Talk Dirty to Me - Soil in 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. So when you flip through the pages of Kitchen Garden Revival, there's something hidden, something you can't quite see on the surface, but it's actually the secret to the success of every single plant I've ever grown. Know what it is? It's dirt. Actually, it's soil. And that's why today on the Grow youw Self podcast, we are diving into perhaps the most important topic I've ever discussed here on the podcast and the most crucial part of your kitchen garden. It's the reason why today I'm going to talk dirty to you. Don't worry, we'll keep it clean. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by the fantastic Gardenary Garden Coaches. Gardenary is training gardeners all over North America to help you set up and grow your own kitchen garden. And you can find help for your garden@gardenary.com you can search for a turnkey service for a coach who can come meet with you personally through our directory@gardenary.com businesses. Or you can get coached right on the site right there with a virtual coach@gardenary.com coaches. So don't go your garden journey alone. Find a Gardenary coach near you who who can help you all the way, especially with your dirt. Now let's get dirty. Let's dive in to this important topic, all about the soil in your kitchen garden today. I can't wait. I'm gonna go wash my hands. I'll be right back. See you soon. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing the podcast with your friends and family. I've loved leading reading your recent reviews of the podcast. If you haven't left a review already, please do so and send me a screenshot. You can DM gardenary company on Instagram or email it to me and I would love to share it with the world. So thank you so much for your support of the podcast. I absolutely love you for it. We are nearing, I think around 75,000 downloads for the podcast, which is so exciting today. Speaking of exciting, we are talking about the thrilling subject of dirt. It is actually the most important. It really is. It is the most important component of your entire kitchen garden. So if I sound a little funny today, it is because I am literally sitting in my family's minivan. That's right. I'm coming to you from the Honda Odyssey in my garage. I got four kids and they are all in virtual school right now, all day, every day. So it's a little much. And we've kind of run out of office space and bedrooms. So guess where I am? I'm in the car. So send me a dm. Let me know what you think about my new recording space. I have to say, right now it's a little warm, so. So this episode might be a little bit shorter than normal and you'll know why. So let's dive in. We're talking all about chapter four. I've been bringing you through Kitchen Garden Revival chapter by chapter. If you've missed any of the episodes, go back and listen in. You'll get led through every single chapter of the book. And we're on chapter four. So this is the final chapter of section one of the book, and it's all about soil and water. I call it fill. Now, as I was setting up the book and trying to decide how I was going to create the chapters, I actually remember I called my agent. I had already proposed the full outline and how I was going to set up the book. And I had put the soil as one of the key structures of the kitchen garden. It was wrapped into chapter three. As I began to write the book, I quickly realized that soil, honestly needed to be its own Standalone chapter. I can remember where I was. I was literally standing at a nursery here in the Chicago area, called my agent, Jessica, and I said, could I possibly change the outline? Because I think soil needs its own chapter. Can we move things around a little bit to make that possible? And she was like, we'll think about it. So thankfully she was okay with the change and my publisher was too, because as I. Like I said, as I started to write, I realized soil probably should be the, you know, the key, the central piece. So it's no coincidence that this is right in the center of the book and that it has its own chapter dedicated all to dirt. Alright, so I'm gonna start you off with an introduction. I'm gonna read the introduction to this chapter. So here we go.

It was the summer in Nashville. The kids, then toddlers and babies, and.

I used a hand shovel and dug a few little holes, scattered the seeds.

We just bought on a whim and.

Then turned on the water hose. This is gonna work, right? We return to the spot every day. And don't worry, we kept bringing the hose. Every day was the same.

Take a look, spray with the hose.

Look again, walk away.

Five, six days and a week passed. Still no sign of anything but dirt. I double checked the seed package. It says here that seeds will sprout in five to 10 days. We could have waited five to 10 years and would have never seen a plant appear. The seeds had either rotted in the thick Tennessee clay soil or they'd been washed away from all that spring. Whatever the case, it was not working. Clearly, I was a garden professional in the making.

Not. Although the kitchen garden structures provide the.

