Stay on the Offense - Tending the Kitchen Garden

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. I'm Nicole Johnsey Burke, your host and the owner of Rooted Garden and gardenary Incorporated and author of Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious yet? I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. The kitchen garden may just be the answer that you've been looking for on your own journey to health and wholeness in this podcast. It's gonna inspire and enable you to make garden magic right in your very own space. If you're someone who wants to eat more good food that's actually good for you, fill your day with great stories you want to text to a friend. If you wanna hear more about inspiring people and do a little bit each day better than the way you did it. The Grow yourself is what your ears have been waiting for. You won't just learn about gardening here. You'll learn how to make growing as a person a big part of your everyday life. And your life, your community. And your garden, of course, will be all the better for it. So put in your headphones, turn up the volume, and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Welcome to Grow Yourself. Last season I didn't make any goals, Mom. Not one. Oh, really? Well, how many shots did you actually take? Hmm, let me think about that. Today we are talking about staying on the offense and I'm going to show you what soccer has to do with the kitchen garden. This is all about chapter seven in the Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. All about tending your garden. This is a fun one. Today's episode is brought to you by gardenary's Garden Coaches. We have garden coaches who know what it's like and why it's important to stay on the offense in your garden. So go check out gardenary.com coaches and find a garden coach who can help you in your garden to have way more fun and shoot way more goals. Have no idea what I'm talking about. You'll find out in today's episode. Let's do it. Welcome back to Grow youw Self. We are in chapter seven. Hello. We are almost finished with this book. That's crazy. Thank you so much for joining me for the Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. That is a mouthful. And it has been such a fun series of weeks. If you've missed any of the episodes, you get a scroll back and listen. We have been walking step by step through each and every one of the chapters, even the preface and introduction. So we've been going much deeper than what the book does to give you a better picture of what I was thinking, why I wrote what I wrote, and to help you start to change your mindset, your thoughts around the garden. Speaking of mindset, we have big issues with tending the garden. Oh, my goodness. If I had to list out the number one question I get asked on Instagram. Instagram, through DMs or comments, and it's the sad, the sad, defending questions. What do I do? There's caterpillars, there's aphids, there's bugs, there's these weird, gross things. There's holes, there's yellow spots, there's brown spots. There's. The whole plant disappeared overnight. There's deer, there's squirrels, there's raccoons, there's rabbits, there's birds, there's. Oh, my gosh. It's just one thing after the other, and it's like panic, panic, panic, panic, panic. And I'm just like, oh, my. I'm so sad that you feel that way about the garden. So I'm gonna show you my unique perspective on the garden and why I think we are totally missing the point when we're all focused on all that stuff, because that is just a total joy kill. You know what I'm saying? Kill joy? Is that what it's called? I paused there because I literally couldn't think of the cool term. I was gonn buzzkill. But, you know, maybe that's not where we want to go with this. All right, so I'm going to do what I've been doing and read you from my book, because it's a book club. Duh. So let's do it. I'm going to read you from chapter 7:10, how to care for your kitchen garden. Have you ever heard that if you talk to your plants, they're going to grow better? Well, I have a better idea. Can the plants just talk to me instead? Are they growing? Are they dying? Are they finishing? Or are they just beginning? We could know if they would just talk to us already. Hey, I'm about to sprout. I'm gonna need extra attention over the next few days. Okay. Did you notice I'm holding on to a lot of fruit over here? It's a little heavy, and if you don't pick them soon, my stem's gonna break. Okay. I don't do voices. Clearly. Okay, let me try another one. Hey, friend. Thanks so much for hanging out with Me today. You're the best. Best. Help. This creep over here is totally bugging me. Hello. I am, like, so thirsty. Did you notice it hasn't rained in, oh, about a week? Can you imagine not drinking for, like, seven days straight? I don't think so. Yeah, it's not a great feeling. How about, like, getting off your phone and giving me some water? Okay. Did you guys like all those characters? I don't even know where that came from. I'm sorry. I just. I'm going crazy over here. All right, on second thought, as I write it all out or voice it all out in my weird voices, my plants are starting to sound a lot like my kids. Excluding that one. Who said I was the best? Maybe we don't want them to talk after all. In fact, perhaps one reason why gardens are such an escape is because the plants don't talk back. At least not audibly. In a loud world, it's a huge relief to have a place to go that's only humming with bees and butterflies, not whining and complaining. But the truth is, our plants are communicating all the time. They're just doing it in a much more subtle way. All right, let me turn the page. What do you guys think? Do you think