It's Almost Time for a Kitchen Garden Revival

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. 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 and in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life 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.

Let's start with a message for the perfectionists and overachievers. There is no such thing as a perfect location for your garden. At least it's very rare that you'll find it, especially if you live in the city. But even without a perfect spot, delicious food will grow beautifully in the space you have available space. Something edible, possibly dozens of edible choices, will thrive in your space. There's always room for you to grow yourself. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. Today I'm giving you a full reading of chapter one of Kitchen Garden Revival. We are less than one week out of my book hitting the shelves, hitting your mailbox, and I am a little bit nervous but super excited at the same time. So today I thought it'd be so fun if we just pretended like we were sitting next to each other and you had a little cup of hot tea or iced tea or sweet tea, whatever kind of tea you like to drink. And I'm reading you my book. So get cozy, put in your earbuds, whatever those things are called that go in your ears. Or maybe you can go head out to the garden and just listen to me while you play in the dirt. Whatever makes you comfortable. Snuggle up and get there because I'm gonna read you straight from my book to your ears and it's gonna be so much fun. This week's episode is brought to you again by my Garden Goals workshop. There have been so many of you joining me and it has been a blast to have you in class. This is a one hour class where I teach you how to make Your garden goals happen this spring, even if you don't think you have the time, space, money, or ability to do so. Those are the four excuses again and again for people who feel like they just can't make a garden work for them. Well, I am going to knock down all those beliefs you have and show you a very unique perspective that I've developed after helping hundreds of people start their own gardens and growing gardens for myself in all different kinds of places. Rentals, condos, townhomes, and a big old spread in a modern farmhouse in Chicago Suburbs. Suburbs. Gosh, I'm having trouble with my words here. Anyway, you're gonna be inspired to make your garden goals happen. I promise. And in this workshop, I'm giving you a little preview of my kitchen garden academy, which is amazing. It's eight modules, six weeks of me teaching you how to set up your kitchen garden. It's like me the professor, and you the student, and it's pretty awesome. So you'll be able to find out more about the academy and decide if it's a good fit for you, and I hope it is. And you'll find out in the workshop. So. So go check it out at Kitchengard. No, @gardenary.com blog. We'll have a link to the workshop in the show notes, too. All right, let's start this little nice reading time. Get cozy, and let me just lull you to sleep with a very interesting first chapter of my book. Here we go. All right, everyone. I am literally reading from the hard copy of my book, which is super hard to believe. Hard to believe it exists. I have to say, when it came in the mail, I didn't even want to open it. I left the envelope on the table for a couple days. Is that weird? I think so. Something about all the work you put into something and then almost not wanting to actually see what it looks like. But it's here, it's beautiful. I love it, and I can't wait to share it with you. And today I thought it'd be fun to read from you. Read to you. Chapter one. You can actually see most of this chapter in a little sneak preview on Amazon.com so they have that little look inside button. Have you guys ever used that? Well, I did on my book the other day, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Basically all of chapter one is right here for everyone to see. So I figured I might as well read it to you, right? But if you want to see what the photos look like and kind of follow along, you can just click yourself over to Amazon.com kitchen garden revival and. And you can just watch and read as I read to you. So the book is divided into two parts. Part one is called Creating the Kitchen Garden and part two is called Growing in the Kitchen Garden. So literally half of the book is dedicated to designing a garden. I recently got some criticism about that whole fact. Basically, they wanted just like simple grandma gardens of old time. And that is not what this book is. So there are a million gardening books that do that very well. And that's. That's not what the publisher reached out to me to make, and that's not really the thing I do. So I would say I am probably a garden designer first and a garden teacher second. And this book is heavy on design. So the very first four chapters, at least the first three, are really dedicated to design. And yeah, I'm going to learn not to apologize for that. If you want some in ground garden or some cheaper kind of simple garden designs, there are a million great books out there, but this isn't that one. So the first four chapters are really gonna teach you how to become a garden designer in your own space. And I think you're gonna love it. So chapter one is called Sight. So I'm gonna dig in. I'm gonna stop with all the peanut gallery talk and get into it. You ready? Here we go. Find the perfect kitchen garden spot. Picture a place that's special to you. A spot you head to. Take a break to enjoy yourself. Discover something with people you love, or just reconnect with nature. Now tell me, did you picture a place far away or one nearby? Were you home or did you skip town? And if you had to leave town, and most people do, do you think it's possible to create a space that could be all those things, but instead is right outside your back door? Imagination, meet kitchen garden. A retreat and a getaway waiting for you in the backyard, on the porch, or just along the fence. You your new escape from reality, even when reality is just a few steps away. In this chapter, you'll face the challenging task of picking the site for your kitchen garden. Choosing your kitchen garden's location can be a tough decision. It's one of the key tasks our garden coaches at Gardenary and my team at Rooted Garden do every day. We help clients make the choice between the left side of the backyard, the spot along the driveway, or the space next to the patio. Choosing the location for your garden is tough for good reason. Location means everything. In some cases, the decision may already be made for you. If you have only limited space, just a patio, or only one patch of ground that gets sunlight. And for others, you may have countless spaces where a garden could belong. In both scenarios, there's more to the decision than you think. Let's start with a message for the perfectionists and overachievers. There's no such thing as a perfect location. At least it's very rare that you'll find it, especially if you live in the city. But even without a perfect spot, delicious food will grow beautifully in the space you have available. Something edible, possibly dozens of edible choices, will thrive in your space. There's always room for you to grow yourself. You guys see where I got the.

