Homesteading on the Moon with Kevin Espiritu

Prime Day is June twenty third through the twenty-sixth. These deals are so appealing like portable steamers for steam. I think I'm breaking in.

twenty third through the twenty sixth.

I think that's it. Nope.

You mean I can grow my own food and not have to go to the store?

Yeah. Make the best of your back yet.

Can I do it in the moon? I don't believe Fresh Direct goes there. Coming up. All the things you can do to grow food in your backyard on Star Talk Special Edition.

Which of course means I got Gary O'Reilly. Chucky baby. Hey man. How you doing? I'm doing great. Lord Chuck Nice. Lord Chuck Nice. All right. We got a special edition here. What do we got? This is on the future of growing food. I like it. Ooh. Because I like food. Keeps me alive. So I see I would say that's the future of growing vegetables because you're not growing a cow.

Genetically modified? Oh.

Okay, genetic, so that you can grow them in a pot. That's right, I would love it. Go water the cow. So, Gary, take us into this. What do you have?

All right, let me just stop laughing. Um right, at home farming or homesteading uh has seen an uptick in popularity in the past few years, which begs the question, where can we grow plants?

Yeah.

Is there a limit to where we can? We'll get into fake light versus real light. Soil science and the science of why our guests. Who you'll introduce shortly, can grow a whole farm in his backyard. How big's exact. And with some of us can hardly Keep a cactus alive. This guy's growing a farm in his backyard. Amazing. Where does the future of farming and sustainability actually take us?

I'm ready to get all in this'cause I I think about this topic all the time. Right.'Cause when I go to Mars Yes. You want you don't want to eat poop potatoes? You want something more than poop potatoes when you go to Mars? Yeah, I think we can be a little more innovative. Yeah. So we've got gardening YouTuber extraordinaire. Kevin Espiritu. Kevin, welcome to Star Talk.

What is up, gentlemen?

All right. Where are you?

I'm in San Diego, California, which is world is is called zone ten B. And I'll get to that in a second, but it's a great climate for growing.

Oh, it's a great climate for everything. Okay. Zone San Diego. Ten B. I miss San Diego, man. It's Isn't there a movie called Zone Ten B or was that the

District eleven.

Thank you for helping me.

And as much growing plants.

Is zone ten B next to District Eleven? I don't know. I don't know. So but first, how big is your backyard? Yeah.

The backyard I'm growing in now, it's about a third of an acre lot. So the house

It's not the back forty. No. A third of an acre. Yeah. We've never got that forty acres, by the way. Just trying to let you know. Okay. I'm still waiting on my Okay. Well he's working it he's working out the two third of an acre here. We don't have large streets uh that's out there. And you can have a garden anywhere, man. Yeah, because what when I think of

Is he still there?

All I'm gonna say guys is I've grown a lot of plants. I'll just put it that way. A little secret for you guys.

There's a reason why marijuana is called weed. All right. So uh so just give us a an overview of what you got going in the back one third.

Yeah, sure. So I mean it didn't start out that way. I started growing in an apartment. Then I moved to like a small kind of front yard lot, like fifteen by thirty feet. I grew I grew enough in that space to poorly survive off for about a month. But we could talk about that in a bit. But now

Did you say thirty fruit trees?

Yeah. Yeah, thirty different fruit trees. Half about half of them are citrus because it's San Diego and you know, it's you can pull citrus off there. And then I've got um maybe like forty or fifty different annual crops that I'm growing depending on the season.

Remind me, annual you have to replant every year.

Annuals, yeah. They're gonna live and die in a single

Spring.

Yeah.

Whereas perennials come back every year. Gotcha.

Are gonna come back every year. And then you know, you get into some like weird, weird sort of situations where there's like a self-sowing annual, like chamomile. That'll that'll produce its seed at the end of the season. It's gonna drop, go dormant, it'll come back. Still an annual, it still lives in.

Not when Monsanto finds out.

No.

Monsanto was now Bayer, just so you know. Oh, really? Okay, continue, please.

Yeah. So so the whole project was like this this idea of how far can you take being so-called self-sufficient on like a standard urban lot? So I've got chickens on the property, I've got rainwater capture. I've got gray water conversion. So taking like shower and laundry water and actually using that on the property instead of

In the in the apocalypse, what's your address so we can all move in with you?

It's redacted. I hid it from Google Maps. No one can see it.

Yeah, when the grid goes down, the water goes down, everything goes down. When when infrastructure fails completely, nobody's going to Kevin's house.

I got you guys I got you guys

All right. So let me ask you about the gray water because that's uh interesting. Um isn't gray water contaminated and what exactly do you use it for?

It it is like semi contaminated, hence the gray. Cause like if you were going to use sink water, which is considered black water, you wouldn't you wouldn't use that. You're not really allowed to. Okay. So what I did is for my indoor shower and an outdoor shower that I have.

So you can't use standard detergent. That was my concern is, you know, I I'm not sure if and uh I want, you know, tied tangerines.

No.

Wait. So you're saying sink water is called black water?

Yeah,'cause I think it's just because of the the different things that end up going down the sink ends up being

Oh sorry. The the water that comes out of the sink. I thought I thought you were talking about the water that goes in the sink, yeah. Not the faucet, not the thing. Not the stuff you drink. Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, where's rainwater off your roof? What's that?

Rainwater off your roof, I think, is just captured rainwater. You think that is like the house I I bought is like a thousand square feet. It's not big. So the roof is a thousand square feet. And I believe it's like an inch of water on a thousand square foot roof is six hundred gallons.

