5 Simple Ways to Save the Planet This Earth Day

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious? I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden.

Each week here on the Grow youw.

Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. John Muir. Today we are talking about how you can literally tug at a single simple thing in nature and change the whole world. It's Earth Day, friends, and I am here to celebrate it with you. Believe it or not, little small things that we do in our everyday lives truly matter. The extremists are going to try to make you feel like the little small things you do every day are no big deal. And unless you go all in and go extreme on caring for the planet, the little things don't matter. But I'm here to tell you otherwise. Every simple decision, every little bit of good that you do, every seed you plant can make a huge difference in our big and beautiful world. So today, we are going to dig in and discover five things you can do right away, right where you are, to to change the planet for the better. Can you tell I'm getting choked up thinking about it? Our Earth is beautiful and worth preserving and caring for. And I can't wait to inspire you to do that in this episode. Before we begin, I gotta tell you that today's episode is brought to you by my Garden Goals workshop. It is so fun. Hundreds of you have taken it already. In the workshop, I'm going to show you how to make your garden happen this spring. There's no better time to do it. We're all staying home and the stores and the plant shops are open. This is our season to start and tend the very best garden ever. In this workshop, I'm going to show you how to make a garden happen. Even if you don't think you've got the time, the space, the money or the ability to make it happen. This year the workshop is completely free. You can watch it by going to the post on gardenary.com or we'll have it in the show notes. And in this workshop I'm also going to show you a little sneak preview of the Kitchen Garden Academy. The Kitchen Garden Academy is a full six week eight module course that leads you from start to harvest in your own kitchen garden and we are starting a fresh new class of students May 1. As soon as you sign up, you'll get full access to the entire Academy. But I'll be coaching you through and answering your questions each week beginning May 1st. So whatever you do, start with a Garden Goals workshop. Watch it. Get inspired to set your own garden up this year and I hope you'll come join me for the full on garden coaching impact inside of the Academy. But the way to get started is by watching that workshop. So jump in. You can find it in the show notes today or on the blog@gardenary.com blog and we will get you set up with the workshop. All right, enough about that garden. Although we're going to talk more about the garden. Duh. Let's talk about how we can change the Earth for the better in such simple and small ways. Just a single little tug in nature. We can change the world together, friends. Let's do it. All right. It is Earth day and time to think about how we can make a difference in changing our planet for the better. I thought I'd open up with a little paragraph from my book Kitchen Garden Revival coming out in two weeks. What in the world? May 5, 2020. In the preface I talk about why kitchen garden and in the final section I say we should kitchen garden for the world. No matter your position on global warming, we likely all agree that things are not changing for the better. And although it's not the only contributor, a few major aspects of our Earth's trouble are food miles, packaging and waste. Currently, most of the food consumed in America has traveled more than 1500 miles before reaching the consumer's plate. The petroleum demand on food is huge. By growing food in your personal kitchen garden and eating locally from farmers and CSAs, you vastly reduce the number of miles your food needs to travel beyond the miles. Food that's shipped across the country or internationally is also heavily packaged. Our plastic consumption in North America is at an all time high high and a lot of that is due to the enormous amount of plastic used to package our ship food. The kitchen garden is one part of the answer to this issue. Even if you just grow greens and herbs in your kitchen garden, you'll make a serious cut in your plastic waste in just a few months. Right? So it is time to talk about how we can change the world. I want to start by talking about something I like to call environmental extremists. Have you met any of these? So I've had my own moments of extremism in my life for different and various subject matters. And I remember this is gonna sound so random, but I promise it relates. I was an amazingly loyal Oprah fan. Like, literally throughout the entirety of my middle school and high school career. I would come home every day, and at 4pm Oprah was literally on. So watched every single episode with tremendous loyalty. I loved Oprah. I just was there for her and all of her amazingness. In fact, when I introduced myself to my college roommate, I went to college like, 13 hours from home. So I sent this, like, top 10 things you need to know about me, about your new roommate. And I think number four literally was every day, my whole day stops for Oprah. So clearly it was one of the top ten facts about me. Anyway, one day, Oprah said something that blew my mind. She was interviewing professor, and it was all these people who had different