our plants should talk to us? Leaves curling, plants standing tall, stems growing 4 inches in a few days, fruit turning red, brown spots on the leaves, or a flower bowing its head. These are all signs that our plants have something to tell us, quiet as they may be. What plants have made clear is that they've got growing phases and challenges, just like us people. They start small, grow fast, and work hard to reproduce before their season ends. Here's the good news. They want to live to thrive, and become the biggest and most productive versions of themselves. As you tend your plants, remember, they have the will to live. They have the will to live. So no matter what happens, don't feel like it's you versus the plants. Your job is to listen to them, work alongside them, and clear the way for your plants to do their thing. Tending the garden, the middle part of this journey, may feel overwhelming. The newness has worn off and challenges set in. And you're not yet holding a harvest basket. As a soccer mom with four kids, I have watched more than a few games. I still don't know much about the sport, but I do know that we are in trouble when our team keeps hanging out on the other team's end of the field. Even though most of my kids are great at playing defender and the goalie's catching Everything that comes her way. I can feel my nerves tingle when we cannot seem to move the ball toward the opponent's goal for any length of time. No matter how hard we fight, if we're always on the defense, we're probably going to lose the game. I know, I know. Playing sports is about building character, not winning. But soccer moms know the best. Winning is a lot more fun. I'll tell you what I tell my kids, if they would actually listen to me. Stay on the offense as much as you possibly can. It doesn't just apply to soccer, but to gardening, too. Your job in tending is to keep the activity on the positive side, the offensive side, the growing side. Because when you start hanging out on the other side, plant diseases, the dried up soil, the pests. When it's just one defensive move after another, it's inevitable there's going to be a point scored and it won't be yours. So each time you approach your garden, think offense, think about scoring, about moving the ball, I mean, the plants a little closer to the goal. The more you think about that, the less you will worry about fighting off the bad guys. You're gonna win. There are a number of ways to play offense in your garden, and they can be summed up in this. Feed, support, and prune. The one act of defense you'll have to play is to protect, and you'll quickly see that all these tasks are, in fact, connected. So today on the Grow youw Self podcast, I'm just gonna go through the feeding phase. So this is feeding your food. So I love to say feed, and your food will feed you. And that's what we're going to walk through in terms of staying on the offense. So here we go. Let's talk about feed. You adopt a puppy or the kitten comes home. What's the first thing you do besides make them a bed? You get food, right? And lots of it. We know that animals need to eat regularly, and the younger the animal, the more frequently. Ask any mom of a toddler. Many times we can be so busy thinking about our plants feeding us that we forget that our plants need to eat, too. Good news, if you've set up things as you've learned here, your plants are already getting lots of nutrients from the 103 soil blend, basking in sunshine and drinking plenty of water. But just as no animal has only one meal, your plants would really appreciate it if you fed them more regularly, too. Page turn. Speaking of toddlers, humans start their life on milk and simple foods and slowly graduate to much more exciting things like pizza and tacos. Plants also need different nutrients and foods as they grow up. Too bad that plants can't eat tacos. I messed up that joke. Sorry about that. Whatever the plant's life stage, we have to you knew this was coming. Think about nature. Don't assume all this talk about feeding plants is a suggestion to purchase something synthetic to add to the garden. Instead, do your best to imitate nature and use materials harvested from nature in a responsible way. There are a few forms of naturally occurring food that carry plants from the beginning to their productive end. These include plant based fertilizers such as compost and ground seed meals, animal based fertilizers such as worm castings, manures and blood and bone meal mineral resources such as rock dust and green sand and sea nutrients such as kelp meal and fish emulsion. One key reason not to use an all purpose fertilizer with high counts for all the major nutrients is because plants have different nutrition needs at each phase of growth. Commercial products are marketed to our busy lives, proposing a solution that's cheap, fast and easy. Easy. The one and done method sounds great on a commercial, but the plants aren't buying it. When your seeds or plants first settle in, the main goal is a healthy and green start. We're aiming for lots of roots and a strong main stem. It's the foundation of the plant we're concerned about at this point, and the best way to encourage strong roots and stems is first to give your plant healthy, wonderful soil. Hopefully you've done that already. Mycorrhiza is a naturally occurring fungus that connects roots to the nutrients in your soil. This connection happens on its own, but adding a little mycorrhizae to the soil around your plants as they begin to grow may help establish the connection a bit faster. The other nutrients necessary to build these plant parts are mostly nitrogen and potassium. Nitrogen comes from a variety of sources, most being that 