Hilary Dahl - Mastering Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest - Get Up & Grow Podcast EP #6

Welcome to the Get Up & Grow Podcast! In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking with Hilary Dahl, co-owner of the Seattle Urban Farm Company. She shares her journey as a grower, entrepreneur, and educator. She discusses the unique aspects of designing gardens in the Pacific Northwest, the significance of sustainability in garden projects, and the increased interest in gardening since the pandemic.
 
Hilary spoke with us about the two books she co-authored which are, Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard and Grow More Food.  She also touches on how her yoga practice complements her life as a gardener. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned gardener, Hilary provides valuable tips for starting and improving your own vegetable garden. 
 
We discuss some of the following:

• Seattle Urban Farm Company: Hilary provided insights into the Seattle Urban Farm Company, its mission, and its impact on the community.
• Creating Edible Landscapes: Hilary elaborated on the concept of "edible landscapes" and highlighted some of the work she has done in this area.
• Unique Aspects of Pacific Northwest Gardening: We explored how working and designing urban gardens differ in the Pacific Northwest region.
• Rewarding or Challenging Projects: Hilary shared a specific project that was particularly rewarding or challenging, offering insights into her experiences.
• Importance of Local Food Production: We delved into the significance of local food production through gardening and its impact on sustainability and community resilience.
• Integration of Sustainability in Garden Design: Hilary emphasized the importance of sustainability in their projects and described various methods they integrate into garden design.
• Marketing and Photography for Business: We explored the significance of marketing and taking good photos to promote the Seattle Urban Farm Company.
• Yoga Practice and Gardening: Hilary discussed how her yoga practice complements her life as a gardener and enhances her connection to nature.
• Advice for Aspiring Gardeners: Hilary provided valuable tips for individuals who are considering growing their own food.

Hilary shared resources during this episode where people can learn more about the Seattle Urban Farm Company and its initiatives which are all available on her website here: https://www.seattleurbanfarmco.com/
 
This Podcast is dedicated to growers like you so we appreciate your feedback so we can provide the best experience possible for the grower community. 
 
Now Get Up & Grow! 
 
Taylor S.
 
To learn more about our Podcast, our Grower Community Blog or our Grow Light Academy checkout our website here: https://activegrowled.com/

Transcript

Hilary Dahl (Intro)
I say start simple. I know that there's a lot of thoughts out there and a lot of different people sending out a lot of different information, but I truly believe start simple. And by that, I mean, maybe with just a few plants and really learn how the plants grow. And like I mentioned earlier, there's just a few things. There's like... 

Hilary Dahl (Intro)
You just want to familiarize yourself with how plants grow, their life cycle, how you harvest them, just like kind of their basic needs. And then once you have that foundation, the combinations and the possibilities are infinite.  

Taylor (Intro)
Hi everyone. Thanks for joining the Get Up and Grow podcast. My name is Taylor Schaberg, your host. Today we are honored to be joined by Hilary Dahl, who is the owner of the Seattle Urban Farm Company. She is an author of two books on gardening and with her husband has built up her successful business in the Seattle area since 2008. She is also a teacher, a photographer, an entrepreneur, a master gardener and a mother. She gives back to her community and believes sustainability is key to growing healthy gardens. She also has a lot to share with us today.

Taylor (Intro)
So please join me as we get to know more about Hillary and the Seattle Urban Farm Company.

Taylor (00:02.11)
Hi, Hillary. It's such an honor to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Hilary Dahl (00:07.761)
Thank you. It's such an honor to be here. I'm happy to talk with you today.

Taylor (00:12.711)
Yeah, thank you for making the time. I know you're a busy owner of a business and you have a family and you got a lot going on so thanks again.

Hilary Dahl (00:22.892)
No problem. Happy to be here.

Taylor (00:25.034)
Yeah. All right, Hillary. Well, I want us to know more about Seattle Urban Farm Company. Can you tell us a bit about your company in Seattle?

Hilary Dahl (00:33.94)
Yeah, yeah. So we have been working in Seattle. I'm from Seattle, but we've this business, as we started the business 15 years ago, and we've been designing and building and maintaining edible gardens for the last 15 or 16 years. And basically the business started out as just a couple guys, my husband and his friend Brad, and they just had this wild idea to start.

Hilary Dahl (00:57.772)
building vegetable gardens in people's backyards. And so it was just the two of them and a couple friends just building gardens. And then we expanded and built out a whole design pro, I joined them. We expanded and built out a whole design program. And then we had this big design installation program, started a farm in Redmond Woodinville for restaurants and kind of got to be really big. Did a lot of like multifamily rooftop installations and things like that. And then we got to a point where

Hilary Dahl (01:27.744)
We felt like we just needed a break. It had been a while and we were getting really big. We had a lot of employees. So then we scaled down. And actually now what we do is we pretty much only maintain vegetable gardens. So our service as business is pretty much only about maintaining vegetable gardens now. So we went from, you know, designing, building, expanding that and then like paring down where we felt like the sweet spot of what we really loved, which is like the actual.

Taylor (01:53.898)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (01:54.724)
growing of the food and helping people be successful growing food. So yeah, now we just have a small team and they work year round, they're on salary and they maintain about 70 gardens still around Seattle. And those gardens range from small backyard gardens that might be 80 square feet, so a couple raised beds or something to multifamily rooftop gardens and restaurant gardens and things that could be up to 1,000 square feet.

