be something that you can

1:15:52

handle for sure your first time.

1:15:54

Any of the, you

1:15:56

know, I always sing the

1:15:59

Simon and Garfunkel song. Parsley,

1:16:02

sage, rosemary, and thyme. Any

1:16:04

of those four. will work

1:16:07

just fine in containers inside

1:16:09

or outside, assuming if you're

1:16:11

gonna go outside, you

1:16:14

need to be in zones

1:16:16

seven and above to be

1:16:18

growing outdoor vegetables in the

1:16:20

winter. Okay, so remember that

1:16:22

USDA Hardiness Zone website. Type in

1:16:24

your zip code, make sure you're

1:16:26

in zones seven and up. But

1:16:29

any of those perennial herbs, I

1:16:31

just mentioned, as

1:16:35

well as mint and and like

1:16:37

green onions and things that's that's

1:16:39

your easiest ones and then you

1:16:42

start to get into probably salad

1:16:44

greens would be like the next

1:16:46

level so if you wanted to

1:16:48

grow your own salad you could

1:16:50

even do that in a windowsill

1:16:53

with like you know little gem

1:16:55

romaine lettuce right just they don't

1:16:57

root particularly deep so you don't

1:16:59

need deep containers minimal

1:17:02

sunlight, as long as you don't

1:17:04

super overwater them and keep them

1:17:06

too saturated, you're bound to get

1:17:08

some lettuce and usable salad greens.

1:17:11

Microgreens are the very first step.

1:17:13

If you never tried doing microgreens

1:17:15

just in a tray in your

1:17:17

kitchen, that is an awesome

1:17:20

thing to grow for kids too because

1:17:22

you get to just throw a thousand

1:17:24

seeds down by the bulk seeds, throw

1:17:26

them on there, keep them... wet

1:17:29

and you're going to get sprouts in under

1:17:31

a week and then you're going to be

1:17:34

harvesting them within the next three weeks or

1:17:36

so. So there's a short

1:17:38

list of anyone can do and

1:17:40

a really good like branch point,

1:17:42

you know, launch point for becoming

1:17:44

a home gardener. I love it.

1:17:46

And since this episode is like

1:17:48

all my podcast people listen to

1:17:51

them year round, so it's not

1:17:53

necessarily winter or going into winter

1:17:55

for those listening in the future,

1:17:59

There's a few others that I'd love for you to just

1:18:01

share. Just give me a

1:18:03

few for spring and for summer.

1:18:05

I wanna say, if

1:18:07

you like garlic, and

1:18:09

I love garlic, you can

1:18:11

take, just go buy a bulb of garlic

1:18:13

at the grocery store. You don't have to

1:18:16

buy garlic seeds or something. It's just get

1:18:18

a bulb of garlic at the grocery store.

1:18:21

And pull off each

1:18:23

garlic. bulb each

1:18:25

herb clove and you know pull off

1:18:27

the stuff off of the garlick clove

1:18:30

and then and then Push it into

1:18:32

the ground with your finger just just

1:18:34

push it in and then and then

1:18:36

a few inches later push another one

1:18:38

in a future later push another one

1:18:40

I had a huge section of garlic

1:18:42

which which I had never

1:18:44

grown garlic and but my friend had worked on

1:18:46

a garlic farm and he told me about it.

1:18:48

So was like, I've got to do this. It

1:18:51

took one bulb, just one bulb. And I had

1:18:53

a whole section of garlic. And what's so cool

1:18:55

about garlic is that you don't have to pull

1:18:57

up, you don't have to pull it up right

1:19:00

away. You can just harvest the garlic greens. And

1:19:03

so the garlic greens got so tall, they're like

1:19:05

taller than my son at the time. So, you

1:19:07

know, I chop them not, not all the way,

1:19:10

but just like, you know, I just chop. them

1:19:12

halfway, you know, so the garlic still had some

1:19:14

greens. And then I'd, you

1:19:16

know, bring them in, rinse them, chop

1:19:18

them up and throw them into a

1:19:20

stir fry like they were spinach. And

1:19:23

they were amazing. And then eventually

1:19:25

I'd pull one. and I would

1:19:28

have an entire new garlic bulb.

1:19:30

So it's like this wonderful multiplication. Say with potatoes,

1:19:33

you put one potato in, you get 12 more

1:19:35

potatoes. It's multiplication.

1:19:38

And how much fun is that? So there's

1:19:40

certain things that are so easy to grow

1:19:43

that are so much fun and that doesn't

1:19:45

get pulled up right away. Like with leaves,

1:19:47

with lettuce leaves, you don't have to pull

1:19:49

the whole thing up. You could just take

1:19:52

a few leaves and then it keeps growing

1:19:54

and they take a few leaves. So

1:19:57

what are some, just if someone's listening

1:20:00

in the spring and in the summer,

1:20:02

what are some other really, really easy

1:20:04

crops to get started? OK.

