Episode four oh one, how to Keep Your Garden Alive with Nicole John C.
Burke.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, And this interview was potentially life changing for me. Did not go in thinking that because I am not a gardener, and I left really not just fired up to start a garden, because any anybody can make you motivated by their success, right. But I have left with an intrinsic like desire, like value for the journey of gardening. And if that's not what we're trying to do with spending money and frugality, I don't know what.
I don't know what we're doing like, but she left that in me.
You will get to hear Jen's transformation right before your ears, right in your right into your ears. And for me too. I love gardening. I would say it is one of my top three hobbies. And I walked away with some pieces of Oh, yeah, that's how I can bring refinement to it. Oh that's the missing link on this thing that I've been questioning for a while, so you're already tuned in, just stay with us.
Yes, but first, this episode is brought to you by weeds. They grow very fast, and some people even think that herbs like basil are weeds, and sometimes we don't like them. Sometimes we want to get rid of them. But sometimes if you think basil is a weed, you should welcome them. You should welcome these weeds that we can eat, especially if they grow really well. Kind of like keeping your
money in a highieald savings account. When you put your money in a high held savings account like CIT that's got over four percent apy, it is going to be growing like a weed, and that is a weed that we will gladly accept. Frugal Friends Podcast dot com slash CIT and start your garden in your savings account.
Speaking of weeds, we pulled you all in our friend letter about gardening. Do you garden? What's your biggest struggle? You all were neck and neck. There really wasn't like a winner answer. Yeah, you're across the board. Yeah, but I can't keep my plants alive. You have but bugs and pest keeping in my stuff? Yeah, but I have a different struggle or no, it's not for me. So there are some of you that's no, it's not for me.
If you're tuning in it, you're gonna probably be transformed and start for it.
But most, an overwhelming majority of you do garden or want to garden. And so this episode is really tailored for It's the midpoint between Jill and I. I started this not wanting to have a garden at all. That was me. I was like, Nope, not for me. Jill was like, yes, I love it, but I have all
of these different struggles. And so she answered all of our questions, even the questions we didn't know we had, and a lot of yours because a lot of your struggles that you let us know, like what's holding you back is the time to water it? A lot of you said weeds, A lot of you said weeds. One
hundred degree temperatures are holding you back. She covers that just all of the things that you guys mentioned as feedback in the polls, she really, we really made it a point to point these things out so that you feel like you've gotten a little a little more assurance than if you want to start a garden, it will work for you this time.
And if you want to tune into other episodes like this. We've got episode two ninety going Plant based on a Budget. We've got episode two ninety eight No cost Ways to be more eco friendly. So these are really adjacent content episodes that you could queue up, but stick with us as we talked to Nicole.
Yes, Nicole john zie Berg. She has written two books, Kitchen Garden Revival and Leaves, Roots and Fruit. So this is really an episode about growing food, growing plants that will nourish you. But she has an online community of over one and a half million people. She's taught over six thousand students in her online Kitchen Garden Academy and Garden Consultant Certification courses, and she is a really good teacher.
I think, like just from hearing her in this one interview, I'm so excited to learn more from her, so and I hope you will be too.
Let's do it.
Nicole, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are super excited for this conversation. It's gonna be a fun one.
It is.
I'm so excited. Thank you for inviting me. And you know, in the before we started, you told me you had given up on gardening, so I feel like I've been dared to talk you back into it today, so I'm I'm I'm ready.
Yeah, And that's exciting for me just to be a fly on the wall to watch you just kind of bully Jen into what's going to be best for her. Really, yes, because gardening plans are my happy place. Granted, I am still learning. What I learned from most people is you are always learning, so that's comforting. But I personally am looking forward to this conversation because there's there's a lot of questions I have.
Yeah, and disclosure journey. I My father in law is a commercial farmer. He has a U pick farm and a winery and he can grow anything, he can make bring anything back to life. And so I've just I've heard him doing I've heard these things before, like you can you I mean, you can't kill this and stuff like that, and I assure him he.
Takes that as a dare. That's her dare.
I definitely watch me, watch me kill this land. Yeah, not intentionally, just it's just me so I got it.
Yeah, But I know that there's a lot of people out there like me that want to get better at gardening. So let's just start out, Like, for someone who hasn't totally given up on green yet hasn't totally given up on gardening, how would you but they have killed things before? Where what would you what would be your starting point? Where would you recommend someone like me start?
Yeah?
Yeah, So first of all, I think it's it's in your head, like to to kind of there's this funny thing that happens with gardening. I don't know. I think part of it is because there is a magical piece to this where we literally don't get it. Like we put a seed in the ground and then you know, months later, we're eating something from that seed. It started this small and it became, you know, a watermelon. And so I think there's a piece of gardening that people
have kind of pushed off to be magical. And I call it the green thumb myth, which is you're either born with this ability to keep plants alive or you're not.
Right.
It's like Harry Potter, like you're either a witch or you're a muggle. Is that what was that what it was called? Yeah, you're either a witch or you're a muggle. Right, And so most of us assume, like we put that first seed or that we buy that plant from home depot and it dies immediately, or we buy it and we're kind of like we're waiting for our name to come out of the hat, right, like are we are? We are? Do we have the green thumb? Or do we not? And that is there's really, you know, nothing
that could be further from the truth. Like gardening is a skill, right, and so like you ladies have developed this skill of frugality, you know, and it's not like you were born with it. You didn't like come out of the womb and go like I know how to stretch a dollar, you know, like I know how to make a budget. You know, you didn't. You weren't born with this ability to make a budget. You've learned it and it's a skill. And so just like you guys could totally teach me a thing or two or twenty
five about frugality, it's the same with gardening. It's a skill. It's something that you want to have a you want to pick a teacher. That's c only what I recommend, Like don't just forage Google and YouTube for every single
gardener's opinion about out there. So you want to pick in general, one method that you want to study under whether a person grows and raise beds or they have you know, they're doing the no dig method and they're they're growing in big rose and they're farming, or if you want to follow a homestead or like, pick your style and pick your your teacher and your method and
then commit to practicing. And so it's just like, you know, if I was like today, I'm like, hey, I want to take a pickleball, right, which I've never played a day in my life. I'm not going to go out to the court and uh, you know, grab whatever it is they have, I guess a little paddle or something and expect to be good, right because I've never played before. And so gardening is the exact same thing. You're just
gonna you don't. You don't start by going to buy a plant, right, You start by picking a method, taking some classes or you know, getting a book, reading about it, and then committing to showing up to practice, say five minutes a day, doing a little little bit at a time.