Foundation and architecture for your space, there really is nothing more important than the soil and the water in your garden. These are the elements that will fill your garden with life and ensure that you don't just have a bunch of boxes and trellises. You have sprouts and plants and of course, delicious fresh harvests. Chapter four may be a little late to say this, but the truth is you could skip the boxes and the pathways and the trellises, but if you cheat on the soil and the water, you might as well forget the whole thing. And you haven't read this far to quit now. So let's fill your garden with the very best soil and water possible and. And ensure that you're not left standing.

With a hose, wet dirt, and nothing.

To show for it.

True story. It really is. So it was the first summer in Nashville. I have to tell you, I had three kids under three and not a lot of money. We were renting, and it was a hot summer. We would basically go to the pool, come back home, go to the pool, come back home, and then we would also go to Target, because that was the way I entertained my kids. We'd go buy something from the dollar aisle and check it out, eat some popcorn, walk around a little bit, and then go back home. And on one of those excursions at Target, we bought some seeds. I think they were flower seeds, if I remember correctly. So purchased the seeds. I do think that I at least had the wherewithal not to buy them from the dollar aisle. We bought them back from the garden center and brought them into our Nashville front yard. Now, I had not really grown anything from seed up until that point, honestly. My mom had helped me grow some oregano from seed when we lived in Charlottesville, but there in Nashville, I hadn't done anything. So, by the way, if you haven't heard this whole story of how I've gardened in so many places and have that background, you can listen to the episode called the Girl who Planted Gardens. So I gathered my kids around. At the time, it was Carolyn and Brennan, 3 and 2. Rebecca was a little young to pay attention. She was like a baby. But we planted some seeds. We literally just kind of raked some soil around in the front and put some seeds directly in the ground right there in the front yard. So this really did happen. I didn't just make this story up, and really nothing happened. No seeds came up in a very short time. I realized this was a fail. So it was a little disappointing for the preschoolers to basically just see a big pile of dirt never change day after day. This is what prompted us to go to the backyard and try row gardening that next summer. But this particular summer, it just kind of all sat there. This is my first introduction to the fact that the environment is such an important part of the garden. It's really not oftentimes what we start with, because we head to the plant store first. We often start thinking about plants and seeds. Those are the visible pieces. Like I said at the introduction of this episode, you know, the first things we see when we look at a garden are the plants, and then we think seeds. But oftentimes, the piece that we're neglecting, that we're kind of forgetting about, is the soil. And the irony is that the soil is literally the secret. It is the most important part of your garden. I find oftentimes in my kitchen garden academy with my kitchen garden students or with Ruta garden with our clients when questions come up. So the, you know, the plant isn't doing well, or the leaves are changing color, or the plants are just sitting there and not doing anything, or, you know, this disease has happened or this pest has happened. I probably sound like a broken record, but I literally again and again and again return back and say, what about your soil? What about your soil? What about your soil? Have you checked your soil? That's become my key question for anybody at any stage of their garden growth, because I've just seen again and again in my own garden and in our clients gardens and even in our students gardens through the Kitchen Garden Academy, that the soil is the secret. So if you can get to figuring out what's going on inside the soil, then you can figure out what's going on above the soil, too. All right, so let's talk dirty. Are you ready? We're going to talk a little bit about dirt, what it is and what it's comprised of, and the things we want to really be considering as we set up a kitchen garden. An important point to note is that most of the things you're growing inside of your kitchen garden are annual plants, meaning they are going to finish their life cycle between 30 to 90 days, and most of them are going to be growing up from seed during that time. So you do have your occasional perennial plants that you might include inside your boxes, like some perennial herbs like oregano or thyme or some chives. But for the most part, most of the things that come to your mind when you're thinking about a kitchen garden, they're all annuals. So whether it be peas and carrots and radishes, tomatoes, peppers and squash, eggplants, tomatillos, hot peppers, or beets or anything even like cabbage, kale, all of it, almost all of them are annual plants. And so they're growing in a very short period of time. They're growing from seed. And almost all of these plants have what I like to call a fairly fragile root system, meaning the roots are very tender and frail is probably too strong of a word. But they're not these, you know, it's not like tree roots or perennial bush roots. It's not like a boxwood root. Right. Most of these roots, if you were to pull up one of those plants from your kitchen garden, they're going to be very tender and frail. And because of this, these roots in general require a very unique