Title for this podcast?

Okay, I'll keep going. Key Site Considerations Picking the best spot for your kitchen garden isn't just about opinion or the flip of a coin. It's about balancing priorities and considerations. After designing hundreds of gardens, I've created created a system that works to help you sort through the options. There are four key aspects to consider before choosing your kitchen garden site. Number one sunlight exposure, two Water proximity, three convenience and number four aesthetics. The nearly perfect kitchen garden location is this six or more direct sunlight hours per day all year. Proximity to a water source near the kitchen and common household traffic ties in aesthetically to the existing landscape and is a large enough space for your desired garden size and shape. My very scientific calculation has determined that exactly 60% of this decision should be based on sunlight, 20% on water accessibility, and the final 20% of the decision is split between convenience and aesthetics. It's true, I did say there's no such thing as a perfect spot for the kitchen garden, but there is a perfect formula as you select your garden location. The goal is to find a location that matches this blueprint as closely as possible, receive six or more sun hours of sun sunlight per day, is near a water source, and is located as close to the kitchen in your everyday activities as possible. You also want a spot that will tie in well to the rest of your landscape and is able to accommodate the size necessary to hold the amount of vegetables and fruit you'd like to harvest. Each of these aspects should be considered as they all matter, but some matter more. At least 60% of your decision should be based on the available sunlight. So we'll start there and then consider the other three aspects. To look at each aspect of the formula, let's create a map of your property. You may just have a balcony and that's fine. Still, make a map. To start, draw your home and yard to Scale on a piece of graph paper. There's a spot to do this inside the downloadable gardenary journal you'll find@gardenary.com book once you've drawn your home and yard to scale, draw a compass to denote the cardinal directions as they relate to your home and yard. Now that you've determined where north and south are located, let's find the sunshine. Then there's like a little section about your map, and then there's all these gardens. I show you where. I show you where the sun is in relation to the garden. Sunlight as much sunlight on your kitchen garden as possible. That's the goal. Sounds simple, right? But getting hours and hours of light on your garden throughout the year is difficult, especially if you live in the city. Even if you do see lots of sunlight in a certain spot during part of the year, it may only be like that for one season. In our Houston home, we watched a plot in our yard receive more than eight hours of sun all summer long. So as soon as autumn arrived, we planted our kitchen garden right in that very spot. I am not kidding when I tell you that the very day we filled the beds with soil, I walked outside to see nothing but shadows on our new kitchen garden. The challenge was that our garden was on the north side of our fence, and on the other side of that fence was a giant oak tree. During the middle of summer, when the sun was at its height in the sky, this was not an issue. But as soon as our northern hemisphere began to tilt away from the sun, the oak tree and fence were suddenly standing right between the sunlight and our garden's promise of autumn carrots and winter peas. Bummer. Though it may seem that the sun is directly overhead most of the day, the truth is it's always shining on us from an angle. In the northern hemisphere, the sun is shining on us from the south, and in the southern Hemisphere, it's the opposite. It's during the winter months that you'll realize this is the case. On the longest day of the year, the sun is nearly straight overhead. But on the shortest day of the year, it can be quite low on the horizon. Depending on your longitude. And if there's a tall structure standing between your garden and the sun's leaning, your garden may only see a shadow for nearly half the year. To avoid these shadows, place your garden on the other side of any tall structure that would stand between your garden and the winter sunshine. In other words, if you're in the northern Hemisphere, place the garden on the southern side of tall structures such as your home, a tree line, or fences. If you're in the Southern hemisphere, place it on the north side, no matter what side you're on. The truth is that most of us live in cities and tight quarters, and sometimes the most light on our garden can receive is significantly less than six hours. If this is the case for you, don't stop reading. There are loads of edible plants that will grow in just a few hours of sunlight. In part two, you'll learn how to plant your plants based on your sunlight hours. If the spot you've selected or have available receives less than four hours of sunlight per day in any season, you'll need to prioritize growing greens in that spot, such as herbs and lettuces. If it receives four to six hours of sun per day, you can grow root vegetables, and if it receives more than six hours of sunlight per day, you can grow leaves, roots, and plenty of fruit. Our garden that ended up in full shade in autumn and winter was perfect for growing loads of greens and I mean loads of the root crops and peas did eventually produce they just took twice as long to do so. After marking the cardinal directions on