things they were perfectionists with, like how clean their garage was or how meticulously they cared for their pedicure and their bath time and their clothes. And everyone that she interviewed had some part of their life that they were perfectionists with. But what really hit me through watching this show, and clearly it did, because I still remember it, like, 20 plus years later, was that no one could be perfect with everything. So what the show highlighted is these people would have say, the most meticulous garage you'd ever seen in your entire life. But then their car might be a total disaster or their closet or they were five years behind on their taxes, right? Or this woman who was so serious about her bath time and her care for her hair and her nails or whatever, was then such a slacker when it came to loading the dishwasher and keeping her kitchen clean. I'm making up these scenarios. I don't remember the exact stories, but I do remember the idea, basically, that it's humanly impossible to be perfect in every aspect. That what our minds like to do is choose one thing to go all in on and be super, super great at. And then we kind of categorize Ourselves as perfect and meticulous and an achie when in reality we have only achieved in that one area. But then we use that perfectionism generally in our worst moments to judge others. So if you know, if your garage is super clean and you're so great at it, then suddenly everyone whose garage is a mess is less than even if they turned in their taxes on time and you're five years behind. So how this ties into Earth Day and environmentalism is the fact that I am see this more and more in environmental movements. So what is happening is this perfectionism and extremism as we approach the need to care for our earth. So what's happening is, let's say someone will go all in on being vegan and that is really their thing. Like they are all in on being vegan. They don't eat meat, they don't eat dairy, they don't eat any animal related products. And so they become a perfectionist in that that is one part of their life they have got full control over and are completely killing it, but literally not killing anything. And they then use that as a bar to judge the rest of the world with. So suddenly everyone else who is not vegan is less than and is not an environmentalist and does not care about the earth and basically is in some, in the worst respects their enemy. So they'll talk negatively about those people, they'll tear them down, they'll go and troll their posts of meat or cheese or dairy. And anyway, they're just, they're so perfect at being vegan that suddenly everyone else that's not is just, you know, does not care for the earth and clearly is evil. I'm going extreme here, but that's, this is what I'm talking about. Another area is zero waste people. So people who super, super, you know, committed to using no waste in their, their home. So they don't bring any plastic into their home, they never throw any type of packaging away. And they're just 100% committed to not touching anything that is, that's plastic or you know, will go into a landfill. And they're perfectionists at it. They do it so well. And so this is now the way that they can judge the world too. So anytime they see anyone posting with a plastic, plastic cup or a piece of, you know, a Ziploc bag or anything like that, they are going to judge that as less than, as someone who does not care for the earth, clearly who's not an environmentalist and who's their enemy. I experienced this, I did A IGTV of like almost zero waste gift wrapping during the holidays. And it was so funny. I got so many posts. So I did it with. I used Trader Joe's grocery bags and wrapped up like a T shirt or a book or something on the video. And then I used tape. So I taped up the edges and then tied it with burlap twine. I got so many comments that I should not have used the tape. It was so ridiculous. I was like, are you really coming at me with that? But it was these people who, like, they've just become perfectionists in terms of their zero waste mentality that anything that you. I mean, literally, guys, it was two slivers of tape. And they took the time to tell me how I could have avoided using tape in my almost zero waste packaging. And I just couldn't believe they would even, you know. But clearly this shows this idea of perfectionism and extremism. We can go other places. So people who homestead and who live off the grid, who don't rely on any energy from the government or who use solar panels, people who only drink water, people who only walk places, people who only use battery operated cars, people who don't buy any food that wasn't grown near them, there are a million different things that are going to or that already do help the planet. And what I want to convey to you in this episode, if you don't get anything else, if you don't listen to the five ways, is that no one can do all these things and survive. So I have seen people who've committed to, you know, no waste, growing their own food, doing all these things. And as I watch their lifestyle, they are living off of the economics and the benefits of people who do. So, you know, they have committed to doing these things and so they can feel like their extremism and perfectionism is intact. When really, if you watch what they're doing and who they're relying on and who supporting them, in essence, they're still connected to those things they're trying to avoid. It is impossible. It literally is impossible to