And so I think that, you know, that's kind of one of my big like soapboxes is let's stop the madness of going to home depot in April buying a ton of of plants, taking them home, watching them all die, and then assuming that gardening's not for you and you know you just don't have a green thumb, because it's
really just a skill. So that would be the very first step I would say for everyone listening is get out of your head that you know it's a magical thing and you either get it or you don't see it as a skill, just like any other thing we build into our lives that we didn't grow up doing. And most of us it sounds like for you guys, even though your grandfather was in the farm, like most of us didn't grow up. If you grew up in the eighties, nineties, two thousands, most of us haven't grown
up near a garden. And so it's not your fault. That's like my one two. That's my four favorite words to say to people. It's not your fault, Like it's not your fault that all the plants die, that you haven't been able to keep anything alive yet because you just didn't grow up with it. And so it's something we have to teach ourselves and learn as adults.
This is such a good soap box because this is one of my issues even though my favorite place to be is outside and digging in dirt, still not doing it expertly. But that's one of the things that trips me up is I might start doing one thing and then I'm on the internet and all these things are now popping up in my Instagram feed about well, here's how to do this right, And then I get in my head about, oh, man, I started at this way,
should I not have done that? And you're kind of just continuously reinventing or jumping ship or hopping around because there's now some new information that maybe that's the more important thing. So your your advice to pick one person and learn. It's kind of like what we talk about in the personal finance space, like you can start with one person, we actually recommend it. But then once you become more of a master at that skill, that's when you can kind of start to branch out once you
understand the fundamentals. And that's what I'm hearing from you is get the fundamentals with like one thing, not the cluttering of voices.
Absolutely, like go deep, right, go deep instead of going wide. Take some time to pick your method and pick you know your your teacher. But yeah, I learned this in college. I had a professor who he just studied so fully one author and basically read all the books by this one author and essentially became like the expert on this author, and then later, you know, would choose another author to go deep on and essentially, I mean you could like pick their brain and it was almost like talking to
the author directly. And I think that's a thing we met we were in its. You know, this is a great information age, but it's information overload for most of us, and especially now that you know all of us are entertained by three to five second videos on Instagram and TikTok. It's like you only need to be online for two minutes and you've already seen probably twenty garden projects.
Right.
I've thought about doing a video that's like, stop saving garden projects. You're never gonna do. We don't need any more ideas, right, we don't need any more ideas. We just need to practice. And I love the idea of five minutes, you know, just just putting it in your calendar. I'm a big My next book actually coming out is going to be on gardening habits, and I did a lot of study on habit building. I'm sure y'all read Atomic Habits, and I read a. BJ. Fogg's book. He
actually inspired Atomic Habits, James Clear. It's called shoot the tiny Habits. Yeah, I think that's what it's called Tiny habits. And he talks so much about the stacks, right, like just taking something you normally do already and then just attaching that new habit onto it. And so I would say, my next recommendation would be, like, pay attention to the flavors and the taste that you like, especially all the green things. So any herbal flavors that you love, any greens, lettuces,
anything that is just green. So we're not going to fruit yet, but green things. Pay attention to those that you love, buying, that you love using in your recipes, and grow those first. The green things are the simplest, easiest to grow. We'll talk about that, I'm sure later, but pay attention to those and grow those things first. That's how you build the habit, right, So if I could convince you to start, I would say, and maybe
we can do this little practice. What's a green? What's a green that you frequently buy from the grocery?
Kale?
Okay, kale, kale. Yeah, So I'm so glad you said that because it's such an easy one. So I would say to you, just start with kale, and like, how would how do you use kale in the kitchen kale salads?
Like I'll meal prep kale salads almost weekly.
Okay, and you prep it for the whole week. Mm hmm okay, awesome. So what you would do is then like let's say, do you do it like on a weekend, like a Saturday or Sunday.
Usually on a Sunday.
Yeah, okay, So what you'd want to do is like habit stack that, right, So take that time when you're prepping your kale and it'll start obviously you have the kale from the grocery. But at that same time that you're prepping your kale salads for the for lunch, right before it or right after it, you're going to go take care of your kale garden, right, so your kale plants, so you would you know one the first day is going to be okay, right now, I just did my kale,
I'm thinking about kale. I'm going to go source everything I need to plant my kale. So I'm going to get seeds and some soil and a container and make sure I have a water source. Then the next week you could go and be like, all right, this is my planting day, right, I just prepped my kale. I know this is a value to me. And then that's
the day you plant it. And then every week when you're doing that mail prep, you attach that to now, for five minutes, I'm going to go and work on my kale gardens, so that you know, two months from now, I'm not buying this from the store anymore. It's coming out of this garden. And so you just connect that five minutes. You already know this is a value to you.
You know it would be huge to replace this from the grocery, and so you just attach a little bit of a habit right after you do that thing in the kitchen.
