Greg Peterson, the owner of Urban Farm, talks to me about getting started in gardening, and the season is now! The simple act of growing your own vegetables, herbs and fruit is not only a benefit to your own nourishment, it is a benefit to the planet and the environment.
This episode promises to transform your view on the traditional food system and inspire you to start your horticultural adventure, regardless of space constraints. Greg shares his evolution from aquaculture enthusiast to a permaculture vanguard and talk openly about the joys of harvesting homegrown produce and the profound benefits of aligning with nature's cycles.
Learn the essentials of organic gardening as we navigate from the simplicity of a potted basil plant to the complexities of soil health. Greg and I offer insights into improving garden beds with organic matter and the importance of using OMRI-certified products for an organic approach. We share practical tips for those of you eager to integrate gardening into your lives, demonstrating how it can contribute to both personal health and planetary well-being. Whether you're in a bustling city or have acres to spare, there's a green pathway waiting to be cultivated by your hands.
Lastly, we talk about innovative solutions for composting in any living space and why composting is a critical part of environmental health. Learn how kitchen scraps transform into garden gold, as we discuss worm bins, chicken-powered composting, and community programs. This episode is where enthusiasm for gardening meets actionable knowledge.
Greg Teaches Gardening 101 and Much More!
Find Greg HERE at the Urban Farm website
Find Greg on Facebook HERE
Other Links Mentioned
Urban Worm Bin HERE
Find Your Planting Calendar HERE
How to Build Healthy Soil HERE
Let's Be Friends
Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.
Let's Talk!
Whether you are looking for 1-1 nutrition coaching or kitchen coaching let's have a chat. Click HERE to reach out to Heather.
Did You Love This Episode?
"I love Heather and the Real Food Stories Podcast!" If this is you, please do not hesitate to leave a five-star review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Greg Peterson, the owner of Urban Farm, talks to me about getting started in gardening, and the season is now! The simple act of growing your own vegetables, herbs and fruit is not only a benefit to your own nourishment, it is a benefit to the planet and the environment.
This episode promises to transform your view on the traditional food system and inspire you to start your horticultural adventure, regardless of space constraints. Greg shares his evolution from aquaculture enthusiast to a permaculture vanguard and talk openly about the joys of harvesting homegrown produce and the profound benefits of aligning with nature's cycles.
Learn the essentials of organic gardening as we navigate from the simplicity of a potted basil plant to the complexities of soil health. Greg and I offer insights into improving garden beds with organic matter and the importance of using OMRI-certified products for an organic approach. We share practical tips for those of you eager to integrate gardening into your lives, demonstrating how it can contribute to both personal health and planetary well-being. Whether you're in a bustling city or have acres to spare, there's a green pathway waiting to be cultivated by your hands.
Lastly, we talk about innovative solutions for composting in any living space and why composting is a critical part of environmental health. Learn how kitchen scraps transform into garden gold, as we discuss worm bins, chicken-powered composting, and community programs. This episode is where enthusiasm for gardening meets actionable knowledge.
Greg Teaches Gardening 101 and Much More!
Find Greg HERE at the Urban Farm website
Find Greg on Facebook HERE
Other Links Mentioned
Urban Worm Bin HERE
Find Your Planting Calendar HERE
How to Build Healthy Soil HERE
Let's Be Friends
Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.
Let's Talk!
Whether you are looking for 1-1 nutrition coaching or kitchen coaching let's have a chat. Click HERE to reach out to Heather.
Did You Love This Episode?
"I love Heather and the Real Food Stories Podcast!" If this is you, please do not hesitate to leave a five-star review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hey there everybody, and welcome back to Real Food Stories. Today we are talking all things gardening because, as some of you may know, I consider myself somewhat of an obsessive vegetable gardener. There is nothing better to me than going out in your garden and picking fresh vegetables that you have grown with your own two hands, and I am one of those people that excitedly waits for the seed catalogs to arrive in my mailbox the day after Christmas. When it comes to healthy eating and living, I consider vegetable gardening one of the top things you can do for your health. But I know people have reasons to not grow their own food. You might be super busy or you don't even know how to get started. You might be super busy or you don't even know how to get started. So today I am deferring to a real expert to talk about the benefits of growing your own food and what it really takes to do just that, and it's not as hard as I think people imagine.
