Good day everybody! Today is the third day of my YouTube lives, and the purpose of being here is just to help you through this time, and not just make it through this time, but actually come out of this time better off than when we went into it. My hope is to be here of service, to help you think critically, think rationally, think differently about the world, and my hope is to really reconnect you with the basics of life, and try to live in a way that is more fulfilling, full of happiness, health, and living in a way that is more environmentally friendly and less environmentally destructive, and today we are talking about gardening! A lot of you probably saw my project where I spent a year growing and foraging 100% of my food. No grocery stores, no restaurants, nothing packaged or processed, nothing shipped long-distance, literally everything that I ate for an entire year came from my gardens, and the idea of that was not to get any of you to grow and forage 100% of your food. The idea was to get you to rethink your food, question your food, and grow a little bit of your own food, even if it is just some tomatoes on your balcony, or some herbs on your windowsill, or joining a community garden, or going and volunteering at a farm, my goal through this project and through all of these projects is to reconnect you with your food. But you have to start where you are! 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 today 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 20 minutes of some suggestions and some tips, and then I am going to take questions, and I might take some questions throughout as well, but mostly I will take the questions towards the end. So I am going to go ahead and get started. First, one of my number one suggestions to beginner gardeners is "start small". Now, some of you (drinking) are going to want to start really big, you want to change life drastically, you want to want to be done with the grocery stores, you want to grow all of your own food, that is 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 one tips is to start small. It takes time to learn, and in some ways gardening is easy, but in some ways it is also very challenging, especially compared to just 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 is just 3 feet by 4 feet in your front or backyard. Start small, and then as you have success, then you can expand, and each season or each year, you can grow and you can grow more and more and more. So start small, and along the lines off starting small I recommend making a plan. With most things in life, if you make somewhat of a plan, you are more likely to be successful with it. If you know what you are doing going into it. So before jumping into it, have a plan, make a plan! The next thing to go along with starting small is to keep a journal. A lot of things in gardening, if you know when you planted something, or when you transplanted it, it is going to help you be a lot more organized and a lot more successful in gardening. Just, in your garden journal, just keeping track of the basic things, like when you planted something, when you transplanted it, you can 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 in future years, this can help you as well. So, making a plan and keeping a garden journal are just some basics to go along with starting small. Now, one of my big things is, it is really about seeking local resources. A lot of people, when they first start to garden, their thought is to go to the big box store, like Home Depot or Walmart, and buy their seeds or buy their plants, but that is not my suggestion. My suggestion is to seek out local resources if you can. You might think that your Walmart or your Home Depot is local, because it is in your city, but it is not local, because those materials are being shipped in from elsewhere and it is not really focused on your particular region. In permaculture, one of the basic ideas is to work with the earth rather than against it, and working with the earth means working within the region around you, not the entire earth. Once you start working with plants, you have to work with the plants that are growing in your area. So, seeking out local resources. One big one is joining a community garden. If you especially are really just getting started and you are not feeling confident, joining a community garden is one of the most beautiful things and most helpful things you can do, because you will be surrounded by community. Most community gardens have veteran gardeners there that you can learn from, that can share resources, you can see what is growing well in other people's plots and you can just feel supported. So join a community garden. Along with that, find other gardeners. You don't have to feel lost. Everywhere you go around the United States, around the world, there are people growing food. You might not know if because you have not been paying attention, but once you start to open your eyes you see that there is people growing food all over. So one way to do this is, ride a bicycle, walk, drive around your community and find gardens, and don't be afraid to just knock on that front door and say, "Hey, I see you are growing vegetables and fruits, and I so badly want to learn, could I volunteer with you in your garden and help with weeding, in exchange for you taking me under your wing a little bit, and teaching me?" 