Yeah, this is kind of already blowing my mind because we're writing, we're finishing up writing our book and it's about reframing spending as a skill instead of something that you're naturally good at or naturally bad at. And so I feel super convicted because I just wrote about how to master a skill. And like the Japanese have this like shoe hai of like first shoe. You you study under one master, and then as you get better than you expand until you transcend and have your own way
of doing things. And so like I literally just was revising that chapter. This week's are getting you.
I wanted to see, I want to see your kick you around. I want to more.
I will I will say this is th and this is going to be the same thing for your reader, right, for everyone who's listening. The only thing that actually I say this a lot, like we all have our excuses, right, but in general, like the reason why I don't save money and I'm not you know, I'm not budgeting is because I don't want to, right, and I don't want to because I don't see the value in it, right it in some way, I don't see the payoff for the work. And I would say ninety nine point nine
percent of people who don't garden. Yet they'll say it's because they don't have a green thumb, they don't have enough space, they don't have enough sun, they don't have enough time, all, they don't have enough money, whatever. But really, if it boils down to it, they just don't see the value in it. M And because they don't see the value in it. They don't want to because we do what we want to do, right, Like we scroll Instagram because we like it. And so so that's like
one of my biggest things. And I'm sure you guys feel this too. Is Like the bigger thing is not can I convince you that you could have a garden that you do you could create a great thumb. The bigger question is can I convince you that it's worth it?
You know?
Can I convince you that that this is worth your time? That it's it's not just worth it, it's essential, Like it's part of the human experience that you're missing.
WHOA, Okay, yes, then let's go there, because I was going to ask you about someone you know, like low maintenance people who are low on time, which that could be true. You might have a lot going on in life, but how do we get to the point of valuing it so that we can make the most of even what little time we have.
Yeah, So there's so many things that you know, we see as challenges, right, So let's just name and y'all can help me out on this, Like what are some of the like current challenges we all face, you know, especially like your your listeners I'm guessing are somewhat like you, probably somewhat like me. Right, So we're busy, what's another challenge.
We're stressed out, probably tired, tired, We're we're trying to like connect with the people we care the most about, right, like kids or spouses or parents or like even just have real relationships these days, right, So like connecting in physical spaces with people. I'm guessing we're all trying to stay healthy, maybe not gain weight or get weight off, or just feel good in our bodies.
Mentally exhausted, yes, on.
Mental stewards of our resources, so like, okay, not waste money, but invest it in the right places. Yeah, And then I think we all have like a guilt complex about the environment and climate. We all know we should do more, we don't know what to do. And then I think we're all struggle with anxiety and depression.
Right.
And so if you go back, well if you look at the science, but also if you go back a century when we were connected to the production of our food. So Joel Salatin is a famous guy, and he owns Polyface Farms, and he has a famous quote of like in the nineteen twenties, our food wasn't in grocery stores.
Our food was in our backyards, it was down the street, it was in community gardens, it was at farmers' markets, and that since the nineteen forties, essentially after World War Two, all of our food moved to grocery stores and we all suddenly got disconnected. So for me, what this looked like was food addiction in high school and college, where I was eating tons of food. I didn't know how
to process my feelings. I was rarely spending time outside, and food to me was like this evil thing that made me fat in my mind and that I should avoid, but I needed it for energy. And so I had this really bad disconnect with food where I saw it
as the enemy rather than as my friend. And what I lived overseas for a couple of years and got introduced to the idea of seasonal food and food right from the earth, and food that's fresh rather than preserved, and went through just this huge learning of my disconnect was with food was actually the cause of the food addiction. It wasn't that I couldn't stop eating. It wasn't that I was a quote unquote like terrible person or a
lost person. It was just I had grown up and it was just more like a product of my culture. So essentially what we're all all these things were fighting, the busyness, the anxiety, the depression, the wanting to take care of our bodies, needing energy, needing to connect. So many of these things get solved in a garden. So just imagine that all of us, everyone listening, has this spot. It could just be one box, right, It's got herbs and greens and a few more special things. But it's small.
It doesn't even have to be big, sixteen square feet, all right. And every morning you go out there, when you wake up, you go outside. Science has shown when you're outside and the sun is coming up, your dopamines come on, your cortisol slows down. You feel good. Right, You've got the air outside, you've got the sky above your head. You're only out there for a minute. You grab some mint, you grab some anassists up, you grab some rosemary. Go inside, make yourself a cup of hot tea,
go through your day. It's lunchtime. If you get to be home. If you don't, you can do this before you leave for work. You cut a big basket of greens. Go inside, rinse this salad off, and now you've got the base of your lunch that you're going to eat either at work or at home. So you're sitting there, You're eating things that came right out of the garden. It's like, you can't get fresher, you can't get more nutritious, you can't get more vitamins and variety than what you
just grabbed from this little box. Right then you go through the rest of your day. You hit the end of the day. You know, generally people are turning on the TV. They're like, you know, zoning out, scrolling whatever. Everybody's disconnected. Instead, everybody in your household heads out to the garden to grab a few things for dinner that night. It takes three to five minutes. Everybody has a moment where they clear their head. You know, they get to
see the sun go down. You get to see the crazy things that happened that grew overnight while you were you know, working and doing your own thing. Go inside, make a big pasta dish with some herb sauce, and maybe put on some peas or you know whatever, the little extra bit that you harvested from the garden that night. Maybe put some flowers in a vase that you pulled
from the yard. And then at the end of the day you could go just sit out there, watch the sunset, maybe just take a little walk and water your garden before night. So and probably five to ten minutes of your day, that's all it took. You got yourself outside, which we know proves like totally changes all the emotions and energy. You You filled yourself up with some of the most nutritious food. You actually can't get it through vitamins,
you can't get it through grocery store varieties. You connected with your family and your loved ones. You had a moment of like a memory maker where you're out there connecting together. You cleared your head, You got yourself off your phone, away from a screen outside at least two to three times that day. Yeah, and you also stewarded the environment. You all these plants are feeding butterflies and bees,
and you know, supporting wildlife and the ecosystem. And you use less plastic, you have less food waste, and you save money.