Speaker 1:Greg Peterson is a lifelong food growing aficionado who first became interested at a very early age with aquaculture and as a teenager, was growing his own fish to eat. That's very interesting. I want to hear about that. During that time he discovered the fragility of our food system and started growing his own food, and by the 90s, he discovered permaculture, which transformed his life from the linear way of thinking to a regenerative or circular way of thinking. In 2001, he started the Urban Farm, an online portal for farming education.
Speaker 1:Greg transformed his home into what is called in permaculture, an old growth food forest, and Greg, just like me, believes the most important thing we can be doing right now is understanding where our food comes from and how to grow our own, because, as he says, we have a very broken food system in the world, and I could not agree more. So welcome to the show, greg. I'm really happy to have you on here today. It is spring. Where I am, I am in my garden right now. I couldn't be more happy about that, and I want to talk to you about just the importance of growing your own food and getting educated on where food comes from. But I think first let's hear your story about Urban Farm and how you got started and your garden story.
Speaker 2:Awesome, thank you for having me and it's been an interesting lifelong journey for me. It's kind of like I don't have any other explanation, except I was born with this mission in mind Because I got my first fish aquarium when I was nine. I bought it from paper route money, and the reason I did that is because I was interested in growing fish to eat, and by the time I was 15, I was running a small business. Because of my interest in fish, I used to hang out at the fish store in my neighborhood and one day the guy that worked at the fish store said hey, greg, you want to help me clean a fish pond on Sunday? And it was like, yeah, and I think he paid me $5 in 1975. And I went and did it and when we got done he said you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. Why don't you take over my clients?
Speaker 2:He had two or three clients that he was servicing, and so literally at the age of 15, I was given a small business to start running, and I'd had a paper route before that. So I kind of got an idea of what it would take. And so between 1975 and 1984, for that nine-year period I used to clean, service and build fish ponds in Phoenix. But better yet, I used to clean, service and build aquaculture ponds ponds for people to grow their own food and during that same period, sometime around the time I was 14 or 15, I wrote a paper for my biology class in pencil on how we were overfishing the oceans. So this is sometimes it's a curse. Most of the time it's a gift, but I have this knowledge about how our food system works that I just have to share.
Speaker 1:So this is just something you were born with. It sounds like it's something we wonder how we got into the careers we get into, and there is no explanation. Right, you're just born with an interest in learning about our food.
Speaker 2:And then in 1981, so I was 20 in 1981, I was serving on the board of the Arizona Aquaculture Association yes, one in Arizona and we went to visit a fish farm in Gila Bend and they were harvesting palapia there, cutting them up, removing the meat and throwing away 70% of the fish, and that just didn't make sense to me. So, on paper, back then, on paper, I designed what we would now call a regenerative fish farm, a fish farm or a farm where everything gets used, there's no waste. Fast forward 10 years and I discovered this thing called permaculture. I like to call permaculture the art and science of working with nature, and I did a permaculture design course, which is a 72-hour deep dive into introduction to permaculture. And permaculture is the art and science of working in the flow of nature, and for me that 72 hours was one great big aha about.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. There's something we can call the way that I think, because I don't think in a linear manner. I think in a circular manner. We as human beings, and I challenge your listeners to come up with a system that humans have created that is circular or regenerative, Because, as far as I can tell, in 30 years of looking, every single human system that has been put in place is degenerative. It breaks down eventually and goes away. The microphone you're speaking into our cell phones, the roads, our pipelines everything has to be diligently maintained, otherwise it's going to go away. And that's not how nature works. Nature works in a regenerative circular pattern.
Speaker 1:Such a good point. I mean, I know from just my own vegetable garden. Right, it is like the circle of life, right? You start, you plant, then you take all that, the scraps and everything right, you put them in your compost, that becomes the dirt, that goes back into your garden the next year and it's just this big circle and it's and it's lovely you know, and and you're right that I didn't even think about that that there really is no other system right in in our lives that does that so efficiently.
Speaker 2:Right. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I recently moved from Phoenix, arizona after living there for 55 years, to Asheville, north Carolina. I bought a small property. We bought four acres here and we're turning it into a farm. And talking about composting and composting food waste, the first thing I did when I got here is I set up a worm bin, a worm composting bin. That's how I do all my composting and over the course of the first year we put all our food scraps in the compost bin.
