The Problem with the Plant Store

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 going to 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 want to hear more about inspiring people and do a little bit each day better than the way you did it the day before, Grow Yourself is what your ears have 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. Okay, question for you. How much money have you spent on plants from the plant store? Second question. How many of those plants are still alive today? Today we are going to dig in to the topic of the problem with your plant store. We're going to talk about the gardening industry. We're going to what I discovered about the industry early on in my career starting Rooted Garden and what I'm trying to do to turn the industry upside down. I know you're going to love this episode. It's full of surprising facts and it's going to save you a lot of money and frustration and from adding that hashtag plantkiller to your bio. All right, let's dig in to today's episode. Just like previous episodes, this one is brought to you by Gardenary Garden Coaching. You're going to learn why in this episode. But if you want to get help with those plants you bought from the store, or if you want to make a plan to plant those plants, or if you want a garden, a raised bed kitchen garden complete with beautiful trellises and the full Gardenary setup, you can get help doing that right away by ordering a session with a Gardenary certified garden Coach. Go to gardenary.com coaches and you can find a coach that'll help you grow to the next level no matter what's happening in your garden right now. So go check it out. But first, let's dig in to today's episode, the problem with your plant store. Let's go. Hello there and welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. We're doing something fun today. We're going to talk about money that we spend on plants. Oh, yes, I've emptied my wallet a couple times, more than a couple times at the plant store. In fact, I must say, starting rooted garden, part of my motivation was so that I could have tax deductible purchases when I bought my plants. And Jason wouldn't necessarily know every time I swiped my car yard to buy some new green things. So let me take you back. I'm going to tell you the tale of two fiddle leaf figs. So this will kind of. This is going to show you what I want to show you about the plant store. Okay. Fiddle leaf fig number one. Shopping in Houston, Texas. I am becoming obsessed with plants. Pretty quickly, had my garden set up. If you haven't listened to the girl who planted gardens, go check out that episode that came out right around the time my book came out, beginning of May. And I tell you all the different gardens we've set up and the plants I bought. Well, right about the time we were having lots of success in the backyard kitchen garden, I went to this plant store. It's a big franchise plant store in Houston, everywhere, all over the city. And they had these gorgeous, gorgeous fiddle leaf figs. Really pretty, really tall, really mature, really cheap. Actually not really cheap, but cheaper than I could find at a nicer plant store nearby. So I'm with my kids. I'm needing some therapy. And I'm very attracted to this fiddle leaf fig. So I buy it. It's been indoors. Not indoors, but it's undercover in the store. So again, I'm still pretty new to gardening. I mean, I hadn't started rooted garden yet. Having my first really full year of kitchen gardening in Houston. And definitely not an indoor plant kind of girl, but wanted to be for sure. Wanted to be. So I bring the fiddle leaf fig home. It's looking pretty nice. It barely fit into my minivan. And I'm thinking, you know, this fiddle leaf fig, I think it needs a little sun. You know, it's been in shade and it's a tropical plant. I'm pretty sure it just needs some sunlight. I'm going to give it a good dose of sun before I bring it inside and so I just place it right on our back patio, which is south facing, by the way. So, you know, just put it out there, took the kids to the pool, came back, you know, and all of a sudden all of the leaves, every single last leaf on that fiddle leaf fig is completely scorched, like, turned yellow and dropped within a day. And so quickly realized that what the. The last thing that plant needed was some direct Houston sun right in the middle of the summer. So I sadly pulled my plant indoors and began to baby it and see if I perhaps could bring it back to life, it revive some. But I'll just say the plant never looked quite the way it did for the five minutes that I had it from the store to my van. So that's the first fiddle leaf fig. The second fiddle leaf fig was one I purchased here, actually in the Chicago area. So I'm here in Chicago and it's getting cold. This is the first winter here, and I'm realizing I do need, in fact, to do some indoor gardening because there's nothing growing outside. We're in the middle of the polar vortex, actually, at this point, and it's like a good zero degrees outside. So it's a Sunday, My husband's home with the kids, and I decided, you know, I'm just gonna go out and do a little plant therapy shopping at Home Depot. So I do. And of course they again have fiddle leaf figs that are calling my name. So I buy two. I buy some nice pots, get some nice potting soil. I know what I'm doing now. Like, I know these are gonna stay indoors and it's gonna be good. I know they need indirect light, not bright, direct light. And I'm definitely not going to move them outside, especially in the winter in Chicago. Put them in my van, we'll