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. Most local nurseries are run by people who love plants, have been gardening for, a lot of the times, decades! So local nurseries can be a really great resource. And then, finding local classes. University extension programs can be a really great introduction to beginner gardening, so find out if your local university has an extension program. This exists in all 50 states across the United States, that is what I am particularly referring to with this, but there are many ways to find classes. Check to see if there are classes in your area that focus on local. Another great thing to do is volunteer in local farms. So many small farms need help and are also passionate about teaching as well. See if there is any farms in your area that you can go to, you can volunteer, you can learn how to grow food organically at these organic farms, and you can get involved in the community. A great way to do that is through WWOOFING, worldwide opportunities on organic farms at WWOOF.net, and you could do this in your area, or you can go all over the world! How it works is, in exchange for you working on the farm, generally it is about 5 days a week for 5 hours, so 25 hours a week and you get your lodging covered, and you get your food covered, and you get to learn how to grow food, so this could be a really great experience if you have the time and the energy and the flexibility to be able to go do that. And then also, local books. When I lived in Florida, when I started gardening in Florida to do my year of growing and growing an foraging all my food, 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. How much water per carrot, how far apart do you 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 Fruit and Vegetable Gardening in Central Florida, it is by Robert Bowden. He was a 25 year veteran of growing food, and it had all of the information that I needed, not just for growing food, but 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 is definitely books that are focused on the north east. These books can be your absolute best friend in the garden, because when it comes to beginner gardening, these books can answer most of your questions. Today I will not be able to go over 99% of what you 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 is at the public library, school libraries, see if there are books there that you can check out. I want to talk a little bit about where to place your garden. Where do you put it? 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 tomatoes, and peppers, and all sorts of herbs and greens and eggplants. You can grow a lot on a balcony. You can grow on your windowsill if you have neither of those, or you have a roof that is flat, you can grow a lot of food on your roof, for example in apartment complexes. 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 through. If your garden is ten miles away and there is all these obstacles to get to it, it is unlikely you will get to it and it will not get the care it needs. If it is located in a place that is really obscure on your property, far away, if you have a larger property, probably you are not going to get to it. The key is to put it in the most easily accessible place, ideally where you walk past it, so that even when you are not thinking 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 easy access to water. And then, especially for beginners, full sun. Again, when I started I did not know the basics of how much sun and things like that, but generally you want to have full sun, and in colder climates, like the northeast or the Great Lakes region, most of these areas, you want full sun as 6 to 8 hours of sun per day on your garden location. In Orlando, Florida, where I lived, where it was really hot, we could do with less than that, we would do with maybe 5 hours of sun per day. So you do want full sun especially with beginner gardening. The more experience you get, there are plants you can work with that don't need full sun but for beginner gardening I would recommend full sun. Let's see, one of my biggest tips is to start with the foods that grow really easily. What I don't recommend doing is walking down the grocery store aisle and say, "oh I love pasta so I am going to grow wheat, and I love strawberries, and 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 somebody with a "black thumb" would be successful. 