Speaker 2:And when I plant fruit trees, I run a fruit tree education program in Phoenix and so I'm really big into fruit trees because you plant them once and you get food for decades.
Speaker 2:That's the thing I love about fruit trees. But I have a very specific way to plant fruit trees and this includes adding one pound ideally, if you have it of worm castings, worm poop. It's high in nutrients, it's high in microbiology and you add it to the planting hole. And so last summer we planted 160 fruit trees and berry bushes and I took just because I didn't have enough, I took a couple of handfuls of worm castings and put them in every planting hole, and this was in May, june and July, and by August we had over 40 tomato plants growing in the basins, where I planted the fruit trees and we were harvesting four to six pounds of tomatoes a day from our orchard, where we didn't purposely plant tomatoes and we didn't purposely water them, they were just growing wild out there. And so back to your. You know your intro to me. Gardening can be that easy if we let nature be.
Speaker 1:So let's okay. So let's back up a little bit, because I I am assuming I said just off air before that I know a lot of people who, like I'm, I, I am obsessed with my vegetable garden, but not everyone is right. I mean, I think you and I are probably in the minority at this point with gardens and stuff. And I know people who said, like, I have a container on my deck or something, but I think it's just so important for the bigger picture of our health. So how do people? We're talking about worm castings and composting, and I get your lingo, I totally understand what you're talking about and your worm bin and everything, but a lot of people may not understand this. So let's like back up a second. How do people then start in gardening? You know, when they are just there, they have an interest and they want to get started, but they have no idea where to start. That's what I wanted to kind of cover today.
Speaker 2:Cool, we can absolutely do that, because.
Speaker 1:I think it's like. I mean, gardening is not that difficult. I would agree, but there are some things that need to be there. Yes, we have certain conditions.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So where would people start?
Speaker 2:conditions yes. So where would people start? Well, so it can be as simple as a pot of basil in a sunny windowsill. It really is that simple. The most expensive thing to buy in the grocery store and the easiest thing to grow are herbs. So if you cook at all and want to use fresh herbs, grow some fresh herbs on a pot, on know, in a pot on your patio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that definitely is right, and I tell people that too. If you don't even have space, right, If you have no yard, get a container right, yeah, and the most important thing to put in that pot is healthy soil.
Speaker 2:If you just dig dirt out of your yard, good luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause most of our soil is. I know, here in Connecticut my soil is really heavy in clay, it's just it doesn't. It doesn't drain, well you know. So I have to, and that's the benefit of the compost. It helps to amend the soil right and balance it, because let's so let's talk about soil for a second. Soil is its own living, you know, breathing like entity. Right, it needs to be balanced, right. There needs to be like a certain balance and there's microorganisms in there and what's the importance of the soil?
Speaker 2:So there's five components to healthy soil, and in order to grow healthy plants that make healthy food, you need to build healthy soil. So the five components are dirt, and dirt has a lot of you know. It could be clay and other things. It's usually pretty dense, but it has a lot of minerals in it that the plants need. But if all you have is dirt, good luck.
Speaker 2:So the five components are dirt, airspace, water, organic matter and everything that's alive in the soil. And so if you have a dirt backyard, front yard, the solution to fixing that dirt is to add lots and lots and lots of organic matter, because as you work the organic matter into the soil, it fluffs the soil, so there's more airspace in the soil, the water can get in that way, and that organic matter brings in soil life, soil microorganisms, which is ultimately that's what we're after. We're after to get those microorganisms working with the plants, because there's this beneficial relationship that goes on between the roots of plants and the microorganisms, where the microorganisms help harvest the nutrients out of the soil so that the plants can uptake the nutrients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I don't even think a lot of people would equate soil with something like living and breathing right, it's like alive.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And you need this organic matter to like, fluff it and get it to like to keep moving and living. What, what would be organic matter? You know? Just just assuming that people are like this is like gardening 101, right, like what, what would be like? Or get like an example of organic matter to put into your soil to get it buffed up and living and breathing.