1:20:07

Spring, summer crops. Well,

1:20:09

I mentioned before radishes because it's so

1:20:11

fast. If you're like, I'm

1:20:13

a brown thumb, I can't grow anything,

1:20:16

you can grow a radish. You put

1:20:18

the seeds in only about an inch

1:20:20

apart and a quarter inch deep. Really

1:20:22

important to read your seed packs, everyone.

1:20:25

Look at the depth at which seeds should

1:20:27

be planted. If you plant them too deep,

1:20:29

they'd stay colder and they don't germinate as

1:20:32

well. So a quarter inch is like not

1:20:34

even the depth of your pinky fingernail. So

1:20:37

radishes are really easy for the quick,

1:20:39

you know, that's your instant gratification. That's

1:20:42

as instant as you get for organic

1:20:44

gardening as 30 days for a seed

1:20:46

to harvest a radish. Radish is really

1:20:48

easy. I would go with

1:20:51

zucchini and squash as a fairly

1:20:53

easy one to grow. The

1:20:56

most common mistake though is when people

1:20:58

go out and buy starter plants from

1:21:00

the nursery, remember that those

1:21:02

nurseries really have to sell you a plant.

1:21:05

So they, they will plant three

1:21:07

seeds, three zucchini seeds in one

1:21:09

four inch pot and they will

1:21:11

sell you that four inch pot.

1:21:13

There's your zucchini. They

1:21:15

don't tell you that you really can

1:21:18

only have one plant coming out of

1:21:20

that pot. So after you plant it,

1:21:22

give it a week or two and

1:21:24

then thin it, cut the other ones

1:21:27

away. You can only have one coming

1:21:29

out of that pot. But zucchini should

1:21:31

yield for you. If you have even

1:21:33

four hours of sunlight in that location,

1:21:36

if you do even minimal soil prep,

1:21:38

you should be able to get some

1:21:41

zucchini going your first time. So

1:21:43

I'd say those kind of those two are your first

1:21:46

round, and then tomatoes start to

1:21:48

come in. I might skip

1:21:50

things like peppers and stuff, take a lot

1:21:53

longer. Cucumbers could be a good one. And

1:21:57

then some sunflowers. Who doesn't like

1:21:59

that? Put some sunflower seeds in

1:22:01

the ground and make sure you

1:22:03

give yourselves this big, decorative, cool

1:22:05

celebration by mid -summer. I

1:22:07

love that. And I love

1:22:10

learning about how some plants complement

1:22:12

other plants, and there are certain

1:22:14

plants that you want to put

1:22:16

around the outside perimeter to ward

1:22:18

off, like deer, for example, which

1:22:20

was my big thing. But

1:22:23

really smelly things, so

1:22:25

like marigolds, and it's

1:22:27

also beautiful, marigolds

1:22:29

and lavender, I'd

1:22:31

plan around the outside. And then lavender's

1:22:33

so much fun because you can make

1:22:36

a tea out of it, you can

1:22:38

make potpourri. as

1:22:41

you just smell so good. But

1:22:43

there's edible flowers you can

1:22:45

grow as well to put

1:22:47

in your salads if you

1:22:49

want. Or what I did

1:22:51

this year is I grew

1:22:54

a lot, in my patio,

1:22:56

I grew a lot of

1:22:58

pollinator feeders. So a lot

1:23:00

of wild, like local to

1:23:02

my region, wild flowers that

1:23:04

fed the pollinators. So

1:23:06

that's when, you know, if you want to

1:23:08

garden, but like, Want

1:23:11

some flowers think about local pollinators

1:23:13

and how we can support support

1:23:15

the the butterflies and the bees

1:23:17

and the you know those those

1:23:19

pollinators are really at risk I

1:23:21

don't know if you remember so

1:23:23

I'm I'm 44 and Back as

1:23:25

a kid when we drove because

1:23:27

we would drive up to the

1:23:29

cottage every Every weekend up in

1:23:32

Canada. That's the thing we do.