kind of soil. Not the kind of soil in general that you're going to find in your landscape. If you look at your landscape, those ornamental plants like a boxwood or just a native bush or tree, those kinds of plants grow well in your native soil because they've got these very strong, you know, super thick root systems that can push through soil that maybe isn't very permeable or is full of clay. Like in that same place where my little seeds were having a tough time in that Nashville front yard, there were plenty of other plants that were thriving. Bushes and trees and ornamental plants were doing great. But these little tiny seeds of food plants or these annual flowers, they were having a difficult time sprouting, mostly because they don't have the strong root system to push through that unique kind of soil. So when we are considering the soil for our kitchen garden, we got to keep that in mind. We want to think not so much about what our eyes can see, but about the type of medium that our roots, the roots of those kitchen garden plants need to grow through. So a couple things. Let's talk about what we want to focus on with our kitchen garden soil. The first is we want our kitchen garden soil to be nutrient rich. I love to say that you want to feed your plants that are going to feed you. And we can't expect for our plants to give us all these nutrients if these plants haven't been grown in a nutrient rich so situation. So just putting your plants out in, say, a really heavy clay soil, or putting your plants out in a very, you know, dense or just kind of dry or sandy situation, those plants have no resource to take up those vitamins to then give them to you. So we want to be looking for a soil that is very nutrient rich, one that's full of all kinds of vitamins and minerals that needs to be top of mind when you're growing any kind of food garden. Because one of our main goals right in the kitchen garden is to grow nutrient rich food. So nutrient rich food comes from nutrient rich soil. The second thing we want to think about in terms of soil is that it's permeable. So we want permeable soil for two reasons. Permeable. You know, I don't know the exact definition, but what I think of permeable is it can be permeated. Is that a verb? So basically that things can move through it, right? Permeable substance would be nothing's going to come in or out of it. And that is not what you want for your soil. So you want to imagine your soil like a sponge, like a very, you know, one of those big sea sponges, right where it can take in lots of water and hold on to it, but as soon as it hits its capacity, that water is just going to run right through it. And that the sponge also has tons of holes inside of it. Right? Places where air can hold out, can hide out inside of that sponge. That's what we're looking for with our garden soil. The soil is a place that's going to hold air and water. Those are two essential things that our plants are looking for to thrive inside of our kitchen garden. So think about the fragile roots that I mentioned, right? So when those roots are trying to push through the soil to start to grow and thrive, if they are in a somewhat impermeable soil situation, they're literally going to be stopped in their tracks. This is why oftentimes, when you're trying to grow kitchen garden plants in, say, just your. Your normal landscape, you'll find that the plants rot from the inside out almost. And a lot of that is because those roots are getting stuck and just kind of holding water or just holding space. So either you'll end up with a plant that is just cut off with growth in the sense that it grows to a certain place and then just stops, or you end up with a plant where it's gotten to a certain place and it's just sitting in water, and then you end up with rot. So when we don't have permeability, that is when we run into the situation where the plant is either going to be stunted in its growth or it's going to be rotting because of its, you know, exposure to just sitting in water. So those are really the two main things we want to be thinking about when we consider the soil for our kitchen garden nutrient rich and permeability. So nutrients and permeable. So anytime you head out to your garden and you're trying to decide, you know, is my soil in a good place? Do I need to change it? Those are the two things you want to be measuring. So is it nutrient rich and is it permeable? Now, let's talk about the way our soil originally comes to us, or really, this is when we get to the dirt, when we're talking dirty. What does dirt come, you know, how is dirt presented to us in our general landscape? What is it made of? So I dig through this a little bit inside of chapter four and begin to talk about the different soil elements that we find naturally occurring. So the one I've been exposed to the most is clay soil. So I believe when I lived in Virginia, in Charlottesville, we had so much red clay soil. Like, if you just went out and dug against a hillside, you would definitely see this gorgeous, vibrant red color. And most of it was clay. So if you were to plant directly into the ground in Virginia, you're going to be diving into a majority clay type soil. So clay generally has the smallest particles. So when we're talking about the size of particles in your soil, clay is going to have the smallest, but it also has a high density. So because those particles are so tiny, they're packed together in a very small space. So if you were to just pull, say, a tablespoon of clay, you're going to have so many particles in that one little tablespoon spoon. Because they're so dense, this density means that the permeability is not great. And you can imagine why. You know, as all