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 can never eat all of it?". For example, I see this with zucchini. It is so common, these giant zucchinis, and I remember when I was in port towns in Washington, there were jokes about how people would have to leave zucchinis on other people's doors to try to get rid of them, but nobody wanted them because they all had so much! Some beginner plants to start with: radishes are one of the easiest ones, and they also produce the fastest. A lot of radishes produce in just 30 days, so it really can be beneficial to have some of these faster producing ones to give you that boosted energy and that feeling of success. Greens can be very easy. Kale and collards and lettuces... greens can be a really easy place to start and they are very nutrient-dense, so I highly recommend starting with greens. Peppers are also an often considered beginner plant to grow. I have had easier time with hot peppers than bell peppers, but peppers can be a really easy one. And then, herbs. An easy way to start is actually buying herbs in the small pots at the store and then planting those and letting them grow much larger. Some herbs can be hard to start from seed, but some are very easy to start from seed. Cilantro, for example, is an easy one to start from seed, but herbs can be very easy to grow, you can use them at every single meal, they can add a lot of value to your life. So my best suggestions for starting are greens, herbs, peppers and then tomatoes. But there is always differences depending on where you are. As I read earlier, the people watching this right now, you are all tuning in from all over the world, and all across the United States, so it is going to be different in different areas. In Florida, where I grew, for example, large tomatoes did not grow well because it was so hot and so humid that they were more likely to get blight or pests, so we had to grow really small tomatoes, and the variety that I grew in central Florida is called everglade tomatoes, and they did extremely well. The next tip is to plant at the right time. What you can do is you can find a regional planting schedule, and you might have the questions like... Oh and I just want to say, the other really ones is radishes, and I grew daikon radishes, which get really big. Zucchinis can be really easy as well. These are just a handful of the easier plants. So the big one is to plant at the right time. If you plant kale in the middle of the winter, you are going to get a hard time with it. In Florida, if you plant kale in July, when it is so hot, you are going to have problems with it, so the key is to plant things at the right time, and the simplest way to do this is to find a regional planting schedule, and if you find one of these local books, they actually have a schedule that will tell you. For example, in Wisconsin you will probably want to plant your tomatoes in... you might put them into seeds in April, get them into the ground in late May or June, if I had to guess, I have not planted there. But, you don't have to figure this out, because these calendars do that for you, and they will basically give you a range of time of when you can plant them, so these regional planting schedules are absolutely key, and there is one at the national gardening association. Everything that we are going through right now is on my guide at robgreenfield.org/freeseedprojectguide and most of these things will be on there, as well as links to resources. That information is there so if you miss something don't worry about it, there is a good chance that it is in that guide. The next thing is the question of "How far apart do you plant things, how deep do you plant things, do you direct plant the seed into the ground or should you put them in pots first?" And again, the best way to decide that is through these regional planting, finding this local information. For example, kale is on average, depending on how you are growing it, about 6 to 8 inches, to 12 inches apart, but you can follow the guidelines on seeds. On the seed pack it has these informations, and in these books , it has this information. There is hundreds of different plants, and also, on my guide, I give the basic idea. There are basic ideas of how far you plant things apart. As far as directly planting in the ground, or planting in pots and then bringing them out, the answer is both. It depends on the scenario. If you are in the colder climates, if you want to get the earliest start possible, planting inside can give you a 6-week headstart, by getting your plants to be large and putting them in the ground already 6 weeks ahead of schedule. I want to talk a little bit about pests now, and I have a big disclaimer here, and that is that pest is a human-made concept. (drinks water) Nothing by nature is a pest. That is just a word that we decided to give different species and different creatures. So much about gardening can be about rethinking the way that we think about basic things. Some of my absolute keys to reducing "pests" and having a healthy garden. Number 1, diversity. You have probably heard the term monocrop. Monocrop is when you plant just one species, for example, corn. When you drive past acres of corn or soybeans, that is a monocrop. Monocrops are very susceptible to pests. Just imagine, you have one plant here, one plant here, one plant here, one plant here, the bugs can do the same thing. The pests can just walk from one to the next, to the next, to the next. Now imagine with diversity. If you have a hundred different species, in your garden, those different insects want different plants, so they can't go out of control if they don't have that one specific plant, so the more diversity you have, the less likely you are to have these plagues of insects. The plague of insects is the reason we have GMO foods, because designed that