Yeah.

Crazy amount when you think about it, because the inch isn't that much rain. And so what I did is I built a system to pull that water off the roof, filter it, because you're gonna get like particulate matter, you're gonna get leaps and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And then it goes under the ground to a huge cistern in my backyard.

Okay, so you have a cistern and um'cause the other way you can do it is a bladder. There's some people that use like it's just a flat looks like a water like a hot water bottle. And then the captured rainwater ends up going into that. And then they somehow pump it out to whatever they have to use.

Yeah, yeah. You can do it that way, or you can do like rain barrels off of shed rain barrels. It's like I've got a shed that isn't connected to that roof system, so I've got a rain barrel on that shed.

Very nice. That's cool, man. And you said you could send water back to the city. Do they pay you for that water?

You can't send water back to the city. Um, but what I mean by that is like, let's say my laundry machine who, which has a gray water system on it. If I'm running, let's say, a a load of laundry that requires a detergent that I don't really want in the ground, then I'll just turn the valve and it'll send that water output to the city and that

I think I'm up with all your Your lingo there. So let me ask you a conservation uh question. Are you seeing because some people just don't give a damn? Let's be honest. They just don't care. All right. Are you sp everybody cares about their money? All right. Are you seeing any significant savings in doing all of this?

In water. So I did the math. I have it on our our second YouTube channel where I kind of chronicled it over the years. I put a bunch of solar on the roof. That has ended up being a good investment. That's paid itself off over the last like five years or so. Very good. The water Water ends up being so inexpensive.

And just so I understand, your solar panels when it's raining are not gathering sunlight, but they are directing water that falls upon them into your gutters so that you can collect it.

Right. Yeah. Exactly.

Just to be clear. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, people, just if you don't mind, uh if you'll indulge me, solar energy is the cheapest energy on the planet. Don't let anybody tell you differently. There's nothing cheaper than solar energy. Just wanted to say that, you know, just in case somebody out there might want to drill, baby drill. Okay. You know, that's all. Okay.

Kevin, are you finding people are following your lead with this sort of project? Because it's not so much the financial investment which we've kind of touched on, but People may not understand just how easy or how complicated it can be to to install this sort of uh facility.

Yeah. I mean, I think showing it from the perspective of me who, like I was saying, prior to buying the house, I had a fifteen by thirty square foot garden in my urban yard in in San Diego. So when I bought the house, I was learning everything about owning a house at the same time as I was putting out all the videos. And so I think just learning in public, which is always what I've I've done on the channel has

And by the way, let me just reaffirm what you just said. If if you learn along with your viewers, that that's a bond that is forever because you're you're you're like garden buds at that point. And yeah.

I mean, I don't have like a formal training in gardening. I just I got into it because I was addicted to playing video games and I wanted to get off the computer. Okay. And so once once I got into it.

Admit it, your mama kicked you out of the basement. Just toss up.

I I told you that in confidence, Neil, you asked.

Oh, I'm sorry. You said it offline and now it just came out. That's great. I mean, the fact is that um so okay, h here we go guys. And don't so I'm an avid gardener. I love it.

It doesn't show.

No, it does not. It does not. You would never look at me and think this guy gardens. But and I don't plant vegetables. My mother had a awesome vegetable garden growing up. But she also had a a rose garden as well, which roses F them. They suck. Um'cause I tried to plant one and

I'm here for this man.

You're the first time I've ever done it!

So... Are you are you old school? Drill a hole, plant a seed, water something, walk away, come back, rinse, repeat, or are we into some very more modern techniques?

Are you inventing new methods, tools, and tactics?

I wouldn't say I wouldn't be as bold as to say I've invented anything all that crazy in the gardening world. Definitely some weird tactics. Like we put a video up a couple of days ago about growing zucchini vertically, which is

Okay, so you're not being kind, you're being take my shit I wouldn't have eaten anyway. Absolutely.

100%. Yeah.

Cause squash is like a weed too.

Yeah, you get it, Chuck, right? Like as a gardener you're like, Okay, I have way too many. You go to a garden uh someone who doesn't garden and you give it to them, you look like this saint, you know, Oh, they grew this for me and you're like, This is just my this is

And really it's your trash. It's your garden trash. Squash is garden trash. And he's giving out the art the squash and not the oranges from his orange tree. Oh yeah, well.

No one's taking my situation, maybe.

All right, well talk about that man, because honestly, I'm gonna say for a lot of people listening to us, you know, our concentrations are in cities, big audiences. I mean, that I've never done as much as I love gardening. It sounds like more of a pain than anything to have a box garden on a balcony. What did you grow and how did you maintain it?

It I mean, I really didn't even have much of a balcony to get light. And so I I was googling around back then. This was like maybe thirteen years ago. I was like, Well, how do you grow plants without

Light.

From the sun. And the answer was hydroponics. And I being like a kid who grew up with an obsession of like growing crystals and all sorts of different science things, I was like, okay, let's go ahead and do it. And so I did it with my brother. And I got a five gallon bucket, filled that bucket with water. I put something called an air stone in, kind of like the thing you'd see in a in an aquarium that's oxygenating the water. I put some nutrients in that water.

Well tell me more about hydroponics. Yeah. And what what works in hydroponics? And what strain of marijuana is best to grow hydroponically.

Now I know why you've got a love for gardening.