do all the things. And we have got to relieve ourselves of this environmental extremism. Because what it does to the majority of us is it ostracizes us, it belittles us, and it makes us feel that the little things don't matter and that if you can't go zero waste, then you shouldn't even think twice about going, you know, 100% waste. If you can't grow all your food, then you shouldn't even plant A seed. If you can't go vegan all the way, then you shouldn't have a meatless meal. And that is just a very unhealthy and not productive way for us to live as a society. So this is going to be one of my new soapboxes, I think, because I. I've experienced this, some hate like this already and I know I will more as my book comes out. But just these extremists who really have picked one or two things that they can be really perfect at and then use that as now the benchmark that they will use to judge the world with. And it's not fair and it's not helpful and it's not going to save our planet. So what will save our planet is all of us doing a few small things together. Collectively, we can literally change the world. So enough about the negative. Let's dive into five things you can do right away. Easily. Well, not too easily, but you can do them right where you are and you can literally make a huge difference. No extremism, no perfectionism required. Let's do it. All right, number one, shop the farmer's market. Super easy. Almost everybody has a farmer's market. If you don't Google it, find out the most close place where you can buy from a farmer. I've seen recent studies showing that the farmer's market is a safer place to shop right now, given the coronavirus. If you're listening in real time, we're in the middle of a pandemic with coronavirus quarantine. And I've seen so many studies showing that it's safer and better to shop outdoors at a farmer's market than a grocery store. So get yourself down to the farmer's market whenever it's open. And I do know shopping at farmer's markets can be super inconvenient. I've experienced that myself. But so this is not, I'm not saying this is easy. It is much more convenient and easy to run to the store whenever you want to. But I want to encourage you to find a way to make it happen. That is a simple step that you can do is mark it on your calendar, make it an appointment, like whatever you have to do. Clear it as a lunchtime break for you on a work day, whenever the farmers from your local area are showing up and selling the things that they've grown, get yourself over there and buy from those farmers. So I went into point out like the organic movement has been huge over the last 20 years, but what is missing so much missing is the local movement. So oftentimes our local farmers cannot get organic certification because it's just too expensive for them. But when asked, you'll find a lot of them are actually growing with natural methods. So they may not be certified organic, but they're not using heavy pre emergent herbicides or pesticides or fungicides or whatever. So what I would encourage you to do is head up to the table of each farmer you want to buy from and ask them how they grow. I do that for every single farmer I purchase from at the market. Farmers may be the hardest workers and the lowest paid workers in your area. They are often underappreciated, they do very, very hard, beautiful work and rarely get the financial backing that they should get. When you at the farmer's market, you cut out the middleman. So the money goes directly into the farmer's pocket. And you'll notice, especially if you've ever gardened, how much you're actually paying is not very much compared to the work and the time and the space they've given to get that food to you. So you are putting money literally into your local economy when you buy from a farmer and you are supporting one of the hardest working communities that exist in your community. So ask them how they grow, focus and let them know that organic methods and natural methods are super important to you. And then I like to encourage you to just keep showing up, keep purchasing from them. I like to pick a few farmers that I really want to support and I go back to their stalls again and again and just try to make sure that we have a connection. I love learning from farmers and I love supporting them, knowing that I'm making a difference in my community. When you do this, you are keeping the farms open. What that means in your community is there will be less cement in your community because those grounds are going to stay open and farming. You're going to have more of an ecosystem in your community. You're going to have plants that are flowering and bringing in bees and butterflies that are feeding the birds and the wildlife. You want those farms to stay open. And if you are not buying from them, the chances of them closing goes up dramatically. This is a super simple step all of us can take wherever we are, buy from local farmers. You'll keep the farms open. You'll be eating better, tasting locally grown food that did not travel in trucks for 1500 miles before they got to your table. And you're going to be helping your environment, your local economy and environment. Listen, living in a city that was Adding on more and more and more cement and less soft earth. I saw the reality of this when I lived in Houston. We just continued to have more and more flooding every time they brought in more cement into our city. So you want to keep as much soft earth around your city and community