bring them outside, like, buy them, you know, they weren't, I think probably they were more expensive than this one. That one I bought in Houston. Put it in my van, bring it, like, I push it, you know, put it in the cart, push it from the cart to my car, put it in my car, drive it, I don't know, 15 minutes back home, park in the garage for a split second, you know, it's still in the car. Bring them out of the car, bring them into my living room, pot them up. Within about 24 hours. The leaves dropped immediately, turned a blackish color, purplish blackish color, and all began to fall off on both plants. Once again. I had managed to pretty much kill my investment, throw my money in the garbage can and ruin my. My plant in less than 24. What had happened to these two? Well, they were exposed to zero degree Fahrenheit weather, and they're not made to be exposed to zero degree Fahrenheit weather. So even though it was just for, I don't know, three minutes in the parking lot or, you know, a few minutes in my garage, it was enough to literally kill all the foliage on the fiddle leaves. Now, I will include in the show notes photos of these two plants because I have managed, believe it or not, to revive these two little baby girls. Girls. And they are doing splendidly, but it has been a journey. And what are we in? We're like 18 months past that purchase. And yeah, they're coming. They're doing good now. But. But yeah, that was sad. So those are my two. That's my tale of two fiddle leaf figs. And I tell you these two stories to make the point that I want to make today on today's episode. The problem with the plant store. So did those. Those plant stores had really nice looking plants and they did their job right. They brought me the plant. They brought the plant in from wherever it was grown. They put a price tag on it, they watered it or took care of it in its own little environment. Maybe even put a tag in there that says a little bit about how to grow it. They rang it up for me, let me put it in my cart and bring it home. They did their job to get the product from the grower, the supplier, to the customer, which was me. The thing that was missing, the key piece that was missing. You can probably fill in the blank here, right? Knowing what I just did to these two plants in 24 hours. The key thing that was missing was education, right? So I got the plant, I got the product, But I literally, for both situations, had no clue how to grow them, how to keep them alive, how to care for them, and within 24 hours, did a very good job of pretty much killing both of them immediately and pretty much wasting my money that I had spent at the plant store. Well, I've discovered over the years not just with fiddle leaf figs, but definitely with my kitchen garden and my kitchen garden business, that there is a serious, serious issue right now with the plant store and the garden industry. And I want to talk to you about it today. So believe it or not, the garden industry is booming. Oh, my goodness. You know, whenever I started my business rooted garden, they say to do market research. You want to find out, you know, what's the Potential. What's the possibility for growing a business? And you want to see, like, is this a dying industry? You know, is this at the brink of extinction, or is this about to take off? So I started researching the garden industry when I was interested in starting Rooted Garden. I wanted to start it just because I loved my garden and if someone would actually pay me to help them in the garden, oh my goodness, dream come true. So I was probably going to start it anyway, truth be told. But I was just, you know, doing what people told me to do and did some market research. So I did see that the garden industry had in fact, been growing year upon year upon year, and that there was a lot of money being spent on garden products and in the nursery type industry. So that was encouraging. And to be fair, just even rereading These reports, since 2015, when I started Rooted Garden, it's only gone up. In fact, the most recent report for 2020 says that the annual spend in the United States of Americ on gardening products. Are you ready for this? Want to guess how much it is? Do you think it's in the millions or the billions? If you said billions, you are correct. And do you think it's in the single digit billions or the double digit billions? And if you said double digit, you are also correct. So $51 billion spent in the United States on gardening products in a year. What? In fact, average households, the spend has gone up nearly $100 per household. So they're spending about $500 a year on gardening products. And one of the coolest, craziest, I think best parts about this is a lot of the growth is happening in the millennial demographic. So Gen Y. I just missed this generation. I have to say I'm one of those weird. I think I'm a gen Gen X. Is that what we're called? I'm 1978. Millennials are 81 to 96. They are spending tons of money on garden products. Even if they don't have a yard, even if they don't have the same financial stability of older generations, they're spending a larger amount of their money on plants and garden products. Is that so great? I think that's great in the sense that not that they're spending money, but that they care. So there is this wonderful report I read from the state of Vermont, I think the University of Vermont, just how much younger people are caring about waste. They're caring about food production, about organic quality of food. They know that they need the garden as a place to relax and de stress to get