1:23:34

We go to the cottage The

1:23:36

car would be covered in bugs

1:23:38

like just Absolutely, the windshield would

1:23:40

just be drenched in dead bugs

1:23:42

because we were driving and it

1:23:44

was the summertime. And

1:23:46

now when we drive around, although I'm in

1:23:49

a different region, but my husband agrees because

1:23:51

he grew up in this region, that you

1:23:53

almost never get a bug splat. And I

1:23:55

just think back to your childhood and how

1:23:58

many bug splats there were on the car

1:24:00

and how little there are now. Our

1:24:03

ecosystem is very fragile. I

1:24:07

hate that I think politicians

1:24:09

talk a lot about like

1:24:11

global warming or like global

1:24:13

climate change, right? But

1:24:15

they're actually, that is again a

1:24:17

linguistic deviation from us focusing on

1:24:20

what we should be focusing on,

1:24:22

which is pollution. And

1:24:24

that man -made obviously, but

1:24:27

like intentional pollution being, we're

1:24:30

spraying things that are killing the

1:24:32

ecosystems. That are killing

1:24:34

the insects that are killing the

1:24:36

pollinators and when we don't have

1:24:38

pollinators we don't have food so

1:24:41

it's it's It's scary to think

1:24:43

about that and that's why we

1:24:45

have to instead of focusing on

1:24:48

the politics of this concept of

1:24:50

climate change Like that that just

1:24:52

desensitizes everyone to the to the

1:24:55

personal responsibility we each all have

1:24:57

which is stopping pollution and by

1:24:59

voting with our fork voting with

1:25:01

our wallet and making choices that

1:25:04

support the fragile ecosystem that we

1:25:06

have and also the pollution you

1:25:08

know is going into our air

1:25:11

in our water and our soil

1:25:13

and going into us and our

1:25:15

children and this is we are

1:25:18

we are going down a very

1:25:20

rapidly down a very poor health

1:25:22

making poor health choices very rapidly

1:25:24

we are declining as a species

1:25:29

And so we want to

1:25:31

make change, and we have

1:25:33

to know that each individual

1:25:36

can make a difference. By

1:25:39

growing your own food, you are now

1:25:41

not consuming those, even like there's over

1:25:43

2 ,000 chemicals, I think it's close

1:25:46

to 3 ,000 chemicals that are approved

1:25:48

for organic produce that we get exposed

1:25:50

to. Organic is always better than not

1:25:53

organic, but you know it's better than

1:25:55

organic is growing your own food. I'm

1:25:59

right there with you with

1:26:02

needing to support our health

1:26:04

through growing and even if

1:26:07

you could get together with

1:26:09

neighbors. That's something

1:26:11

I saw in another country and I

1:26:14

can't remember which one it was at

1:26:16

the moment, but I think it was

1:26:18

like Holland or Norway. Somewhere in that

1:26:21

section of Europe. Each

1:26:24

each person in the neighborhood would

1:26:26

choose one thing to grow so

1:26:28

like let's say we say you

1:26:30

are the though You're really great

1:26:32

at broccoli. You're growing broccoli. I'm

1:26:34

growing potatoes Susie over there is

1:26:36

growing onions and Jim down the

1:26:38

streets growing garlic, right and we

1:26:40

all grow and then we all

1:26:43

share and So if if we

1:26:45

got together even got together with

1:26:47

a few friends and said okay

1:26:49

I'm gonna grow these three things

1:26:51

you grow those three three things

1:26:53

and we can get together in

1:26:55

each other's gardens we could help

1:26:57

You know, there's ways we can

1:26:59

get creative. We don't have to

1:27:01

do this alone. I did this

1:27:03

interview a few years ago about

1:27:05

depression and it was fascinating that

1:27:08

the author, he's a journalist and

1:27:10

an author talked about, they

1:27:12

did studies where they took people who

1:27:14

had like suicide level depression and they

1:27:17

had them instead of therapy, they were

1:27:19

doing experiment. They had them as a

1:27:21

group, instead of group therapy, they had

1:27:24

them go out into a garden and

1:27:26

tend a garden together. And

1:27:29

what they saw is that

1:27:31

this community got built together and

1:27:33

being in the garden, which

1:27:35

is very cathartic as we've talked

1:27:37

about, but that community, that

1:27:39

communal group, it was, it wasn't

1:27:42

a huge group. Maybe six

1:27:44

or eight people got together and

1:27:46

they talked to each other.

1:27:48

and they supported each other, and

1:27:51

their depression lifted as a result,

1:27:53

which is one of the

1:27:55

reasons we're so disconnected. We're disconnected

1:27:57

from our food. We're disconnected

1:27:59

from our community. So

1:28:02

if there's anything we can do to

1:28:04

bring us back to our roots, bring

1:28:06

us back to the soil, to each

1:28:08

other, to community, I think we

1:28:11

can heal on so many levels. So I love the

1:28:13

work that you're doing. I

1:28:15

think it's very exciting. to

1:28:17

see the impact you can

1:28:19

have, especially because now you're

1:28:22

aiming towards bigger businesses, which

1:28:24

is just getting community. So

1:28:27

now you have a common goal. How

1:28:29

great is that for a team building?