as you possibly can. And one way to make sure that happens is by keeping the farms open. So that's the first thing. I'm going to read you a little section from chapter five of my book about shopping the farmers market in relation to the garden garden. Although I may be okay, there's a form of shopping you should do before planting your garden at the farmer's market. One of the best ways to plan your priorities for your kitchen garden is to regularly visit a farmer's market or join a local CSA for a few seasons. Once you start, your taste buds won't let you stop. Although I may be able to help you set up and start planting your kitchen garden, it's your local farmer who really knows the specifics of your particular seasons, how to get the timing right, and how to make the most of your climate. When I move to a new town, and I seem to do that a lot, the farmers market is the first place I visit. Local farmers are a wealth of information. If the farmer has beans, lean in and kindly say, wow, these beans look great. When did you plant them? Or if she has the best looking tomatoes, ask when did you plant these? They look amazing. Snag a quick photo each week to document what's on the farmer's tables. Before you know it, you'll have created your planting calendar. If you see something on the table, you know it was planted just two or three months earlier, depending on its size and maturity. To me, farmers markets, CSA's and kitchen gardens go hand in hand. Although you'll get to enjoy a lot from your garden, there will still be fruits and vegetables you'll need to buy to fill your plate each day. As you start to taste what local and seasonal food is like, you'll be more willing to take a special trip and support your local farmer. Got it. All right, so gardening and shopping from farmers goes hand in hand. You will get I have a little some links that you can check on to find ways that you can locate your farmer's market and locate local farmers and CSAs in your town and community in the show notes for this episode. So check it out. This is episode 16 by the way. Oh my goodness. Sweet 16 for grow yourself. Number two, grow as many herbs as you can. All right, so herbs is a simple thing that we use to make our cooking taste so much better. They're good for our health. They make us feel better. There's so many links to medicinal goodness from having herbs, but trucked herbs just don't add up. So trucked herbs that are coming to you from farms in California or the west coast, wherever they're being grown, they're going to take up so much. They're going to be using fuel to get to you. Then they're going to to be packaged up in all this plastic and all these bags, and then you get them into your fridge and the flavor just isn't there. Or worse, your cilantro or parsley turns ick before you even get to put it in your taco. So the easiest, best thing I talk about this a lot is just to start growing your own herbs. So a simple, simple solution is the moment you know you need cilantro in a recipe or rosemary or basil. When you're about to go buy that cutting from the grocery, buy the plant instead. Buy the plant, Plant it. You can either grow it in a very sunny windowsill or plant it outside, depending on the season. More on that later. But if you will just simply buy the plant, a lot of times grocery stores may even have some organic plant solutions right there. I know Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, a bunch of grocery stores literally have potted herbs right when you're checking out. So instead of buying the plastic trucked harvest, go slide over to the plant area and buy the plant instead. You'll get so many more herbs from that same purchase. Generally, some herbs cost like four or five dollars anyway in that plastic packaging, you'll get the plant. You can propagate those cuttings so you can cut those cuttings off and grow more plants. I have some blog posts about turning rosemary one rosemary into 100 more. And I'll link those in the show notes for today as well. Well, so you can grow from the plant you buy and then you can just grow that plant itself. So this is a super simple, easy way you could just commit literally to not buying any more harvested herbs from the grocery. Only buy some herb plants. One of the things I love about herbs is the taste actually intensifies when the herb is dried. So for these herbs, even when you aren't growing them fresh, you can harvest so much from one small plant that you can hang them up to dry, keep them through the winter, and you could literally have herbs year round from just a few plants. So use them fresh when you get them, then Harvest all the extra cuttings when it's the end of the season, dry them to enjoy through the fall, winter, and early spring. And then, boom, you're back to growing your plant outdoors when the weather warms again. There really is no reason why we should be trucking herbs across the country. And I would love to see more of us growing our own own herbs right away. So I created an entire online course about this because I think it's so important. It's called the Herb Garden Guide, and I have a few free little snippets and samples and things to get you going on growing herbs. So I'll link those in the show notes too. Or you can just check out the Herb garden guide@gardenary.com courses. It's a great way to get started in your own garden. So no more buying. No more buying herbs from the grocery. Okay? The next one is to pick and eat one locally sourced meal a week. So this