Speaker 2:Well, the easiest things if you're getting a pot, go to your local nursery and get a bag of planting mix and it's usually made up of cocoa peat and maybe some worm castings and perlite and compost, that kind of stuff and for the soil you're looking for something that's OMRI certified, o-m-r-i, and it's a little logo that'll be on the bag that's telling you that it's organic. And often what I do when I'm planting in pots is I just get a nice potting mix and you get what you pay for. So if you're paying $3 a bag for it, it's probably not that great. If you're paying $18 a bag for it, that's probably a lot better. And so get yourself a nice potting mix that's omri certified and put it in the pot and plant your seeds or plant your plant.
Speaker 1:It's really that simple okay, yeah, so that's the simple version of it and when you say, like the worm castings? Worm castings are like worm poop, right? They, they eat, they eat what's in the soil and then they poop and then that's like something that is like compost that then adds more nutrients into your soil, correct?
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly so, and you said something really interesting. The compost and the worm castings have biology in them. They have microorganisms in them that help the plants. They have microorganisms in them that help the plants and that's so incredibly important. And when you add chemical fertilizers non-organic actually all fertilizers are chemicals, but non-organic fertilizers and chemicals like pesticides or herbicides and that kind of stuff, when you add that, it negatively impacts the soil biology. So that's one of the big reasons we only want to ever use organic fertilizers.
Speaker 1:So commercial fertilizers might get you to grow giant tomatoes or something right or something like. That's not normal, but it's not benefiting the-.
Speaker 2:Soil life.
Speaker 1:And soil right, and then ultimately, probably your vegetables.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, because when you have organic soil underneath the plant with organic fertilizers, it's nurturing the biology in the pot or in the dirt and that biology is helping your plant uptake the nutrients that it needs, and those nutrients are good for our body and they improve the taste of the food that's so incredibly important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's nothing better than going out into your garden and picking tomatoes or you know something that you've just grown and eating them. It just that's. You can't compare it really to any anything.
Speaker 2:Anything. Exactly One of the fruit trees. Yeah, harvesting a ripe peach off of a peach tree is nothing you will ever experience in a grocery store.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:The peaches and stone fruit in grocery stores are hard and crunchy because what they're doing is they're harvesting it before it's ripe. They have to Do. You know what food miles are? I don't think so. They have to do. You know what food miles are? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Food miles are the amount of miles, the number of miles that food travels from where?
Speaker 2:it's grown to where you eat it and you want to take a guess at the average food miles in the United States.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say 2000. Is that over my overreaching?
Speaker 2:2000. Is that over my overreaching? 1500 is generally but 1500 miles. So what they're doing is they're harvesting that peach or that tomato or whatever else you're eating. They're harvesting it two to four weeks early. So all of a sudden that fruit or vegetable isn't completely nutrient dense, because those vegetables, those fruits, as they ripen on the tree, become more nutrient dense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they become better for you. So they're harvesting this fruit that isn't totally nutrient dense. Once you harvest it off of the tree or plant, the nutrient density starts declining slowly. So we're getting food that's not fully nutrient dense for us when we're picking it and shipping it and having it wait two to four weeks, or three months for that matter.
Speaker 1:So that's a good question. So because you know there's that local food movement, right, like you know, eat locally and eat within like a few miles of where you live and everything. But that's not always possible. I mean, I know I live in Connecticut so I'm not getting, you know, in January nothing's growing here and I guess I could live off of carrots and potatoes and things that are stored in a, you know, in storage, cold storage, but that would get boring, you know, after a little while. So what is the solution? I think to to grow, but you know. And then, on the other hand, I now see watermelon in January, peaches, I mean, my husband just came home the other day with he went to the grocery store and came home with plums and I said, where did you even get those from? I mean, it's, it's still early April here. Like they're not. Clearly they've traveled very, very far and I didn't even want to try it because I can't imagine that they would even taste good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess my question is the you know we want to eat local, as local as possible. Probably when you were living in Arizona you could eat you had more availability of stuff but here in the Northeast, what's the solution to that then?
Speaker 2:Doing the best that we can. That's really the solution Having an understanding of what's in season and generally gravitating toward that this time of year. If there's, you know, peaches or plums or out of season fruit at the grocery store, I don't buy it. No, I don't buy it either.
Speaker 1:My husband. I didn't tell him to buy. I was like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:I was almost like offended that he did that, but yeah, I wouldn't buy it either.