Taylor (02:07.371)
Wow.

Hilary Dahl (02:24.332)
So really they work and we work, you know, still in a variety of spaces. But over the years, we've just learned a lot from working in so many different spaces, you know, from backyards to farms to rooftops and in so many different, even just in the Seattle area, so many different little microclimates and so many different types of soil and just so many different, you know, spaces that we...

Hilary Dahl (02:51.808)
We've just, we've learned a lot. And so over the years we've written some books to share those tips that we've picked up along the way with people. And, um, and now we're creating products and they're just, we started with the trellis because, which is really like the impetus for the product creation line. It wasn't like, Oh, we're going to start creating products. It was like, we want to make a better trellis and then, um, maybe we'll expand on that, but basically we have been building custom trellises for people and they're awesome.

Taylor (03:09.585)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (03:20.492)
But it's just not scalable and everybody needs a better trellis for all of their vegetable crops. It's feedback that we get all the time and like one of the number one requests we get from people is to build trellises. And we can't get to everybody and now we don't really do any installations. So this is our sort of solution to that. And also we're trying to, you know, part of our goal as a business has always been like one of our main mission statements was always to.

Taylor (03:31.292)
Mm-hmm.

Hilary Dahl (03:49.944)
provide jobs for people in Seattle who wanted to actually have a livable, like a job with a livable income, you know, sort of, relatively in Seattle. But you know, to be actually, to be able to do farm work and gardening work and have it be sustainable. But then on top of that, really, you know, we truly blew that like growing food and, you know.

Taylor (03:52.741)
Hmm.

Taylor (04:01.338)
Seattle income. Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (04:16.708)
tuning into your environment, your local environment a little bit more is going to just make such a big impact on how people just interact with the world and hopefully make a little, there's a bunny, sorry. It's a new thing, there's bunnies everywhere now in Seattle. Just, yeah, sorry, just trying to be a little bit more sustainable. So our big goal with our new product line is to create things that last forever.

Taylor (04:31.335)
Aww.

Hilary Dahl (04:43.508)
So no more throwaway trellises and things like that. But, and you know, we're just trying to reduce the amount of waste that we create in our gardens. And that even goes down to like, we're like digging into even like the amendments we use and the type of potting soils we use. And I mean, that's a whole nother story, but we're really trying to like take this opportunity where we've done a lot, we have learned a lot, and we're trying to then like.

Taylor (04:51.576)
Right.

Taylor (05:00.395)
Right.

Hilary Dahl (05:09.78)
synthesize all of that into helping people be more successful and more sustainable all at the same time.

Taylor (05:15.926)
I love it. Yeah, perfect fit to be on this podcast and discuss some of this stuff. So, yeah, you said you joined the company and then it sounds like it kind of blew up after that. What kind of a background did you have to bring to the table and like get things going?

Hilary Dahl (05:21.3)
Yes, really do you like?

Hilary Dahl (05:35.189)
I...

Hilary Dahl (05:38.248)
Well, okay. So the business was, it was always like for what it was, it was always very successful. We actually, the business launched right in 2008 or the end of 2007. And it was this moment where it was like the financial crisis was just kind of kicking in and people were, it was kind of similar to 2020 where people were like, oh, I want to learn how to grow my own food or oh, I want to have this.

Taylor (05:45.228)
Right.

Taylor (05:55.126)
Right, correct.

Hilary Dahl (06:03.048)
service because I want this vegetable garden in my backyard that I can tend to, you know, maybe they wouldn't be like a maintenance client that they would want an installation or something. So it's this like really sweet moment and people were also looking for something that was would give hope. So we got a lot of press just like it was just lucky. We just like got a lot of press at that moment. And so the business was successful from the get-go. So that's been great. But I came in with a background in urban planning and landscape architecture and I was like,

Hilary Dahl (06:30.948)
had these grand schemes and I started out actually doing design. And I quickly realized that even with my background in design, that just like wasn't my thing. And not what I, it's not what I wanted to do. What I really wanted to do was teach people about growing things. I think my passion really lied more in the growing than the design. And so we brought on a different landscape designer who then worked with us for four and a half years or so.

Taylor (06:54.327)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (07:00.952)
And she did hundreds of designs over those years. And then after that, she moved on, started her own business because she moved away. After that, we worked with some landscape architects ad hoc, which was also really, really great. And then we got to a point where you kind of almost didn't need landscape design. We were really just installing gardens. So like I said, it just was like, we built the built, did huge installations and then kind of have been like tapering off over the last like five or six years.

Taylor (07:08.407)
Hmm.

Taylor (07:21.347)
Hmm.

Taylor (07:27.578)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (07:30.104)
So my vision was, yes, expand, doing like make these full edible landscapes, work with more like larger scale, like restaurants and rooftops and things like that. But really it was a vision that I had and I'm glad I had, but in the end I didn't really wanna like, I tried it and it didn't work for me. And so then we sort of pivoted as you do.

Taylor (07:55.838)
And you have a bit more control this way, right?

Hilary Dahl (07:59.46)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I don't know. What do you mean by that, I guess?