these particles kind of stick together, there's really no room for there to be that sponge like material where there's air pockets for water and air to flow through. So the great thing about clay, though, is it is firm and secure, as you can imagine. If you've ever dug into clay, you know exactly what I'm talking about. When we lived in Houston, we bought several fruit trees. We did all of our annual planting, so our kitchen garden planting and raised beds. But we purchased some wonderful fruit trees that were grafted onto Texas rootstock, so they were bred to be able to grow in the Houston soil. And the directions were literally to just dig straight into the soil and plant. And if you should have seen the shovel come up the first time we dug in, I mean, it was like, if I could make the noise, I'm not a professional noise maker, but it was something like this because it, like, stuck. It stuck to the shovel so bad, like, we could hardly pull the shovel out of the ground. That's how thick the clay was. So if you've ever dug into clay, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So the permeability is not there, but there is structure. There is a strength to the clay soil that is great, and that is something that our plants are looking for, is they don't want to be growing. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, when you watch those movies, there's action movies, when people are grabbing onto the side of a cliff and it starts to break away in their hands. You know, there's not a strong enough structure. You want to imagine your plant roots are kind of like that. They're trying to grab onto the soil to, you know, to settle each layer of Their roots as they grow down rather than up. And so when you don't have strong structure in your soil, then that is definitely something that can cause issue. So that's the first element. The second is silt. So if you've heard of silt, I can remember first being introduced to the word silt, I think when I was studying, you know, ancient civilizations and how they would find silt beds alongside rivers, you know, and that's where the first civilization settled and began farming. So if you've heard that story too, you have this picture of this really dark, rich soil, right, that can be farmed and that helps people start to grow food in the first place. So silt is generally like the best thing in the soil for you to be able to use in your kitchen garden. And silt is going to have more like an intermediate size particle. So clay has the smallest, and then silt would be like one step up. So silt is going to have more air between its particles. It's not going to be as dense. And then it's also going to have way more nutrients than clay does. Right. It's going to be holding those nutrients that like that black color is literally evidence of the nutrients. In fact, I often judge the nutrients in my soil by the color of it. So if I can see the color of my soil changing, turning lighter brown, that's often a sign to me that I don't have enough nutrients in my soil. So silt is intermediate size, has less density than clay and more nutrients. So it's good, but it does not. It's not quite dense enough to have structure. So it is going to fall apart a lot faster than clay. So back to that analogy of, you know, us climbing a cliff as our plant roots climb cliffs, down deep down into the soil, silt is going to be difficult to hold those roots in place. The next element is silver sand. So as you can imagine, sand is going to have bigger particles than clay and silt, and they're also going to be further apart. So in terms of density, sand is going to have the least density between silt, clay and sand, and not too great nutrients either, as you can imagine. So just think of heading to the beach, you know, and being out on the sand. Now, you do see plants growing in the sand, but it's rare that your vegetable plants, those that need all those nutrients to grow fruit and roots, it would be rare that they could grow in 100% sand situation. However, sand does have an incredible amount of porosity or permeability because the particles are so big. So it's great for adding that option or that addition to your kitchen garden soil because it literally brings in that sponge like situation into your soil blend. Now, the final element that we find just in nature, in our own yards is organic matter. Otherwise you could even call it just compost. And this is going to be all the things that have broken down over time in our soil structure. So it could be a plant, you know, that's died, it could be leaves that have composted. It could be, you know, sorry to be a little gross, but it could be animals, you know, that have passed away and that are decomposing right there on the top of the soil. Something as simple as even an insect or an earthworm that have, you know, died and are decomposing right there. That's the organic matter that makes up that part of our soil. And as you can imagine, that is full of nutrients because it's literally all the vitamins, minerals that made up that living thing have then basically kind of broken down and they're almost like separated out into their elements, ready to be used by whatever is going to grow next in that space. So the organic matter is going to have a really nice permeability. It's going to be very loose. If you've ever held freshly made compost, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's just full of air pockets, like every single place, like a huge big sponge. It's also going to be full of nutrients, but it's not going to have a great structure. So it's going to be similar to silt in that it's not going to be giving plants, you know, these great things to hold on to and grab onto