Speaker 1:My husband. I didn't tell him to buy it. I was like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:I was almost offended that he did that, but yeah, I wouldn't either.
Speaker 2:Because out of season fruit like that is coming from South America. It's coming from Australia, believe it or not, and you know it's just traveling super far. So for those reasons I choose not to eat that out of season. So right now citrus is in season. So the citrus I can't grow it here. I grew it in Phoenix when I was there but I can't grow it in Asheville, north Carolina. But I know that it's coming from Florida or California. So at least the citrus I'm eating is somewhat local to the United States. It's not traveling as far. So really, the solution is to have a general understanding of what's in season and then gravitate toward that. Now we eat bananas here every week because we like bananas and they're available 12 months a year and they're coming from South America. So it's just an ethical boundary or balancing act that you have to do for what works for you. Yeah, and what I tell people is generally understand what's in season and eat that when you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great answer to that question is that we have to do the best we can, because there are things I mean I know that in the winter I'm guilty, I'm eating berries and blueberries and stuff because I know just nutritionally they're good for me. I mean I want to be eating them. I try to eat maybe frozen blueberries and freeze Cause I know just nutritionally they're good for me. You know, I mean I want to be eating them.
Speaker 1:I try to eat, like, maybe frozen blueberries and, you know, freeze things and have it like I'll make pesto in the summer and then I'll have it in my freezer, you know so I can have that in the winter, but I think it's doing the best that we can. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And with what we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess, fortunately, food, some food does travel and so, like bananas, you know, so you can, so we can have access to those. So let's go back to the starting the garden, Okay, and like just dead soil kind of, you know, like things are not going to grow. Well, what's the next? And I just want to grow a couple of containers on my deck. What are the other important things? Are there other?
Speaker 2:So adding soil is great. One of the big things you have to do this get yourself a planting calendar for your area, because we cannot count on the big box stores, and sometimes local nurseries, to bring in the climate and season appropriate plants. So one of the things that I used to laugh at at the big box stores in April and May was they'd be in Phoenix, they'd be bringing in broccoli. Broccoli in Phoenix is going to immediately go to seed. It's not going to do you any good whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Because it's too hot.
Speaker 2:Because it's too hot and then in the fall, in October, they'd bring in watermelons and cucumbers and that kind of again wrong season. So to put the name of your, the biggest city near you so for me it was Asheville and planting calendar. And do a search for that and find a local planting calendar. Often it's the cooperative extension. You know there's also all kinds of other ones out there, but get yourself a planting calendar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you could probably just like Google that Right and you know so, then you can see what your zone is Right Is that what you're talking about, like your zone for right, because I agree with you. I go, I've gone to like Home Depot and, like March or April, you see, they've started to get the seedling. You know the plant, like the small plants and you see tomatoes there.
Speaker 1:like you're not putting those in the ground right now? It's too cold and they will not live. And why are they doing that? They're just trying to push. I guess push plants or.
Speaker 2:Well, interestingly, I did a lot of media when I was in Phoenix and I had one of the TV stations ask me to quantify how much of the stuff at a big box store was actually climate and season appropriate for Phoenix. And so I did a general survey at a big box store and over 50% of the food plants that they were selling were either not climate appropriate so they were they you know they needed to be in a zone six and they were in a zone nine there or season appropriate. So make sure that you do your homework about that, and it's super simple. You know I have a planting calendar for the low desert. It's a two page document. You download it from my website. It's free, and it tells you to plant cucumbers in March and it tells you what to plant when. So that's a big one.
Speaker 2:The soil we already talked about. Getting a garden in a place where it gets enough sun is a really important piece too. A really important piece too. If you in the Northern hemisphere, if you plant a garden on a North side of a structure, it's highly likely not ever going to get enough sun to make food, and you know you're just kind of out of luck right there, so making sure that you place your garden and your garden pots in a sunny location.
