Growing Food & Guerrilla Gardening

how to actually start doing stuff. And one of the things we talked about a lot is a lot almost everyone we've interviewed has mentioned us at some point that trying to get more active in the things you're consuming and the things that you're eating. And one of the ways to do that is by just literally growing your own food. I went when I was growing up, I mean my grandparents operate, I mean like they you stopped

right like like like like a large, large farm. Now they operate kind of like a farm that just like feeds them. So whenever I'm at my grandparents in Canada, usually we you know, we just eat all the food they grow, whether that be like produce, um. They also do like their own hunting, They make their own sausage, like,

you know, they preserve meats. So like I kind of grew up around this type of thing because just how self reliant some of my family is, but not everyone may have this kind of background, and so you know, this idea of growing your own food can feel maybe

a little bit daunting. Um. And to help us talk about food and then eventually soil and other kind of things, I have invited a guest on from another kind of podcast in this that operates in the same rough, rough framework, I would say, probably how to how to kind of slowly improve improve the world? Um uh do I do? Won't explain who you are and what's your what's your whats your project is? Sure? So my name is Andy.

I'm the post of the Poor Roles Almanac. We're a pod cast that's focused on thinking about after collaps how do we things like climate change and collaps impact things like food systems, and what can we do today to

prepare for what's coming in the future. Yeah. I feel like it's not not a coincidence that all of these different kind of projects are getting more popular around the same time, because we're looking at the world and being like, huh, this doesn't seem very sustainable, So we better we better start figuring out what to do with all these systems kind of slowly, you know, start losing parts. I want

to talk about kind of food today. I want to want to maybe branch off into like a few different directions. Branch that's a plant plant plant pun um what a branch off in a few different directions both like, you know, what do you do if you have like your own house and yard or maybe you're like more ruled, you have lots of space, and then also king of the inverse of like let's say you lived in like a

cramp city apartment, different things that you can do. Let's probably start with like the rule, just to like give a you know, a more like base background. You know, you have more of like a standard set up for what you're able to do. If someone's never grown anything before, they've never like maybe they've had like one house plant, but like they've never grown anything, what what do you think is the best first like preparation steps before you

actually you know, go and start buying seeds and stuff. Sure, so when it comes to growing food, it's really not that complicated. Chances are if you have a front yard, we're talking about someplace that's pretty rural, assuming that climate is in someplace super dry, you're generally going to be thinking about growing food someplace where grass probably already grows. So if grass is already grown there, you know things can grow there. And really that's that's as simple as

it can be. It can be more complicated. We can start talking about things like soil pH and nutrients and all of these other things, but really, when it comes down to it, if you put a seed in the ground and the temperature is not too warm or cold, and it gets rained but not too much rain, the plant's going to grow. And if you've got some say a couple of acres and you want to cut out a little section of it to grow some food, uh, that that's as simple as it really can be. And

you can go to whatever store and buy seats. So like that, that's a good place to start. And obviously, depending on where you live, you want to think about things like lead in the in the soil if you live someplace near an old house, or maybe if you're near some place where there was manufacturing. And one of the things to keep in mind is that a lot

of older settlements, even if there isn't a factory there. Now, it's very possible there was a factory years ago, it's been demoed and you never even knew it was there. So it's really important if you do live in someplace that has that manufacturing background or an old house to really check for things like lead in the soil because that can be really dangerous. And there's yeah, very accessible

like old testing kits available that stares on online. Okay, yeah, it's like I think fifteen dollars you can have a soil sample taken and you can find out everything that's in it, just like the pH and you know if it's too acidic and things like that. So yeah, you you figure out you wanna you want to start growing stuff? You have you have some space, whether it be like a front yard or maybe like like even like an open field if you're lucky, Um, what kind of what

kind of stuff do you think? You know? Should I just jump in and buy any kind of seed that looks fun, or should I like start with specific things? I don't know. It's like, if I really like potatoes, just go to potatoes. If I really like cauliflowers, just to cauliflower. What's kind of the if I'm brand new, what's the different things that would be worth for straying out?