is a super easy, simple thing that you can just put on your meal plan. And it doesn't have to be that you do it every single day or the rest of your life. You're just committing to one day a week eating a locally sourced meal. I was inspired to do this from my friend Tricia. She and I used to work together, and she on farmer's market stays, she will head to the farmer's market, and whenever she purchases, she'll purchase, you know, maybe even some fish or things that are. That are sourced from local farmers down at the market, and she'll make her whole meal that night from the farmer's market. I thought that was such a beautiful, simple expression of supporting local and eating local and not making it a huge ordeal. So I think we could all do this in some form or fashion. Let's say even you grew a bunch of peas in the summer. Well, what if you dried them and saved them? And one night a week through the winter, you made a pea dish with those harvested peas. Let's say in the spring, you're growing lots of Swiss chard. So you could do a Swiss chard lasagna one night of the week, you could do some soup. You could do a bean and kale soup in the spring. In the middle of the summer, obviously there's so much you can do. You can do a tomato pie, you can do, you know, like pepper enchiladas, whatever. Like you can get super creative. I'll link to a few of my cookbooks that I love to inspire you to eat seasonally. But just commit to do one Local meal a week. I was inspired by this too, with my book Animal. Not my book. Barbara Kingsolver's book. I consider it my book because it was so precious to me. She changed my life. I read it back in 2010. You'll hear me link to that book a lot. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was written by Barbara Kingsolver. And the whole premise of the book is they eat locally for a year, so they commit to not get any food past 100 miles. A hundred, like a circle of 100 mile radius from their home. So they grow their own, they buy from local farmers, et cetera. And she had a fact. I looked for it before this episode and couldn't find it. So I'll see if I can find it before the show comes out. But basically, if all of us would commit to eat one locally sourced meal a week, we would drop the nation's fuel needs by like millions of barrels. It was crazy. Big numbers that happen. So just one locally sourced meal a week can change the world. So do it. Another inspiration you could follow is Andrea Bemis. She is an amazing farmer. She has a book, cookbook too. I think it's called Digging up the Dirt. Dishing up the Dirt. Anyway, I'm sorry I'm butchering it. But she's a beautiful human being and she did a. A whole challenge where she just ate locally for a long period of time and she documented it. I think she even has a documentary about it. So I'll link to that again, but follow her. Andrea Bemis, B E M I S super inspirational farmer who focuses on eating locally. So I know you'll get inspired to do that. All right, we are at number four. Number four is to grow as many salad greens as you you can. So in this one, you guys know I love growing salad. Salad is literally the simplest thing. I think, to start from seed. Salad greens have a very small root system. You can grow them just about anywhere. Most salad plants are cut and come again varieties, meaning you'll get to harvest from the outside, let it continue to grow from the inside, and cut again and again and again. Most plants you'll get at least three or four harvests off of before the end, end of the season. Lettuce taste awful from a box that drove across the country for 1500 miles. Do you guys feel me? Like, you pull that out from the plastic container and can you put enough dressing on it to make you want to eat it? I don't think so. But freshly harvested lettuce tastes so good. It's sweet, it's crunchy, it's juicy, it's watery, it's flavorful. It's like it melts in your mouth. It's buttery. It's all these things. The first time I harvested my own lettuce, I was just like, oh, my gosh, I could literally eat this salad for the rest of my life. It's so good. So I would encourage you. You can literally set up a salad garden in the smallest little container and start growing your own greens. I just got a picture from a kitchen Garden Academy student last night. She sent me the most cute photo. She was on her driveway. She had bought. She said they. I forget the reasons, but anyway, she has some parameters around what she can do right now in terms of setting up a garden. So she bought these simple little IKEA boxes, covered them with burlap on the inside, and she was harvesting lettuce from her driveway. It was the most beautiful picture of doing what you can, where you can. It was so awesome. So if she can do it, you can do it too. Grow a little bit of your own salad greens. If you need more inspiration, go listen to the Romaine Calm episode on the Grow youw Self podcast, or the most recent one, the surprising story of Spinach. These two will show you how the mass production of our greens is no bueno. We have got to get our greens more locally grown. And greens can really, in almost every place, be grown at least six months out of the year without cover and. And even more so in a greenhouse or cold frame. So I really am of the mind that we need to move to a place eventually where every community is supporting their own greens growth because it is so possible. I used to help with some boutinese. I'm sorry, I just totally murdered that name. Bhutanese refugees