Speaker 1:Right. How many hours do you think needs to happen for a successful garden?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. And so, first of all, sunlight. There's two things there's light and heat. So the heat was something very big that we need to address in the low desert. So an Eastern exposure was great in the desert because we'd get sun from sun up until about noon or one o'clock and then there'd be shade in the afternoon. But what it really back to your question, what it really depends on is what you're growing. So herbs and lettuce, greens and things that don't make a fruit or a vegetable can go with less sunlight, maybe four, five, six hours a day. Things that make a fruit, like a peach tree, or a vegetable, like a zucchini, are going to need more, like six to eight hours of light. And then if you're in the desert, you have to manage for the heat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good point, good point. Right, the heat is a huge factor in it. Right so, even growing, I know here growing, I'm growing lettuce right now, but by july I'm probably not growing lettuce. You know too exactly because it will get, it will bolt, it will. It will not be a great plant, but then I'll start planting it again in the fall right because it's cooler and and I'm still getting a decent amount of light.
Speaker 2:Often with lettuce, when it starts to bolt it goes bitter. So at that point you want to save the seeds and spread the seeds around your garden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's advanced.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be. It can be as simple as that. You let it go to flower and it makes seeds, and the seeds blow in your yard just like they would in nature, and then a lettuce plant comes up over here. It's really that simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and that's fantastic, but let's see if people can just grow a couple heads of lettuce first and be successful with that. I know the other no-brainer thing is water, right? I mean, is there anything special about water or how much water to be had? I know, in the desert I can't even imagine how that was working, but you must have needed a lot of water.
Speaker 2:Yes, so for small gardens you can hand water, and what I highly suggest that people do is get yourself a $9 moisture meter from your nursery and use it, and usually you know they're like on a scale of 1 to 10, and 10 being the wettest and 1 being the driest, and you want to make sure that you're paying attention to your pots and your gardens and making sure that the water meter doesn't go below about three or four. Often plants like to dry out in between, but not completely dry out, and soil will go phobic. So if it dries out too much, then trying to get it wet again takes a really big project. The biggest thing that kills people's plants is that they forget to water, and so if you're growing a garden, you just need to walk out in your garden every day and pay attention, see what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to give it some attention. You can't just let it. Let it go and do its own thing. So I think you know there's so many people who just ask me, like I've. I've been growing my containers or I've been trying to grow some vegetables and something's not working. And but I think we talked about the sunlight, the soil and the water, and if one of those is out of balance, that's probably one of the answers as to why your garden is not growing correctly and you really do need good soil. I think it's the most important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's the other thing You're going to kill some plants. It happens.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I promise you maybe not you, but I promise you I've killed more plants than most of your listeners out there. Not on purpose, it's just. Oh okay, that didn't work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I won't do that again. That's how we learn. Every year is a learning experience within the garden.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And here's the downside of your first garden. And that is that and my friend Zach from Arizona Worm Farm reminded me recently, greg, your first garden is your worst garden. Now, my first garden in Phoenix, arizona, was in 1975. And I gardened all since then. I had gardened and I moved here and my first garden here was a miserable failure. It was just like and then that's when he reminded me, your first garden is your worst garden. It's like, well, why would I even know that? Because I haven't had a first garden since 1975. So just have you know your listeners, just pay attention, you may kill a few plants and that's, that's how we learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you're now in a totally different climate.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:With more seasons, the seasons are different and yeah, so that's very understandable. I mean, I know my first garden back many, many years ago too, was to complete. I had. I just was clueless and I was just growing things indoors under lights first, but like in January and they were like I was like had a jungle in my basement for a while before I was I was not. I but we learned. That's how we learned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly my friend Kari Spencer. She's written some books on urban farming. Her first garden 20 years ago. She went out garden beds here because I have more control over the soil in them and one of the things I want to share with your listeners is that I will spend $30 on a garden bed and all I do is I get 12 inch, two inch by 12 inch tall untreated boards and I screw them together. A garden bed can be that simple and that's $30 and I'll spend $300 on the soil going in the garden bed and I've done that.
Speaker 2:Since I've gotten here I've probably spent $2,500 on garden bed soil and that's a big upfront expense and I wanted my garden beds to go right now. I wanted food to grow. And then what I do with those garden beds is I'll get some good organic compost and every year I'll add maybe an inch on top of the garden beds. I'll add maybe an inch on top of the garden beds, so that becomes the task going into the future. And for a 10 by 3 garden bed, I'll spend maybe $30 on compost a year. So I spent the $300 to fill the garden bed, but then in future years it's really simple. It cost me $30. I add nice compost. I'm making my own worm compost.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you're not then starting with the dirt that's in the ground and having to amend that and balance that soil. You're just starting with a good base with really high quality soil and then adding compost every year to it just to amend it right, because it has to be, because every time you grow vegetables they pull some of the nutrients out of the soil, so you need to keep amending your soil right.