4% mentioned in our soil chapter, but also organic cottonseed meal and kelp meal. For each of these, follow the directions when applying them, being certain not to apply too much. Chicken manure can be used as well, but you'll have to be especially careful not to burn the young plant at this stage of their growth. Potassium comes right behind nitrogen in order of importance, potassium determines the root health of your plants, their ability to grow big, and to take up water and nutrients. Greensand and kelp mill are great sources of potassium for plants. Once a strong root structure and sturdy main stem are growing, it's time to focus on Leaf growth. For some plants like lettuce and kale, this may be your end goal because the plant is stronger and more established. At this point, you can use stronger nitrogen sources like chicken and rabbit manure for fruiting plants. Once the plant starts to produce a good number of leaves and has a strong stem, it's time to encourage flowering and fruiting. This is accomplished with phosphorus. Though we like to call them vegetables, most of the foods we think of eating from the garden are technically fruits and fruit follows flowers. Before flowers can become fruit, most will need to be pollinated. Bees, butterflies and other insects do this work for us. An important reason to include pollinator friendly plants in your planting plan. But you can assist the insects by hand pollinating. Use a clean paintbrush, gather pollen from male flowers and then tap into female flowers. Once the flowers turn to fruit, continue to feed your plant phosphorus rich foods such as rock dust, bone meal and finished animal manures. Turn the page one more time and that's the end of the feeding section. So the idea here is to feed your food to think of them just like you would a new pet or a little baby or anything like that, right? So seeing your plant as a living thing with a personality and with needs that change as they grow, just like the activities and the meals that I've served my children as they've grown up, you're going to do the same kind of thing for your plants. This is why I don't love the marketing from garden centers and lots of garden products which are, like I said, cheap, fast and easy because they totally misrepresent what it really means to be a gardener, which is to grow a plant step by step, just as you would, you know, a person or a pet or any other living thing. Seeing plants as living things and comparable to pets and people, I think can really change the game in terms of how we care for them and, and how we can also kind of just calm down when things don't go perfectly. So, you know, my puppies, I'll use that as an example. We got Ponyo and Totoro in the winter of 2017. Well, over the last few years, they are, what are they, two, almost three years old? Actually, this fall they'll be three years old. So over the last three years, you know, we've really adopted the way that we care for them and adapted the way we care for them and feed them as they've grown. And with each thing that, you know, each new stage they've moved into as they've grown from puppies into Dogs, there have been challenges. You know, there have been like, I don't know, you know, a time where they were covered with fleas. We didn't have a flea problem in Houston. We moved to the Chicago area and we have kind of a woodland at the back of our yard. And our first summer, I mean, they suddenly were just overtaken with fleas. Now, you know, the immediate thing could be, oh, my goodness, you know, everything's over. My poor pet is covered with pests, right? Like a total freakout moment. But if you have a pet, you know, like it's just a thing, right? So you try one kind of thing and another thing and eventually you find the way that you can deal with the issue. And we've had other things. You know, when one seems to, like, his totoro seemed like his foot was hurt for a while, or, you know, Ponyo had like this little sore on his head. They're still puppies, so they haven't had tons of horrible things happen to them, but they have had injuries or sicknesses or, you know, or pest issues really. And with each of those things, we deal with the issue. But the bigger part is we get, keep feeding them, we keep walking them, we keep hugging them and petting them, and we keep their schedule the same and then we just deal with whatever frustration comes their way or whatever, you know, like pest starts to itch them, you know, we go and attack it. So for some reason with plants, I don't know if it's because they don't talk to us or they can't, you know, move from their spot like a dog can, and definitely not like a person who can tell us their issue. There's something about with plants, when things start to go awry that the majority of us have a freak out moment. And part of my reason in writing this chapter the way I did and talking about staying on the offense is to really encourage you that this is just part of the process. This is part of being on earth and dealing with a living thing. Living things want to thrive and they're just made to want to grow to their fullest potential and just, just like naturally, just the way the earth is set up. There are other living things and other conditions in the earth that are going to kind of come against them. There is an opposing team, you know, that's going to push back on the growth and the life that your plant is trying to achieve. And that's just part of nature. And it's not any commentary on how great of a gardener you are or you know whether things are actually going to work out in the end. We didn't take the tick and the flea infestation for Ponyo and Totoro as a sure sign that their life was over, right? Or that