away from a screen. So many wonderful things happening in terms of attention to plants and to the garden. So on the positive side, that huge number of $51 billion, what that does represent is attention, which I think awesome. So that is not the problem with the plant store, but let's talk about what that $51 billion is being spent on. So this report basically details everything that that money is going to. So it's going to a broad range of nursery and garden products, which include trees, shrubs, plants, seeds, bulbs, sod, and then like farming equipment and animal feed, farm supplies, etc. But most of it, a lot of it is plants and plant products. The biggest companies in the nursery and garden store industries are things like tractor supply company. They have the biggest supply, Armstrong Garden Centers, Callaway's Nurseries, and Stein Garden Centers. But there's actually like over 22,000 businesses included in this report. So a lot of them are just, just single one store kind of garden centers, which is crazy. So not a, you know, 22,000 businesses are selling $51 billion worth of material. So here is the situation. This is, I think the issue here is all this money is being spent, but it's being spent in general, for the most part, the way I spent my money on my two fiddle leaf fish, right? It's just product. And so going out and spending $50, $100 on a plant does not at all necessarily equate to this thriving, beautiful garden, this return to nature, this caring for nature that we're expecting when we spend that money. So this is what I call the problem with the plant store. The problem with the garden industry in general is that we are upside down currently. So the entire gard industry is focused on product and not on people. So if you look at some of these reports, it details where the money is being spent. And most of it's spent on things like annual plants, houseplants, tropical succulents. That's actually the largest. The largest two categories are annual plants and houseplants. But then you do have trees and shrubs and perennials and then other money spent on, you know, fertilizers and mulch, etc. Things like that. So, so what we have here is tons of money, literally $50 billion being spent in an effort to reconnect us to nature, to give us the opportunity to grow in a garden or in our own home. And yet most situations turning up the way mine did with my fiddle leaf figs, in the sense that we get these things home and we don't know what to do with them or we think we know what to do with them. That was my problem. And we're wrong. Little did I know, you know, I checked out at that store, zero degree weather and bought these. These trees. I mean, these. Yeah, they're trees, I guess. Fiddle leaf figs. And no one, I had two clerks checking me out. You know, no one said, okay, you want to be really careful, actually, we should probably cover this plant for you because it's zero degrees outside, it's going to die immediately. And they didn't say that because they didn't know that. Right. Because the focus of that store is not education, it's just product sales. I experienced this too, at a fruit tree sale in Houston. So a company I really respect is called, oh my gosh, Urban Harvest. And they do a fruit tree sale every year in Houston in, I think, February. It's incredible. They partner with some of the great fruit tree growers in the city. And what they do, which I think is splendid, is they have their volunteers is placed around where all the trees are. So I was there really doing research for my company, Rooted garden, picking out trees that I thought would be great for clients and just walking through and seeing the huge variety of fruit trees that were available. Now, I had shopped for these fruit trees at local stores as well. Especially hard, you know, the bigger stores and seeing them for sale in all different places. The difference for this particular fruit tree sale is there were volunteers standing at every little spot where a new variety was available, and there was a sign available for every single fruit tree and bush that you could buy, describing how the plant grew, what kind of production it had, what kind of needs it had in terms of care, when to plant it, how to plant it. A very good long description for every single thing that was available for purchase. Not only was that there, but there was also a person, like a real live person standing by the sign to answer questions. So I could walk up and they might have a peach tree and I could say, I thought you couldn't grow peaches in Houston. And then they would have a long explanation to tell me about this particular variety and why it was possible, but you know, how hard it might be and things I might need to consider before I purchase it. As I walked through that particular fruit tree sale, I thought, oh my goodness, this is the way that plants should be grown. Where or should be purchased where it's not just a pretty plant standing there and you trying to guess which one you should buy and then bringing it home and hoping you do it right. Very likely that you won't, but instead, being set up for success. Lots of education surrounding the plant when you're buying it, and then a real person to talk you through the process and help you understand how to care for the plant and to decide if it's the right plant for you. So there are two different visions, right? So we have the fiddle leaf fig story, and then we have the fruit tree sale. And that is really the vision that I have for gardenary and for the garden industry in general. And one I want to kind of alert you