Okay, I'm bought in. I already kind of was. It sounds really idyllic, but I am gonna want to get into some of the nitty gritty too.
Let's do it. But did I convince you? I was trying my hardest to convince you.
I and so you're such a good like story tell her in that because I saw myself outside with my two sons wearing a prairie dress, not wearing a prairie dress, but just like out there, like letting them experience where food comes from and what our earth can do for us, and like being a part of that and that. Okay, yeah, I'm here, I'm here for you, she's here for it.
I love it. Okay, I did my job.
But now now for the nuts and bolts though, because a couple of things came to mind, and so whatever you want to tackle first. But I'm thinking about pests and like remedies for common plant diseases. I'm thinking about seasonality. Like it feels kind of like what you described is very much for most people in North America, very much a summer experience. So kind of what what are we talking where we can have some of these foods regularly?
What about square and birds and deer and skunk and rabbits, and what about plant diseases and what about the soil? I'm throwing it all at you, but I want to get the most.
Okay, Okay, So I'm going to start at the top and we'll go down. Okay. So first is talk timing. So I teach something in my book Kitchen Garden Revival called the arc of the season. So where do you guys live.
We live in Florida, So we get we get it all.
You're easy, You're easy. Easy. But if you're listening and you live in Wisconsin or Canada or somewhere very cold, I've gardened from Houston all the way to Chicago. So what I just described to you in Houston, I did every day. In Chicago, I did from February to December. Wow, all right, so's it works in cold and hot places. Obviously there's a month or two where it's not happening in a cold climate, but it can still happen in a greenhouse with a cold frame. There's ways you can
make it happen. So most people talk about frost states, like you can only garden after your last frost state and before your first frost date. I teach ignore that. More of what we're talking about is seasons. So we have a cold season, a cool season, a warm season, and a hot season. So for you guys in Florida, you're probably going something like cool season in the middle of winter, like from November to January, where you're going to do lots of greens, lots of peas, lots of
root crops. You have maybe a chance of frost, but probably not, am I right?
Not yet?
Probably maybe like one or two days.
Yes, Okay, So Houston was the same. So you're gonna have lettuce from October until March. I love that October to March, so all the greens, the kale, all that kind of stuff. That's October to March. As soon as you pass Valentine's Day, essentially you move into what I call the warm season. That's when there's no chance of frost, and that's your best time to grow tomatoes, cucumber, squash, zucchini, all those quinn essential summer things. For you guys, that's
actually a spring and a fall thing. So you do warm season plants in the spring. In the summer, you guys move really high and that's what we call the hot season. We had that in Houston. So that's when you're going to grow okra, eggplants, sweet potatoes, all those things that you associate with like equatorial climates, you'll do those June to August, and then you mirror it. That's
why I call it the arc. On the other side, in the fall, you're going to do a warm season garden again, so you'll get to do fall tomatoes, fall cucumbers, fall beans, all that kind of stuff. For me in Nashville, I'm a little bit lower, so I'm in what I call a mild climate. So mine goes cool, warm, a little bit of hot, just like for a three to four weeks, back to warm and then to cool again.
I do have a cold season right in the middle, and then in Chicago, I had kind of a long cold season from something like December to February was our cold season. And so the season I got two of in Chicago is two cool seasons. So I had a cool season in the spring and a cool season in the fall, while you guys have warm seasons. So there are plants to match every season, right, So there's loads of plants that grow in the cool season, loads of
plants that grow in the warm season. So the way I teach, the method I teach is that you're always planting the next season, so you guys, right now, you'd be planting your warm season garden. You're going to enjoy that for the next two to three months, and then as soon as you hit June, you start pulling things as they finish and moving to the hot season, and then go another two to three months and then start again.
So so that's the timing piece of this is basically we're always planning planting, or we're always planning to plant. And I know one of your questions is like low maintenance, right, like we're busy, and so another piece of this is planting a lot. So I know, like a common teaching for gardening is start small, but I actually recommend the opposite. So at least if you're having just one bed, don't
have blank spaces. Like when I look down in your garden when you start yours six weeks six weeks after planting, I wouldn't want to see any open soil. And so that's actually what makes a garden low maintenance. I learned
this from going to national parks. Speaking of frugal vacations, My family loves to go to national parks and I was just starting a garden and I would notice we're out in big bend actually in a desert, and I noticed the plants there there were surviving in a desert with like no care, right, no fertilizers, no pesticides, and there were just plants thriving in a very harsh condition. And I noticed I never saw a plant that was by itself. Plants were always bunched very close together growing.
It was a variety of sizes, but you could never see the ground in the areas where the plants were growing. And so I've learned that's what a low maintenance garden is. It's a garden that's packed with plants so much so that the soil isn't exposed. And that leads to your next question about pests and disease. One of the reasons we end up with weeds and pests and soil that isn't good is we're taught to space out our plants because most of the directions out there are for farmers.
And so it'll say, like put a tomato here and then give it three feet and then plant another tomato. Have you guys seen these direct hats?
Yes, and I've ignored them. I'm like, I can't do good.
You're you're my kind of person. So I do the same thing, and I realized, basically those rules are for farmers, but also those rules ignore the way nature works.
Right.
