3 Reasons to Stop Gardening with Fertilizer (and What to Do Instead)

Stop using fertilizer in your garden and do this instead. Today, I am going to call out the Miracle Gro gardeners. I am going to call out all of you who think you got to go find some other chemical or spray to put on your garden in order to make it work. I'm calling you out when you see my full, abundant gardens. And the number one question you ask me is, what kind of fertilizer do you use? Because I don't use fertilizer. And after today's episode, you're not going to want to use fertilizer either. So, I'm Nicole Burke, and I'm so excited that you're here with me on the Grow youw Self podcast. Each and every episode, we talk about how to grow yourself with your food, with your garden, with your lifestyle, so that we all are living healthier and happier lives. The thing I want to touch on today is fertilizer, because I feel like these days we think that if you've got a garden, you gotta have fertilizer, and it's just not true. I don't know if you know this, but one of the biggest, biggest companies, perhaps the biggest one in the garden industry is Scott's. And Scott's owns Miracle Gro. And if you head to a big box store any day anytime soon, you're going to see a ton of products that have the logo Miracle Gro on them, including all the plants. In fact, it seems like at least the stores I go to, Lowe's and Home Depot, every single vegetable plant that they are selling has the Miracle Gro logo on it. And I have to say, have to warn you, they are setting you up for failure if you're not going to bring them home and use Miracle Gro, too, which I'm hoping you're not after this episode. So here's the deal. I learned to garden. Not from the garden store, not from big box stores, definitely not from buying a lot of Miracle Gro. I learned how to garden by going to national parks. My family, we've never brought our four kids to Disney World. Shh. Don't tell them. They don't even know there's a Disney World. No, I'm just kidding. They're teenagers. They figured it out. But when they were young, instead of bringing them to Disney World, where we'd have to stand in line for hours and hours, we brought them to national parks so that they would get exhausted. Not from waiting in line, but from climbing mountains. And it started early. We still love taking them to national parks. And one of the first we went to was Big Bend. We thought it would be a great idea to bring a lot of young kids out into the desert where there were no other living beings for hundreds of miles. We were out in Big Bend, I was just starting my garden and we were in the desert. Place was sandy, it was hot, it was the middle of July, and there were tons of plants, tons. And they were growing in some of the most peculiar places. And I looked around, noticed, and I was thinking about my garden and how many trials and tribulations I'd had in my first few seasons of gardening and how everything was failing. And I'm like, we're missing something, right? I've got this perfectly set up box and this, the soil I bought from Home Depot and the plants I got from Home Depot. And yet I come out and nothing's working. And then I come out to Big Bend national park and there's a desert and there's heat and there's no water and there's no people, and yet the plants are thriving. And it was this moment, this little aha moment for me, like maybe I should stop taking my lessons and notes from the big box store and from these fertilizer companies and maybe I should just start taking a note from nature instead of. And so I went home and instead of buying plants from the big box store, instead of buying fertilizer, I tried to imitate the plantings that I saw in the parks. And what I saw in the parks were lots of plants all together. Big plants, medium sized plants, small plants, always growing in clumps, never separated, never, with lots and lots of space between them and thriving. So the tall plants would be right in the center. Then you'd have these medium sized bushes and then lots of ground cover just sprawling and spreading all around this part of vegetation in the desert. So I started to plant my garden like that, packing in the plants, putting the plants as close together as possible and putting varieties of plants all together in one bed. And then instead of fertilizing, I started moving to thinking about, okay, what would happen in a national park? What would happen in just a natural place where plants are growing? Well, there's going to be weather, of course, there's going to be animals, of course, and there's also going to be degradation. There's going to be a breakdown of materials over time. Those are the three things that happen naturally to plants, right? You've got weather, you've got animals and other living beings, and then you've got the breakdown of that plant matter. Whatever is around the plants. And I made a promise to myself. From now on, I'm only going to do in the garden. I'm only going to try to reenact in the garden what I know happens in nature. I'm not going to bring in an external force. I'm not going to try to push things to go faster or to be bigger or better. I'm simply going to try to reenact what happens out there in the wild inside my box. And that was the moment that my garden game changed and the pressure was off and I wasn't spending a ton of money on all this crazy blue powder stuff from the hardware store. Why is it blue? I don't get it. Anyway, I made that vow and that was the big change. So I want to encourage you today to do that kind of change in your garden, too. Fertilizer is basically, if it's a chemical fertilizer. So I'm not talking about natural minerals, I'm not talking about natural animal products. I'm talking about synthetic materials, synthetic chemicals that we're sold that we should add to our garden. I see those in the same way that I would see a steroid, in the same way that I would see any kind of chemical I might want to add. You know, we're sold to add