you think critically, think rationally,
think differently about the world,
and my hope is to really reconnect you
with the basis of life, and try to live in a
way that is more fulfulling,
full of happiness, health, a world
that is more enviromentally friendly
and less environmentally destructive.
Today we are talking about gardening.
So a lot of you probably saw my project.
i spent a year growing and foraging.
100% of my food, no grocery store,
no restaurant, nothing processed, or packaged,
nothing shipped long distance.
Litterally everything that I ate the entire year
came from my gardens and the idea now is not
to get anyone of you to grow and forage
100% of your food, the idea was to get you
to think, to rethink your food,
question your food and grow a little bit
of your own food. Even if it's just some
tomatoes in your backyard, on your balcony
or some herbs in your window sills or
joining a community garden or going
volunteering at a farm , my goal through
this project and all of this projects is
to reconnect you with your food.
But you have to start where you are so
today we are going to go through
some basics and give tips on helping you
to get started. So this is really geared
towards beginner gardening. However some
of the things that we are going to discuss
are going to be useful for people who have already
been gardening for some time as well.
And I am going to go through maybe
15 or 12 minutes of suggestions and some
tips and then I am going to take questions
and I might take some questions throughtout
as well but mostly I ll take the questions
towards the end. So I am going to go ahead
and get started. First, one of my number 1
suggestion for beginner gardeners is start
small. Now, some of you are going to want
to start really really big, you want to change
your life drastically, you are done with
the grocery stores, you want to grow all of your own food.
That's great and if you feel confident that you can do that
go for it but if you are worried, if you feel like
you have a black thumb and everything dies
and you just feel overwhelmed, maybe lost,
one of my number 1 tips is to start small.
it takes time to learn and in some ways gardening
is easy but in some ways it's also very challenging.
Specially compared to going to the grocery store and
buying all of your food. So what I really recommend
is starting small, don't feel like you are not being
successful if you just have some pots on your balcony
or you have a small raised bed that's 3 feet by 4 feet,
your front of backyard. Start small and then
as you have success, than you can expand and each season
or each year you can grow more and more and more.
So to start small and along the lines of starting small
I recommend making a plan so like for most things in life
if you make more of a plan, it is more likely to be successful with it,
if you know what you are doing going into it
So before jumping into it, think about it, have a plan
make a plan, and yeah, the next thing to go along with
starting small is to keep a journal. So a lot of things
in gardening is if you know when you planted something or when you
can't plant it, it's going to help you be a lot more organized
and a lot more successful with gardening. Just in your garden
journal keep track of the basic things like when you planted
something, when you transplant it, keep track of weather
and this is also a beautiful way to connect as well,
to be able to go back and look at things and then
in future years this will help you as well.
So make a plan and keeping a garden journal
are just some basics to go along with starting small.
Now one of my big things is really about seeking local
ressources. A lot of people when they first start to garden,
their plan is to go to the big buck store like Home Depot or
Walmart and buy their seeds and their plants,
but that is not my suggestion. My suggestion is to seek
local ressources if you can. And now you might seek that Walmart
or Home Depot is local because it is in your city, but it is not local
because those materials are being shipped in by elsewhere
and it is not really focused on your particular region.
So in permaculture, one of the basic idea is to work with the Earth
rather than against it. Working with the Earth means working
within the region or around you not the entire Earth.
When you start working with plants, you have to work
with the plants that are growing in your area,
so seeking out local ressources, one big one is joining
a community garden if you especially are just getting
started and not feeling confident, joining a
community garden is really one of the most beautiful thing
and one of the most helpful thing you can do because
you will be surrounded by community, most community gardens
have veteran gardners there that you can learn from
that can share resources, you can see what's growing well in other
people's plots, you can feel supported, so join a community
garden. Along with that, find other gardeners
you don't have to feel lost, most anywhere you go in the United States,
around the world, there are people growing food. You might
not know it because you haven't been paying attention but
then when you start to open your eyes, you will see
that there are people growing food all over.
So one great way to do this is drive biycles, walk, drive around
our community and find gardens and don't be afraid
to just knock on that front door and say hey I see that you
are going nice vegetables and fruits, I so badly want to learn, could
you volunteer with you in your garden and help you with weeding
in exchange for you taking me under your wing a little bit,
for you teaching me? And this is a great way
to get involved and learn from someone who is local
and has local knowledge. Another way to do this is
to go to a local nursery and you know most local nurseries
are run by people who love plants, have been gardening
for a long time, for decades and so local nurseries can be a really great
ressource. And finding local classes, universities and extension
can be a really great introduction to beginner gardening.
So find out if your local university has an extension
program which this exists in all 50 states across the United States.
This is what I am particularly referring to with this.
But there are many ways to find classes so
check to see if there are classes in your area that focus on local.
And then another great thing to do is volunteer at a local farm.
So many small farms need help and are
also passionate about teaching as well so see if there is
any farm in your area that you can go to, you can
volunteer, you can learn how to grow foor organically
at these organic farms and you can get involved in the
community. A great way to do that is through Wwoof Inc.
Wordwide Opportunites on Organic Farms and that's Wwoof dot net.
And you could do this in your area or you can go all over
the world and how it works is that in exchange for
you working on the farm generally it is 5 days a week for 5 hours
so 25 hours a week you get your lodging covered and you get
you food covered and you get to learn how to grow food.