in Houston. I would volunteer in this apartment complex where they were living. Living. They had all come from Bhutan for refuge in the U.S. they were a beautiful group of women and children. And I would bring my kids and go play with them and just try to read them books and tell them stories. And every single day I would get there. They would always come in five minutes after we were meant to meet up, and their hands would be full of greens. Beautiful, fragrant, fresh green greens. They had no space to grow in their apartment complex. And they had walked the boulevard and planted seeds of their own greens that they loved to grow for their native cooking and planted all these greens and they would go every morning and go harvest them from the boulevard. Now, the typical Houstonians, we had no idea that that was food they're growing in the boulevard. But they did. Isn't that amazing? These women were literally, literally cutting their own greens. They had brought their own seeds from Bhutan and were supplying their own greens for themselves. If they can do it, we can certainly do it. I just remember being so inspired by that. That was right around the time I started my garden. So the picture of them bringing in their greens. Yeah, I'll never forget it. So let's do the same. Be inspired by what these women were doing all the way from Bhutan and grow your own greens too. So you're gonna cut down on trucking, on packaging, on waste, and you'll actually find some salad greens that you wanna eat. Sound good? I think so. You can learn so much more about growing salad. I've got tons of resources I'll link to in the show notes. I have an entire online course called Salad School. I'm gonna be re recording that this spring as I document all of my salad gardening. But I created that back in, gosh, I guess 2017, and it will literally teach you every single thing about growing greens year round. Or you can sign up for kitchen garden academy, and you'll basically get the same instruction as just the broader focus of growing everything rather than just salad. So number four, start growing your own salad greens. Just about to wrap up with number five. You ready for this one? This is the opposite of that person who's the extremist and the perfectionist who is spending so much time making sure they're following all the rules, that they're. They're not helping anybody. So my encouragement to you for number five is teach and share everything. You know, I can't encourage you to do this more. I think that one of the best things we can do to change our planet is to share and teach. And I think we all can teach and share with someone. So let's say you're coming back from the farmer's market and you just got a ton of delivery delicious tomatoes. Well, share one with a neighbor or friend. Or if you see somebody on the street that's begging or you know someone who's in need, go share a couple of those tomatoes. After you taste it, of course, and make sure that it's delicious. Let's say that you are cooking a local meal for the week, well, cook a little bit extra and share it with a friend. When your friends get to taste and enjoy these things that you have taken time to do more carefully, the fact that you took out time to head to the farmer's market, the Fact that you more mindfully chose to cook a locally sourced meal that week. When you get to share that with someone, you can, you can literally impact them and encourage them to take similar action. One of the ways that really my business, this whole thing began for me was the fact that we grew so much in our backyard in Houston, and I love, loved it so much that I couldn't help talking about it, I couldn't help sharing it. So I can literally remember a day. All my kids were young at this point, under probably 8, and we accidentally. I didn't know, right? So I had planted basically an entire bed of parsley. We had literally pounds of parsley. So the kids and I harvested it all and we tied it up in bunches and we delivered it door to door. In our neighborhood, we did the same with our salad greens. I can remember doing it with cilantro with our tomatoes. We bagged them up and passed them around to our neighbors. And every little time you share a joy like that with other people, you are urging them to do similar good themselves. And then as you share, you're also going to get to teach. So I think this is a huge part of changing the earth for the better, is teaching. So if you know how to find the best things at the farmer's market, tell somebody. If you know how to find a locally sourced meal for the week, teach someone. If you've started successfully growing some of your own herbs or salad greens, share that with a friend. Like put a post on Facebook, put a post on Instagram, share it on Pinterest, make a blog post, tell your neighbor, call your mom, whoever you can share this change with this new thing that you've learned. Learned. A couple things happen. First, when you teach someone else, you learn it better yourself. I found this to be so true as I began to be a garden coach and garden designer. Every single time I have to put words to the thing I've learned or discovered, I learn it in a totally deeper and better way. So this will happen to you too. You'll actually learn the subject. You'll learn. You'll kind of understand shopping at the farmer's market or cooking a local meal or growing an herb in a deeper, better way by having to share it with someone else. And then the next thing that will happen is you will