Speaker 1:Yes absolutely so I want to talk about, then, compost, because some people don't even know what compost is. But I know that it's. You know, for me I cook a lot, so I am, you know, I'm a chef and nutritionist, so I am making a lot of food scraps, vegetable scraps and fruit scraps and everything, and I am a huge proponent of composting in your own home, because I can't even imagine the amount of garbage I would create if I didn't compost.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So just describe like what compost is. I mean it's just broken down vegetable scraps and fruit scraps, right, and anything else to add in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah so and I give a class called non-composting, because composting, or thermophilic hot composting, it's not easy. It takes quite the amount of materials and process to make it happen. But basically what you're doing is you're adding 30% greens, which is your kitchen scraps, and 70% browns, which can be leaves, straw, that kind of stuff, and mixing them all together and letting them get hot, and that hot is the microbes breaking down the stuff and it's about a six-month process to do it properly and then it makes this nutrient-dense fertilizer for your garden. Essentially, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is free right, Then it's free, then you're not buying anything.
Speaker 2:Exactly, which is free, and it's a hard process to do, and so I actually have other suggestions for people. The simplest thing to do once you have your garden, the simplest thing to do is called pit composting, and what you do is you just take your kitchen scraps and you go out in your garden where you're not growing something, and you go down about 12 inches, dig a hole, pour the stuff in, cover the hole back up, and what happens is is the worms arrive and the microbes arrive and nature does what it does down in that hole and over time it'll make really healthy soil in that space. So that's the simplest way to go.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much what I do.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Perfect, yeah, well, because I have so many scraps that's my other. You know I use so much that it's like I can't. I need right, and it does take a while to break it all down. But but so that is. I agree with you, that is one of the easiest ways to do it. Rather than buying the, you can buy compost bins and turners, right? I mean I've done that. All they break because I don't, cause I have so much.
Speaker 2:And they're expensive and yeah, they're expensive Right.
Speaker 2:The second thing I suggest people do is worm composting. The second thing I suggest people do is worm composting and there's this really, really cool product on the market from Urban Worm Bin and it's shaped like a funnel. The cool things about worms is that they travel up. When you add new food scraps on the top, they will work their way up the worm bin. So Urban Worm Bin has a funnel compost, worm composting bin. So it's shaped like a funnel and once it's established, you just add the worm food or your kitchen scraps on the top layer. The worms process them as they move up and then once about every six or seven months, you open the hatch down at the bottom of the worm bin and the worm castings fall out.
Speaker 1:Which is then the compost that you put into your soil.
Speaker 2:Exactly, worm castings or worm poop is a worm compost. It's really really good for your garden. The third thing I highly suggest that people do is, if you have a yard that's secure, get some chickens. Hens are great composters. They eat your food scraps. They will eat bugs and weeds. They give you eggs every day, practically every day. They're great diggers. They're great fun friends. They're great pets to have and then that manure is amazing for your garden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's also a form of compost too right. I know I have chickens so, and I know they eat a lot of the food scraps, scraps, right, they'll eat pretty much anything. And then right and then. So that's another cycle, right that we? Go through and then even the egg shells you can put in the compost bin exactly so it's yeah, so they are really important, I think, to have in a garden.
Speaker 1:But you know, you talked about the warm composting and I I wanted to just talk about urban farming or urban gardening, right, because that's the name of your business. So is there, you know? So I'm we're talking, like, with the assumption that people have decks and yards and a place to put a compost bin, a compost bin. But what if you are living in in the middle of a city or you're? You know you don't have the space, like maybe you just have a little deck off of your apartment, or you know how is worm composting something you could do in an apartment?