to and wake you up to if you are one of those people like me who likes to go and spend a lot of money at the plant store. So what's happening right now? This is just to sum it up in the plant, plant store industry, the gardening industry is number one. More money is being spent on plants and garden products than ever before in human history. $51 billion is being spent on plants, plant supplies, and garden supplies in just one country in the United States. The second thing that's happening is the younger generation is excited and interested in gardening, more interested than previous generations have been. And the third thing that's happening in the garden industry and the plant store is that most of this money, if not 100% of this money, is going entirely to products rather than education. So most people are spending tons of money, but not actually knowing what to do with their purchases. All right, so that's what's happening now. Let me give you a little sneak peek into the gardenary vision and what I want to see happen over the next 10 years. So my first realization about this wasn't just when I killed my fiddle leaf figs, although that definitely helped. But with Rooted Garden, so what happened quickly with Rooted Garden, when I first developed my company is I thought I would be a garden coach. I would be helping people. I would just be teaching, consulting, passing along knowledge. Well, before I knew it, we just had an incredible clientele in Houston, and they really quickly moved me into something I wasn't necessarily anticipating, and that was the designing and building of those gardens. So very quickly, I moved from teaching, just the educational piece of it, to actually setting up gardens for clients. And before I knew it, honestly, that took over our business. That became our main line of business, and still is, and we're so thankful for it. We love creating gorgeous, beautiful spaces for our clients. But before long, as Rooted Garden took off, we ended up working with tons of gardens everywhere. Not tons of. I mean, that's a little over the top, but Lots of clients who had raised beds. And soon the questions started rolling in. What do I do now? What happened here? What's this pest? Why do I plant this? Why is this like this? Why is this crowding here? When do I need to cut this? Should I prune this? I don't know what to do with this bug. And it was just question after question after question. And I soon realized that even with great setup, which is what we had done, and great production, there was still an element of education that was necessary. And without it, success was really not possible. It was then that I decided to start Gardenary, my online business that would be 100% committed to education instead of garden design or installation. That it would be basically a sister company, a complimentary company that would bring the education. Education to go alongside the products. And Gardenary really is. That's the whole vision of Gardenary is gardening is ordinary. It's so ordinary that people understand it again, that they understand how plants grow, the general philosophies and theories behind the garden, and they know what to do with the things that they've purchased. Now, quickly, as I grew Gardenary and grew online, my company was answering questions for our clients in Houston. But what I started getting was questions from everywhere. People DMing me on Instagram or emailing and say, what about me in Virginia? What about me up in New York? And how about me over here in Oregon? And what would you do with this? I'm in Michigan. And I quickly realized that the questions for the garden weren't just plant specific. They were local specific. They were location specific to draw the comparison with that fruit tree sale in Houston. The same fruit treat sale, the very same kind of setup could not. The answers will be very different if that fruit tree sale was set up in Charlottesville, Virginia, another place I've lived, or in Chicago, Illinois, another place I've lived. Right. The same people would not be able to stand by those trees and give answers because they had never grown those trees in this new climate. And so if I were to replicate that fruit tree sale, I would need to bring in volunteers from Chicago who know what to do with a citrus. Can you grow a citrus indoors? Who know you know what to do with, let's say, a fig or a cherry or a peach. Things that grew certain ways in Houston are gonna grow a totally different way, if not at all, in Chicago, and vice versa. So I soon quickly realized that, number one, education was the key. And then, number two, that local was vital. So having a local perspective was always going to trump and be so much better than someone just generally giving detail and ideas from one original location. In other words, I realized I could not answer everyone's questions and that I shouldn't, that that education was the answer, but that getting a local perspective was vital. So for anyone anywhere trying to decide whether to buy a product, it was going to be super important for them to get educated. Not just in a generic way, say by me, but by a local expert, by someone who had grown that thing and understood that plant inside their current local climate. The third thing that really opened my eyes to the potential of gardenary was when I started doing research and seeing about the trend of the decentralization in a number of other industries. So examples like Airbnb and Uber and Etsy and WeWork and how all of these new up and coming businesses were basically decentralizing forces that had