your map, place a star in each spot of the yard that receives maximum sunlight throughout the year. Congratulations. You've just narrowed your location choices. Now it's time to consider the second water Water Source After Sunlight the second item to prioritize for your kitchen garden is its proximity to a water source. Consistent water is key to your success. Nature's water is best, but also unpredictable, and most vegetables and fruiting plants thrive with water schedules they can rely upon. For this reason, think about the available water supply before choosing the site for your kitchen garden. If you're installing your gardens during a rainy season or an early spring, when the weather seems cool and moist, a water source may be a complete afterthought. Even if it isn't, you might be so excited about your garden that you're picturing yourself with your watering can walking from plant to plant each morning before sunrise. Trust me, your excitement won't last forever. The watering chore, nostalgic as it sounds, will feel like the chore that it is fairly quickly and nothing about wilting or dead plants waiting for you to show up with your watering can feels nostalgic. If possible, place your garden near a spigot, a rain barrel, or where it can easily connect to a formal irrigation system. If using a spigot, be certain you can attach either a hose or a drip system from the water source to the garden area. If using a rain barrel ensure that water can run from the barrel to the garden beds. And finally, if you have a formal irrigation system in place, situate the garden in such a way that the lines can be brought into your garden bed with as little digging and repositioning as necessary. There's more on water connection in chapter four. Before moving on, mark all the spigots, rain barrels, or irrigation hookups in your home or yard on your garden map with a circle. 3. Convenience the third consideration for your kitchen garden space is the convenience of each potential area. When we meet with rooted garden and gardenary clients, some want their kitchen garden hidden from the home just in case it gets unruly. This is actually the way to ensure that very thing happens. Out of sight, out of mind isn't just a saying, it's a thing. Because it is a kitchen garden, it makes sense to have it as close to your kitchen as possible, right? Picture yourself prepping dinner and just starting to serve soup when you think fresh chives on top would be just the thing. How close should the garden be for you to walk out with your scissors? Or imagine prepping a salad jar for your work lunch early in the morning? How far are you willing to walk to cut some lettuce before packing up? If you can keep the kitchen the garden as close to the kitchen as possible, you'll use it and tend it more frequently. My first successful kitchen garden was right alongside the driveway. As a busy working mom, I was able to check up on the garden just by driving into the garage. Even if I only had a second, I could quickly see if things were wilting. Uh oh, notice holes on the leaves? Yikes. Or note when things were ready to harvest. Yay. I'm fairly certain this proximity to our daily activities made all the difference in my kitchen garden success, and I'm sure it will do the same for you. So mark the most accessible spots in your landscape with a square aesthetic. Ever felt a little awkward? Raise his hand. Between wrangling four kids, dirt under my fingernails, and lots of moving, I tend to keep finding ways not to fit in. Although McKay was standing out as a person, awkward is just not the look we're going for with the kitchen garden. Instead, the goal is to fit in with the rest of the landscape. Don't get me wrong, the kitchen garden should and will stand out because of its beauty, but we don't want it to draw attention just because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the landscape. Here's how to avoid that situation. First, look for natural spots where a garden could fit possible spots. Include a side yard along a fence or as an extension of an existing structure, such as a deck or patio. Look for ways to connect your kitchen garden to the rest of the landscape by lining up or being near existing structures or plantings. Second, look for areas where your garden could match some measurements of other pieces of your landscape. If the deck is a certain height, design the beds to measure the same. If the building comes out to a certain width, design the beds to come out to that width as well. By selecting existing elements in your landscape to match the garden, you'll give your garden a sense of belonging. Sorry, turning the pages here. As you design your layout in the next section, be sure to group elements within the kitchen garden. Don't just throw a box out there by itself. If the kitchen garden is going to stand out, be sure it has friends to stand alongside it. If you're just creating one box, add fruit trees, a bird bath, potted herbs, or something else to group alongside the garden. Keep these three principles in mind and save your kitchen garden from that. One of these things is not like the other scenario do you guys know that song? I hope so. Place a heart on the spaces on your map where a kitchen garden would fit well with the landscape, or continue a line or design from your home or other existing structures. Now it's time to weigh all four considerations and select the top garden site choices. Keep each aspect in mind, sunlight being most important, water being essential, and then convenience and aesthetics. Choose your top three to four locations, if there