You would never see just one plant, like I have a woods behind my home and and it's covered in green. Every piece of the ground is covered. There's something growing there. And that's the way nature likes to work. And so you a way to deal with pasts and disease and challenges is you actually plant more the way nature does. That's what my second book, Leaves, Roots and Fruit is all about. Is essentially, you plant the centers of your beds with fruiting plants, those that are going to be
big and take a long time to develop. Then you plant your medium sized plants along that, and then small sized plants like your leafy greens and herbs along the outside. And what happens is when you plant all these varieties of plants together, you're helping with pests because pest love a buffet. And so when you break up your plants like this and combine them, pests are like, wait, I
really liked that one plant, but this one doesn't taste good. Right, So they might eat from one plant, but it's not like they're going to destroy the entire bed all at once. These different plants work together, so you have herbs and flowers that put off smells and scents that can repel pests and help with pest protection. And then you're going to have healthier soil because covered soil is a healthier soil. It dries out slower, and it loses it's nutrients slower
as well. So okay, pess timing, you ask some more questions. What were they?
Plant diseases?
Okay, plant diseases. I put them in the exact same category as pest. If you think about like you never watch like Animal Planet, you know, and it's like the bad guys coming and who gets taken when the bad the bad animals coming to like the predators on its way. The slowest one, yes, so it's either it's then the slowest one is generally going to be the youngest, the oldest, or the injured, right, and so in the garden is
the exact same. The plants you have to be the most careful about are the youngest, the oldest, and the injured. Those are going to be the most likely to get pest, to get disease and and to cause you know, challenges in the garden. So so I try with the smallest, with the youngest. Those are the ones I try to protect the most. So you watch after those. You you do that is a period of time where you like, when you plant your kale garden, you want to water
it every day for the first two weeks. You want to be watching out for those tender, little young plants because those are very susceptible at the end of their life cycle. You want to keep an eye out because they're going to be the most likely to attract paests and disease. And so those are the first ones you want to take out of the garden. That's why I
really promote seasonal planting. You really don't want a plant in the garden for more than sixty five to ninety at the most one hundred and twenty days, So taking those out and then and then finally the plants that are injured, so plants that you know maybe weren't great coming in from the nursery, or just have never taken off, or just have some issues. Generally those are ones I'll prune back and watch and if they don't seem to improve,
I pull those out as well. So my concept in the garden with pass and disease is stay on the offense. So I think a lot of people get stressed out about all the things that can go wrong, and what I try to do is just focus on the good inputs. You guys probably do this too with your budgeting, right, So I worry less about the bad guys and I worry more about what's something good I can do for my garden today? So how can I prone it or water it or add composts? Like what are good things
I can bring in? And generally, I have to be honest, I spend very little time dealing with pest or disease because I'm just focused on the better sub Is there pest and disease Absolutely, if you're going to have that's a thing we should just clear up. If you're going to have an organic garden, pests and disease will be there,
just part of the deal. But guess what, all the food that you're buying from the grocery store that's organically grown, they've got pests and disease around them too, but just way bigger. So it's part of the food you're eating already. You just don't see it. One lady she was like, I was trying to come to her garden. She's like, ew, I just can't stand the thought of like bugs crawling all over my food. Ooh, It's like I just can't
do it. And I was like, well, I hate to break it to you, but bugs are crawling all over your food, Like you just don't You're just not aware, right, It's just part of the process that you missed. But yeah, it is part of it. But but definitely like over like like intensively planting, keeping your garden full, and then like we talked about before, like prioritizing those things you definitely know you want to eat from the garden because like that that kind of idyllic scenario I told you of,
like a day with a garden. That's there's a saying like the best fertilizer in the garden is your shadow, and it's essentially the same, like the best pest control in the garden is your shadow. So I try to have things that I don't buy at the grocery so that I have to go outside to get them, right
because they're not in the fridge. So I need this thing for a recipe or for a dish, I have to go to the garden to get it, and then while I'm out there, I'll see oh, oops, like looks like there's a bug is eating that plant, or oh there's a hole in that leaf, right, And so you catch stuff a lot sooner rather than getting away from you.
Now with that, this is a really specific question. Okay, we're following kind of one master, and so we're not getting all the clutter of everybody else's ideas. But then once we start to see an issue that we want to solve for, would you recommend at that point it's okay to google, Hey, what's happening with my lemon tree? Or is it still best to try and find like, what's the one master saying about this thing? Or is that when we can open the floodgates to the internet.
I think you can. But I see that also as like I think we underestimate our own wisdom. And so something I teach in my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival, in chapter seven on tending, is the concept think about nature. And I think we've gotten so custom to going to the internet or going to the store for a solution. I just want to remind everybody like Nature's amazing, Like nature knows how to protect itself. The plants want to protect themselves. So I have just a little practice that
I recommend. So if you have an issue cut away the issue, add compost to the plant. Is essentially like giving vitamins to the plant and then watch it. And so that's like my just simple remedy. If you have an issue like cut away the problem, add compost to support the plant, because nine times out of ten the plant will self rescue. Yes, you can totally look it up. I'm not against that at all. But as a mom,
I know you probably felt this too. Like I've had an issue with say like something happens to my kid or they have like a bruise somewhere or something, and I google it and that's like the absolutely worst thing I could ever do, because suddenly, like my kid is dying, you know, and so like I go to a very deep dark place. So I would say beware. And also
just don't discount how smart you are. You know, think about nature, think about the way nature solves its own problems, and then just kind of partner with nature in solving that problem.
Oh, that's simpling so much, I know, so helpful.
You are essentially telling us, and we did not. We're not paying you to be here. You're telling us, like pretty much all the things we tell people to think about when they're spending money and how to save money, but you're talking about it in like plant psychology, where we talk about spending psychology, and it is it's blowing my mind. I never thought to think about gardening in this way.
It's it's very cool, awesome.