Well, I got I got these hydroponics, aeroponics. Vertical farming, just these the things people are doing with plants. And now and mi we we're here at my office at the Hayden Planetarium. We're in Manhattan. There are buildings in midtown Manhattan where plants are growing on the wall. And then others, the people growing on their roof. Nice. So it's like, is earth not good enough for you? Where did the are these solutions to problems that people had encountered?

I think yes and no. I think if you go to hydroponics and aeroponics, those first two, hydro of course, meaning water, aero meaning air. Ponics coming from a ponos, which means work. So these are methods of growing where either the water or air does the work instead of what? Instead of soil, right? Which is where

Oh pretty much everyone neither of them have soil. There you go.

Ne neither of these are soil-based ways to grow. Um, and so if you it's kind of it's kind of weird because if you think about it, you think, of course a plant needs soil to grow. And I might even argue as a gardener, that is kind of true. I do prefer it. But what what a plant really needs is what's in the soil or what the soil's providing. And the soil's o almost a medium for oxygen, water, and nutrients. Yeah. Um, and so when you're growing in a hydroponic environment like my cucumbers.

the most beautiful roots.

Yeah. And but but the crazy part is it grows plants grown hydroponically tend to grow faster. Uh, and they tend to have roughly the same kind of macronutrient profile of like when you were if you were to eat that food, but the flavor is kind of up for debate. I think to me at least the flavor does feel like a little bit flatter.

Well, Kevin, it seems to me that if you're have some control over what's feeding the plant, then there's no end of ways you can manipulate that to create whatever flavor profile you might want in a food and possibly even patent that. Nice. How does this work with air? Because I can yeah. With a f with the fluids such as water, I can see you can dissolve something in it, new nutrients can hang out. But air, how does it pull nutrients out of the air in aeroponics?

And yeah, and aeroponics, I messed around with this, I would say, a little bit back in the early days of starting epic gardening. The whole logic behind the aeroponic method is well, the plant the plant roots don't really need to be bathed in water. They're

Are you nebulizing the leaves as well as the roots or just the roots?

I think most people would would just do the roots, but then there's this whole concept of like what's called foliar feeding or feeding the leaves, where some things are uptaken by the leaves and used in in in certain ways. But of course the roots are like the most common way that things are being uptake.

So doesn't Nebulizer sound like some weapon on Star Trek? I love it. Yep. I will nebulize you.

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Let's go back to you mentioned the the zoo Yeah. Just another way of saying this is a spaceaver. Because we've got the old traditional it's on it's flatland, it's acreage. This now we can stack and stack and stack and stack and you don't have it anywhere near the real estate that uh you would otherwise have.

A hundred percent.

Yeah, I mean the the zucchini method I I was using was just in soil, like with a little with a little steak growing it up. But you're totally right. Like some of the so instead of like imagine you have your soil like this, that's one Yeah, it's just one plane that you can grow on. And of course, when you're out in the Midwest farming soy, that's fine. Like you you can just do that forever. Yeah. Uh but in you know, in Manhattan or in Brooklyn, if you're trying to grow

How to get light in there. What what about yields? Uh, because do you get the same amount of yield from the same amount of space vertically than you do horizontally, or does it change?

You well, you'd get you'd get more yield on like a per square foot basis because you've got the z dimension, right? Right, or the the y dimension now that you're you're dealing with.

We'll take the Z. Z is good. Yeah, we took the Z. XYZ goes straight up. We good.

Z's up. Okay, great. We grew it. And and then, you know, you also got like the density at which you can plant. So like if you were I'll I'll just go back to my house for example. Let's say I'm growing peaches and citrus in my yard. If I'm a commercial peach grower, I'm growing those trees out to like fifteen feet wide, fifteen feet tall, basically expressing their full genetic potential.

Yeah, Chuck, the way you posed the question, I think you meant what's the yield per plant. Yes. But that's not the metric of measure here. Right. It's what's the yield per square foot. Right. And that makes sense. And that and that wins. No, that wins. You're always gonna win. You you win.

It's not not like they wouldn't try to squeeze out more yield per plant too. Like let's say hydroponics is gonna get you a little more efficient growing. Like that's also gonna happen. But they're I mean, you're talking like pretty razor thin margins i would imagine on some of those setups like i know that these companies have raised like a bunch of money you know so they're gonna do everything they can

Is this more intensive in terms of your management or anyone's management if you're vertically farming?

Totally. I mean I I always like to say like Well, people will say, I grew this or I can't grow this. And the way I think about it at least is the truth is no one's really ever grown a plant. Like uh as a gardener, what you're really doing is you're putting a plant in the environment in which it it knows how to grow best. And so you're not growing it. Of course, it's growing itself. And you just have to kind of cultivate that right environment. So in soil, yeah, it's a lot easier.

So looking at the nutrients, the one thing we always think of is going to need some sunlight. call light. You you mentioned in your balcony you had your own little grow lamp. Why is it that you've got some plants that will flourish with less And some just won't flourish unless they have twelve hours a day.

Yeah, this one is kinda interesting. So Take like a like an eggplant. That's like a classic summer crop. It loves a lot of sun. And then take something like maybe spinach. It's a leafy green, it grows low to the ground. If you were to give it a lot of sun, it might actually the leaves might actually bleach and and get damaged. Yeah. And you think about it, it's like, well, they're both photosynthesizing. So wouldn't more light just equal better growth across the spectrum?

Evilly, that's exactly what I would think.