Taylor (08:05.167)
I mean, well, I guess you've learned from these different architects and you kind of were like, okay, we've gotten to a point where we feel comfortable doing this on our own and let's do it the way we want to do it. And then you kind of found your own path in that, in that, in that or.

Hilary Dahl (08:15.253)
Oh no.

Hilary Dahl (08:20.152)
Yeah, kind of, it was more just that I, the, if I were to be really honest, it was just that the, taking the whole process from, you know, site visit to landscape design, to installation, to planting, it's a huge process when you're doing, you know, quarter acre landscapes and they're full edible design and it's, you know, there's hardscaping and.

Taylor (08:40.587)
Mm-hmm.

Hilary Dahl (08:48.276)
It's just, it's a lot and it's a lot of people to manage, to run all of that. And I think Colin and I realized at a certain point that we were just kind of, we were just managing people and we weren't actually doing the part of the business that we loved. It was like just managing people. Cause when you get to that scale and you're doing, you know, you could have like eight people working on one installation and like, that's a lot of people to manage. Sorry, the garbage truck.

Hilary Dahl (09:16.984)
Maybe we should pause for a second. Of course. So yeah, I think it mainly was like, we had got to this place where the business was successful, but it wasn't really what we wanted to be doing. And we realized that there was a way to pivot a little bit and to do the work that we really wanted to do. Because in the end, like we're running an urban farming business, to an extent, it's a labor of love, you know? And so you wanna love it and not just be like.

Taylor (09:17.176)
Okay.

Taylor (09:46.675)
and...

Hilary Dahl (09:46.708)
You know, it kind of felt like at a certain point, like you could be doing anything. You know, because you're just making people. Does that make sense?

Taylor (09:51.552)
Right.

Taylor (09:54.114)
I totally, it makes sense to me as a business owner, like trying to, yeah, manage people and then you kind of get lost in the mission and then maybe, you know, and some people might prefer to work with you because you're, you know, this more boutique service in a way. And cause they, maybe they get more hands on with you. Is that kind of correct?

Hilary Dahl (09:56.32)
Okay. Yes, yes.

Hilary Dahl (10:11.135)
Yes

Hilary Dahl (10:15.02)
Yes, we're very, we're very boutique. And we, what I love about how the business has evolved is now we do the maintenance. And so we have most of our maintenance clients. It's like warms my heart have been with us for over 10 years. I mean, we have clients that I've seen their children grow up. I mean, it's been so great. I mean, 15 years even like from the beginning. So that's been really great. And what our maintenance service really is, is it's a full service. Our, our team comes in.

Taylor (10:38.69)
Mm-hmm.

Hilary Dahl (10:43.384)
from March through November and they do everything. They plant, we leave the harvesting to the clients because that's the fun part and that's the part where they really get to engage. But we come in, we plant, we succession plant, we clear, we add fertilizer, we trellis, we do everything. And so that's been really sweet. And so people who want to garden but don't have the time or just still don't feel confident can kind of watch their own garden evolve.

Hilary Dahl (11:11.304)
and our team is taking care of that. So that's been so great. And then those, our maintenance team has been around for so long that they're just so dialed in that now we do garden coaching. So they can come in and you can hire them to come and just talk to you for an hour and then create a planting plan for you. Or they'll do, it's our services are, we have two kind of garden coaching services and one's more involved than the other. But anyways, and so that's really for people too who just want, a lot of times with gardening, what I love about gardening and also

Taylor (11:20.364)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (11:39.452)
One of the things I'm always trying to get across is like, really, if you just know some really basic, especially with vegetable gardening, I guess, if you know some really basic or have some really basic skills, then you can do anything. But a lot of people just feel like, like getting over that hump and feeling comfortable, like, I don't know, familiarizing themselves with those basic skills or feeling confident, I guess, is to say that they have those basic skills, even if they do. It's the confidence.

Hilary Dahl (12:09.312)
Um, yeah, so just a little boost sometimes helps get them over the edge. And then they have a really successful gardening season where they may have been more timid. So that's what I are. Are we're really in the, in the, in the space of like just helping people grow food and garden and make them their gardens beautiful. Cause that's always. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a lot about empowering people. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor (12:23.445)
Right.

Taylor (12:26.186)
empowering people. That's great. That's amazing.

Taylor (12:32.258)
It seems like such a cool business concept. I don't, do I, is this something that's around the US and other cities and places? I feel like I've, maybe I don't know. Is it?

Hilary Dahl (12:40.972)
Yeah, it is for sure. Um, you know, maybe it was probably 15 years ago. Now we had the first like urban farming summit where we got together with a few businesses and like the ones, some of them aren't around anymore, but like one that we're still friends with and, um, it's like farm scape down in LA. Um, I don't know why I'm blanking on there's a, there's Portland farms and there was a

Taylor (12:51.587)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor (13:01.987)
Mm-hmm.

Hilary Dahl (13:07.228)
a few different people. It's called like a west coast farms. Oh no and love and carrots like my friend Meredith who's on DC they flew out to the west coast for this like little urban farming suburb. It was like in someone's backyard there was like eight businesses um and that was probably in 2010. um now i think there are hundreds. every city i think has them. it's a real thing and a lot of people are leaning into this kind of like garden coaching model where

Taylor (13:21.111)
Yeah.