to our bodies to get us more muscular or more fit faster, where we kind of like skip the system, if you will. We kind of try to rush the system and skip over all the hard days and just go straight to. To the ending. And that's what fertilizer is, a chemical. Synthetic fertilizer is something that basically tries to skip over the natural processes that all the other things in the wild have to go through. So when you use a fertilizer, number one, you're creating a dependent plant. You're creating a system that is now going to rely on you and this material and this schedule for. For good. It's like a baby or a kid that you feed candy every morning, right? So if you get in the habit of giving them a little piece of candy every morning, give them a little jolt of energy, get them going for the day so that they're less whiny and not throwing a fit and just easier to deal with in the moment, right? You give them that candy at 8:00am well, what have you created? Have you created this, this much easier child to deal with now for the duration of their childhood? No, you have created a monster. Because tomorrow morning when that child wakes up, they're going to say candy. And when you don't give them that candy, guess what they're going to do? They're going to throw that fit. So you're going to have to give them that candy again. And then you've just created this cycle where every single morning, to get the kid to do what you want them to do, you've got to give them the candy. And the same is true for plants. Fertilizer is like candy for plants. And so what happens to a lot of us is we buy plants that have been grown with fertilizer, we bring them home, put them in the garden, and they just sit there. They do nothing. They might not die, but they certainly don't grow. And part of it is because they're the kid that was getting the candy. And so you put this into your garden space and they're like, excuse me, ma', am, where's my treat? Right? Like, until you bring the treat, I don't bring the plants, I don't bring the growth. And so when we do this on our own, whether the store has done it or we're doing it, we're creating this being that now is dependent on that candy. It's dependent on that extra kind of food. It's that, you know, candy is basically what we would get in fruit and all of our diet over a whole day. Candy gives it to us right away in one little shot. And it's the same with a fertilizer. So your plant can still get all those nutrients, but it's really much more natural for your plant to get it over time. So that's number one. You're creating a system that is now going to require you to keep buying the fertilizer, keep showing up and fertilizing it. And the plant is eventually going to put its foot down and say, I'm not growing until you bring me the candy. The next reason is that fertilizers are associated with all kinds of bad stuff. Stuff I'm not going to go into all the details in this episode. Maybe that's for another one. Let me know if you want me to make it. But essentially, the making of fertilizer, it requires mining of fossil fuels. It requires the mining of materials and minerals that otherwise should stay put right where they are. It's made in plants, you know, synthetically produced. So it's got an off put. It's got a pretty big carbon footprint just of the making of it. It's sold to us in plastic containers. And not to mention the price that we pay for it. Then studies have been showing that These fertilizers have crazy runoff. So it's not that the fertilizer just goes onto your plant. It's then inside of our whole system. So it's not just that you can isolate it. Right. This fertilizer you're putting in your garden, it's going to get washed out by the rain. It's going to go through your yard system. It's going to get into the gutters and the sewers. And where does that go? It goes into our water systems. And what's in our water systems? Animals. Animals? Yeah, animals. Fish. You know, things that we rely on for our whole cycle of life on this planet. They get impacted by that little piece of fertilizer that you sprayed on your plant. So I know we all like to think that we're kind of working in isolation, but we're not. So every time you bring in these synthetic chemicals, these things that are not natural into your garden, it doesn't stop there. It doesn't end there. It goes from there and goes back into nature and disrupts all the things that we count on and rely on and want to stay natural. So don't be fooled by the idea that this is just happening right here in your little ecosystem and it's not going to touch the others because it does. So that's number one. Number one reason is it's like candy. You've created this dependent system that is going to require your time, your money, your attention, or the plant will not perform for you. Number two, this disrupts the whole ecosystem. It doesn't just end right there in your garden. And number three, perhaps the most important is you miss the miracle. When you use something like Miracle Gro, you miss the miracle of nature. When I walk in these parks, when you take a walk in nature, when you walk through a place that is wild, that was grown with the heat of the sun and the minerals of the soil. When you walk in a place that hasn't been touched by a person, you're in awe. You are in a different place. And that is what happens in your garden when you don't mess with it, when you let nature do its thing, when you plant the way that nature works and you trust nature and you walk into a space and you know this wasn't. There was no candy here. There was nothing extra here. This is just the magic of the earth that I live in. This is just the miracle of my home. And that is enough. It's fast enough, it's big enough, it's amazing enough. It doesn't need Anything that a store is trying to sell you. So here's what you can do instead of fertilizer, so you get to watch the miracle. You don't mess with nature and you don't end up spending your time and your money with this