Right. And and that's m I think really that's what I would think too. But when you think about it, like all these plants that we grow in a traditional garden, like even take a salsa garden, which we think of as a group of plants that make sense together.

You have to grow tortilla chips too. Do you have a tortilla?

Well you can just get that corn, baby. Just grow that corn, you know.

No, I want it I want it to come out as chips.

We might need to go into GMO.

Little triangle leaves. Little triangular leaves that you can just pull off. Become chips. All right.

So if you think about that, like take that spinach. I don't know where that's where it's endemic to, but regardless, wherever it evolved, it was low in the canopy. It was low.

Yeah.

In the entire sort of hierarchy of the plants around it, right? So it was basically fighting for photons to photosynthesize with. Whereas like a nice tall like banana plant or something like that that's growing in the tropics, it has no problem with that. So of course it can, it can tolerate more. Uh and what ends up happening with like a shade plant that gets too much sun if you put it in the wrong spot is what once was good, the light, actually starts producing um

What you're saying is

If the plant

wanted to survive but didn't have much light. It evolves to use that much light. Right. And if it then it has less or more light than what it evolved to have, that can't be good for the plant. 'Cause it didn't evolve that way. Absolutely. And you see that even in some flowering plants, not even for consumption, but when you plant certain flowering plants that need um what they they'll say partial shade. That's where it grows back. And the reason is

I wouldn't go as far as to make a bold claim to say like all of them would do better under normal sunlight, but I kind of do think that's the case because there are studies that prove not only do plants use far red, so like above the 700 nanometer range.

clear, the seven hundred nanometers is like the accepted edge of the visible spectrum where we would identify it as red light. Okay. And you can have light energy beyond that. Mm. And we call it infrared, but your eye can't see it. Right. But but of course the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom they have different sensors than we do. So we should not be defining what they care about and what they want. Don't tell me what I can see and what I can't see. I'm a plant.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you you're right. Like like the w the the first sort of LEDs that came out back when I was growing cucumbers, Chuck, back in my old place. Um they came out and they were called like blurple lights, blue, purple, red, because

Basically,

Whoever was designing them back then was like, well, plants mostly use light between four hundred and seven hundred nanometers, kind of like the visible spectrum. Um so they'll use blue light for vegetative growth. They'll use red light to signal flowering and stuff like that. So whoever was designing the lights back then was like, well, let's just give them exactly these ranges.

Yeah, just to just to put some punctuation on that. So if we see a plant and it's green, it means It's sending green light back to you. And it's not using the green light. Right. That's right. Okay. Right. Which is a a fascinating we think green as nature. Right. Green is the color it's rejecting. Yeah. Right. So what you're saying is not all plants are rejecting all green.

They're not going to be able to do that rejecting all green. So if you take red and blue, just colloquially, those ranges. I think the plant is using somewhere between like 91 and 95%, depending on which color it is. Green, you would think like, well, it's reflecting green, so it's using like 0% or maybe 10%. It's still absorbing in the range of like 70 to 80% of green light.

Are we talking mood lighting here for plants? Because we hear about plant stress. Are we now creating the right kind of light bath for specific plants? Are we at that point?

Yes, yes.

Should we also allow them to have a little uh Marvin Gay while we're at it?

Play him a little music, man. Why not?

Oh now you've now now I know if he wants if he talks to his plant.

Don't you know? I get it all the time. Like, do you talk to them? Do you name them? Do you I don't. I'm a little bit brutal to them sometimes, you know.

Yeah, I mean if you're gonna eat them, there's no sense in like, you know, getting to know them. Serenading them. Right. Yeah. So are you saying or implying that even though plants are green, they're not reflecting back all the green that they're receiving, they're keeping some of it.

Yeah. I mean that whole leaves like normal plant leaves are absorbing Oh, maybe about 80% of green light or so. So the reflecting back of 20, which is pretty much what we're seeing. But the the way it ended up working in the study that that kind of turned everyone on their head, realizing that we actually do use green light with plants.

Okay. Okay. All right. Again, plants just doing the best they can make in the situation with what they got. Do with what you got. Plants are like black people. I don't have no money, but we gon' make the rent, baby. Don't you worry about it.

All right, we we hear about plants being able to adapt and survive um in extreme conditions. Uh I suppose it wouldn't be the same unless we asked you about growing plants in space. and the extremes of the environments that would be encountered.

And before you before you answer that, can I tell you when I was in high school, I grew a plant upside down.

Is it Australian?

Cause I said to myself, well, does it really know which way gravity is? And does it really know which way the light is in advance? Because if I take a plant, turn it upside down, hold it with saran wrap, the the soil, so it doesn't come out. And I have all the time. That's correct. So the plant, it kept trying to go up. But the light kept it coming down. So it didn't grow in a straight way. It was like confused on its way in.

What plant was it? Do you remember?

I have to look I s I'm sure I kept the notes.

But then were you growing it in like a chamber where the only light source was below?

It was the only light source. That's it was a box. It was a box.

Oh, that is interesting. Because I've grown peas upside down and I grew tomatoes upside down. And the same thing happened, but my experiment was not one in which it there was a controlled light source at the bottom. So it was just outside. And so it but it did basically gravity was pulling it down and then it kept pulling itself back up towards the stronger lights.

Almost a weird

Stair stepping type effect.

Nice. Yes. That's basically the results I got. And I got an A plus on it, too. Oh, very nice.

Did you did you mark your own work?