Taylor (13:23.554)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor (13:27.147)
Really.

Hilary Dahl (13:36.356)
There are people who are, you know, teaching people how to become garden coaches, and then they start a little business in their city. And so I don't know if there are as many like expansive businesses. I mean, I know Love and Carrots and Farmscape. Love and Carrots is in DC, Farmscape is in LA and San Francisco. I know they're big. They're bigger than we are. They have, they probably both manage in the hundreds, 120 gardens. Um, cause I check in with both of those owners pretty regularly, but, um, but yeah.

Taylor (13:48.055)
Right.

Hilary Dahl (14:06.092)
So I think on a variety of scales, I think that this is a service that's really proliferated in the last like five years and especially since the pandemic. I think it really took off then. But so yes, there are other people that do what we do. Not really in Seattle though, interestingly. I mean there are, but not again, not quite as big.

Taylor (14:14.432)
Yeah.

Taylor (14:20.366)
Okay. No.

Taylor (14:25.738)
Yeah, that maybe goes into my next question. Like, how is setting up these edible landscapes different in a place like the Pacific Northwest? What kind of seasonal varieties can you get? And yeah.

Hilary Dahl (14:35.24)
Yeah, well it's strange. Yeah, no, I mean, so again, we've sort of moved away from the whole edible landscaping model. We're really just like doing vegetable gardens. But when we did, I remember my very first garden I designed for a sale and farm company. It was probably like a five or 6,000 square foot lot and the house was pretty small. So it was a lot of garden. And our goal was to make the entire thing edible. And I remember just like doing a lot of repeating.

Hilary Dahl (15:05.128)
So there was like lots of strawberries and lavender and huckleberries and blueberries. But I mean, there is quite a variety of perennial edibles. And even, I mean, I really dug deep and I think I incorporated everything that was like humanly possible at that point. But even as the climate is changing a little bit, because it is, we, or at least like the temperatures have changed a little bit here in the Pacific Northwest in the last couple years because we were planting things earlier.

Taylor (15:06.41)
Okay, yeah.

Taylor (15:26.679)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (15:35.528)
There are even more varieties that we're experimenting with, like guava and some interesting, I'm growing a, oh my God, why am I blanking on it? It's a pepper, the Japanese Sancho pepper, and just kind of like fun, explorative crops. But the Pacific Northwest is full of edible natives. I mean...

Taylor (15:50.816)
Okay.

Taylor (15:55.981)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (16:02.924)
huckleberry, blueberry, lingonberry, and then there are more obscure ones like a strawberry bush or arbutus, which like you could technically eat, but you know, nobody really does. Marionberry, yeah, well, Marionberry, and I'm gonna, I might misspeak here, but I believe Marionberry is actually a cross between like a huckleberry and a, I mean not a huckleberry, a raspberry and a blackberry. I think it's a cultivated variety.

Taylor (16:15.54)
What about the Marionberry?

Hilary Dahl (16:31.916)
But salmon berry, you know, there's actually quite a few. Is it really loud? Sorry. We're good, okay. Okay, yeah. Well, of course it's like, it's garbage day. I didn't think about that. I'm not super close to the alley, but anyways. So yeah, and then, you know, there are plums and cherries.

Taylor (16:41.502)
No, I can hear you. It's part of being in nature.

Taylor (16:53.326)
It's all good.

Hilary Dahl (17:00.84)
apples, I have this espalier, apples behind me. And you know, there's tons of tons of edible perennials that you can incorporate into the landscape. And then just tons of natives too, that look beautiful and grow really well. I mean, we find the crazy thing about the Pacific Northwest is that it's so rainy, you know, a lot of the year, but really we have kind of a drought in the summer. So for a few months out of the year, it's...

Taylor (17:23.638)
Mm.

Hilary Dahl (17:27.496)
knock on wood or what. I like the break of rain. Other people might not agree with me, but for a few months out of the year we get kind of dry weather and it gets really dry because it's not like there are usually no like sporadic rain showers. So it's nice to have plants that are native and established perennials around your garden because then you don't have to worry about watering them and whatnot. So yeah.

Taylor (17:54.414)
Okay, I got you. Do you mind telling me about an exciting gardening project you have going on currently? I know you said you're mainly maintaining, but is there a particular project that you think is interesting or unique?

Hilary Dahl (18:04.676)
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Yes, we have a lot of actually really, really cool maintenance gardens. But the one that is super exciting right now because it's so mission driven is this project out in, it's on the East side of the lake. So the Seattle area, there's a lake down the middle and on the East side it's a town called, there's Bellevue and Kirkland and not really Seattle. Anyway, over there, there's more space and there's this big garden. It's probably, oh my God.

Hilary Dahl (18:34.06)
The actual growing space is just a couple thousand square feet, but it's in a park and kind of surrounded by perennials and fruit trees. And anyways, it's actually called the Ferriton Spur Park and all the food, it's paid for by a local tech company and it produces so much food and all the food goes to a local food bank.

Taylor (18:48.878)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor (19:01.207)
Really?

