Five Reasons Everyone Should Grow Their Own Salad

Foreign. Here are five reasons why you should be growing your own salad greens at home. My name is Nicole Burke. Welcome back to the Grow Yourself podcast. And if there is one thing that I am convinced that every single person in the entire world could grow themselves, it is salad. And if you've ever had a sad salad, if you hate salad, then you gotta listen to this episode. So these are five reasons why you gotta start growing your own greens. And I think they're pretty convincing. So put me to the test. Tell me if I can convince you that salad greens is on your to do list for the new year. So, number one reason is nutrition, nutrients, good stuff for your body. So let's talk about this salad. Greens currently get to you on a truck in a plastic bin, in a plastic bag. They are going to sit on a truck for a couple days. They are going to sit on the grocery store shelf for more than a couple days. Then they're going to come home with you after you spend a lot of hard earned money on them, and then they're going to sit and rot on your refrigerator shelf for a few days. All right? So from the moment that those greens are harvested to the moment that they go into your mouth, you may have passed 7, 10, 14 days before that leaf gets into your mouth and into your body to take care of it. So I see so many people talking about salads these days and how we need to eat more salads and salad, salad, salad, but no one's talking about the source of the salad. And is that salad, by the time it gets into our bodies, even worth anything? And the answer for most of the salads we eat is no, because these are leaves, right? These are the smallest portion, the smallest section of a plant, and the most fragile. So if you look at the structure of plants, especially vegetable plants, the leaves are the most tender, the most fragile. They are the fastest to lose water, the fastest to lose nutrients, the fastest to degrade when taken off of the plant, fruit will last much longer, roots will last longer, but leaves don't. Leaves degrade almost the moment that you cut them from the plant simply because of their nature. The way their cells are structured, they're just a more fragile piece of the vegetable plant. So when these leaves get shipped across the country, sit on the shelf, come to your shelf, and then go into your body. You may be thinking that you're doing a lot of good for your body because you're eating a salad, but you're really just eating some fiber. You know what I mean? So the antioxidants the vitamins, all the things that we think we're ingesting when we eat a salad, we're missing a lot of that if we're eating a shipped variety. But if you grow your own, which you can do in almost any space, you are going to get that nutrients the minute that that leaf is harvested. So instead of this thing degrading and sitting and waiting and, you know, getting cold and then getting hot and getting wet and then getting dry, you're going to go from the garden where these leaves are growing, cut them, bring them inside, put them onto a plate or a bowl, and then eat them within minutes of harvesting. So instead of that leaf losing its freshness and its, its water source and its nutrients, it's going to be sitting right there straight from the plant and then go right into your body. So if your goal is to nourish your body, which everyone here, everyone listening, I hope that is your goal. Take care of your body. You only get one, and it needs some good stuff. My kids, one of my daughters this morning, all she wanted in her lunch was some rice cakes and some goldfish and a croissant. And I'm like, girl friend, be good to your body. Eat a salad. You got to be good to your body, too. And freshly, just harvested salad is one of the most important ways you can get that nutrients to your body. So don't assume just because you're eating something that's a vegetable or a salad from the grocery. Don't assume just because when you look up online, the nutrient value for romaine, lettuce or cabbage or iceberg or kale, just because you're looking that up and it says it online. Kale has so much vitamin C, and this has so many antioxidants and so much folic acid, etc. Just because it says it in the stats doesn't mean your body is actually realizing those nutrients because these leaves have lost a ton of it when they travel across the country. But when you eat one that you just picked right from your garden, so nutrient dense. In fact, the most nutrient dense that you can get, you cannot get more nutrition than getting a harvest straight from the plant into your body within a few hours. So that's the number one reason everybody should be doing this, is to take care of yourself, take care of your body. I have this theory that I don't say no to any particular foods, but I just try to fill up on the good stuff first. So I don't tell myself I can't eat dessert or sweets or I can't drink or whatever, have these certain things. I just say I'm going to do the good thing first and see how full I can get on the good thing. And then, you know, maybe if I'm still hungry, still thirsty, then I'll go for those. And so that's what we want to do with nutrient dense food, is fill up on that good stuff. You can still have the rice cakes and the goldfish, but have a salad first from your garden. So that's number one. The number one reason you should be growing your own salad is for the nutrition. The second reason is for the taste. Oh, my goodness, the sad salads. The reason why we hate salads, the reason why my daughter wants goldfish and not a salad is because it just doesn't taste good when we get it from the store. So our current US system has all of the US salad