So generally speaking, you really want to think about what your climate is and I think that's one of the things that gets missed a lot of times as you want to grow things. So like I live in New England, growing say watermelon is really a challenge and a lot of ways because you have to think about the length of my season versus the length it takes for a watermelon to be a full sized fruit for you to eat. So depending on where you live, the one thing you need to keep in mind is what that length of

your season is. Now, to get back to the main subject of the podcast, talking about things like climate change and collapse, that season is changing rapidly right now. We're adding days, so the seasons are getting longer, but also we're having weird cold snaps later and later into spring, so what might have been a traditional season no longer

really applies anymore. So if you're thinking about this is your first year, you don't want to grow anything that might be right at the cusp of um being in your season, or you don't want to start a plant inside and then have to move it outside, and you have to know whether or not it has a tap root and all these other things to make sure that

you don't damage the plant. Then you definitely want to grow something with a shorter season, things like um cold weather plants, lettuces for please, cauliflowers, things like that will generally do pretty good in short seasons, but they don't really do well in really warm climates. So if you're in say Florida, it's gonna be really difficult. Um. But that that's kind of how you want to start thinking

about those processes. Learning what the colt season plants are, what the warm season plants are, where you fit in in terms of the zone that you live within, and again starting to think about, okay, the last couple of years, when did we get the last frost, Because it's not what it might say ten years ago is your average last frost? Those days are pretty much gone. I know here in Portland we're currently growing a lot of potatoes and that's been that's been kind of our our our

big haul. Also, tomatoes did very good this year, particularly because of our big heat domes they got we got the tomatoes did so much better than what they what they usually do we've like canned so many tomatoes just because we just we have so many more than what we're used to. But if I do find that interesting, being like, you know, climate change obviously being generally a net bad, but you know, in some cases for growing, it's gonna make certain crops easier to grow, but you know,

other crops will be harder to grow. It's something I wanted to talk more about in the first five heavily scripted it could happen here season two episodes. It is like particularly how different growing regions are going to shift up and how like you know, Canada, for instance, is going to have a lot more agriculture in the next years just because so many, so many climates are slowly

inching upwards. But you know, even in places like Georgia and other places where different if you know, specific plants are growing, all that stuff is gonna be changing. Obviously, this is affecting coffee and how we're getting less and less space and land that's actually able to grow coffee because basically plants, you know, growers have to move their plants up a mountain every year in order to make the coffee actually work, which is why we're just gonna

we're just gonna run out of space. Um. So yeah, that is obviously the more negative sides of things and California lack of rainwater and just and just lack of rain. Yeah, absolutely rain, Yeah absolutely, And that brings up a really important point that you know, you're talking about moving the coffee trees further and further up a mountain. As the areas that are considered prime agricultural areas moves north for us, you have to think about the infrastructural challenges that brings.

So it's not just you're going to grow the crops in one place, but the infrastructure, the trains, all these different things don't exist in the places where you'll be able to grow those foods. So speaking of something you know around that rough kind of idea is like, if someone's never never done this before, they're out to go get stuff, where would you where would someone like that

find seats? Um, let's say that they don't let's say they don't use the internet, tons um areabouts where you think they'll go and get cauliflower seeds or carrot seeds if they if they want to start doing this stuff. Yeah, so there's a bunch of different growers that offer seeds, and one of the things to keep in mind with annuals is that it does make sense if you can to buy them locally, because what within a couple of generations,

plants will start evolving towards local conditions. It's it's really beneficial, especially with like I said, with climate change, to start thinking about how can we integrate our food systems into the ecological conditions where we live, and that ecology includes the climate. So we have to continuously more thoughtfully start thinking about these things and how we grow food and where those foods come from in order to really be able to deal with and mitigate the effects of climate change.