Hilary Dahl (19:01.472)
And so we try to grow, we check in with the food bank and the food bank generally, yeah, they give us feedback as to what they want, what they can use and we grow it and harvest it. We have a wash pack station at this place. I mean, it's like a full blown farm in the middle of this kind of like tech campus with all the amenities so that our team can really grow a lot of food.

Taylor (19:18.539)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (19:27.264)
wash it, pack it, and then send it off to this food bank. So it's really cool. We have a couple of gardens that are like that. Amazon actually has a similar program, but it's really in the city and it's on rooftops. So it produces a lot of food for Fair Start, which is a local nonprofit. But this one on the east side is so expansive. I mean, it's just like, just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food every.

Taylor (19:36.92)
Really?

Hilary Dahl (19:52.912)
year that come out of this garden. And so that's really exciting because our team, it's fun to have kind of a mission-driven project like that. Yeah.

Taylor (20:01.118)
Yeah. I'm sure the feedback's been great. Fresh food locally, Gourown.

Hilary Dahl (20:06.134)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (20:08.716)
Yes, and the thing that's really cool about this site is that it's open to the public. None of, it's like maybe our only site that's really open to the public, and it's big and there's tons of food, and the managers, the property management company is like, people could just wander through, try a cherry tomato, try a pepper, whatever, they don't care. It's there for the community, and so I think that that's really special, that it's open to the community, people can wander. Every time I'm there, people are just.

Hilary Dahl (20:37.56)
there are kids and they're digging through things and just kind of exploring. I mean, people are respectful. It's not like they're, you know, doing any harm, but you know, every now and then someone will pick off a cherry tomato or something and that's great. And that's what it's there for. And, um, in addition to then providing for the food bank, but like I said, there's so much food that, um, I think there's like 34 by 12 foot raised beds or something. So if you can do the math, but it's big and that's.

Hilary Dahl (21:06.848)
And that's not including the perennial and like herbs and berries and things that are around the perimeter. I think we have like 20 blueberries and yeah, it's just a really cool, dynamic, beautiful site. And it's just great to have a place where people can actually go visit. We get asked all the time and like, I can't send you to this like rooftop that we need security clearance to get to. Or, you know, it's like we have all of these like very closed.

Hilary Dahl (21:35.26)
spaces and this one's really fun because people can go there and actually interact with the space. So that's super exciting.

Taylor (21:42.418)
Yeah, that's awesome. Super inspiring. So and you got a few few projects like that going on. You mentioned sustainability a little bit. How important is sustainability to your projects? And like, what are some of the methods you use to integrate it into your gardens?

Hilary Dahl (21:59.284)
Yeah, no, that's great. We are super, super focused on sustainability to the extent that we can. Or, you know, we're always trying to improve, I guess is what I should say. And first and foremost, we've always used drip irrigation, which is, we feel like a huge factor in creating just like a water-friendly garden. It's just, they're so efficient.

Hilary Dahl (22:26.772)
And the systems that we use last for so long and are really easy to repair. So again, we're trying to create as little garbage as possible, as little waste as possible, like plastic and metal and things like that in our gardens. So we're trying to use high quality products that last a long time that are efficient in whatever they're meant to be doing. So drip irrigation's a big one. And then using, we try to use as much, well, no, we only use local.

Hilary Dahl (22:56.188)
oil and compost. Our compost that we use is actually, we compost our gardens at the end of the year. So all like 70 gardens get three inches of compost on the top of them at the end of the year. And that is because cover cropping in the Pacific Northwest in the type of gardening that we do doesn't work because our gardens are basically full until October. And unless someone wants to like, wants us to pull out.

Taylor (22:57.387)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor (23:15.982)
Thanks for watching.

Hilary Dahl (23:22.42)
all their crops in September or something to get a cover crop in, which nobody does. We don't really have time to then go through the full cycle. Our winters aren't cold enough for the cover crop to like fully kill. So, so it just doesn't work with our cycle because we start planting again March 1st. So anyways, we compost our gardens. And so we use compost that's from byproducts of the local fishing industry. And so and then, you know, we

Taylor (23:46.96)
Okay.

Hilary Dahl (23:50.064)
Sometimes we'll use the municipal compost, but we really kind of moved away from that actually, and just have just because we found that this, the fish waste compost is just more effective. So that's those are a couple things that we try to do. We try to be really efficient in our daily, like we have people driving around the city, a couple of them. But we group everything by

Taylor (23:55.021)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (24:18.712)
the driving as much as possible. Like people just go home, they don't have to go to the office. You know, it's just, we're trying to become, be efficient in that way. And that's part of, partially just like for our teams, mental health, so they're not just like stuck in traffic all the time. And then with our new product line, really what we're trying to do, or with our new trellises, is create something that you buy once, and you don't have to repeat, you know, you don't have to buy over and over again. I can't tell you how many, or just every year at the end of this season, I walk around just my neighborhood.

Taylor (24:30.199)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (24:48.728)
and there are just like tomato cages out free, free, or broken, scattered in the trash, you know, just like garden shmegma everywhere. People are trying to get rid of it or throw it away. You know, there's poly twine and just all this stuff that it just doesn't feel like conducive to gardening in the way that I would like to envision a world where we garden, where things are.