This can be a really good experience if
you have the time and the energy
and flexibility to be able to be all to do that
And then also local books. So when I leaved in
in Florida I started my year of gardeniing
and foraging, I was pretty clueless. I had grown
very little food before. I didn't know how much
water a carrot needed, how much sun I needed
in my garden. I didn't know any of these things.
So I was feeling pretty lost and what I did is
I went to the internet and I was just searching every
question I had on the internet. How much
water for a carrot, how far apart ro plant
carrots, how much sun does my garden need, I was
looking up all these individual questions and
after a few weeks, I found a book that was written
by someone who lived in Florida
I think It was called Food and vegetable gardening
in Centrla Florida by Robert Bowden. This book was...he was
a 25 year-veteran of growing food and it had all
the information that I needed, not just for growing
food, but particularly for growing food in my region.
So seek out books that are written for your region
and if you can't find one written for your
particular area, find books that are written for the greater
region, for example if you are in New Hampshire,
maybe you can't find one for New Hampshire but
there are definitely books that are focused on the North East
and these books can be just your absolute best friend
for your garden because when it comes to
beginner gardening, these books can answer most of
your questions. Today I won't be able to go
over 99% of what you might want to know but these books
can have all of that right there in one place.
So seeking out books and the library is a great
place to check, check your library whether it's at
the public library, the school library and see
if there are books that you can check out.
I want to talk a little bit about of where
to place your garden. Where do you put it?
So if you have very minimal space don't let
that deter you. If you just have a balcony you can put
pots on there, you can use 5 gallon buckets, any
container that can hold soil can be used to
grow food on your balconies and I have seen some
very impressive balconies producing tomotoes
peppers and all sort of herbs and greens and eggplants,
you can grow a lot on a balcony. And you can grow
on your window seals. If you have neither of those
but a roof that's flat, you can grow a lot of food
on your roof, for example an apartment complex.
But some basic tips on where to place your garden
first of all where it is easily accessible
where you are easily able to get to
if your garden is 10 miles away and there
is also these obstacles to get to it
it's unlikely you will get to it and it will
not get the care it needs. If it's located
in a place that's really obscure on our property,
far away, if you have a larger property,
probably your are not going to get to it.
The key is to put it in the most easily accessible place
ideally where you walk passed it every day
so that you even when you are not thiking
about it, you see it and you know that you should
get in it. So an easily accessible place, also where
there is easy water. Whatever gardening you are doing
there needs to be water. So having an easy access
to water. And especially for beginners full sun.
So again when I started I didn't know the basics
of how much sun and things like that, but generally
you want to have full sun and in colder climates
like in the North East or the Great Lakes region,
you know most of these areas, full sun is 6 to 8 hours
of sun per day on your garden location and
in Orlando Florida, that is very hot, we could do with less
hours of sun or maybe 5 hours per day. So you do want
full sun for, especially for beginner gardening.
The more experience you get there are plants
you can work with that don't need full sun
but with beginner gardening, I would recommend
full sun. So, let's see, one of my biggest tips is to
start with the food that grows very easily.
What I dont recommend doing is walking down
the grocery store aisle and say: oh I love pasta
so I want to grow wheat, anb I love blueberries
and I love mangoes...don't think about what it is
that you love the most, instead figure out what grows
so easily in your area that even someone with
a "black thumb" will be successful. So talk to
those local gardeners and ask them: what is the most
successful crop? what grows well every year?
what produces so much that you could never
eat all of it? For example, a lot of people,
I see this with zucchinis, I see people, it's so
common, these giant zucchinis, and I remember
when I was in Port Townsend, WA, there were
jokes about how people would have to leave
their zucchinis at other people's doors to
try to get rid of them but nobody wanted them
because everybody all had so much. So some beginner
plants to start with, raddishes are one of the easiest ones
and also they produce the fatest so a lot of raddishes
produce in just about 30 days. So It really can
be beneficial to have these fast producing ones
to give you that boost of energy and feeling of
success. Greens can be very easy so kale, collards and lettuces.
Greens can be a very easy place to start and they are very nutrient
dense. So I highly recommend starting with greens.
Peppers are also often considered
a beginner plant to grow , hot peppers I have had
easier time with them than bell peppers
but peppers can be a really easy one
and then herbs, now and easy way to start is buying
herbs in small pots at the store and then planting
them and letting them grow much larger
so some herbs can be hard to start with seeds
but some are very easy to start from seeds
cilantro for example is an easy one to start from
seed. But herbs can be easy to grow, you can
use them at every single meal, they can add a lot
of value to your life, so really some of my best
suggestions for starting are greens and herbs, peppers
and than tomatoes. But there is always you know
differences depending on where you are as I read
ealier people watching us now you are tuning in
from all over the world and all across the United States
so it's going to be different areas, Florida where I grew, for example
large tomatoes didn't grow so well because it was so hot
and so humid that they were more likely to get blite or pest
so we had to grow really small tomatoes
and the variety that I grew in Central Florida
was called Everblade tomato and they did
extremely well. Let's see...okay...so the next tip
is to plant at the right time so what you can do
is you can find a regional planting schedule and you
may have the questions: oh..and the other really
easy one I want to say is raddishes, I grew Daikon
raddishes that grow really big, zucchinis can be really
easy as well. Those are just a handfull of easier plants.
But the big one is planting at the right time.
If you plant kale in the middle of the winter,
you are going to have a hard time with it.
In Florida, if you plant kale in July when it's so hot
you are going to have problems with it.
So the key is to plant at the right time.