Gardening is our past and must be our future

[Music]

[Music]

human beings have been growing their own

food for tens of thousands of years

what started off as collecting and

planting wild edible weeds has

transformed into the cultivated food

growing we know today

just over the past century many of our

grandparents or great-grandparents

grew their own food and the practice was

commonplace

during the great depression there were

relief gardens which were planted to

help feed those hit hardest by the

economic downturn

during both world war 1 and world war ii

there were victory gardens

which were so successful that by 1942

an estimated 20 million gardens had been

planted supplying nearly

half of all the fresh produce eaten in

the country that year

in more recent times we’ve seen the rise

of urban gardening turning rooftops and

empty lots into edible gardens for

members of the community

in 2020 we saw seed stores sell out

all across the country fueled by the

global pandemic

we as a human race have gotten as far as

we have today

by knowing how to sustainably grow

nutritious food

so how is it that so many of us have

forgotten

my name is ellie and i’m the head

gardener at home gardeners

a business my partner michael and i

created that builds edible gardens and

food forests

right here in central florida i wasn’t

always a gardener though

and in fact originally i was a hair

stylist my education comprised purely of

chemicals dyes and hair sprays and

that’s as pretty far as you can get from

organic gardening

everything i learned start in my own

backyard besides a few books and

internet articles my only teacher was

mother nature

this is why i need to say this and get

it out of the way

no you do not have a brown thumb

if i can do it with a background in the

natural lacking as much as it was

so can you our culture has gotten

scarily comfortable with just saying

oh i can’t guard and i kill everything i

touch or

i just don’t have a green thumb as a way

of dismiss producing our own food

food growing is a learn skill just like

driving or cooking

the first time you drove you probably

weren’t the best driver

and the first time you cooked it

probably wasn’t gourmet

we never write those things off saying

oh it’s okay driving just really isn’t

for me i guess

or i’ll just have my mom cook for me the

rest of my life

we keep trying and we get better until

we’re just able to do it

gardening is no different and

surprisingly easy once you know just a

few requirements of each plant

yes there will be problems and yes there

will be frustrations

but it’s worth it 100

the reason i went from hair stylist to

homesteader was

left out of picking up a new hobby and

more as a means for survival

at the time my family didn’t have much

money on hand so it just made more sense

to make the investment in growing our

own food

than spending hundreds of dollars a

month buying it think of the give a man

a fish she eats for a day teaching a

fish he eats for a lifetime analogy

despite my lack of knowledge in

gardening some things grew by well

without even trying

the inspiration that came from seeing

how nature persevered helped me do the

same after accidentally killing the rest

of my plants

little by little i learned with each

mistake and soon

gardening became my passion i started

saving seeds from my plants to grow new

ones

i learned that you could cut up a branch

and stick it in soil and it could grow

roots and become its own plant

i grew so much food i had to give it

away just not to waste it

my partner michael built an entire

greenhouse out of scrap wood and old

windows we found on craigslist

and we built so many gardens that our

yard was completely full

one day on a whim i offered free

gardening advice over facebook to

anyone who was ever interested in

learning how to grow

the response was so enormous that the

next day

i found myself driving all over the city

going guard to yard

teaching people how to grow their own

food it was upon this revelation of

interest that michael said

why don’t we build gardens for people

for a living and that’s what we’ve been

doing ever since

gardening means the world to me let’s

talk about why you should garden

why everyone should garden the first

benefit

is having fresh produce available right

in your own backyard

you know how it was grown where it came

from and didn’t have to travel miles to

get to your path through anyone else’s

hands

some may argue that all the work isn’t

worth it and that the grocery store is

good enough

but i’ll give you a different

perspective

having fresh picked food is something

you can’t get at a grocery store

and it’s a bigger deal than you may

think did you know that there has been a

steady

decrease since the 1950s and the general

nutritional content of almost

every common garden vegetable grown here

in america

conventional farming practices used to

grow your food