1:28:32

Instead of it just being an

1:28:34

office that you go to, now

1:28:37

it's a community working towards this

1:28:39

fun garden goal together. So I

1:28:41

think it's so cool. Absolutely

1:28:44

right. I couldn't agree more. I

1:28:48

mean we have groups scheduling

1:28:50

meetings in the garden for

1:28:52

their team. So

1:28:55

no, I could not agree more.

1:28:57

I'm like, you should come

1:28:59

work with us. You seem to get the vision.

1:29:03

Absolutely, absolutely. bringing

1:29:05

people together around this common goal and

1:29:08

especially when we give like right around

1:29:10

now we do orientation sessions for new

1:29:12

people joining the program because we do

1:29:15

big seasonal things we have people sign

1:29:17

on for the whole spring season spring

1:29:19

and summer so because we want them

1:29:22

to plant, care for, grow, and then

1:29:24

consume or share the produce that they

1:29:26

actually physically grew, right? Because that's the

1:29:28

process that we're trying to duplicate and

1:29:31

share with everybody. And so

1:29:33

this is a new season. We're going

1:29:35

to be doing our orientation sessions. And

1:29:37

part of my speech every time for

1:29:39

these orientation sessions is... you'll

1:29:41

be getting a garden plot. You

1:29:43

and your team will have this

1:29:45

plot. It's your plot. But as

1:29:47

a group, this whole garden only

1:29:49

works if we're all working together

1:29:51

to do it. So we

1:29:53

do like big events. We just finished

1:29:56

kind of the heaviest harvest of the

1:29:58

season is like toward the of August

1:30:00

is like. You can't stop the garden

1:30:02

then. I mean, there is, there is

1:30:04

pounds and pounds. I mean, hundreds of

1:30:06

pounds of tomatoes coming out of these

1:30:09

corporate gardens. So much zucchini

1:30:11

that it's like, it's sort of absurd.

1:30:13

And so we do these produce share

1:30:15

or harvesting parties. and we bring

1:30:17

music and everybody comes out and then they're picking

1:30:19

stuff and they're, oh, you have this other kind

1:30:22

of tomato. Let me try that one. I'll trade

1:30:24

you these. And we kind of just, we do

1:30:26

like a leave it on the table one that

1:30:28

we donate all that produce or we have a

1:30:30

chef come out and the chef will prepare something

1:30:33

based on whatever ingredients we give. And

1:30:35

it really, it does build this really

1:30:38

interesting community. People that wouldn't normally communicate.

1:30:40

in a work setting so it's forging

1:30:42

these new connections and people are like

1:30:44

oh maybe our teams can work together

1:30:47

on something here we can collaborate on

1:30:49

our project next time or your team

1:30:51

and our team should join up and

1:30:54

get a box together next time because

1:30:56

you guys really like these kinds of

1:30:58

tomatoes and we like these peppers and

1:31:00

we're gonna make salsa uh it really

1:31:03

it is uh i'm just happy to

1:31:05

be a part of it. You know,

1:31:07

we set that stage, we

1:31:09

make sure that people are successful, and

1:31:11

then we get to like sit there

1:31:14

and kind of listen on those party

1:31:16

days, and we get to go, yeah,

1:31:18

you know, Josh and I often just

1:31:20

won't be off in the corner watching

1:31:22

other people engage in the garden, just

1:31:25

kind of high -fiving, you know, and

1:31:27

just hanging out. It's so cool. I

1:31:29

have a friend, a Jewish friend, wonderful

1:31:31

woman who she was trying to get

1:31:33

vegetables into her kid and she makes

1:31:36

latkes. I don't know if you know

1:31:38

what a latke is. I don't. Okay,

1:31:40

so a latke. So I grew up,

1:31:42

I just did a part of Toronto

1:31:44

with a lot of Jewish friends and

1:31:47

I went to, I raised Christian, but

1:31:49

I'm like, cool, let's hang out. And

1:31:51

so I was invited to a lot

1:31:53

of bar mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs and

1:31:55

invited to synagogue and your shul and

1:31:58

the Friday night dinner and all kinds

1:32:00

of fun Jewish food is so good.

1:32:02

It's so delicious. But latkes are these

1:32:04

potato pancakes where you take a potato

1:32:07

and you grate it and then you

1:32:09

squeeze out some of the water and

1:32:11

you smush it together and you fry

1:32:13

it. Fried food's not

1:32:15

really healthy for you. You can probably

1:32:17

do it in an air fryer now.