I I don't know that I've got too much more. I feel like you brought this so full circle of like here's all the uswers, there's all issues, because truly, that is one of my biggest things is it's not just fear of what's going to happen. It's seeing that these things are happening. It's seeing that those seeds never took. They just didn't grow. I don't know if squirrels or birds got to them, but they never grew. And there's some things that do happen in my garden that can
take the wind out of my sails. Or it feels like so laborious to now have to look up. Now. I just kind of planted and I was excited and I'm going willy nilly with it. But now it feels like, well, I have to be an expert on all of these specific types of plants, and the internet has so much information, and what do I do? And then I just walk away and my garden doesn't see my shadow. And so I feel like you've brought these really helpful tethering points
of Really, it's a habit issue for me. I'll be excited one Saturday of the month, and then I just want the thing to do its thing. But I've not created a habit to go visit this every day. My garden's not seeing my shadow, And how many of my issues would have been resolved if that were the case. Like, it's not like it needs this whole herkn effort for its lifetime. It needs maybe, yeah, that one day and
then these habits along the way. So I am just reflecting back and highlighting I think the things that are important for us to glean from here. And I appreciate that you're highlighting food that we can eat. I mean, of course, having plants and greenery in the house and outside and flowers are exciting, but I think the value of this plant is serving a purpose for us, and so we're getting emotional and mental health through being out in our garden. But then we're also getting the nutrients
that our body needs. So just thank you.
Yeah, you've brought everything full service. I do have one question, So where do I start, Like where's the best place to find starter seeds or what? Like, what's the best what do I need to start?
Just like, yeah, So so my book leaves roots and fruit. So if you're if you want to learn from me, then this book Kitchen Garden Revival is setting up the garden. So if you I do raised beds, Trellis's I like to set up a garden nicely, all right. Some people would say fancy, but it doesn't have to be fancy. My thing is if you have a beautiful garden, If you have a garden that you think is beautiful, I don't have to think it's beautiful, but if you think
your garden is beautiful, you will go there more. And so I would say, whatever you do, even if it's just a container, whatever you set up, make it beautiful, as beautiful as you can afford, as beautiful as you want to afford. Because the prettier you think it is, the more you're going to take pictures of it, and the more you take pictures of it. The more you'll notice it, and the more you notice it, the more you'll want to go there.
And the more you post about it on Instagram, the more motivation you'll have to keep it up. So people don't ask why do you stop posting about it?
We're all about motivation. It's all about motivation. So this is all about the setup. You'll like I talk about soil and water and planting, and then the latter part of the book is all about the plants. If you're a beginner gardener or you just want you already have the gardens set up and you want to dig into the plants, then my second book would be for you, and it's called Leaves, Roots and Fruit, and it is a step by step system to learn how to garden.
So I start with the very simplest, which is growing sprouts and microgreens inside. So for your listeners who are in a cold climate, this would be your answer for what to do in the coldest part of the winter. But we go from leaves, so I do sprouts and microgreens in chapter one. Step two is herbs, so that would be the next place i'd tell you to start. Then salad greens, so herbs and salad greens. You're going to get the most bang for your buck, the biggest
roi and so prolific. So for one plant, you will harvest week after week after week after week. So you just get a huge payout, a lot less stress, there's less pests, there's less disease, and it's just a shorter lifespan. Right, So it's like training someone to run a five k versus a marathon. So leafy plants are the five k, all right, So if you're just training yourself, like I'm ready to start this, don't You don't have to sign up for a marathon yet. It's okay, right, So leaves first.
Next up is roots, so that's like radish's beets, carrots. Those are going to be harder, take longer time, need a little bit more skill. A simple one. Two simple ones you guys could do would be potatoes and garlic. Those are easier. They do take more time, but they're not they're pretty, they're pretty dependable. And then the last stage is the fruit. So that's all the ones we talked about, tomatoes, cucumbers, being zucchini, squash, the plants that
stay in the garden, for three, four, five months. That's your marathon. So you can totally run a marathon if you want to on your first go. I just want you to know that's what you signed up for because a lot of people, a lot of people buy that marathon plant. That's their very first plant that they buy, and then they come home and they're like it didn't work. And I'm like, well, yeah, you like went for a marathon on your first run. Like I just ran to the end of the block, you.
Know, yeah, I mean, and I'm a runner, so like I get that, and I love you get of the five k distance? Yeah, okay, perfect, And I love herbs and salad greens. That's what I like buy most consistently, and it's only.
You will get. You want to talk about frugality, there's a book the guy who wrote Square Foot Gardening, Bartholomew. I just forgot his first name. He also wrote a book called High Value Veggies. You guys should get this especially for your uh, for your audience, and he details which which plants in the garden you get the biggest ROI on. And so he did this math equation of like it costs much it takes up this much space, how much do you get in harvest from this?
Right?
Guess what The first fourteen plants are salad greens. I thought that too. It's all herbs.
Oh wow, well yeah, because they're so expensive.
Yeah, so a half ounce a half ounce at my grocery store, a half ounce in a plastic box at the grocery is three ninety nine and from one plant, from one plant, you can grow two to three pounds.
Yeah, to do the math on that. And that's something you can do indoors year round. So even if you don't have a yard where you can do the type of gardening that we've been describing there, it sounds like there's options for people. Yeah, indoorly in apartments.
Yeah, or are like I'm on a mission to get everybody growing their own herbs because it's it's easy, it's prolific, and you will save a ton of money.
You know what's easy and prolific. And I'm on a mission every episode, Yeah, to get to this point, the bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. US bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, Nicole.
Every week we invite we yell at our guests and invite them to share with us their bill for the week, and we would love to hear yours.