No, just to be clear, in high school you normally take biology and chemistry and physics. Right. But in my high school I took physics first. And then I took chemistry and I took biology as a senior with all of these freshmen. Right. So I was like the oldest kid in the biology class. N Neil deGrasse Tyson, biology bully.

All right, Kevin, we're gonna throw you into space.

Yeah.

Metaphorically, are we gonna just take what we do here on Earth and just say, Yeah, we can do that in space, or are we gonna have to think a lot differently?

Because Kevin, you know, we speak of the lunar surface. It's not soil. It's what the geologists call regalith, which is powderized rock created by micrometeorites that on Earth would be what? Uh burnt up in the atmosphere. Exactly as a shooting star. Right. No such thing on on the moon. Oh, right. They hit and they pulverize the rock. And it's been doing that for a billion years. So all you have on the moon is rock soil. And and I as I understand

I mean I honestly think you just can't. Like you're you're right. I mean

Bummer dude.

Megolith, like that's basically dirt, right? And the difference between dirt and soil is dirt is soil soil is dirt plus the life that you talked about. The microbes, the fungi, bacteria. And so if you can't do that on the moon. Well, first of all, there's there's no oxygen, there's no atmosphere, right?

You'd ha you'd have to figure that out too.

growing plants here on earth.

That's that's a side detail.

If we're if you're growing plants without soil here on Earth, we just re replicate that kind of practice.

I think you'd have to grow them hydroponically or aeroponically in like a pressurized chamber and I think you'd have to use artificial light'cause what's the moon's like

No, no, moon's got light. We get no problem with light. Oh, moon sorry. Moon has a moontly cycle. So a day on the moon lasts a moon.

Yeah, so then you're in trouble because plants evolve for a twenty four hour light cycle, right? And so

Okay.

Would need to supplement with like they can't they wouldn't survive for what, like fourteen days of

Fourteen days in darkness. Right. Okay, so you have to like phase that somehow. Well just bring grow lamps. I mean

I think you just gotta bring Growland. I mean you basically just

That's what they do in every sci fi film. It's the you know, the horticultural deck is what they have. They all have the horticultural deck.

Are we going to just take genetically modified plant material with us? Yeah. Why not? Built, constructed to grow in extremities, to maybe deal with mooth. I've learnt a new word too.

Well that's where the word month comes from. The moon. But but let me let me tighten that question. So I as far as I know, plants like carbon dioxide. So if we're on the moon and we're all exhaling carbon dioxide, why don't we just capture that and stick it in the in the in the chamber where it holds the plant. Where it holds the plant.

That is such a good question.

So we wanna know that, right?

I I wish I knew. I don't know it, but I think there is There's definitely

And amount.

That that like on a per person basis.

One tree per person? That's a lot of art'cause a lot of trees on Earth. I just learned there are three trillion trees on Earth. Oh my god. I said, I don't believe that. I ran some math on it. Yeah. It was like, Yeah. Three trillion? Yeah. Not for long. That's right. We'll be cutting them down.

You know what else you could do on on the moon? I just thought about it, is you could go aquaponics. So we talked about hydroponics and aeroponic. We didn't talk about aquaponics yet. All right. Which basically is because you remember in hydroponics, aeroponics, you don't have the soil, so you don't have the nutrients, right? Do you need to input those nutrients synthetically?

Well wait, so the aqua refers to what in that context?

Good question.

Just the water. Yeah, but but you just said hydroponics, the hydro referred to the water. That's probably why they made it aqua because they're like, you know, Aquaman talks to fish. Okay. That's the idea. Okay, so that's interesting. So you bring some fish with you.

No, you've really got the circle then.

Circle, I've left. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. I don't think NASA's thought about that. No, it's a pretty cool idea.

Water and white. Everything is about to be a little bit more.

But has a fish ever been brought to space? Do you guys know?

I I don't know and I'd hate to be that fish because fish align themselves vertically because they're skinny and long, vertically because they know which way gravity is. Yes. In zero G. That fish is gonna be totally Oh man. It's hard enough when you pull them out of the water and they have to explain what happened back to their friends. That's why they all look surprised. With their eyes over. You ain't never seen a fish that doesn't look surprised. It's like what?

Yes. It's gonna be terrible.

Because you're making nasty cucumber.

Can you I mean I grew the worst cucumbers of maybe anyone's ever grown. They they were yellow, they were deformed, like they had all these deficiencies. I still ate it, but you know, it was bad.

I mean are we gonna have to just if we're interstellar travel, just come to the f conclusion that you know, flavours are something in the past?

No, you get a c flavor capsule. Flavor's just chemistry. It's Yeah.

flavor's become a condiment. Yeah.

All right. Put some more flavour on it.

Do you just grow like the most efficient vegetable you can grow and just flavor capsule it with like grow potatoes and just flavor capsule?

So we're back to the

So so before I I want to take this into a sustainability question and oh yeah maybe the transition to that is Tell me about the plot of land that you experimented on where you fed yourself for thirty days. And that was all the food you ate. So did you get your protein? Did you lose weight? Did you look pale and sickly? Did you look healthy? How much land and what was the mixture of fruit and vegetables that was on that land?

Okay, let me lay this out for you guys.

the only one consuming that food.

I have to tell you the set of rules I gave myself to start the challenge. Okay. So I came up with the idea, it was like February of twenty nineteen.

Brilliant idea.