Taylor (24:53.474)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (25:15.192)
compostable or reusable for, you know, as long as possible. So we created this trellis that will last forever because it'll never rust and everything that can go, that can be used with it is compostable. So you just throw everything away. So we're trying to get, you know, as much to like kind of thread the needle between like last forever and cradle to cradle and local and efficient systems. I guess those are kind of like three, three goals that we have right now.

Hilary Dahl (25:44.316)
And you know, we're always trying to, again, like I said, improve and do better, but those are three things that are top of mind, I would say.

Taylor (25:51.658)
Okay, cool. Yeah. Maybe this is out of left field, but on your LinkedIn, it said you are a yoga teacher as well. I'm wondering...

Hilary Dahl (25:56.665)
Please.

Hilary Dahl (26:00.436)
Oh, oh my gosh. I better change that. Yes. Right. Well, okay. That's really funny. That's how much I go on LinkedIn. I haven't taught in probably five years. Yeah. Probably since I was pregnant with my first son. Um, so I did, I have, do have like somewhat extensive yoga training. I did a 500, well, two, what is it? 200 and then 5,500 hour or whatever.

Taylor (26:05.476)
Okay.

Hilary Dahl (26:28.376)
This was years ago. I did a lot of training and taught for about six or seven years, but I mainly worked with athletes. It was very focused on, um, working with athletes. It was just like what I was interested in. So yeah, that's my.

Taylor (26:40.886)
I didn't know if this, how does that play into your life as a gardener? I mean, I practice Ashtanga every other day, so I'm just like interested.

Hilary Dahl (26:49.056)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had more. Well, it actually probably plays a huge role. I truthfully like gardening, if I'm actually can be out in the garden alone, just in my space, which is rare these days. That's like the best meditation possible for me. And then I've always been, I mean, a big part of the reason why I did

Hilary Dahl (27:18.688)
went through yoga training and I have practiced yoga. I just am really interested in body awareness and like being a gardener, just thinking about how you use your body. And again, being efficient, kind of like back to this whole efficiency system thing, just trying to be smart and mindful about how we use our bodies in the garden. And yeah, so.

Taylor (27:36.458)
Yeah, I bet when you're like bending over and reaching down to pull out roots out of the ground or like building something that's you got to be considerate of your body when you're doing all that. So

Hilary Dahl (27:46.396)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's a big, it's a big thing. So yeah, just try. Yeah. I wish I Yeah, I don't have I don't have anything like really interesting to say about that. Because I'm kind of out of the out of the mix on that. But I do practice I'm actually just started trying to practice yoga every day. And I'm on day four. But it's something.

Taylor (27:52.326)
Okay, cool. I wanted to touch on that.

Taylor (28:09.782)
Namaste. Cool. So, I know you're limited on time, so we'll get towards the end here. I just wanted to say, what can you say to the person who is at home listening and thinking of growing their own food? Maybe they're not in Seattle where they can use your service. Like, how does someone kind of get started there? I know it's kind of a really open-ended question.

Hilary Dahl (28:17.496)
Yeah, okay. May have to go.

Hilary Dahl (28:31.392)
Yeah. No, no, no. This is what I love to think about. I say start simple. I know that there's a lot of thoughts out there and a lot of different people sending out a lot of different information, but I truly believe start simple. And by that, I mean, maybe with just a few plants and really learn how the plants grow. And like I mentioned earlier, there's just a few things. There's like...

Hilary Dahl (28:58.808)
You just want to familiarize yourself with how plants grow, their life cycle, how you harvest them, just like kind of their basic needs. And then once you have that foundation, the combinations and the possibilities are infinite. But I like to just tell people to start simple. And because I think that people tend to get overwhelmed with gardening really quickly and feel discouraged really quickly. And I...

Hilary Dahl (29:27.604)
I think if you start simple and set yourself up for success, so start with a system that is, you know, let's say, let's just use vegetable gardening as an example. You know, if you start with something that's set up well, so an in-ground bed or a raised bed that the soil is loose, it's going to drain, there's irrigation, it's been fertilized. You know, if you

Hilary Dahl (29:52.244)
when you start to cut corners on things like that, that's where people get frustrated. It's like, oh, I can't grow broccoli because it bolts every time. Well, it's probably because it's not getting watered consistently or it's probably because the soil you put it into is just like fill from your backyard, you know, back urban yard or something. So I think like start small, start simple, be successful in that and then expand and be, you know, get to like be more creative at that point. But I truly believe that.

Hilary Dahl (30:23.556)
It sounds so lame and I always like I am I saying this but I say it over and over again if you follow the rules Which I'm not like a rule follower necessarily with vegetable garden if you start by following the rules just to start just to start I don't follow the rules anymore, but just start by following the rules You're gonna learn so much that then you're gonna be do be able to do whatever you want but when you don't and you just jam things in the ground or don't actually aren't intentional about looking at your plant and

Taylor (30:51.202)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (30:52.512)
like, you know, communing with it, like, oh, what do you look like? Like, how are you going to grow? Um, maybe I should look at a book and see like how you're going to grow. Oh, should I thin you? There's three broccoli here, not one. Like if, you know, just kind of like taking your time to, to learn the rules and familiarize yourself with how plants grow, which isn't a big lift. It's not a big commitment, especially in vegetables. It's like pretty basic. Not to do a shameless plug, but like our, our first book, food grown, right? Like.