very demanding plant. So you're going to plant the way nature does. You're going to pack in the plants. Follow along with my spacing. Check out our workshop so you learn how to plant the way I do. So intensive planting, it's really covered, especially in my book Kitchen Garden Revival. Big plants in the middle, medium sized plants right around it. And then cover the outside of the garden with tons and tons of small, small plants. You want no extra soil, no bare soil. Six weeks after you've planted. That's the number one thing to do. Number two is you want to plant a wide variety of plants so plants work together. And there are symbiotic relationships that plants have where one plant gives and another plant takes, another plant gives and another plant takes. So pay attention to the plants that work the best together. A great example is how peas release nitrogen and fix nitrogen in the soil. So I grow peas in the spring. I plant my tomatoes right around those peas. As soon as frost has passed, the peas are fixing nitrogen in the soil. As the tomatoes are beginning to grow, they grab the nitrogen from that soil, take off, start to grow, and then will go up the trellis with the strength that those pea plants gave them naturally. So work with plants, let plants work with you. I give a lot of work with nature tips in my Leaves, Roots and fruit book that you can check out. There's tips under every single type of plant in the eight step system. So let plants do their thing. And then when you can see that the plants are maybe not growing as fast as you want, or you just want to help them use things that are natural. So I think about those animals, right? So if an animal were to come into a natural place, what's an animal going to do first? It's going to eat, right? So it's going to eat the lower outer parts of each and every plant. For us, that's called pruning. Okay? So when you prune your plant, you're stimulating the growth hormones of those top leaves of those top stems. You turn on that hormone when you prune the bottom, lower leaves. Because why? The plant wants to survive and it's scared. It's like, oh, my goodness, Nicole's eating me. I gotta grow. I gotta get bigger if I want to survive, because she's coming in here and cutting every day. Right? So pruning, we're imitating the actions of animals that happen in the wild. You're going to cut the bottom and lower leaves on a regular basis. What else does an animal do in that space? She poops. Okay, so I'm not asking you to poop in your garden. That would be a little much. But what I am asking you to do is buy some natural types of poop that you could bring into your garden space. Some chicken manure, some rabbit manure, even earthworm castings. So any kind of defecation that an animal would naturally do in the vegetative area is something you can add right around your garden space. Then what's something else that works and happens naturally in a garden? It is degradation. It is plant matter breaking down. And this is when and where compost comes into play. So every few months, I come into the garden and I just add a little bit, just a little layer, a couple inches of mushroom compost. So this is compost that's been breaking down over time, and it is exact replication of what would be happening in the wild. Right? Because these plants grow up, they drop fruit, they drop leaves. Those things get mixed in with the soil, with the animal poop, and with the weather, they break down and turn into compost right after that. So bringing compost into your garden isn't fertilizer, but it's going to feed your plants in the same way that nature does. And then, remember we talked about animals, we talked about degradation, and then, of course, weather, Right? Plants grow when they have light and when they have water and when they have plenty of airflow. So you want to think about imitating the weather in your garden. If you haven't had a lot of rain for a while, then you need to make sure that your garden's getting at least an inch of rain every week. If your plants aren't getting enough sunlight, that's where pruning comes in. And making sure that they all have ample access to every little bit of sun that's shining on your garden each and every week. And that is it, my friend. That is the way that you get to watch the miracle of nature without interrupting it with something like miracle Gro. So have I convinced you? I want to hear in the comments below this video, or come and tell us online if you're going to say buh bye to fertilizer, just like I did so many years ago. If you see my gardens and you've ever thought, I wonder what kind of fertilizer she uses. Now you know the answer. I don't. I simply imitate the miracle and the magic of nature each and every day with weather by watering and sunshine, imitating animals with pruning and adding some poop and finally adding in compost and just naturally degrading plant material that would happen in the wild anyway. If you do those three things, you will never, ever, ever have to use fertilizer in the garden. And you'll have the most prolific, delicious and beautiful plants and be taking care of our sweet earth together at the same time. All right, are you in? I hope you're in. And you need to come and check out Gardenary's Calendar. If you want to know what to plant in your garden, go to gardenary.com calendar. You can download it for free, put in two of your most precious dates. We'll do all the rest of the work for you and tell you when to plant what and when to plant it, where to plant it, and all the details. We also, I'm sure, have a workshop coming up very soon that you gotta join me for. So head to gardenary.com to our homepage or gardenary.com calendar and check it out. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self Podcast. This is something we all can do. Grow a little bit of our own food right away today. I hope you'll join the movement and I'll see you next time. 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