way, no crops, well, some will, but most food crops, especially annual crops will not work if you have them as monocrop. Having as many species as possible in your garden is one of the keys to success, and along those same lines, imagine if you have one tomato on the north side of your garden and one tomato plant on the south side, and one on the east, and one on the west, what happens is that you would be amazed at you might get the tomato hornworm on one plant, but it does not make it to the other ones, whereas if there is one next to each other, they will just walk from one to the other, so diversity also allows you to spread the different plants out, so intercropping is a big part of that. Planting different species next to each other, that can work together and create diversity. Another really great thing is beneficial insect attractive mix. At Johnny's seeds I buy something called the beneficial insect attractive mix. This is a mixture of about different flowers that bring in beneficial insects, and what a beneficial insect is, is these are insects that eat the other insects that you don't want or compete with them to keep them out. For example, aphids are a problem for a lot of people. Ladybugs actually eat aphids, so ladybugs are a beneficial insect. A lot of caterpillars that eat your plants, one thing you can do is, you can bring in wasps that eat those caterpillars, or parasitic wasps that lay their eggs in those caterpillars so that when they hatch they eat these caterpillars. So wasps are actually really beneficial to have in the garden. Ladybugs, honeybees, all bees. All of these are beneficial to have in the garden, there are many different creatures that are beneficial to have in the garden. So, planting beneficial insects attracting mix, and also creating evironments to bring them in. Along those lines, frogs, snakes, lizards, these reptiles or/and amphibians are really beneficial as well. If you don't want rats in your garden, then snakes are great, because they can eat the rats and the mice, so these are great to have in the garden. A lot of people are afraid of snakes and frogs and toads, but those are your friends as a gardener. The next thing is healthy soil. You have to have healthy soil. If you only focus on the plants, the plants are less likely to be healthy. The key is focusing on the soil. Healthy soil creates healthy plants. I am not going to go into the depths of healthy soil today, but it is just something really important to keep in mind. Another big thing, and this is one of the biggest things in all, is perspective, keeping in mind that insects deserve to live as well, and I am not saying that I don't kill insects. I do, and I actually don't have any problem killing caterpillars on my tomatoes for example, in order to make sure that I have food. I believe this is one of the standard parts of the circle of life, and if we are not doing it, the reality is someone else is doing it for us and we are just not seeing it, but perspective, just realising that the insects, or the other species, deserve some of the food as well, and it is okay for them to eat some. If you plant abundantly, then you don't have to worry so much. I remember my first time planting, when I had very little growing, it was so much bigger of a deal to me, when some of my food was getting eaten. But by growing abundantly, you have enough, and you don't have to worry about that. Another thing to keep in mind, aphids for example. A lot of times aphids are not that damaging to the plant, but people just don't like the aphids on there. Aphids are basically another healthy, well, healthy... you have got to listen for another second here, healthy extension to the plant, and what I mean is healthy to you. Aphids suck the juices out of the plants, and then those aphids are just as edible and healthy as the plants themselves, so don't worry about eating some aphids at all, they are plenty healthy. I eat aphids almost every single day. I ate aphids today because I am harvesting stinging nettle in the wild, and there are aphids on there. Another tip for dealing with pests that you don't want in the garden, and this is especially if you are trying to keep things organic, and that is really connecting with your garden and being out there every single day. If you go through your garden and walk through every single day, you will see when problems start to arise, and you can deal with them early on. Imagine, if there are 10.000 caterpillars, you are not going to be able to deal with that, but if you start to see when there is only a handfull on there, often you will be able to pick these caterpillars off before they start to exponentially grow and multiply, using your hands. And the beautiful thing is, this is just a great way to get down in the garden, get down on your hands and knees, or your belly, and really connect with that. So that is another tip with pests. And again, healthy plants. The healthier your plants, often when there are pests it is not a matter of treating the plant, it is a matter of figuring out what the problem was in the first place. Why are there pests on these plants? And often there is something to do with them not being healthy. For example, are they