Hilary Dahl (31:21.484)
literally like will walk you through how to grow every plant, and most every vegetable crop. And it's like 200 pages and a fun, easy read, you know, something like that. It's like, you'll be so informed that then after that, you can start to get crazy and creative and interplant or do whatever you want. But I don't know, I just, I worry because I see so many people, I talk to so many people that get so discouraged, but they're...

Taylor (31:33.442)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (31:50.488)
they're just not informing themselves enough at, you know, from the get go and not starting simple. I think one of the biggest problems, and then I'll stop talking, I just blabber on when it comes to vegetable gardens, is we all wanna grow. When you wanna grow food, I feel like you wanna grow it all. And I totally get that. It's like, and you have one four by eight foot raised bed, let's say, because that's like the most standard thing that people have. And people wanna plant it with every single thing that they can possibly think of. And then again, like it doesn't.

Taylor (31:59.135)
Yeah.

Taylor (32:13.581)
Right.

Hilary Dahl (32:20.416)
work out because you can't plant 15 broccoli and 8 tomatoes and like 6 eggplants in one bed. It's just too much. So I think just start simple and like whatever you do grow if you kind of follow those rules will be super successful and super bountiful and then you'll feel empowered to get more creative. So I don't know. Is that okay?

Taylor (32:47.755)
And no one's gonna get it right the first time, right?

Hilary Dahl (32:49.664)
Oh my god. No, that's the other thing. Don't be afraid to try again, you know, like if you plant something and it doesn't work the first time, it doesn't mean you can't grow it. It just means either you did something wrong or the environmental conditions were such that it wasn't the right time. Like, I mean, it happens to me all the time and I've been growing food for a very long time. So, you know, like a couple last year, I planted these beautiful Merlot cabbages and

Hilary Dahl (33:16.48)
I kind of knew it was a long shot because it was a little late in the season. They were so beautiful. And then I cut them open and they had like totally bolted. And I was like, what's wrong with me? I know better. I know it wasn't the right time to plant them, but I did it anyways. And then they bolted. And like, you know, so even when you know you're going to make the wrong decision, but try again. I'm trying them again this fall though, instead of the spring.

Taylor (33:25.027)
Hmm.

Taylor (33:35.287)
Yeah.

Taylor (33:39.506)
I was speaking with Joe Gardner, who's been growing his whole life just a couple of weeks ago, and he was saying that you kind of develop this mindset through growing over the years where you can learn patience and understanding and kind of like, mother nature is always gonna surprise you, you can never control it. So I thought that was something interesting that can apply to this conversation.

Hilary Dahl (33:42.612)
Is it? Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (34:00.212)
No, absolutely. And I think that's another thing is when you learn, if you really do wanna garden, it does take time and it's a nice way to spend your time, but getting out there and actually sitting with your plants, and this is why I always encourage people to cultivate their soil, because when you do that, just even if it's like five minutes in your garden every day, one, you're gonna learn so much and two, you're gonna see so much that you would never see.

Hilary Dahl (34:28.944)
on a variety of scales. You'll see so much, you know, in the garden. You'll see the plants changing and growing and it's so beautiful and you learn so much from just watching that, like that evolution. But then also you'll, you'll see like every time I'm out in my garden, I'm surprised the birds I see or like the different types of insects. And so it's just, I don't know, just even like if you're going to do it, try to commit a little bit to it, like a practice, like a yoga practice.

Hilary Dahl (34:58.328)
And it doesn't have to be this huge commitment, but even like five minutes a day, and I think you'll learn so much and be so much more successful.

Taylor (35:09.662)
I love that. What is what is coming up next for Seattle Urban Farm? I know you're currently coming up with products. The Trellis system looks awesome. What's next for you guys?

Hilary Dahl (35:10.848)
I'm gonna miss you.

Hilary Dahl (35:22.632)
Yeah, yeah. So next to my sweet Colin, my husband is like, he's already, I'm like, wait, we're just getting this launched. He's like already creating all these other new concepts. But really from the get go from the trellis, we did want to expand upon the trellis and expand it in such a way that it could support perennials in a very intentional way. It can support perennials now, but it's not designed to be a raspberry trellis. So it's not designed to be a grape harbor.

Hilary Dahl (35:52.288)
And so what we're working on right now or actually in the design process is our system is modular. And so you can set it up to different dimensions. You buy one kit and then it can be set up to different dimensions. And so within that, we're gonna create these kind of like add-on kits where you can swap out pieces for other pieces that would then maybe support a very specific perennial crop like berries or an espalier tree or raspberries.

Hilary Dahl (36:20.848)
So that's been really fun because again, it's really cool that we've made this system that we can just kind of like piece in different pieces so you don't need an entire different, you know, entire new system. You can add something on if you wanted to change, you know, use your trellis for something different than an annual crop. Or if you're just looking for a system that would support your perennials and would last a really long time, this is a good option.

Hilary Dahl (36:49.316)
We're not there yet. Hopefully by this fall though, actually, there's gonna be some kind of get this going. So I'm excited about it. Actually, the design concepts are really clever. So I'm excited to launch that, but that's kind of next, working in the, you know, trying to support the perennial plants, because we see those as a really important element to any vegetable garden or any edible space.