are that many possibilities, and number each one on the map. Size now it's time to grab a measuring tape and determine how much growing space is available in each area. Measure the width and length of each potential garden space and mark them in your journal. Before you plan for a huge or compact garden, consider both your input and output goals for the space. Essentially, it's time to figure out how much you have to give your garden and how much you'd like your garden to give you. Your garden size is limited by space, time, and money, and can be altered to fit your output desires. Once you've decided on these constraints, you can begin to determine the best size and shape for your kitchen garden. Now that you know the total space available for each potential spot in your landscape, consider the amount of time you'll have for your garden. For time, you may have only a few minutes at the start or end of the day, or you may have a few hours each weekend. Adding kitchen garden duties will slowly become part of your daily routine, but if you work full time, have kids soccer games every weekend, or travel a lot. It's important to think about time and time constraints at this point rather than after you've installed a large garden. Time needs for the garden will vary from week to week and season to season, and some plants require much less tending and attention than others. But these are the general guidelines to consider. Consider turning the page now. You'll need more time for the garden at the beginning and the end of each season. In the beginning, you'll need time to find and source plants and seeds and then have an extended period of time for planting and seeding. And at the end of each season, you'll need time to harvest and use your plants and then time to pull spent plants and start again for the following season. In the middle of each season, you'll mostly need time to tend and regularly harvest from your garden. This can be a little each day, but should come to about 1 minute per square foot or 30 minutes per 30 square feet per garden per week. Basically, you need about 2 minutes per square foot for the planting and harvesting phases of the season and about one minute per square foot per week during the tending season. After you consider your time, it's time to consider money. If you've spent any time online, you've likely seen all the claims that gardening will save you loads of money. Never buy an avocado again. Do this and you'll never spend money on celery. Save hundreds at the grocery store each month by doing this. These posts remind me of the time we installed our kitchen garden in Houston. My husband bought the untreated cedar and built the beds himself. We ordered the best soil we could find and did all the shoveling. We used pine straw for the ground cover and planted nearly everything by seed. Though we did the work ourselves and tried to buy the least expensive versions of high quality materials, we still spent more than $2,000 on our 120 square foot kitchen garden. I felt more than a little guilt over the cost of the whole setup, so I'd proudly report to Jason every time I skipped buying boxes of organic lettuce, kale and Parsley. Jason I saved $19 today. He'd just laugh. How many grocery store trips skipping past salad boxes would it take to make up our $2,500 investment? It I'll tell you the answer too many. There are times when harvest will save you at the grocery store, but I'm sorry to say the kitchen garden isn't really a way to save money, especially in the beginning. So do yourself and your partner a favor. And don't expect to make money on the deal. Instead, see your garden as an investment in your home and landscape, like buying a nice piece of furniture, splurging on a beautiful piece of art, or adding on a new room. Consider money spent in the garden, like money spent on gym equipment, a club membership, or music lessons. Or simply simply consider it as paying for a doctor's visit. The saying is a little lame, but it doesn't mean it's not true. Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes it would take quite a few therapy sessions to equal the cost of a kitchen garden, but you will at least get to eat your results as you plan your garden. The investment in costs will add up quickly. So do a check on your bank account on your home improvement budget or your fun money and see how much you can afford to invest in your garden. For this first round, you can start simply for a few hundred dollars or invest more significantly with a few thousand for money. You'll need anywhere from 25 to $50 per square foot for a DIY wood garden installation. If you'd like a kitchen garden company to install it for you, find one in your area@gardenary.com Turnkey installation will start at around $100 per square foot, and then I have a little chart that shows you how much time and money you would need per square foot in the garden. Output for output, you'll get an average of about one to two harvests a month from every square foot in the garden. This is just an estimate, but if you're growing in 30 square feet of garden space, you can harvest two servings of greens a day or one serving of a larger vegetable or fruit a day for about a month or two. I'm going to turn the page again, 30 to 40 days after planting. Garden Layout Finding the right layout for your kitchen garden is like jumping into the dressing room at your favorite store. It's exciting and intimidating at the same time. Will anything Fit? It's funny. For clients, I can almost immediately decide on the best fit and layout for their new kitchen garden. But in my own