getting enough sun? Think of how we have an immune system. If our immune system is down, we are more likely for a bacteria or a pathogen or a virus to be able to take over enough, to make us sick. But if our immune system is great, we are able to resist that and fend off, and the same goes with plants. They don't have immune systems but if they are weak, the pests are able to take over. If they are strong and vigorous, they are more likely to continue and fend that off. So healthy plants, and that again comes down to planting at the right time and planting hardy plants, planting plants that are are designed for your area. Another one, and this is where I am going to end, and then we are going to go on to some questions, and that is focusing on perennials. Perennials are so much easier to grow than annuals. Imagine a plant that you plant once, and it is there for you year, after year, after year. In colder climates rhubarb is a perfect example. this can live for 25 years! You plant it, and every year it will come back. The snow and the ice go away, your faithful rhubarb comes back. Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, these are all perennials. Fruit trees like apples and pears and plums, or down south mangoes and seagrapes and white sapote, black sapote and mamey sapote. Fruit trees are all perennials. Most of fruit bushes are perennials, but there aree is also a lot of perennial greens. If you watch my video I released this week on foraging, most of these are perennial greens. You can grow perennial greens and you can grow self-seeding annual greens that just keep coming back year, after year and this drastically reduces your work. The thing about perennials is that they are generally more resilient to pests, and often they need less nutrients, they don't need the tilling of the soil, so I really recommend perennials, and one video that is very helpful that I released recently is "How to turn your yard into a garden and it is right here on my youtube channel, and you can watch that. If you go to robgreenfield.org/freeseedprojectguide that has a lot of these resources. Also, if you go to robgreenfield.org/grow, that guide is specifically for central Florida, where I did my year of growing and foraging all of my food, but also has a lot of great information and resources. I did not go through a lot of the basics because there is so much that we could go through, but there are amazing channels for that. I really like Epic Gardening Kevin, and Niki Jabbour. She is actually in the colder climates. She is a great resource. Kevin is in San Diego, California but he is a great resource for across the country. There is hundreds of amazing gardening channels on youtube, on social media, websites, books, so find great resources because this has the information and you can have it right there at hand. Those are some of my tips for beginner gardeners to really help you get started. Again, remember that starting small is great. You don't have to feel bad about starting small, or growing just a little bit of food. A little bit is a lot more meaningful than none. Remember, this is about community, it does not have to be alone. Connecting with other people, volunteering at farms, volunteering with other local gardeners. One of the best ways to make friends with a gardener is to pull their weeds, because almost all gardeners need help pulling their weeds. Do this with community, seek out local resources and enjoy this! Gardening is work, but if you love it, if you are passionate about it, if it is making you healthier, it is getting you outside, it is connecting you to your community, sure it is work, but it is also life. It is living the life that you want. So I am going to take a handful of questions, and you can ask questions that are more exact, and I will see if I have an answer to them, or more general. I will say that I have grown quite a bit of food now, but there is so much that I have not done, so there are a lot of questions that I will not be able to answer with exact things. My experience is limited to the few places where I have grown food, but ask questions away and I am going to answer some of them. Okay, let's see. Melissa says, "Are seeds that are about to expire still okay?" Yes. Absolutely A lot of seed packs will have an expiration date on them. There is nothing that says that the seeds are bad after that, it is just that some of the seeds will not sprout, they are not viable anymore. But generally when you buy seed packs, the idea is they want to have a viability rate of, say, 90%. But each year all that happens is that some of the seeds become not viable anymore. One second, there is a dog that wants to come outside and I want to make sure it does not so it does not make noise. [birds chirping] Okay, so yes you can absolutely use those seed packs, and what happens is, if the viability rate is down 50%, it just means that you need to plant about twice as many seeds. Or, you can check the viability by putting them in a wet paper towel and letting them sprout, and seeing what percentage of them sprout or just planting them and see what percentage of them come out. So absolutely, you can use those older seeds, a lot of times they will still