So a great resources Johnny's Seed. They do a lot of really good work and there they have good quality stuff. And there's a bunch of seed companies out there that have done some really problematic stuff that I won't go into or talk about, but they're these guys, does far as I'm aware of, pretty good, so I would definitely

recommend them. Awesome. Yeah, their website is just Johnny Seeds dot com just for everyone who's looking that up at Johnny with a y good for Johnny with a yes, great, All right, let's now, let's say someone lives in a downtown apartment in a metropolitan area. They don't have immediate access to you know, tons of dirt or you know grass, but they want to start kind of growing some stuff. If if you were in that position, what would you

start doing? And to that, I want to to part that that would be somebody with a balcony where they have access to like even like a little patti area or those and then without yeah, sure, So there's a bunch of different things you can do. Starting with if you have a balcony, you can start thinking about getting pots, filling them up with soil, amending that soil as needed

as you add plants. And again the general rule is to think about how bigger plant gets, and how big a plant gets is how big its root system is going to get. I mean, it's not accurate by any means, but it's just a good rule of thumb to think about as you're doing something like this. And you know, if you have a tiny pot, then something that gets big is not going to work. Might be better for a lettuce or whatever. And there's a bunch of different places you can look online for how to grow things

on balconies and things like that. You can also and this is really dependent on money, is start thinking about things like grow lights, which really are not that complicated once you start learning a bit about them, hydroponics, which comes with their own challenges because at the end of the day, while it's nice to be able to grow food in your house, you're still relying on extractive processes. So you know your nutrients are coming from fossil fuel essentially,

So that's just something to be aware of. It's probably still better than the alternative of buying food on the shelf, but it is something to be aware of in that process that it's not really a sustainable quote unquote practice at it. And what are some of the go twos for a balcony garden that you would recommend for people that are just starting out. Definitely, those leafy greens are a good place to start. They grow small, they have

smaller roots systems. Most times, things like lettuces don't need a ton of sun to grow super well. As long as they get a decent amount, they'll be fine. They're not like a tomato that's gonna like be desperately looking for that that sun in that energy. So those smaller greens are generally a better option. Great. Yeah, I was able to grow kale and like a pot this of this winter and it was great. Yeah, kale is a

great one here in New England. It's really nice because you can grow it under glass during the winter, so even if you get a cold spell, it will stay just warm enough to make it pretty much throughout the winter. All right, Now, I have no balcony. I only have you know, two small windows, you know I have. I have like a counter and stuff you know, I can like in the set ups off, but I do not have tons of outdoor access. But I would like to stop buying dil every time I go to the store

because I use it in my homemade ranch dressing. Now, can I just buy those like pre pre potted stuff and just water them or kind of get like if if if I want to get more in depth, what are they? You know, some things that are beyond that, but not you know, making this, you know, making this giant set up so you could be creative and do something that's less than eagle. And there's this practice known as guerrilla gardening. I was I was gonna mention girla

grilla gardening soon yeah. Sure. So this is like something that works really well, and there's a bunch of different ways you can do it, and it really depends on your local conditions and what can grow out in the wild and needs a lot of maintenance and what doesn't. And I don't know the Pacific Northwest that well, but it is warm enough that I think dill would probably do fine, and it is wet enough that dill would

probably we do fine. So you could just go anywhere where there's green space that nobody checks things and just drop some plants in. You could start seedlings in your house and bring them where you want to harvest it later, and it's on your walk to work or where you get coffee or whatever. Drop it in the ground, make sure the roots are you know, not bound up, and make sure it's got a nice water wrench right when you put it in the ground so it starts adjusting.

And that's you know, that's that's the first step in something as simple as guerrilla aggricule. One of the first things that we tried to do when I got kind of started in you know, the you know Portland's is kind of more lefty seed was, you know, ideas for you know, building a community garden somewhere, and yeah, because there is just a lot of dirt, especially in Portland's specifically low you just because we just have so much

green space. Uh, there's a lot of places to to start grilla gardening, to start doing our own little community garden. Do you do you have any alleged experience in guerrilla gardening. Yes, So if you're on Instagram, I post a bit about some of the guerrilla gardening stuff that I do. UM. I generally focus on guerrilla gardening not necessarily for my own consumption, but more for ecological mitigation for damage from

um clear cutting and things like that. So I go out and try to plant things that are native to regions and try to bring them back a little bit. So that's one of the challenges that we see here on the East Coast is not only are our city is not really designed with green space and mind and for community gardens, I almost never recommend them, just because in places like Boston they're hard to get into and a lot of major cities like you can be on

wait lists for years. So that's not really a short term solution or a solution for a lot of people that are rather transient where you might move communities every three or four or five years. UM. So, like guerrilla gardening works really great for those folks because you can do it when you want and how you want. Nothing

says community like a waitlist, right, No. But like in terms of community gardens, I think, you know, there's been a lot of people asking about how they get involved in mutual aid and stuff, especially if they don't have like friends or like they don't have many friends or connections to activism. I think one of the best ways to start anything like that is just all you need is like yourself and maybe one or two other people that you know to just start a community garden somewhere.

