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