Right. I go, can I do this? And remember, back then I was in a 15 by 30 foot growth space with like some raised beds and containers and stuff like that. So I gave myself that amount of space. And then I also utilized like one of my friends' little terraces. And I say, okay, I want thirty uh I'm giving myself ninety days of lead time.

But what do you mean by fish? Use the fish as a verb. What do you mean?

Like literally go fishing.

Oh that's allowed?

I allowed it in the challenge. Hold on, hold on, hold on. This is why. This is why. Because okay, name a pr name a plant with a ton of protein.

Well, you know, what's interesting Legumes. But what what's interesting is that potatoes are like one fourth protein. The problem is they're a way higher percent water. So if you took the water out of potato, they have You have a dense protein source? De so it just potatoes are just full of water, that's the problem. But otherwise yeah. So

You'd look at nuts for protein.

Ja, så he didn't grow nuts. San Diego, that's a nut country, isn't it?

I mean y th but I had ninety days. So I can't grow a tree from scratch, right? So it had to be produced from that moment on, right?

Oh okay, gotcha, gotcha.

So here's where I go. I go, Okay, I need seventy eight thousand calories to live for thirty days and not lose weight. I even got a DEXA scan before just to see like what I was at, even my body comp to the point of losing muscle.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so so I grew about eighty hundred pounds of potatoes and some amount of beans. I forgot what it was. Because the protein and fat, specifically fat, actually harder than protein to grow quickly, you think about plants with a lot of fat, you're thinking about like there's like a coconut or an avocado or something. You can't grow those in ninety days.

What kinda dumbass species is this to say, let me go on and so and flop around so people can take me eat me. Life is too hard.

I think it's one of those where like there's just so many it doesn't matter kinda approaches. No.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because there's like tens of thousands of them.

And do they flop around only'cause when the tide pulls out or or they just purposely do this?

I think it's the full moons or something.

Well that would be if the tide you get a strong tide. Okay.

Продолжение следует...

Well what happens is the the females come up and like dig a hole and like lay their eggs in it and then the males come up and drop Sperm on the whole. Yeah, exactly.

Look at that. Always sex that is the end of a man.

I scooped them up. So yeah. I mean a huge a huge part of my meals that month were what I called grungy potato pancakes, where I like mashed the potatoes and put them in a pan and like put the fish in that and then just ate that. And that's pretty much what I ate the whole month. I ended up losing 13 pounds in 30 days. And nine and nine of the pounds, this is the part that made me so mad. Nine of the pounds were muscle.

I mean that's the way it was before we had our modern day capitalist society or agrarian and trade and totally

Hey, this is Kevin the Somolier, and I support Star Talk on Patreon. You're listening to Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The apocalypse comes, we're just screwed, right? Yeah, what about like the victory gardens that people had in the Second World War to show your solidarity with the uh rationing? So it in apocalyptic earth, you're one of the survivors.

I would make it. Yeah. I mean I you'd you'd put me in your apocalypse crew, I think, because I could feed you.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Alright, give us your address again. Yeah. Because yeah, no I I mean the canned food can last essentially forever until at least the next civilization comes around. Right. But But you can dry your grunions if you have a cool damp basement and some salt.

Yeah.

them out and dry. Yeah back in the salt. Yeah. Okay. So so tell me about sustainability going forward. The with with mega agri what do you call it? Farming? Big ag Farming. Yeah. You know, w that is the solution to our own problem, yet people are saying we shouldn't do that. It's feeding everyone. That that is gone. Whereas w in our childhood.

Man, I think it's it has to be a both, right? I mean, you're right. We grow we grow corn, soy, wheat across most most of the Midwest of the USA. California grows like eighty percent of the the produce of of the country, especially. We grow we grow such an incredible amount here, you know.

So Kevin, my whole life I've heard about topsoil, but I don't have any understanding of it, even as a scientist, because you the seed grows up into the air, goes down with roots into the soil. Who cares about the top three or four inches?

Yeah, I mean, we should all care about the top three or four inches. The top three or four inches is basically where everything actually happens for the plant. So you're right, like the roots are down in the soil, right? And yes, sometimes those roots go pretty deep and they can mine for specific minerals or nutrients that they might need. But

Why isn't it in the i six inches below that?

I wouldn't know the exact maybe evolutionary ecosystem reason for this, but my hypothesis, I guess, would be that it's because it's efficient for the plant roots to not have to go that far to get the nutrients. Okay.

That feels right. So what's happening to the topsoil?

So we're losing it dramatically faster than we're it's being regenerated.

Why?

I because we're the way that we farm in industrial agriculture is we're effectively It's almost like you're growing hydroponically in the soil because you've you've now, let's say you've stripped all the topsoil, just hypothetically, right? Well, now you're growing in effectively dirt. There's not a lot of life in it. There's not a lot of nutrient content in it anymore. So what do you do?

So the phosphates too and things? I mean is that.

It can, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so we're sort of like taxing the earth and not repaying it enough. Yeah. And there will be a point at which there's like you've crossed the sort of horizon of being able to do that. And then you you may actually see yields fall fall off like crazy because we're just losing it way too fast.

But you just said we can manufacture what the topsoil would have done if we till it back into the soil. So who cares at this point? Okay. But no, what he's talking about is sustainability. So what all the time. So what? I'll do it all the time. So what? But that

Solving one problem to create another downstream problem.