1:32:19

But what she figured out was that

1:32:21

she could do a one -to -one

1:32:23

ratio of zucchini, shredded zucchini, to

1:32:26

potatoes, and her son didn't notice the

1:32:28

difference. And so she was like, I

1:32:30

know zucchini is not a vegetable, technically

1:32:33

it's a fruit, but like let's just,

1:32:35

you know, it's actually such a low,

1:32:37

it's high in water, high in hydration,

1:32:40

good healthy gut fiber, low

1:32:42

in calories and it fills you up.

1:32:45

So volumetrics, it's wonderful for dieting also

1:32:47

because it does fill you up. And

1:32:50

has lots of great vitamins and so

1:32:52

let's just like not argue about whether

1:32:55

it's a vegetable or fruit and And

1:32:57

so Yeah, she would do what she

1:32:59

would do is she would when she

1:33:01

harvested her garden She would grate all

1:33:04

the zucchinis that she couldn't you know

1:33:06

couldn't eat them had access she would

1:33:08

grate them and freeze them so put

1:33:11

it in you know Ziploc bag frozen

1:33:13

freezer bags and then all year round,

1:33:15

she could add that to soups because

1:33:17

zucchini shredded is a great thickening agent

1:33:20

for a soup or a stew. You

1:33:23

can make a tomato sauce, you can

1:33:25

thicken tomato sauce when you cook it

1:33:27

long enough, it just becomes very thick

1:33:30

and actually has an oily, fatty,

1:33:33

rich texture. when

1:33:35

you cook it long enough. So there's

1:33:37

a lot of fun you can do

1:33:40

with that excess zucchini, but she would

1:33:42

make her luttkas out of, she would

1:33:44

do half potato shredded, half zucchini shredded,

1:33:46

and it was delicious. So there's a

1:33:48

lot of fun things you can do

1:33:50

by freezing and then saving it for

1:33:52

later. And just talking about

1:33:54

the fruit, you know, fruit in the

1:33:56

garden that's actually we consider a vegetable,

1:33:58

right? So think, you think

1:34:00

of a fruit salad. I invite

1:34:03

you to think that you can make the weirdest fruit

1:34:05

salad out of like zucchini, and

1:34:07

tomato, and

1:34:09

avocado, so we can

1:34:12

make a weird fruit salad that way.

1:34:15

get yeah get have have some fun in that

1:34:17

in that garden um you brought up soil prep

1:34:19

and that was one of my questions for super

1:34:22

beginners like the gray uh gray thumb i'm i'm

1:34:24

not a i'm not a brown thumb i'm a

1:34:26

gray thumb i used to i used to kill

1:34:28

everything that i grew until i i learned just

1:34:31

a few things just a few things nature pretty

1:34:33

much you can't stop nature it just you got

1:34:35

to get it of its way and just give

1:34:37

it what it needs and stop giving it what

1:34:39

it doesn't need so that's just a little you

1:34:42

know, get more in tune with

1:34:44

nature and the nature takes care

1:34:46

of itself. But, uh, I thought

1:34:49

it was a gray thumb until

1:34:51

I learned a bit more about

1:34:53

soil. So when someone is gardening,

1:34:55

like you suggested, maybe growing radishes

1:34:57

or growing some herbs in their

1:34:59

windowsill, um, and they don't have

1:35:01

soil, what soil do you

1:35:04

recommend they buy and what should they

1:35:06

avoid or stay away from? Cause of

1:35:08

course they're buying soil out of like

1:35:10

plastic bags at the you know, right,

1:35:13

the whatever, you know, local local

1:35:15

store, hardware store or something. This

1:35:19

is a good one. And I get this question a lot.

1:35:21

And it's a it's a really good one. So

1:35:23

we're not really like brand promoters, right? So

1:35:25

it so forget about what brand it is,

1:35:27

I can go tell you go go buy

1:35:29

this brand or go buy this brand. But

1:35:32

what I can tell you is how to

1:35:34

read ingredients on a bag of soil and

1:35:36

get the right kind of thing. If

1:35:39

you are doing containers, let's

1:35:41

call it containers, whether that's a big

1:35:43

pot outside or a small pot inside.

1:35:45

Just remember that that pot is not

1:35:48

connected to the earth underneath. It doesn't

1:35:50

have this mycelium network. It doesn't have

1:35:52

this ability to share nutrients with anything

1:35:55

else. So you need

1:35:57

to provide an all around soil

1:35:59

blend for anything that you're going

1:36:01

to grow in containers. And

1:36:03

that means you have kind of

1:36:06

three main ingredients. for

1:36:08

a healthy soil. You have a mineral