grown in just two places. Actually, 98% of the US salad is grown in two places. It's Yuma Valley, Arizona and Salinas Valley, California. So I double dog dare you when you go to the grocery store next time, if you're listening from the US Grab a bag of lettuce, arugula, spinach, spring mix, whatever, flip it over on the back and see where it was grown. If you can get to the fine print, I can bet you I don't know a lot of money that it's going to say Salinas Valley on the back of it. Every single salad box, every single bag I've ever checked at the grocery, I've lived in Chicago, Houston, Nashville, Philadelphia, Virginia. Every place I've lived, the bags say the same thing. All say Salinas Valley, California. And I've never lived in California. I've never lived even close to California. So all the lettuce in the US Is shipped from Salinas Valley or Yuma Valley. Most of it's grown in Salinas county for like, you know, 10 months out of the year. And then during a little period where it gets too cold there, they flip it over to Arizona, where they have like, no water. And they grow it for two months there in the Yuma Valley. And then they go back to Salinas Valley. And so these few companies, they grow all the greens for the US they ship it across the country. And that's how we get our salad. And that's just sad. That's why we have sad salad. That's why it doesn't taste good. So if, you know, you want the nutrients, you know, you know you're supposed to have nutrition, but you Hate the way salad tastes. Don't blame the salad, right? Blame the source. It's notit's not the lettuce's fault. In fact, the first year we started growing our own salad, I, like, I just tasted salad for the first time. Like, I. I've never tasted salad before because I just had grocery store variety. But when you have your own, the taste is so much fuller. It's just like if you've ever had the experience of going fruit picking, right? If you picked strawberries from the field or blueberries from the field, if you've ever had something fresh, like the minute it was picked, salad is the same way. It's just fresher, crispier, juicier, and it's got more flavor. It doesn't taste like nothing. I mean, right. Most grocery store salad tastes like nothing. Watery nothing. I call it like watery cardboard, you know, so you get the flavor, you get the fiber, but none of the flavor. So if you want to love salad, if you know you need to eat more, then you've got to make your salad taste better. And that doesn't mean having a lot more dressing. Okay, you can have dressing, but you can solve the problem so much faster in better for you by just growing your own. One of the reasons the taste is gonna be better is not just the freshness that helps, of course, but also the variety. So there are. You can probably see at the grocery, right, there's only, like, a few varieties that they sell us of salad. But when you get into salad gardening, you're gonna learn there's, like, hundreds of types of salads you can grow. And, you know, variety is the spice of life, right? And so you can grow mustards and herbs and, like, spicy things and sweet things and crunchy things. You can have all these different flavors and textures in your salad. You don't have to just have, like, a romaine Caesar salad. You know, there's more options than that. You don't just have to have, like, a spinach salad. Like, there are so many other things you can do than a Cobb salad with an egg and some bacon. And so it's really going to open your eyes when you see all the varieties. And that's what makes the taste so much better. So nutrition, number one, we gotta take care of our bodies. Taste number two. Cause you know we're not gonna eat something if it tastes bad. So that's number two. Number three is for the waste. So they estimate that in the US we throw away 1000. The average household throws away $1600 worth of groceries every year in waste. And I'm pretty sure 1500, 900, $1,599 of that is from spinach, especially nowadays with inflation. Right? So I know I've seen this meme. Have you seen it where it's like, I just bought a head of lettuce. Should I throw it out now or wait two weeks like I usually do? There is so much waste that happens with greens because they go bad so quickly, because they weren't meant to be shipped like this. Right. They're the most tender part of the plant. And so when you grow your own, you're going to vastly cut down on food waste. And if you're at all awake and watching the news and seeing what's happening with our climate and with our planet, you know that we need less food going in the trash bin, right? And so instead of that food rotting on your shelf or, you know, sitting in your crisper drawer just waiting for you to toss it back into the trash, it's sitting in your garden. And so you get to harvest it when you're ready, and then it just stays there and thrives until you come back for more. And let's say, worst case scenario, it goes bad in the garden. It either gets frozen or it goes to seed. Then it's just compost. Like it's material to put into the compost bin and turn into soil that you can grow in the next season. So that's the third reason, is we all got to cut down on our waste. The next reason why you want to grow your own salad is to save the fuel usage that's accompanying your food. So we talk about that. All the salad is grown in just two places, California and Arizona. So if you live near Salinas Valley, you can absolutely ignore this point and just be like, no, doesn't apply to me. But if you live any distance from Salinas Valley or Yuma Valley, Arizona, then your salad is traveling a lot of miles to get to your plate, and it's just not necessary. When I first started gardening and