I just solved that problem. What's the downstream problem? So the downstream problem with that is you We're gonna let the man Oh I'm sorry. The one who has a YouTube channel on this? Okay, okay. Oh, yeah. Uh in uh an ecological or climate and sustainability. But Kevin, go ahead.

Well we'll we'll riff off of it, Chuck. Like I've got one for you. So California grows a ton of almonds, right? We grow most of the almonds in the country. So the way to do it efficiently in the industrial, you know, Neil method, I'm gonna call it for

I'm just being I'm just trying to put it out. Go ahead.

Is is you're gonna put only almond trees in the orchard, right? You're gonna strip away everything else. And what do almond trees need to produce the almonds? Well, they they have a flower. That flower needs to get pollinated. How is that flower gonna get pollinated?

And allow them to pollinate.

Exactly.

Yeah, but bees are no longer naturally there. Because what you did was the other flora you eliminated. Okay. Okay, so now so it created an industry. You know, half bee will travel. Half B will travel. But wait, but here's another reason why. Because When those chemicals go in, a lot of times they run off as well. So what you get is farm runoff of all of these chemicals that you put in the and how uh everything's a chemical, so you know what I mean. Where's it gonna go?

So now you've put another industry in there. This this goes into groundwater, that goes into the rivers, the rivers will go into the sea. Right. And then we just like this.

We have a mouse problem. That's okay. Let's get some hawks. All right, now we've got a too many hawks. Let's get the snakes. All right, well now we need monkeys. Like it never ends. Yeah.

It never ends, and then in the end, you end up like manually reinventing what nature already was doing. Right is the way that I think about it. Oh, you know.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, we have to that's a profound thing. Could you just say that again? Okay.

Yeah, so sure. So if you try to solve every problem that you created from these large scale agricultural systems, you end up basically just recreating what nature already was doing.

Right. Ooh. That's a great that's a great way to put at it. I mean to look at it. That's it.

I mean you you go round in a circle and come back to the point you originally were to realise you had it good and then you just

Like the war in Iran. So what did they do before we did this commercial farming, which is commercial agro? Did they just rotate fields and not use them and then you come back to them and Totally.

I mean, in the past, I I guess you're kind of right, Neil. Like a hundred years ago, you would have spent part of your actual life producing the food. Right. Right. Let alone, let alone buying it. But you know, in the past we we used effectively like regenerative agriculture principles where you're not taking more from the land than

CO two in the air.

Yeah. From the CO two in the air. Yeah. But what people will do these days are stuff that stuff that like we'll do in our in our backyard or we'll promote. is is regenerative practices where you are adding back as as much as you are. And and yeah, maybe you are leaving something for a crop which you're basically just growing to generate biomass that you will cut and leave in place.

Leave in place. Interesting. Right. Wait, so with corn, lately I've noticed by the way, I was astonished, forgive me for even being so ignorant, that every stalk of corn Makes only one ear of corn. That felt so wrong to I didn't believe it until he made me go look at a stock. You didn't believe it.

Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um yeah, I mean I think corn's an interesting one because corn is one of the crops of course that we've we've modified. Right. So most most of the corn that you're seeing like in those fields. Is like a single ear hybrid corn variety that's that is only going to produce one per stock. Where there are corn that produces more than one. Like two, you know, like two, you know.

Yeah.

Which is great. And so you

That's called nitrogen fixation. Yeah. They're like a pump. Okay, because the the atmosphere is seventy-eight percent nitrogen. Yep. So we got the nitrogen. And so it takes that and puts it back into the soil, which serves as in some way as a fertilizer.

Well yeah, nitrogen nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are the three major elements that plants need to grow. Nitrogen being probably the most Right. And and and so

I love that. I never heard that term cover crop, but it makes sense. That makes complete sense.

Kevin, d I mean back way back, you know, when the agricultural revolution took hold, they would leave a field fallow to let it rest.

I remember that. We don't hear about that anymore.

And I'm I'm gonna get to that follow up question. Then they when you say cover crop, would that be you'd plant that crop in that field? And then that would then become absorbed back into the soil you wouldn't harvest it.

You wouldn't harvest it.

Are people out there still practicing these old, old traditional farming methods or is that just gone, just give it chemicals and let's let's let's grow everything?

The group that's doing it the most are these urban farming folks who are farming on maybe, maybe a third of an acre like me, although I'm not traditionally farming. Sure. I've got a I've got a buddy here in San Diego. He farms on an acre. I think he makes about one hundred fifty grand a year selling his produce at market. He he loves that lifestyle. Uh-huh. And

Yeah.

Yeah, I got you. Well you ever come down, we'll go do a whole tour.

Yeah.

But he'll do he'll do a lot of that stuff, Gary. He'll he'll run his chickens through, which of course they're gonna be eating they're gonna be eating insects, right? They're gonna be taking a little bit of forage here and they're what are they doing? They're making droppings. Those droppings are extremely high in nitrate.

Sympathetic and a symbiotic relationship between maybe animals, the plants and growing other crops around other crops.

Yeah. I mean, that's where I get to. I go, nature's kind of doing it already, but you can come up with like really creative techniques like running the chickens through the field, right? Instead of solving the problem that you created by creating this problem, by creating that problem, you know?

So the the uh Jonathan Swift, who's famous for authoring Gulliver's Travels. Oh okay one one of Gulliver's Travels, this is seventeen twenty-six I think it was. One of his visits was to the Logato Academy, okay, which was a a c academy where there's just scientists doing completely batshit crazy things. Okay. And but one of them was can you read their experiment, it sounded kinda like but then you think about it's like no. So one of them was they didn't want to have to till the soil.