be good 3, 4 years past those dates. Let's see. One thing I want to say when I am looking through these questions is, don't feel bad if some things die. If you have not killed anything, you have not grown anything. It is part of life. Don't worry about some failure, don't worry about things dying, but also, realize that even if you do the right thing, plants are going to die, that is how it works, so don't be overly worried and overwhelmed all the time with plants dying, it is just a part of gardening. Plants are going to die in order to have plants that are living. Okay. "What herbs are good to grow at gome, I don't have a balcony or a garden". Well, an important thing I have to point out is, all the plants need light. These plants photosynthesize so they need to have sun. If you don't have sun you need to have artificial lighting. I don't have any experience with artificial lighting, I know some people do that, but I only have grown food with sun, so if you are going to grow herbs at home, they need to have sun. What herbs are easy to grow? Some herbs that are very easy to grow would be rosemary, cilantro, thyme, dill, basil, those are just a few that come to mind, but there is way more than that. Also, you get past these popular herbs and there is actually thousands of different herbs out there. Jaypee lip says, "What are your thoughts on growing in the southwest?", my thoughts are find local resources for the southwest. I don't have experience for the southwest. I did grow a little bit of food in San Diego, if you want to call that the southwest, I am thinking more like Arizona, New Mexico, things like that, but my thoughts for the southwest are that plenty of people grow a lot of food, seek out local resources and you will find out how to do it in your area. Bruno asks "Can you speak a little bit of French?" No, not really, my French has been majorly unused. But, I am going to do a French live video with Christophe, who I am staying with, and he is going to translate, so we are going to do that. Noah says "Rob, how did you get this natural background from a green screen?" This is not a green screen, this is the real world. Okay, Anna Lopez says, "Do you know of any online permaculture classes you recommend taking?". Geoff Lawton is an amazing online permaculture class. If you go to permaculture.org.uk, I believe it is one of the best permaculture sources that exists out there. That is focused on the UK but it is really their permaculture across the world, and if you go to robgreenfield.org/coronatips, one of my tips in there was to take a permaculture design course, and that is in there. There are so many permaculture designs certificates though, and so many of them are absolutely wonderful, but those are just a few resources. I also really like permaculturewomen.com That is a great resource, it is a wonderful group, a wonderful organisation run by women and designed for women in permaculture. Okay. So the question is "Is it okay to grow hydroponically if you don't have land to plant on?", Is it okay to plan grow hydroponically? Of course! If you want to grow hydroponically, go for it. It is not my choice, I prefer land, and if I don't own land, which I don't, then finding land that I can grow on, talking to a neighbor, finding an unused lot, joining a community garden, figuring out a way to grow on land. That is for me. I don't have experience with growing with hydroponics, so I can't give any experience there, but there is plenty of people who do grow with hydroponics, it is not my choice. Mike Jordan says "Did you ever have issues with voles in Florida?", I did not have issues with voles in Florida, so I don't have experience there. Brandon says "Hi Rob, I am starting a garden and I have 2 pallets and a cherry tomato plant I have started composting, now what do I do?" Now what you do is listen to this last half hour of advice and go to that guide. Now what do you do? You have got to start a garden. I don't know if I can give a good answer to that. "Rob, do you have any good tips for having a garden while there are pets that might dig it up? I have a dog that I am afraid would mess up my garden and raised beds seem wasteful." Yes, keep the pets out. Building a fence around it, whatever you have to do to keep them out. You have got to keep them out if they are going to be digging it up, and they can be a nuisance. I have friends whose dogs run freely around the garden. It depends on your garden. I don't think raised beds are wasteful, there are many ways to build raised beds out of secondhand materials. You can find fences, brick walls that are falling down, a lot of urban environments have whole brick buildings that are falling down, you can make raised beds out of that. You can find wood, you can take old logs and just make raised beds out of that. There is plenty of ways to build raised beds out of secondhand materials. Kathleen says, "How long after grass killer is applied can I use the ground to replant edible food to be safe? Killed my pineapple chives, onions and radishes with grass killer. The answer is that there is no definitive answer to this, but you have to also question the food that you are buying at the grocery store or the restaurant. Do