So my bill is big. I have four kids, they're all teenagers, two dogs, and then a very hungry husband, and so my my grocery bill is sky high, especially since twenty twenty. But I will tell you what I'm so proud of is that on that grocery bill there is not a single green and there is not a single herb. And it doesn't mean that we don't eat salads or have herbs. In fact, right now, every single day for the last two weeks, I have cut myself a giant size salad. And I'm talking like, consider an
entire box of spring mix. Okay. I have a friend who she challenges people to eat a pound of produce a day, so I've been trying to do that. WHOA, So I want you to think about a spring mix box, all right, That's what I'm harvesting every day at the grocery store. That costs seven ninety nine and so I'm just going to say I've harvested that would be eight time, seven fifty six dollars worth of salad this week, and
that was not on my grocery bill. So I'm not going to tell you how high my bill was because it did include many other things that it did not include any salad.
The day I can start growing apple sauce pouches, they would be the day that I drop everything else in my life and just like commit fully to gardening, Like, yeah, we.
Can't grow apples here.
Yeah, yeah, bummer, you're gonna maybe strawberries oranges. Strawberry kids don't like orange sauce, because that would be it.
They do love oranges, and my father in law has orange like I think it's tangerine trees and they're they're best known for their strawberries, and we get two crops of strawberries a year. So that's nice to go pick them for free. Yeah, that's a part.
Absolutely, that's huge.
Well, if you all listening, have a bill about your best bill being not spending as much because you're just implementing problem solving and creativity and gardening or just anything else your name is Bill. You like someone named Billy? You know the Drill Girlfriends podcast dot com slash Bill. We're ready for it, and now it's time for the lightening round we do.
All of our sound effects are organic.
I appreciate that. Yeah, it's it's feeling very real right now.
So for our Vulnerability round today, we will all answer this question except maybe me. What's your favorite plant to grow and why? Like Nicole, I feel like this would be between you choosing your children, but could you choose one?
I know. I was like, oh man, this is a hard one. I'm gonna I'm gonna go with with Parsley.
Oh I love Parsley.
Tell us about par tell us about your love Parsley.
It's like such a no fuss plant. I was just noticing we had like five inches of snow over the winter and all my parsley just popped back up as soon as the snow went away. So it comes back at least twice a year, at least over two years. It is a host plant for butterflies, so the swallowtail butterfly and ladybugs love it too, So it's like such a good eco friendly plant. It is a protector from past for other plants. It doesn't need any special care.
I mean literally, as long as you have it in a garden, like close to the ground so that you don't you wouldn't want to put in a pot because it needs to be watered quite often. But in just a normal raised bed. I don't do anything special for it. I can cut from it probably twice a week, just one plant. I parsley is full of vitamin C. It's like it's a packed nutrient powerhouse. And I put it in everything. I put it in green smoothies, I put in omelets, I put it on top of salads. Has been.
His grandmother was Armenian and she made this delicious tabooley salad with curly parsley. And then she also would just chop up like a cup of parsley in every fresh green salad. And so I've taken from her and I do that. And then you know, if I have like if I'm serving my kids like pasta and red sauce and I'm feeling like I'm just not making the dinner happen, I'll just cut some parsley and throw it on the plate as a little garnish and call it, you know,
a wind. Yeah, so it's it's just an easy I would just say, yeah, it's such an easy, dependable plant and so good for me, and uh yeah, it's just it's just a good one.
I love Jimmy Cherry.
Oh that's it too, Yes, Jimmy Churry is to die for.
Yeah, so they're inspiring me. Parsley, Parsley is going to go in the garden.
Yeah, Nicole, you can have mine if you want to have a second favorite, because.
I want okay, I want to get you. Yeah, second favorite. You know. I'm trying not to do herbs and greens because those really are my two favorites, but I do if you follow me. I grow tomatoes on an arch trellis and that's like on the front of my book. And I love sun gold and Juliette tomatoes and black cherries. I think I they're not like they're the opposite of Parsley. They're not easy to grow, they take a long time. You only harvest them in a certain period of time.
And I think it's that magical place where the plants meet the top of the arch and it's usually like the end of the season and it's like a culmination, right, It's just like a moment where you're like wow, Like all these little minutes, all these little moments in a garden, all these times I walked out here, they added up to this and it's like you walk, I walk under the arch, and but I plant like eight plants on a trellis and every day I'm watching the plants kind
of like edge their way up, edge their way up, edge their way up. And then suddenly you come out. There was like a big rainstorm or something, and you come out and they met and you know, it only happens, like I said, for a couple of weeks at the end of this season. Uh yeah. And it's just it's like the perfect picture of you know, the work of our lives when we do these little things every day and how they add up and then you get to eat the results. They're pretty delicious.
I'm so beautiful.
I'm so glad I gave you my That was beautiful.
I gave you you have one, well, so mine wasn't. It's not a veggie or a fruit because I my gardening is fits and spurts. That's how I would describe as aesthetics. You have a lot happens for me.
Of plants that are thriving well for aesthetic purposes.
Yeah, I like greenery for greenery's sake. And I'm and I've tried to dabble with with plants and stuff and it happens in fits and spurts. So for me, ivy, I just love a good IVY moment. It's easy to propagate, hard to kill. I just love it. I put it everywhere, it's all over.
That's awesome. I love plants like that that you can just grow and grow. And yeah, you get a big bang for your buck with ivy. Yeah. Actually, I'm glad you said that because I need to put some of my landscape.
It's also a go to gift for me too. I will just clip off pieces of my ivy, propagate it, throw it in a pot, give it to people. I did give one to jenn Al though I've learned better because I don't think it's still.
A lot, but it is still alive.
Jill. Yeah, job, so that's your favorite thing to grow that. She needs some more dirt though she definitely has. She needs to get that she needs to refill. That would be great. Yeah, she is alive.
She is alive, and she's alive because you refer to her as a small, as a as a girl, a human plant. She just have a name though human personalities.