Yeah.

See, so it's y at first it sounds clever at first. Right. But it's not. So you were saying try to double do it on the on the chickens. If they just poop on the top, does that get down into the soil or does that get washed away?

Scratch through. So, like you know, my my hens will they'll come out in the garden and they'll scratch through like three, four inches deep sometimes, hunting for little bugs and grubs. And so, yeah, it's it's not like the

My hen, you heard that? These are my hens. My hens. Well they are. Yeah.

Don't come at my hands, Neil. You can come to my address for some produce. You're not getting my hands.

Uh do you do you name your hens and then slaughter them and eat them?

I don't eat'em. Um if I ate them I probably wouldn't name'em, which probably sounds irrational, but it's

That's what we're just checking here. They do give eggs though, right?

Oh, yeah. Okay, cool.

So obviously not everyone has a plot of land to grow food, but everyone who pays rent has some household square footage and in principle can buy a grow light for not much money. So how much of a difference can everyone growing something to eat make in this world?

It's such a good question. I mean, you brought up Victory Gardens earlier. I think back in those times. We produce something like 15 to 20 percent of our produce as a nation from the Victory Garden movement. But that took like a world war to galvanize everyone to do, you know? So, like what would it take? I'm not really sure. If everyone did it.

But it could it could create a a sea change in how people think about the environment that could have other beneficial decision making uh consequences in people's lives. Absolutely.

I mean before I started gardening, I like I said, I was like addicted to playing video games. You know, I didn't know anything about this. Now I have changed my entire life and habits because of of just getting into

Yeah.

C'est ça, c'est ça

شكرا للمشاهدة

We gotta land this plane.

But before we do, Neil, um let's let's wrap it up with the final question. So, Kevin, what's the question about plants and or food systems, if you like, that you think science hasn't answered yet?

Ooh, I like that. What are you waiting for scientists to figure out?

There's a lot there's a lot of'em, man. But the one that just selfishly I'd be interested in is How to impact flavor at a deeper level. Cause when you think about crops that are like like like wine, right? People get very snobby about their wine. Oh, the terroir of this land, this or that. It's true for all crops though. Yeah. You know, just just because it's wine, of course, that's a high value crop. I would love to know like what is impacting the flavor, let's say, of a tomato.

You need a home genetically modified organism laboratory.

Or something. Yeah. Or something like that.

Or something. Wow. Yeah, so so flavor. Uh and and by the way, the counterpart to that in the grown meat movement. Right. the w what's it called? Not grown meat. Laboratory meat. Laboratory uh synthesized meat, but it's actual meat protein. It's meat protein. It's meat protein. It's grown in a dish that you didn't have to kill an animal to provide. All right.

So we need a flavour wheel like you get a colour wheel.

Yeah, and and and you could get two of this and three of that and put it through this. Can I have a cotton candy burger, please?

Wow. That's so interesting. Because caraway is in the like the carrot or parsley fan family and mints in its own.

Yeah, they got the flavor just the flavor. Yeah, yeah. Not the rest of its substance.

Right. Still, that's still fascinating to me.

Just to be clear, I heard that multiple times, but I've never officially read it in a journal. And I've never seen anything to counter it. So I'm just putting it out there. But whether or not what I just said is true. No, it's true, because there's the same thing with banana and I forget the other flavor. But it's the exact same thing. Okay, our crack team of yeah of researchers just verified what I just said. Yeah, them um yeah, definitely. I believe yeah.

Yeah, that one's called Epic Homesteading. It was just the story of building out that property that I've been telling you guys about.

Okay. All right. So we can find you in two ways there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what's in what and so we can find you what's the name of your YouTube channel? Epic gardening and epic Epic Gardening and Epic Homesteading. There you go. That works. Yeah. That totally works. Well, congratulations on your following and the success that you've produced and I'd love people just getting the job done themselves. Yeah. And that and now with YouTube and other platforms we can all participate vicariously.

I'm simply I'm simply the face nail, the beautiful face.

The face of what? Well who do you have behind the scenes there?

No, I mean Epic Gardening, it started as a little blog back in the day, became a YouTube channel. It's now a team of fifty five people. We we actually o w yeah, we own we own a seed company. So we sell seven hundred, fifty, eight hundred varieties of seed around the whole country. And so when I say we, I mean like the team of gardeners at Epic, which includes master horticulturists, master gardeners, et cetera, and me, the guy.

Wait, we got stuck with you when we could've had a master horticulturist?

You could have, I know, I know, I know. They just put the they they put the face on for you guys.

Nice. All right, dude. Keep up the good work. Keep it up. Keep it going. It was a delight to have you. And good to see that it's become an empire. The a seed empire. Yeah. So in the apocalypse, we're bunking at your place.

I'll send you guys an email. I got you guys covered.

Ha ha.

Alright.

All right, guys. Bye. So this has been another installment of StarTalk Special Edition. You're coming up with these special editions.

You've got to credit the lane over in LA. Yeah.

Yeah, we have our L LA office as part of this part of the special edition portfolio.

But there's there's still so much to to land on. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well Chuck, good to have you always a pleasure. This has been Star Talk Special Edition. All about farming in your back forty. Nice. Except if you don't have forty, you do it in your back one third of an acre. And if you don't have forty acres in a mule, don't expect it. As always, Neil deGrasse Tyson bidding you.