Taylor (37:18.466)
Yeah, totally. Well, where can people go to learn more about Seattle Urban Farm Company and find the trellis system that you're talking about, get a hold of you, find your book. If you don't mind saying the name of your book again, I'm gonna provide links to everything at the end of the show so people can find you.

Hilary Dahl (37:20.087)
Yeah.

Hilary Dahl (37:33.644)
Yeah. Oh, cool.

Hilary Dahl (37:37.996)
Yeah, so we have two books actually. The first one, Food Grown Right in Your Backyard, and that's the one that really walks you step by step through how you grow each annual vegetable crop, and then basics on setting up a garden, fertilizing, how plants grow. My favorite part of this book, I love that book. I just, I really do. It's like has a special place in my heart because it's just so well done. We wrote it after, like if I do say so myself.

Hilary Dahl (38:03.684)
Colin and Brad wrote it after five years of working with clients. And it's really like all the questions that people had every day, year after year. And so there's this chapter called Plant Life 101. And it's just great. It just walks you through how plants grow, like kind of an overview. It's like a botany 101, but it's very, very approachable and very fun. And there's lots of jokes. And so anyways, that's a really great vegetable, beginning guide to vegetable gardening. And it's written technically for,

Taylor (38:12.194)
Hmm.

Hilary Dahl (38:32.84)
anybody in any region. But obviously, it's, you know, we're gonna have like a Pacific Northwest bent to it. With that said, Colin and Brad both started farming in the Midwest. So they farmed in Ohio and Pennsylvania. So they have a lot of experience out there as well, in the Midwest as well. And then the second book is called Grow More Food, and that sort of builds on food grown right. And basically, that one doesn't walk you through like, you know, how you grow each

Hilary Dahl (39:02.848)
that's like how do you improve upon your system? So you know how to grow food now, you know the basics. Now how do you create more efficient systems? How do you expand if you wanna have a larger space, if you wanna grow specific, like say you have a wedding or some event coming up and you wanna grow enough salad for everybody, you know, there's all these charts so you can calculate or if you really wanna like have carrots. Every.

Hilary Dahl (39:31.384)
day for the entire year like how you calculate how you grow that things like that. So that just is like food grown right 2.0 basically like how you expand upon the basics of vegetable gardening. So those books are really awesome. I know I'm close to them but I did the photography for both of them the first one I did 12 years ago. It was like I was a baby but it was very very fun and then I got to do.

Hilary Dahl (40:00.068)
grow more food as well a couple years ago. And then our trellises are on our website. They're called the Frayer Trellis. And they are an aluminum trellis with steel ground anchors. They're powder-coated, they'll never rust, and they're modular. So the idea is that can fit in as many different spaces as we could make, make sense with our engineers. And yeah, there will be more products.

Hilary Dahl (40:27.968)
we'll roll out more products to kind of expand on that. And even expansion systems, maybe an L shape or something. You'll see what I mean if you look at the website. And then yeah, we're on Instagram at Seattle Urban Farm Company, and we share a lot of tips there, which is really fun. I have a podcast that I have not made new content for in about a year, maybe more than that, but that's my passion project. And

Taylor (40:35.842)
Okay.

Hilary Dahl (40:53.948)
I, over the years that, just like our business has evolved, it started off with me just talking. And then I brought on a very fun, very great local kind of beginning gardener. And we worked together kind of bouncing off ideas through the podcast and sharing our different perspectives from kind of an expert and a beginning gardener. And then I started bringing on experts from all across the world actually to talk about different skills and growing different crops and things like that.

Hilary Dahl (41:23.18)
That is my, like I said, my passion project and I hope to bring that back because I love doing it. It just takes a lot of time and I have three very small children and business and a lot of things going on. So there's like time is not is non-existent. So yeah, and seattleurbanfarmco.com is our website. Everything's just seattleurbanfarmco website, Instagram, all that good stuff. So it should be, is pretty easy, but yeah, I hope this was.

Taylor (41:44.802)
Gotcha.

Taylor (41:52.05)
Yeah, no, well, no, it's been great having you on Hillary, the multi talented, you know, master vegetable garden gardener, product designer, mom, yoga teacher, photographer, book writer. Yeah. But

Hilary Dahl (42:05.83)
Yes, photography. Yeah, but that's, that's my other passion is the photography, but no one needs that anymore because we all make videos now, which is fun too. Yeah.

Taylor (42:14.89)
No, photography is crucial. Photography is crucial. Well, thank you and thank you to your husband, Colin. You guys are amazing and...

Hilary Dahl (42:23.008)
Yeah. Oh no, thank you. You'll have to have him on sometime. He has lots to say. Thank you so much for having me on and it was really nice to talk to you. Yeah, we'd love to do it again. It would be fun to do it with both of us sometime if we can figure out a way to wrangle our children somewhere. Wrangle our children and work. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you.

Taylor (42:26.594)
For sure. For sure.

Taylor (42:33.855)
Yeah, of course.

Taylor (42:39.15)
We'll make it happen, if you guys can find the time. Or, all right.

Taylor (42:46.25)
Well, thank you so much again and until next time. Appreciate it.

Taylor (42:52.803)
Bye.

Hilary Dahl (42:53.132)
Take care. Bye.