Yes, Nicole, this has been so lovely. If only for us, it's been so lovely, it might have been life changed.
And for me, if.
People want you to be their master, they want to call you master, where can they find more from you?
Well, you don't have to call me master, you can just call me Nicole. But my favorite place to hang out is Instagram at gardenery coo, so g r d E and ar y coo. We are all over socials, so if you like watching videos on other platforms, were there as well under the same name gardenery dot com. We have over a thousand If you want to get lost in some instruction, we have over a thousand blog articles that you could just search and then you'd be
able to see my method for those things. So generally, if you have an issue or if you have something you want to do in the garden, there's an article about it. And then we have YouTube channel and a podcast, so same Gardenery on YouTube and then the podcast is called grow Yourself. And then of course my books like if you want just assyscinct, like I don't want to watch a video. I just want to get the plan.
Then my two books, Kitchen Garden Revival. It's how to design and set up a beautiful garden that you love and then leaves, roots and fruit is plants specific be beautiful.
So much, Nicole, this has been so great, and I'm so excited for people to grow things and get more connected to anything that gets people more connected to each other and to the earth. I am giddy about and yeah, of course this is going to do it. I didn't know why I didn't put it together and I'm just excited, so excited.
Well, thank you for having me. I think you know, I don't know if you've watched that show Blue Zones on Netflix, but almost every blue Blue Zones are Dan Butner researches these with National Geographic and it's areas where people live the longest, you know, where they live to one hundred or more. And he just recently did a video that in all the Blue Zones the people are gardeners.
And so yeah, I just dream of a world where our kids are growing up and they don't have to say these sentences that we say that we don't have green thumbs and we don't have time for a garden, that the garden is just a normal part of their lives. And I'm so thankful for the opportunity to share with you and your listeners. And yeah, it's called Kitchen Garden Revival for a reason, because I really believe that if each of us grew a little bit of our own food,
we could change the planet for the better. So thanks for giving me the opportunity. Beautiful, Thanks Nicole, Thank you.
Wow, I wish we could have kept going for so much longer. I got to watch something happen to you just now.
It was putting when somebody can like shift your mentality or shift your mindset from from just seeing the project to seeing the purpose for the project. And that is
that's what we try to do with spending. Like saving money and frugality is not for the sake of saving money and frugality, it's for the time freedom, it gets you, the connection that you get with other people through sharing and connecting on by nothing groups in Facebook, marketplace, and like it's connection and good stewardship of natural resources like these are all the reasons that we think values based spending and frugality are important. And she literally just took
all that and translated it to gardening. Basically spoke our words to us and who knew you no idea that she would do that.
Translate it to gardening. Yeah, So what will be your first step? Like, based on this, you feeling intrinsically motivated now seeing value for it, what do you think your first step will be?
So after we pop, like get the renovation all done up, I think maybe at the maybe over the crest of our hot season, I might start with some herbs, maybe kale, the easy stuff. Yeah, I don't eat microgreens, but I do eat a lot of kale.
I'm excited for this. Yeah.
And Dan, my father in law, has always said how kale is so easy to agree. He's always like, please take kale with you when you leave. I have too much, So I don't know, Like it's not a big cellar, but he keeps growing it because it just grows so easily.
It could be like a good like she talked about having a lot of stuff in your garden, it could be a really good filler. It is. It's only growing, it's hard to kill, so it's just a nice little addition.
So I'm I'm excited to show Kai like how things grow and how the world works. He'll love it. So thank you so much for listening. We love hearing your feedback on episodes like this and so if you really got something out of this episode, we would love to hear a review from you, like Missus grows Vege. Wow, you really found a good way for this episode called the Voice of Reason. It happens to be five stars and they say this podcast and the emails are the
reminders I need about living a frugal life. Thank you for bringing our family financial peace and joy. Wow, missus grows Vege.
I'm so I love these short and sweet and to the point, they're so powerful. Reviews that this process of the friend letter and this podcast is helping you to find financial peace and joy is more than we could have ever asked.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for listening. If you all are enjoying this show, please also take a minute to review. To leave a rating and review, it doesn't have to take you long. You don't have to write paragraphs. You can write a sentence and it helps other potential listeners find us.
So thanks in advance, Thank you, see you next time. Grugle Friends is produced by Eric Siriani Okay, Jen trees, okay, follow up.
Yes. After we stopped recording, I asked a personal question about my garden to Nicole because one of the problems I have is I have raised garden beds on the side of the house, but we have a live oak tree that one of the branches does it is starting to hang over a bit the garden bed. And it is a beautiful live oak tree that houses many birds
and animals. But something that has been happening recently is blue jays hanging out in the tree on the limbs of the tree, and they are pelting me with acorns when I go out, like they're bullying her. Yes, they are sitting above me, and I know they're doing it on purpose. Blue jays and crows are some of the two smartest birds on the planet. They know exactly what they're doing, and they are lying in wait for me and pelting me with acorns like it's a fun little joke.
I'm just trying to show my garden my shadow, and these blue jays are sniping me.
Yeah. She also it was also a question about the leaves, the leaves or coming in the leaf drops, and she said that it would be best if you can to move it. And then she said her book Kitchen Garden Revival actually covers like where's the best place to place your raised bed? And so I was like, well that kind of changes where I was going to put my
potential gardens. So I'm I'm excited her mentality with learning from one person and treating it like a skill that can be improved, just like again takeaway, Yeah, and you've got to learn the skill and not just like see somebody's videos on Instagram and try to recreate what they have. Don't try to like recreate their step twelve when you're still on step one or two, because then you're going to think, because you're not starting at twelve, you can't get there.
Yep, yep, yep, hmm yep. We're best. We loved it.
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