growing salad, I had so much salad, I had to give it away, right? So I would be just harvesting one bowl a day and feeding my family and then giving it away to friends and neighbors. And then I would go to the grocery store to buy my other stuff because we weren't just eating salad and there would be salad all across the produce aisle that came from California. And I was living. I wasn't, like, in a big lot, right? I didn't have, like a huge acreage or anything. I wasn't a farmer. I just had a box, right? And it was creating enough salad for myself, my friends, my neighbors, and yet they're shipping all this salad across the country to put it on the grocery store shelves. And so the only thing that's missing there is knowledge, right? If everybody knew that they could just have a really simple little box of salad greens outside their back door, then we could cut down on all that fuel usage to get all that salad across the country. So if you watch things about climate change and you see all the news and it's just heartbreaking, and you're like, what can I do, Right? Like, who am I? I'm just this little person, and the big guys are making all the decisions, and I don't have any way that I can participate. Well, here is a way you can participate. Here is a way you can make good change. Grow your own salad, okay? Even if you don't grow anything else, grow your own salad. Every time you skip past that box at the grocery, you just cut down on the fuel usage needed to feed yourself, to feed your family. And those little moments, they add up. And if all of us do this, it really adds up. And we get to make a statement to the food industry, like, hey, we're good on salad. Like, grow broccoli for us or something. But we're good on the salad. We can grow our own, and we can also provide for people around us. So that is number four, is to do it for the planet, do it to cut down on fuel usage and get your food to your plate much faster. The fifth reason to grow your own salad is probably it's a good one. It's because it's just so dang easy. It is so easy and simple. You can set up, you could grow your own salad in just a little container. All you need is a container, some sandy loam soil, some seed, and some water. All right? So if you only have a patio or a porch, if you just have a little bitty slice of earth where you can get four to six hours of sunlight, you can do this. If you have a bigger space, if you have a deck or a patio or porch, you can do it even more. And if you have a whole backyard, you could become your neighbor's supply for organic salad. But those are only the four things you need. A container, some soil, some seed, and a consistent source of water. And you're in business. You're in the salad gardening business. It is from seed to harvest, about 45 days. The plants are very Small. They don't take up a lot of space. They're very forgiving. They don't need to be trellised or pruned. They're not that prone to have issues with pests. They're so easy to harvest. And they're cut and come again. So you cut from them and then they come back and grow again. So it's not like one plant, one seed, one harvest. It's one seed, five harvest. I mean, it's easy. Okay. It is simple to do. This is something all of us can do, even if you swear to me that you have a black thumb. All right, so let's review. Okay, class number one reason to grow your own salad is because of the nutrition. Take care of your body. You only get one, so give it some nutrient dense greens every day. Number two, the taste. If you have to eat salad, it better taste good and it's going to taste awesome when you grow your own. Number three, stop throwing away your money. You're putting $1,600 of your money into the trash every year, especially when you throw away your salad that you bought from the store. Stop doing that and instead put that money toward building a salad garden. Number four is save the planet. We may not be able to make decisions up in the White House, but we can change the planet by cutting down on the fuel usage for our food. And number five, reason to grow your own salad is because it's so simple, so easy. Anyone can do it. If I can do it, this is how I learned to garden. I know you can, too. So have I convinced you? Tell me. I have convinced you that you are on with this. I so, so hope that that you're going to become a salad gardener with me this year. Listen, I have so many resources to help you do just that. My book Leaves, Roots and Fruit has a whole chapter. Chapter three. It's a step by step to grow your own salad. You can find so many resources@gardenary.com plus we have the Gardenary calendar. It is free. Go to gardenary.com calendar. This will show you what dates you need to do what. No matter where you live, it's customizable. You can download it and use it yourself anytime you want. And if you are a gardener, you're listening to this and you're like, yes, I am in on this mission. Then you should become a gardener. Gardener consultant. We teach gardeners all over the world how to grow their own salad. It's one part of our Gardenary system. And if you'd love to teach other people to start growing their own salad too. You gotta check out our Gardenary Consultant Certification program. You can find out about that also@gardenary.com all right, it's time for this episode to be over because it's time for you to go get your supplies and start growing some salad. So send me a picture I cannot wait to see of all the harvest that you're going to have this season. And I cannot thank you enough for being part of the Grow youw Self podcast and Gardenary. I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on Apple podcasts on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.