we were horrible dog parents. It was just something to get through and move on. So this is why I say to stay on the offense, because it is just so much more fun. And I would encourage you in your growth as a gardener to continuously make sure that you keep your perspective on your side of the field, that you keep your attention on scoring goals. Scoring goals in your own garden versus what all the forces of nature and all the challenges are doing. I challenge you too, to take a little scroll through Instagram or Facebook to a lot of gardening sites and places where there's lots of comments and notice how many people are focusing on the opposite. How many people have their eyes on the defense, like, how they are. They're basically playing goalie instead of playing striker. So it's just, I don't know, I guess it's like a protection mechanism we use as human beings. But I want all of you guys to be strikers. So even if you enjoy being the goalie and catching the balls from your opponents, I really want to challenge you to move out of that section of the garden and move to the offense and kick, kick and keep kicking. So here are my three reasons why I like to focus on offense in the garden. Why I encourage all my students inside of Kitchen Garden Academy and all of our clients with Rooted Garden and Gardenary to do so as well. So number one is because it's just a lot more fun if you've never been to a soccer game or really any kind of sports game, which I think that's probably rare, but probably these days we aren't going to many games. But if you've ever been to a game, think about when people cheer more. Do they cheer more when a goal or a touchdown or a run is scored? Or do they cheer more when a run or a goal or a touchdown is prevented? Think about it. Even though it is super impressive when the goalie saves the day and catches that ball, or the fly ball is caught at the back of the fence and doesn't become a home run, Even though people do cheer for that, they cheer about 10 times more excitedly when the score is made, right? When the goal goes. When the ball goes through the goal. And the same will be true for you. So if you make your focus on the one thing you've harvested that day rather than the 10 pests that are attacking your other plants, you're just going to have more fun because it's just more exciting to. To score than it is to prevent other people from scoring. So I always try to focus on the offense in my garden, and even when I'm discouraged or certain things aren't working, I really try to turn my attention to what can I do, what things are growing, what can I harvest. Today, nothing's looking that great, but what actually is doing okay. This is how to have more fun in the garden, to calm down, and to enjoy the process at least 10 times more. So if you want to hear more cheers in the garden and more cheers in your home, focus on kicking that ball through the goal and not about preventing your other team from scoring. The second reason is because it puts you in control. So you're calling the shots, you are making the plays, rather than responding to what's being played on you. I talk about this with my girls a lot who play soccer, and I think sometimes. I was just discussing this with my daughter the other day because she does like playing Dunn defender. And I said, do you like it? You know, maybe more because you like responding to what other people are doing versus, you know, you making the call. Now, she disagreed. She said that defense is actually. She definitely makes a lot of, you know, she's the starter of some moves. I'm like, okay. But in general, what I've seen from watching sports is that when you're playing defense, you're responding. You know, you're not the one who's got the play written down on the paper. And you're going there and then there and then there, and then you're scoring. You're more like, oh, what'd he do? What'd she do? Oh, what happened? Oh, I need to go this way. Because he's going this way. And I just don't like playing like that. I like waking up with a plan and doing it. And when you stay on the offense, you focus less on the pests and the issues and the challenges and more on what you're going to plant, what you're going to tend, what you're going to harvest, how you're going to feed your plants. It's just so much nicer to be in control. I'm a little bit of a control freak. I think everybody is, even though they don't admit it. So there's that. But if you have any issues of being in control, staying on the offense is definitely one way to make that more possible. And then finally, it's Just better for the garden, it's better for the environment. It's better for the world to stay on the offense. So I've seen lots of neighbors. I'll walk around. Not lots, but every now and then I'll see someone walking around their garden. They have tons of open space, they're growing like ornamentals and they're spraying roundups around those plants. You know, they're trying to keep weeds from growing. And I've thought, wow, that's such a bummer. You know, like they're spending their energy, their time, their money on a product that's basically causing harm to the environment. And also, you know, is if it touched the plants that they actually want to grow would kill them on the spot. And I thought, wouldn't it be better to be spending that energy, you know, putting compost around the plants that they want to grow and then planting nice plants in those spots where weeds are showing up? Like that's the way to be on the offense rather than on the defense. And it would be so much better not just for them, so that they're not like spraying round up near their face, but also for the garden itself and for our environment because