because it's just falling apart. It's so nice and loose. So I'm sure there are a million other pieces to our soil, but I found these four categories really help me start to understand and put some parameters around what I'm looking at when I'm looking at dirt, so I can pick up, you know, a little piece of dirt from my landscape and start to kind of separate it out with my hands and look at it and go, okay, what in here is silt and what in here is color? Clay. What is sand and what is organic matter? And there's all kinds of fun tasks. I'll share some on the show notes today. But there's all kinds of fun tasks you can do at home to just start discovering what kind of soil you have natively available to you in your own landscape. And like, I Said, I've lived in so many different climates and places and it's been fun to discover what different kinds of soil are there available to me in each and every space. But I would say the predominant feature has been clay. We had very heavy clay soil in Virginia, super thick clay soil in Houston, and also clay soil in Tennessee, which I referenced at the beginning of chapter four. So my exposure has primarily been to primarily clay soil. When you find this out, this will help you to decide what you're going to do in terms of your kitchen garden soil. Because once you can figure out which of these types, which of these elements are most prevalent in your own soil, you can decide. One, do you want to use it as you amend to put into your raised beds or to your food garden, or do you need to start from scratch or, you know, kind of a mixture of both? So it's been fun. This year, inside Kitchen Garden Academy, we've had a good number of students who chose, as they use my soil blend method, they chose their topsoil to actually be their topsoil. So when you hear the term topsoil, we're literally referring to that top layer of soil available to you in your landscape. So, you know, if you were to take a shovel and dig the first three to six inches off of your landscape soil, that's literally what topsoil means. Generally, that's going to be fairly nutrient rich and it's going to be fairly permeable and probably the best soil that's available to you right away, as long as it hasn't been degraded or, you know, sprayed with lots of chemicals or pesticides or, you know, something nasty like Roundup or something like that. So that's what topsoil is. So we have these four elements. So what do we do next? How do we take this and apply it to the kitchen garden? Well, what we want to think about is that we want to think about nature, of course. So I do recommend, if you have not listened to my podcast called Think about Nature, you want to go listen to that episode. In that one, I really dig into my concept of garden soil in regards to nature. But I'll sum it up for you here quickly. Basically, what we're trying to do is recreate inside of our beds the nature that would grow these plants on their own. So we're not trying to bring in any really man made product here. We're not trying to trump the system, right, and like create a miracle. What we really want to do is we want to recreate the optimal conditions that These plants would thrive in what's the best kind of soil that this plant would naturally grow in in its own setting? Ask yourself that question, and then that is what you want to create inside your box. So what I found to be true is that really the optimal soil for kitchen gardens and a combination of all of these soil elements. So you have your clay, which generally is going to be available to you in a topsoil, either from your own landscape or a topsoil product that you buy locally. And that is generally going to include some clay matter, because, at least from all the places I've lived, clay is just very prevalent in our topsoil matter. So clay is going to give you that nice structure. It's like the, you know, it's the cliff that's going to be so strong and give your plants something to hang on to as they start to send their roots down deep into your beds. Then you want to have a sand element to your soil. So what the sand does is it adds this layer of permeability. What we talked about at the beginning, this ability for your soil to be more like a sponge where it can let water and air pass through it and it can hold on to those things when the plants are in need of them. So sand adds that permeability aspect to it. Then also you want your soil to include some compost and topsoil and compost and silt as well. So those two elements are going to be bringing in the nutrients, right? And the permeability. It's really a combination of both those things because the compost is going to have all that nutrients of the living things that have broken down all the way and decomposed into your compost. And then that silt, again, is going to have those really great vitamins and minerals that it's been deposited on, either from rocks or, you know, naturally occurring storms or from the water, whatever it was exposed to, for that silt to be developed, it's going to be bringing all those vitamins and minerals from that as well. So you can see silt is basically, you know, what the earth created through rocks or, you know, rocks decomposing or I don't know if rocks decompose, but rocks basically getting beaten down. You know what I mean by weather, whatever. Turning into dust and then compost is really the breakdown of living matter. So I like to say, you know, the. What I've experienced is that is what an ideal soil is. It's a combination of those three things, and it gives us the structure, the permeability, and the nutrients that our kitchen garden plants are needing. So here's what I want to encourage you to do as you think about the dirt in