Speaker 2:Yep, Absolutely, it can be done inside and, um, you know, like a 33-gallon tote, there's ways that you can use the totes. The thing is is that the worms will stay in the bin. And you know, in Phoenix Arizona it's hard to grow worms in the summertime because it's just so dang hot. So, you know, keeping them in a cool corner of your house, they'll do the processing for you, and then it's just as easy to you know, harvest the worm castings out of there and put it on your house plants, or put it on your plants.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you just add it to the top. Okay, so no fear of worms escaping and getting all over the house.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there any other? No, I was going to ask, like, if there's any other solutions to all the food scraps and everything. I mean I know it like in Manhattan, for example. I mean I think that they're about to start a mandatory food composting initiative. Are there places, like, if I just have so many food scraps I just I can't like handle it, but I do want to compost where? Where does that go like? Are there places that would take my food scraps?
Speaker 2:very likely. In san diego they have a community composting program set up. I've've had the founders on my podcast before. In Phoenix there's something called Recycled City and JD is a student of mine when I was teaching at Arizona State University and he started this company where he's collecting the food scraps from restaurants and homes and turning it into compost. So there are in major metropolitan areas and even in your small metro area they might have something like that that is heading that direction. I know that there are cities that are implementing mandatory, I think, places. Maybe even California has a mandatory food scrap program. Because here's the thing in Phoenix we did some research back about 15 years ago and from the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, we pulled this data from them In Phoenix, arizona, a metropolitan area of about 4.7 million people. They estimated and I'm going to have you guess the timeframe on this 1,100 tons. I'm going to say that again 1,100 tons of food waste every.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say seven days.
Speaker 2:Day. Oh, every day 1,100 tons of food waste every day in the Phoenix Metropole.
Speaker 1:That makes me crazy.
Speaker 2:I know right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so when it goes into the landfill, it's just making methane. When it goes into my garden, it's making healthy, happy soil.
Speaker 1:Right, right, oh, that, just, yeah, that angers me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so there are easy ways to to take initiative and compost your food scraps and you know there's.
Speaker 2:There's the ways that we've talked about. There's a Bokashi composting that you can do at home. There's a black soldier fly composting that you can do at home. There's black soldier fly composting that you can do at home if you have chickens. There's so many ways that you can process food waste that isn't traditional thermophilic composting.
Speaker 1:And I imagine if, wherever my listeners live, I mean you could probably it's Google, you know Google see where you can, you know if composting doesn't feel like your thing, but at least you want to get your fruit, your food scraps to a composting facility. I'm sure that there's something around you.
Speaker 2:Exactly Just like the planting calendar. Do a you know compost search for you know who's making compost in my area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, greg, this has been really helpful. I think. Just to sum up, you know, if you're gardening 101, you really just want to get into it. Well, greg, this has been really helpful. I think, just to sum up, if you're gardening 101, you really just want to get into it. Now it's spring, at least here, and people are ready to plant really good soil. We talked about composting, sunlight, concerns about heat, maybe not having things too hot, good water, a planting calendar and, I think, a moisture meter right.
Speaker 2:To make sure your plants are dry? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I think I got it.
Speaker 2:I did put together a series of how to build healthy soil videos and you can find it at healthysoilhackedcom.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, great. So yeah, my that. My next question was how do people get in touch with you and how do you work with people and you know, with with your, your gardening initiatives and everything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do garden consults with people virtually.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And you can find out about them at urbanfarmorg. We do the podcast urbanfarmpodcastcom and you know, just jump in and be curious.
Speaker 1:So, it sounds like you have a lot of videos and resources also.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, I will definitely link that all in the show notes so people can reach out to you.
Speaker 2:Cool. We do have one of our courses. It's called Growing Food the Basics. It's nine lessons on how to get your garden started, and you can find that on our education page and right now this first half of 2024, it's on sale for $29.
Speaker 1:Oh great, that's like practically giving it away. Okay, exactly, good, great timing, so I'll again. I'll link that in the show notes. And thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It's been really nice to talk to someone who's as enthusiastic about? Gardening, as I am Right.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to this afternoon get into my garden again and just start my planting.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much I'm sitting out here. This last weekend I bought a bunch of plant starts, because I'll do plant starts and then I'll interplant with seeds.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so I'm sitting out here looking at about a hundred plant starts that are going. Oh, you are, oh, I know I can't wait.
Speaker 1:I know I'm about to, I'm about to do the same. I'm excited. These are the little things that get me, that get me happy. So thank you so? Much again. Yes, and happy gardening.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Heather.