all that nasty stuff that they're spraying that's going to get washed into our gutters and stay in our water system. System. So just no bueno. You know what I'm saying? So it's just better for the garden when you're. If you want to think about it, it's like giving your. I always use this analogy. It's just so much better to feed your garden vitamins and nutrients than antibiotics. Think of your body itself, right? Or your children or your puppies, right? It's just so much better to be building up the living systems that are still set up to fight bad things rather than giving them an anti something, right? Something that's going to take away the nutrients, to take away the strength that's there naturally. So staying on the offense isn't just more fun for you. It's not just a way to keep you in control, you being the one choosing the plan and the plot for the days ahead. But it's also just much better way to view the garden one time. Or not just a way to view the garden, but a way to grow the garden. We've had, you know, we have all kinds of clients with rooted garden, so fun to serve them. And many of them have never gardened before. So they're coming at this totally new. And most of them are very, very interested in the success of Their garden, of course. Aren't we all? And over the years, it's been interesting to see, you know, a number of clients, especially some who, you know, possibly haven't had, have had very little exposure to growing plants before, have a bit of a freak out moment when things don't go as planned. So when pests come in or, you know, the plants, you know, just aren't growing at the rate they anticipated. And once I had a client, wonderful client, still such a good friend, and she began to have holes in her pepper plants pretty early on. We set up the garden in May that year and we hit pretty high temperatures in Houston. Well, she was texting me almost constantly, pretty concerned about the pests. And I did give her, you know, I was like, just give it some time. Nature's going to balance it out. Let's add some compost and care for the plants. And she really wanted a way to treat the pest. So I did recommend a spray that she could use to protect the leaves. Well, you know, a day, a week, two weeks pass, I check back in and she said, and she sent me a new picture and the leaves had all fallen off the pepper plants. So, you know, went from having some holes and a little bit of pest pressure on them to literally just, you know, gone. I said, oh, no, what happened? She said, I don't know. I spray them every single day. I don't know what's going on. And I was like, that might be the challenge. So, you know, she was so interested in defending and staying as the goalie that she just went way overboard with the pest treatment. So she was spraying, spraying, spraying, trying to keep the pests off. And the poor plants, you know, couldn't push through and take care of themselves and keep themselves alive because they were so busy, you know, being treated to, to defend against their pests. And so we ended up losing, you know, I think all the plants. I've had a couple clients like that where they just insist on spraying and pushing against the, against the pests rather than trying to build up the nutrients for the plants. So it's just a very. Yeah, it's just not very fun to look at the garden that way. And in general, we end up harming ourselves and our garden more when we make the focus on the defense. So this is your encouragement to go get your soccer goal and a ball and think about being the striker, be on the outside of the net shooting again and again and again and again and not inside the net, trying to keep other things from coming and scoring. This is what I like to call staying on the offense in the Kitchen Garden. It is way more fun, it keeps you in control and it's so much better for your garden itself, for the environment, and just for calming down and enjoying the best parts of the garden. What I love happening, watching happen season after season in the Garden is that it all turns out the way it's supposed to. So when you trust that, you can enjoy it in a totally new way. I'm gonna close up by reading the end of chapter seven so let me turn to that we should tend the garden the way we tend our bodies and our loved ones a little each day and all will be okay. If there comes a time when the game feels frustrating and it seems like you're only playing on your opponent's end of the field, focus on the offense, start kicking a little stronger in the right direction and you'll soon be winning again, even if you lose a few. At least the game was interesting. Thus our goal is to keep the garden interesting, not stressful. And that will happen when you stay on the offense. Thanks again for listening to Chapter seven, Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. If you haven't gotten your book yet, go get it@gardenary.com book and I'll see you next week for the final chapter. Oh, it's gonna be so sad. I'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. Talk to you later. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I love you for it. Don't forget to take a selfie and tag me DM me on Instagram so that I can see where you are listening to the podcast. And of course I would absolutely love it if you left a review. Reviews make a world of difference when someone's trying to decide if they want to listen or not. Don't forget that this episode is brought to you by the Gardenary coaches. You can get help in your own Kitchen garden. Learn how to stay on the offense and what that actually looks like in the day to day of your garden care@gardenary.com coaches. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week. I don't.