your own kitchen garden is not to head to the store first, to take a walk, to head to a place you could go into, like a nature preserve or a local garden area or even to a park and just observe where plants are thriving. What you particularly want to look for is not just perennial plants, not just bushes and trees, but where you see plants that are more annual in nature, where they're going to have a much more tender, fragile root system, what those plants are thriving in, and then pay attention, maybe even lean over, get dirty, and take up a handful of the soil in which those plants are thriving. And not always the case. Sometimes plants just, you know, they're so determined to live that they will live no matter what. But I'll bet that nine times out of 10, that soil is going to be dark. So it's going to be darker in color. It's going to be looser, and it's going to have a moisture to it. So it's going to be dark, looser, and moist. And then it's also going to have a little bit of element of structure to it. It's not going to fall apart the minute you pick it up in your hands. It's going to hold together in some shape or form, but still have a little bit of looseness, really, just like a sponge, where a sponge would give to your hand but still would hold together. That's what the best optimal soil is going to look like. So this is what you got to do as you start to set up your own kitchen garden soil, and you want to prioritize it. So like I said at the beginning, you could literally forget the boxes and the trellises and the pathways. You don't have to do all of that to start, but you do have to get the soil right. And that means taking some time, stepping away from the store, not trying to buy a quick fix like, you know, a miracle Gro or some synthetic fertilizer, but really getting down to the bones of your soil, what your soil is made of, and considering how to rebuild it. So if you've got. If you're missing any one of those three things, then you're going to add that back. So that brings me to the final part of this episode, and we're going to talk about change. So I mentioned this at the end of the chapter of chapter four. I'm going to flip the page and read it to you, even though your 103 blend. So that's the soil blend I talk about in chapter four is 103% perfect. Your watering system is on point. There is a key word that I need you to remember with your kitchen garden. Ch A N G E. That's what happens every single day in your kitchen garden. I'm sorry to say that even though your new garden started close to perfect, that doesn't mean it will stay that way. Every single minute, the soil and the water levels are changing. On the upside, nutrients and moisture are moving to the roots of your plants. But on the downside, there is not an endless supply of these things. You can count on it. Your garden will be counting on you for help. This is what makes you a gardener, after all. I think someone somewhere said that the only thing that's certain is change. And this is certainly true for your kitchen garden. Begin with certainty that this simple soil mix and your preferred watering system are going to work in your garden. But do not assume it's going to stay perfect. Take care of the soil and water, and your garden will, for the most part, take care of your plants. Don't let those bags of fertilizer and other garden products at the hardware store and the accompanying claims of supernatural growth overwhelm you. Remember that little tomato vine thriving on the banks of the Amazon river hundreds of years ago? Think about nature. Give it a little help and you'll be picking cherry tomatoes in no time. So that is the thing to remember with your soil. It's changing all the time, which means you have to change with it. I'll never forget our first really successful year in Houston. We were growing with a soil blend that I talk about here, where it was a combination of clay and sand and compost. And the first year was amazing. We had the most thriving garden. It was the one that I grew salad from for six months out of the year. And yet here we were a year later, and I was not having hardly any success in the garden. I was pretty disappointed. So I called the soil provider to ask what is going on. She asked me to describe what was happening in my garden and to feel the soil a little bit. And she said, oh, it sounds like your soil has lost its nutrient base, that it's missing its permeability part. So what you need to do is add compost. So sure enough, I headed to the store, I bought some great compost, brought it back in, mixed it into the top of my garden, and boom, we were back off to the races. So the thing that was Missing in my soil at that moment was permeability. I didn't have. I mean, not permeability was nutrients. I had the permeability. The soil was super permeable, almost to a fault where the water was just running right through. But I was missing the nutrients and I was kind of missing the sponge part of the permeability where it could actually hold the water there long enough for the plants to take it up. So all I had to do was add in the next part, right? I had to add in, bring in an element that was missing. Well, then I could go to another part of the year, maybe two or three years later. And my situation might be that I'm getting, you know, lots of growth, but the plants are, you know, kind of falling over or not staying strong after they've grown up to begin with. Well, in that situation, I could look and observe and check out my soil and find that probably the main problem is the structure in the soil that I'm missing the structure that's supposed to be there. So in that case, I could bring in some more top soil or a little bit of extra clay and