also. You'll not only learn it, but then you'll also, like, grow your confidence and grow their confidence. So by teaching and cheering others, we kind of bind ourselves together as a community in a super great and powerful way. So this is what started me as a garden coach. And if you are a gardener, if you're someone who listens to this because you, you already care about these things and you're already doing these things, or maybe you're just doing one of these things and you want to start teaching others in a more formal way, I would love to help you through my Garden Coach Society. So the Garden Coach Society is something I set up back in 2017 to help gardeners like me. I set it up basically because this is what I wanted back in 2015. So Garden Coach Society is a group of over 175 gardeners around the country, around North America, America, who work together and own our own businesses. So inside the society, I teach you how to start a garden coach business using your garden knowledge and experience, taking what you already know and learning how to teach it and monetize it and turn it into a profitable profession. So I would love if you are a gardener and you're someone who's itching and ready to start teaching what you know. The world needs more garden coaches. The whole world right now is excited about gardening. The Victory Garden movement. Movement is real and happening in a new way. And people are literally. I've seen so many people who just will come up on a Facebook post and say, does anybody know how to build a raised garden? Raised Bed for Gardeners, I think is one of these books that's like killing it in terms of beating my book on Amazon because I'm not watching the, you know, I'm not watching the sales or anything on Amazon. Just kidding. So anyway, if you are a gardener who wants to start teaching others and maybe even doing it as a business, you should take my Garden Coach Challenge. I'll put a link to it again. There's gonna be so many links in this episode, but the Garden Coach challenge is a five day challenge that helps you start to figure out how to teach what you know. And it leads you through the step by step to do that. So many gardeners have gone through the challenge and have said, oh my gosh, I never realize how much I already knew and could teach other people. So I'm a firm believer that everybody, every student should eventually become a teacher. And I just think teaching and sharing with other people is one of the best ways to grow yourself. See what I did there? All right, guys, five ways. You do not have to be an extremist or a perfectionist or even call yourself an environmentalist to change the world for the better. Shop at the farmer's market and stop Buying herb harvest and buy herb plants instead. Eat one locally sourced meal a week, start growing a little bit of your own salad greens and share and teach everything you know. Those are five simple things we can do right where we are, wherever we are. Listen, you don't have to go zero waste. You don't have to be a vegan, you don't have to homestead, you don't have to be an extremist to make a change in the world. In fact, those people sometimes can make us feel like the little things we do don't matter. But it's not true. Everything you do matters and you can make a huge change in the world just by showing up and making a few simple changes in your everyday life. Things that you're already doing, just do them a little different, a little bit better and together we will will save our Earth, take care of our beautiful planet and come together as a community that supports each other, does not judge each other and can make lasting change. I cannot wait to be part of this movement. I can see in the years to come that we are going to grow together and really change the planet for the better with just a few simple changes we can all do right away. So thank you so much for being part of this movement. Thank you for bringing back the kitchen garden with me and for growing alongside me every single day. I love you for it. I'm here for it. I am not a perfectionist or an extremist. I'm just trying to do my little part, my little best over here in my corner and I'm cheering you on as you do the same. In the meantime, keep growing yourself in the very best ways. I love you and I will see you you next week. Happy Earth Day guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Grow It Yourself podcast. Oh my goodness. That was a ton of links so go check them out at the blog. @gardenary.com blog we'll have all the links for all the things. If you want to grow salad, greens, herbs, start a garden coach, business, whatever, it'll all be there. Don't forget that all of this. The biggest link that I should say is my garden goals workshop. So if you are ready to start growing some of your own, you should take a look at that. It's going to teach you all about how to make your garden happen this year and I would love to help be a part of the process. I am so excited to see the difference we can make in the earth together and I can't tell you you how much I love you for listening to the podcast. Please share this episode Take a selfie, tag me on Instagram, send me a dm however you want to do it. I would love to know that you're listening. Please subscribe and please leave a review. As you guys know, it's a popularity contest out there and I need you to help grow yourself grow. So I appreciate all the reviews, all the subscriptions, all of it. I love love you for it. Have a great week. Bye.