focus on producing high inconsistent

yields

not the nutritious food our ancestors

ate

fresh produce can also rapidly lose

nutrients green beans and spinach for

example can lose more than

75 percent of their vitamin c in as

little as a week

even under normal refrigeration

temperatures

consider how long it might have taken

from the moment the food was picked the

time it took to process it

chip it and sit on a grocery store shelf

only bought by you who kept in the

fridge for god knows how long before you

finally decide to make dinner out of it

compare that to having a backyard garden

where the food is picked

right before it’s eaten in our house

an empty fridge isn’t a bad thing it

just means all the food is growing

outside

you may have also heard at one time or

another people say

the food you grow yourself tastes better

and it does

did you know that some food at the

grocery store is picked before it’s even

ripe

do you know what the ripening process

does it’s the final stage of fruiting

where the sugars and flavors reach their

peak

in order to gain the appearance of being

ripe food producers gas your food with

ethylene gas

this only forces the food to change in

color on the outside

and doesn’t naturally ripen it from the

inside at all

and this goes for food that’s branded as

organic too

i know many people find comfort in

seeing the usda organic label on their

food

but in all truth the organic label does

allow practices that wouldn’t be

happening the same way in nature

and studies have shown that organic food

bought at the grocery store

is about nutritionally equivalent to

conventionally grown foods

large-scale food producers are in charge

of feeding the entire population

and i honestly don’t know how they could

do it completely in sync with nature

but you in your backyard can’t

yes gardening is dirty and it can be

hard work

it doesn’t have to be hard work often

that’s why i started my first raised bed

a raised bed is a large often wooden

container filled with high quality soil

free of weeds

this gives your seeds a healthy

environment to start in when you

irrigate it the majority of your work is

trimmed away

you will have weed seeds blow under your

bed from the wind or the occasional bird

that’ll leave a city present in your

soil

but compare that to the estimated

hundreds of millions of weed seeds in

any given acre of land

your work seems a lot easier even in the

hottest months of the year when the

weeds run

rampant we simply tarp our garden beds

with clear plastic sheeting

and the sun will solarize the bed this

not only kills the weeds that are

already growing in the bed

but also cooks the remaining weed seeds

until they are no longer viable

and kills pests their eggs and larvae

that way when the hot season is over you

just take the tarp off the bed and have

a pretty fresh late to start in

give it some fertilizer plant some seeds

and you’re growing again eating the food

you grow yourself

is good for you as it is but so is all

the effort you put into making your

garden big and beautiful

according to the cdc life gardening work

can help reduce the chances of

cardiovascular disease

type 2 diabetes heart attack stroke

and several forms of cancer if you’re

gardening on a nice sunny day for just

15 minutes your body will absorb enough

vitamin d

which research suggests can help

decrease blood pressure increase

bone strength reduce the symptoms of

autism and help prevent colds and flus

and don’t forget about the dirt research

has discovered a common bacteria found

in soil that was able to

elevate the quality of life in cancer

patients

and in mice it affected them as if they

were on

antidepressants

the point is we weren’t made to sit

inside all day under artificial light

staring at a screen

we forget we are animals we are meant to

be outside we are meant to be eating

fresh like the rest of the wildlife on

our planet

we have seen ourselves as so separate

for so long that we don’t even realize

how

artificial pre-packaged and processed

our life has become

whether you recognize it or not it is

affecting you

it’s affecting your children it’s

affecting our species

it’s affecting our planet

having a backyard garden is such a small

thing you can do that has such an

immense impact on our lives

both as individuals and as a whole i

fully believe that we could build our

community into a food growing hub

one where we grow more than enough to

share and we learn so much that we will

help

others just starting out not be afraid

to grow our country used to do it and we

can do it again

here in our growing region of central

florida we can grow food approximately

331 days

of the 365 day year making it one of the

longest growing seasons

in all of america we have

every reason to grow and it just starts

with

one small garden bed in your backyard

gardening is our past and it absolutely

must be our future thank you

[Music]

you