work that into the soil to make sure that the plants keep the structure that they need. Or you could fast forward, you know, go to another part of a season, and the plants are growing, but as soon as they start to grow or get to a certain point, the leaves turn yellow. The plants seem to be rotting, maybe even from the bottom up. And I just can't figure out what's happening. Well, generally, probably what's happening is that there's not enough permeability. So the plants are growing, but the roots are hitting a place where they can't push anymore. So they're either sitting in too much water down at the base of the plant, or they're getting stunted in their growth because the roots are unable to push through. So in that situation, what am I going to bring in? Some sand. So when I bring in the sand, that's going to add some permeability to the soil, all of a sudden there'll be lots of air pockets for the roots to push through, and I won't have these bad yellow leaves that were, you know, bumming me out beforehand. So does that make sense? Change is always happening. It's not something to be afraid of. It's a good sign. Like I said, it means on the upside, that your plants are taking in nutrients, that they're growing and that they're giving back to you. So you have to give back to them. You've Got to be paying attention and noticing, you know, just like my kids. I mean, I just. Yesterday, I just had groceries delivered. Last Friday, we hit Wednesday and we are out of groceries because these kids are home all day long and they're eating me out of my house. So it was time to feed them again. And the same is true for your plants. When your plants have a great big spurt of growth or they're doing something special, they're fruiting or flowering or moving to the next stage of their life, they are taking a lot of food out of the pantry. And in your garden's case, the pantry is your soil. So your job is to pay attention and to keep the pantry well stocked. Does that make sense? I think it does. And it's not too dirty, not too terribly dirty. You are going to get dirty. But it's a fun kind of dirty. It's a clean kind of dirty, actually. So listen. Soil is so magical. Soil is, you know, this is a topic for another podcast, but I truly believe composting, using great soil, reusing organic matter, letting the things that we grow break back down and become compost for the next season. Using compost instead of fertilizers, I truly believe is a way that we can change our environment for the good that we can sequester carbon. Look up how carbon is sequestered by compost. It's amazing. There's so many things that we can do that are good for the world when we take care of the soil. And one of the ways that one of the great things about soil is that it gives back to us. It is one of those things that you can't out give it. So you give to it, and It'll give you three to four times what you gave to it. And you give three to four times more to it, and it'll give you 10 to 12 times more. It literally out gives you again and again. Remember that story, the Giving Tree? Well, I think we need a book called the Giving Soil because it is literally so generous. I am always adding new things to my garden soil. New compost layers, new little treats. I'm treating it like it's a kid. It's a member of my family that needs to be fed constantly. And the more I view it that way, the more it gives back to me. With beautiful plants, overflowing plants, and lots of lots of harvests. So I am certain that you will find the same is true for you. So when you're feeling discouraged in the garden, when you're not sure what's going on or if you just feel like this year has been a big disappointment, don't look at the plants. Don't look at your raised beds or your trellises or your design. Look at your dirt. Pick it up in your hand, feel what it feels like. Try to pick it apart and find out if it's got clay or sand or silt or compost in it. Decide if it's permeable, if it's got enough nutrients, if it's got enough structure, and then give it what it needs. Listen to your soil, feed it well and it will feed your plants, which will feed you back 10 times. That's the dirt on dirt. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I love you for it. Thanks for getting dirty with me. Send me a picture of your dirt. I can't wait to see what your soil looks like in your own kitchen garden. Stay tuned. Next week we'll be diving into chapter five, all about planning your kitchen garden. You're going to love it. I will see you then. All right, thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I have officially worked up a fantastic sweat here in my minivan, so I'm going to go in inside now. But I wanted to remind you that if you want help in your own kitchen garden, you got to get help from a gardenary garden consultant or garden coach. So you can find them on the gardenary site@gardenary.com you can search the directory for a business near you or you can get coaching right on the site@gardenary.com coaches. I am on a mission to help gardeners everywhere create a profitable profession teaching others how to garden. I think it's successful secret to bringing the garden back and making the garden an ordinary part of our lives once again. So go support a local garden coach or garden consultant near you. And if you are a gardener and you want to become a garden coach or consultant, you can. You can take the. You can find out more about it on the Gardenary site. We'd love to welcome you into the Garden Coach Society. All right, thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I love you for it. Don't forget to review the podcast and come hang out with me on Instagram @GardenaryCo. I'll see you next week.