And that's a very very nice on ramp into like

community organizing. Absolutely back in Portland, when I used to live in the Southwest, there was there's just whole like community plots that are like you know, more like official but still pretty like decentralized that you could just basically go up to one of the bankt plots and just start planting food in this community setting, and like once a month, all of the different gardeners would like get together and talk about what they're growing and stuff, and

they could you know, could trade produce, be like, I'm growing I'm growing pumpkins, you're growing butternut squash. I want one of your squash. I want one of your pumpkins. Right, you can like that kind of stuff. Um or if you know, if you end up having with having like a larger hole, you could just give it out to random people. It turns out people might like receiving fresh produce. That could be another way of making friends and making connections.

If you're kind of isolated in the city and you only have one or two other people, you can't start start a new community garden somewhere in the city, just like scope out a spot, start growing and then and to speak to that. You know. One of the things is that if you act like your official and you're supposed to be there, and you know you're supposed to be there, people generally don't really question you, especially when

it comes to plants. Like if I go to like a median and go plant some trees, like as long as I like I know what I'm doing and like don't look like I'm trying to be sneaky, no one ever questions me. And that that's the key thing is to really make it clear that, like, you know, you're supposed to be there when whenever I eventually I'll put

together an episode on like urban stealth and stuff. And there's nothing more powerful than like a hive is vest just an incredibly powerful tool for making people glaze over you and think you're a professional. It's amazing. Or in this case, like when I'm doing what I do, you know, I'll borrow someone's old beat up pickup truck and throw a couple of big trees in the back and like you see that pulled over on the side of the road with its hazard lights on. Nobody's going to question that.

It's like a town or a city. And if somebody from the town shows up as I'm from the DPW or whatever. Yeah, there's it's incredibly incredibly useful. Um and yeah, but like getting to know you know, if you're like I don't know where to find a local you know, I don't know how to like where I would pick a local community garden spot, be like you should like get to know your local area. It's in another great way of figure ring out how to start doing any

mutulate or anything. It's like you need to know where you live and like, what's what's around you? Who others who you know? Maybe in your search to find the community garden, you might find one that already exists. If you're unfamiliar with your you know, with if you're in the metropolitan area or if you're more out in the middle of nowhere, you may not know what's around you. And I mean looking out to see what's actually in

the community. It is one of the first big steps to have any kind of and that plays out also in ecology. So you know, if you're in a city, most cities have public forest parks, whatever it might be. And part of not knowing what's around you, or knowing rather what's around you is starting to identify the plants

that are already around you. And while there's been a lot of action in terms of thinking about things like foraging, um, there's there's a ton of opportunity for us to start looking at foods that we don't traditionally think of foods but produce a ton of calories. So something like oaks. Oaks are across the United States. I don't think there's any state without oak trees and acorns can be a huge part of anyone's diet if they're willing to take the time and more and about them. And that's not

something that's radical or anything. It's something that's been done for thousands of years. It's just in in our lifetime, in our parents lifetime, that that knowledge and that experience has been mostly lost. But it's not something that's weird

or unaccessible or any of those types of things. Absolutely, um, I think this is actually a decent cutting off point for this episode and then the next in in in the In the next episode in the feed here we will focus more on ecology um books, more on soil and maybe get into permaculture and some other kind of stuff, because I would love to learn more about you know, specific soil stuff and you know different you know, more insight to our current like growing situation overall as like

a country and how you know stuff is changing. But um, would you like to plug anything really to you or any other like reason verses on this topic before we head out. Absolutely so. We are a podcast. Go check us out or parls dot com or Spotify. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, you can go check out some of our work. We're also on Instagram and Facebook like everyone else. And you can go follow us over there

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