Rob Greenfield Live: Gardening for Beginners - Grow Your Own Food

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.