landscape, I spend a few months in the garden dressing room trying on one layout after another. Making decisions all by yourself can be a little tough. When I began Rooted Garden, my limited experience led me to believe that a kitchen garden was just a wooden box placed in the middle of the yard. It seemed that one size fit all. But as I soon discovered, there's not just one, but dozens of ways to lay out your kitchen garden space before you select yours, keep these designs in mind. Here you'll find five of our most basic, classic and tested designs. The Border Garden Border garden has become our most popular layout, I think, mostly because it fits naturally into so many spaces and often makes the most of areas of the yard that were previously underutilized. A border garden layout works well if you're limited in space or you'd like to preserve most of your lawn or landscape for other uses. We've designed border gardens along the house, inside yards, along fences and driveways, and along the backyard's perimeter. You'll need a minimum of 2ft of width and at least 6ft in length available to make the most of a kitchen garden in the border layout. Border gardens are generally 1 1/2 to 2 1/2ft wide. Three sides of the garden are accessible, but the other will be against your home or a fence or other structure that will block access. So 2 1/2ft is about the maximum width to consider. And then there's all these beautiful pictures of border gardens. Twin Gardens if you've got space and can dedicate some of your central lawn to a kitchen garden, twin gardens can be a perfect match. Twin gardens allow you to grow a wider variety of plants, and the design works well in the landscape generally. I found that if you're not going to have a border garden, you'd rarely want one garden all by itself in the middle of the yard. So I almost always choose a minimum of two gardens, unless the landscape just doesn't allow it. Twin gardens provide a symmetrical layout that makes the most of a yard that's deeper than it is wide or wider than it is deep. Twin gardens also allow you to maximize the growing space inside this larger garden area, while creating more interest and appeal than a single garden provides. A garden trio. My mom, the interior designer, always says to put things in groups of threes, and when I get to line up three gardens in a row, I see why. When a space is very long or more circular, creating a garden in a group of three is a great way to maximize the space. I've created a garden trio twice for myself, first in our driveway garden in Houston, and now I have six gardens, essentially two garden trios, along the side of my home in Chicago. Mom, can you believe I finally listened to you? If your garden space is longer than it is wide, or if it's more circular and curved, a garden trio may be a perfect solution. The Four Garden Classic if you have a space that's square or nearly square in shape and at least 15ft wide. A four garden classic is my favorite option. Functionally, four distinct gardens give you the option of separating crops and plants. More methodically and aesthetically, four gardens are absolute perfection in terms of kitchen garden design. The feeling you'll have inside your four garden classes is magical and truly an escape from reality, which is not a bad thing in the middle of a busy week. And then you'll see all these four garden classics that are so pretty. Formal Potager and if your landscape allows for a total garden area that's more than 20ft wide and long, you have space to create a formal potager. These designs are so large and ornate, we had to call in the French language to help us describe this. Potagers go well beyond a few raised gardens and include additional features such as fountains, fruit trees, seating areas, and more. I've had the opportunity to design a handful of formal potages, and the experience and transformation were such a privilege. To create. Potages include garden beds with unique angles and curves, and the gardens work together to create something of a maze or an enclosure. If your space is ready for a formal potager, hiring a garden consultant is a great idea. Now it's your turn to create a layout that maximizes your growing space and suits your landscape. Think about your home and your landscape entire garden into that space. Then we sum up the five garden layouts. Site Requirements as you think about your garden layout, keep these numbers in the length. The longer the garden, the more you'll need to support the garden bed. Internally. We've found the maximum size is about 15ft long for one continuous garden, and the magic length is somewhere between 6 and 8ft. The width of a raised bed, if accessible from all sides, should be no more than four and a half feet wide. We can make an exception if we have large trellises through the garden center and extend it to five feet. If the garden is only accessible from one side, you'll want to max out at three feet width, which is a literal stretch. Two to two and a half feet wide is pretty much the standard for a border garden. You'll find that your arms in general will only reach two and a half feet into the garden un unless you've got elastic arms, in which case I'd love to hire you. Height for the height of a garden, start with a minimum of 6 inches. The height will really only accommodate greens and herbs. Generally, we start with at least one foot for garden height and may go up as high as 2 1/2ft, depending on the client's needs and the surrounding Structure note, most of our gardens are right at 2ft tall. Pathways and borders pathways should be 2 to 3ft wide. A