you think that there has been no pesticides used there whatsoever? If it is USDA organic, it is about as little of a guarantee as you can hope for. You know who runs USDA, the current administration does, and who ran it before that? Other administrations. Not organic gardeners. If you are worried about something in your yard, I would think deeper about the food that you are eating as well. For me, personally, if there was some chemical sprayed in my yard, and I wanted to start my garden, I would start my garden, absolutely. The chemicals in there are gonna be probably minimal compared to food that youare buying at the store, and I just don't try to avoid all chemicals, because the reality is this. When I ride my bike down the street, I am breathing toxic fumes from cars. So many things that we are doing, we are exposed to it. I don't worry about that very deeply, and plants don't accumulate tons of this. It is just a thought on that. Gaia says "Where can I find heirloom tomato seeds? In Ecuador the tomatoes are very unflavored." I don't know how you can find them in Ecuador, but local seed companies. If you go to my Instagram page, just a few days ago I did a post all about local seed companies, and on my website at robgreenfield.org/freeseedprojectguide I list some local seed companies, so find local seed companies. Go to the internet, and type in "heirloom seeds in Ecuador" on a web search. Search for Facebook gruops, find local gardeners, find community gardens. Seek out local seed cmopanies, seek out local nurseries. Find gardeners in your area that will be able to share seeds with you. Michael says, "Do you know of any less popular plants that are worth trying out?" It depends on where in the world you are, the key is growing what grows in your area. So absolutely yes, but it really depends on where in the world one would be. Let's see, I am going to answer two more questions, and then I have to get going. Lauren says "Can anyone eat 100% out of a garden, because of pasta, bread, we need cereals so it is hard to do it by itself". Well, you know what pasta and bread are made of, they are made out of grains, and many people grow their own grains. You can also make pasta and bread out of dehydrating tubers like potato and yamm, and yuca and making that. All foods are made from a food from the earth, so, yes that is possible, absolutely. I did live 100% for a year of food that I grew and foraged so that shows that it is possible. It was not just from the garden but yes, absolutely possible. Kay Malvin says, "I appreciate the content and questions, is it possible to have a home vertical garden or greenhouse in the north and grow tropical fruits?" I would highly, highly recommend against that. It is just really difficult and the odds of getting much are slim. You are much better off growing blueberries and blackberries and raspberries, and there is papas, and pears, and plums, and nectarines, and peaches, and apples, cherries, there is so much to grow in the northern climates that grows really really well. I highly advise against trying to grow things that are extremely difficult, in areas, especially as this is focused on beginner gardeners. Peter says, "What is the most abundant food in cold climates?", Hundreds! Hundreds of different things. Everything is abundant in cold climates except the things that don't grow there, and the same goes for tropical climates. The things that are abundant in cold climates don't grow there, so there is so much that grows in cold climates. Any idea that any of you have that food does not grow in cold climates, get that out of your head. Get it out of your head now! Food grows in true abundance in cold climates, it just has to grow during the growing season. You don't grow it when there is 4 feet of snow on the ground, you grow it during the summer, and for people that live in the colder climates, you have to grow it during the summer, harvest it and preserve it through the winter. So any idea that food does not grow in cold climates, I don't know how it is so deeply so many people's minds, but it is wildly incorrect. There are thousands of species of foods growing in cold climates, and I really do like to focus on the bigger philosophy. There are lots of gardeners out there that go through the details that can help you with that. For me, my biggest benefit that I can have to you is just to rethink your food, get out of these social constructs and these boxed ways of thinking and just see that it is possible. Connect with your local resources, connect with your community, use these basic tenets and ideas, and start! Start growing some food. Starting some is a lot better than doing nothing. Some is going to die, remember that that is okay, that is part of becoming a gardener. When you become a gardener, you become a part of death and a part of life and that is the way that it is. I love you all very much, I really enjoyed this time here with you, and I hope that this was meaningful to you, I am going to do five deep breaths to end this, and you are welcome to join me, or watch, or just get right into that garden, or do your five deep breaths in the garden, or the woods if you can. [Breathing deeply] Alright, I love you all!