wheelbarrow generally measures about 2ft wide. And for border garden pathways, they only need to be about 1 1/2 to 2ft wide. In summary, I mean, how many decisions could I force you to make in just one chapter? If you suffer from analysis paralysis, me too. This has not been your favorite part, but now it's time to use the layout you've selected and the size and shape that fits your budget, time and output desires and pencil your kitchen garden onto your mat map. After you've completed this process, it may be a little bit more obvious why gardenary and rooted garden exist. The process of kitchen garden design can be a little daunting. But now that you've learned more about your property and its needs and characteristics, you're well on your way to that kitchen garden you desire. And if you need a little more clarity, you can always get direction and find your garden coach to help you. @gardenary.com after drawing your garden design onto the map, it's time to step out and stay stake the garden. This will help you determine if you've chosen the right spot. And then we close up chapter one with directions on how to stake the garden, which I'm not going to read to you because I think it'll be better if you see the pictures. So that is chapter one, my friends. That is my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. It took the better part really of last year to, to write that book. I had a friend at the end of the process ask me, how long does it take to write a book? And so I started adding up the process and Eric Kelly was the fabulous photographer for the book and he and I met together three times and he went an extra time to Houston. So he did two photo shoots in Houston, one in January and one with me in May. And then he did two photo shoots with me in my Chicago garden in April and in August. So I would say probably for me, the biggest part of this whole book creation was the photographs. I think we took almost 10,000 photos. I wanted to do the book with film photography. So Eric is a world renowned wedding photographer and he specializes in real film photography. Like the kind of film that, you know, you take it and you send it off to a photo lab and they develop it for you. I love the look of film. Film has like this patina, old look to it where you can see like the little grain and detail of items. And I've never seen a Book. I haven't seen a book in a very long time with film photos, and so I asked if he'd consider doing film photography for the book. So literally, for every single photo we have in the book, he took a digital copy and a copy of the actual whatever we were photographing. So that was probably one of the biggest parts of the undertakings of the book. So I will say you are going to get a feast for your eyes inside of this book because the photography that Eric accomplished is just amazing. Actually, when the publisher signed me on to create the book for them, they offered that I could take the photos because I do take, take okay photos for Instagram and such. And anyway, I asked Eric if he would be up for doing it and he said yes. So his photos are literally 100 to a thousand times better than mine. So I'm so thankful to you, Eric, and I cannot wait for you guys to see these photos. Literally, after you read the book, if you want, you could just cut out some of the photos and turn them into pictures. No kidding. So I am on a mission to bring back the kitchen garden. I've been on this mission for almost five years now. It started just with my business in Houston, and then I started Gardenary in 2017 with the hopes to reach an international audience with my message of how simple and easy you can just set up a raised bed and start to change the world by growing a little bit of your own food. So last year, last January, when Quarto Books, Cool Springs Press contacted me and said they wanted me to write a kitchen garden book, it felt like a great thing to do. Not because I would necessarily make money from it or profit from it, but because it would be a way to really solidify my process of setting up a kitchen garden and make it accessible to almost everyone. So the clients we get to work with in Houston, the gardens that we create for them are expensive. So we're working in very nice, larger landscapes inside the city of Houston. And these clients are amazing. And what I love about them is that they do have a lot of financial resources and they've chosen to spend some of that money on something meaningful like growing a little bit of their own food in their yard. And so I'm so thankful to them. Because of them and their financial investment in their gardens, I got to create some of the most beautiful kitchen gardens in the world. I think what I really appreciated about them opening their homes to me and Eric for the book is we get to show you close ups of all these gardens so you can really see how they were created and what they look like. It doesn't mean that we can all have that garden. I really can't afford or necessarily have any of the gardens I've made for my clients, but I can be inspired by them and bring the design elements and the pieces that are so beautiful from their gardens. My own. A book is a way. It's a way that I can send the message to more people. I realized quickly with Rooted Garden, I could only meet personally so many clients to consult with them. That's why I started hiring other consultants to do the consulting for me with Rooted Garden. Then I soon realized I could only really run a business in so many cities. That's why I started the Garden Coach Society, so I can train gardeners in every city to go and do consults and help set up nice kitchen gardens in every city in North America and create a system that's replicable. And then I realized that not everyone can afford a garden coach. And so that's why I've created courses like Kitchen Garden Academy, so that people who can't necessarily hire a coach or afford a coach or afford a company to create a garden for them, they can take my courses for a much more affordable price, basically for the price of a consultation, and create their own kitchen garden with step by step instruction from me. But then this book was a next step. So it's not as intensive or detailed as my courses like Kitchen Garden Academy, it's not as personalized as a garden consult, and it's definitely not as high level as the installations my company Rooted Garden does for our clients. But it's something that everyone can pick up and be inspired by and apply in their own space. So I just, I feel so honored to be able to pull my experience from gardening with over hundreds of clients through Rooted Garden and growing myself in five different climates and share that with you in this book that can literally travel the world. It's not too big, it's like an 8 by 10 book hardcover book and it can come right to you in your mailbox. And that you and I can sit together and learn the garden together, it feels like a huge privilege. So I want to thank you all for your pre orders. We hit over well over 500 a couple weeks ago and every pre order tells Amazon to order more books and to lower the price and to share it with more people. So I really, really appreciate your pre orders. The book is coming out May 5, so you have a few more days to join in and pre order the book. When you do so@gardenary.com book. You'll get a link there to email me@helloardenary.com and we will sign you up for a free mini class called before youe Begin. It's five questions to ask yourself before you begin your kitchen garden. It's part of my kitchen garden academy, but you get to enjoy it as a book buyer. So thank you so much for your pre orders. They're super duper important and now that I know what date it is, I know that you can still pre order because the book's not out yet. So go pre order. I love you for it. It makes a huge difference in letting the world know that this is a good book to share. So I appreciate you and yeah and I would love for you to come and share your reviews on Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com the reviews really matter. It shows people. Even if you hate the book, it helps people understand whether it's a good fit for them. So even if you have a negative review to share, I'd still love for you to share it so that other readers who are trying to decide if it's a good fit book for them can read your opinion. Yes, even though I probably don't want to, I want to thank you so much for being part of the process. A lot of you who are listening have been part of the book writing process from the very beginning. I told you guys back In April of 2019 I was writing a book. You helped me so much. So many of you even helped me decide what the COVID of the book should look like. So I just want you to know how important you are to me and how thankful I am. This book would not be possible without your support. Without all your likes and comments and subscriptions. It definitely would not be possible without my clients. My Rooted Garden clients are so precious. And I'm so thankful to you and the Rooted Garden team who made all this happen. Chewy and Jen and Jessica and Jill and Monica, Maya, so many of you. And then especially to Eric who took the wonderful photos. It takes a village to write a book. I definitely discovered that through this process and my acquisitions editor, Jessica Walliser has been an incredible support to me through the whole process. Process. All right, so get your little booty over to Amazon.com or wherever you want to order from Barnes and Noble local stores. And please buy my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. I know it's going to inspire you. You're going to be able to see your garden and your space in a whole new way. The book is written very personally, as you heard today, and I think that it's going to be so fun to share it with you. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast this week. I love you for it and I'm so thankful that you're here. Please please subscribe to the podcast. Please review it, share it with your friends. Take a screenshot of you listening while you're hanging out in the garden, taking a walk, doing whatever. DM me on Instagram. I'd love to see it. GardenaryCo thanks again for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. Bye for now. Hey there. If you love this podcast and you love the idea of growing yourself in new ways, you gotta check out my Garden Goals workshop. It's free, it's fun, it's like one hour long, and it's gonna teach you how to set up your own kitchen garden, even if you don't think you got the time, the space, or the money to make it happen. So get yourself over to gardenary.com blog. You'll see the link to the workshop. You can sign up right away. Take it right now where you are. I promise. The perspectives on time, space and and ability in the garden. They're things you haven't heard before because I made them up. So go check it out. Garden Goals Workshop and you can see if this is the right time for you to join my Kitchen Garden Academy. We start May 1st and I know you're gonna love it. So come check it out@gardenary.com thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I will see you next time. Bye for now. Sam.