been in place. So, you know, instead of one big hotel chain kind of dominating the entire industry around the U.S. now you had all these local people who could say, hey, I know where the best, best restaurant is, I know where the best cafe is. The best park is right by my house, and if you sit right here and look out this window, you're going to see the sunset in a gorgeous place. It was this new personalization and decentralization that was making these kind of really upending these industries. The taxi industry, the hotel industry, the product production industry. And I thought, wow, what if we could do that with gardening? Where instead of people going to a big box store and from Chicago to Nashville to Houston to California, all buying the exact same plant that was basically bred and grown to ship out to all these, the same plants shipping to very different stores and very different climates around the country. And then with very little education, could we, could we change that? Could we flip that on its head and instead gardens be produced and designed and an education be given by all these people in their own little local pockets. So, you know, someone in, in Chicago knowing exactly how to grow, how to set up a garden for success, and what to plant here being the main source of information and education and help for the plant purchaser, rather than them going to a generic nationwide store that really could not teach them nor help them in the sense of knowing what to do locally. So that's really where the vision for gardenary began. First, realizing my own clients needed education and that education was the missing piece with the plant store. Second, realizing that local gardeners know best, that I would always be limited with my ability to help people nationwide, but that local gardeners would always have the answers. And then third, to see that this decentralization really gives way for a new era in gardening where the focus is not on these big box stores, this very like, you know, machine production of plants and products, but instead a much more locally curated and unique system that is found in all these different places all over the country. So that is how the gardenary vision began. So if you're not familiar, that is the reason why I started Garden Coach Society. So what I do in the Garden Coach Society is I help gardeners from all over the country start their own garden coach business, just as I did with Ruta Garden. And then we've built a directory on gardenary.com for those people to be found. So I like to call it we're the Airbnb of gardening. And that really is my vision. Now, we're not quite there yet. We've trained about 250 coaches at the time of this recording. But the vision is that eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, anyone can come onto the gardenary site just as they would to go to Airbnb or to Uber searching for. If they're searching for a local driver or a local place to stay, they'll become able to come onto gardenary.com and search for a local gardener who can educate them, teach them what to do, when to do it locally, and then provide them the best design, the best access to plants and things, the products that are going to do best for them locally. So that's the vision. Pretty great, right? So let me tell you why I wish there was already a Chicago Garden Coach when I got started here. So I moved here with my family in 2018 and had to hurriedly set up my garden last spring for photos for my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. And I was out purchasing some plants. I was going to be doing a workshop at Anthropologie and then also needed those plants for my garden. So just called around and asked for a couple of nurseries. I knew I didn't want to go to a big box store, but I wanted to try a local nursery. So I head to local nursery. I'm like, do you have edible herbs? Oh, yes, we do. So she's pointing me to all these great herbs, and they look lush. I mean, they're green, growing fully, like, looking amazing. And so we start to fill up my card, and I'm just having the best time. I haven't seen plants in like six months, except for that dead fiddle leaf fig. I'm just having the best time. And I just casually started to think Huh. I wonder how they grow these things. No markings, you know, on the plants whatsoever. And so I lean over and I said, these are really. These look wonderful. Can you tell me about how you grow these? And she said, oh, yes, honey. Do you see those little. Those hoses at the top of our greenhouse ceiling? I look up and I see hoses all along. I mean, there's just lines of hoses. I say, oh, yeah, I see the hoses. And she goes, okay, those are filled with Miracle grow. And from the minute these, these seedlings are planted. But by the time these seeds start, they are fed Miracle Gro from the beginning, so they are just dripped out water and Miracle grow every single day. And that is why they look so amazing. And that's also why we can't drink from the hoses. Yeah. You feeling what I'm feeling? And I was like, okay. So I just casually put back about half the herbs that I had picked out, and I had to buy the other ones because, honestly, I needed them for props. So I did bring some home, but I can't say I ever ate from them. I didn't say it out loud, but I did want to lean over to her and say, well, if you can't drink from the hose and it's got that stuff in it, do you actually want to eat plants that are filled with water from those hoses? I mean, I just don't get it. Anyway, basically, so much of this is what's going on behind the scenes at the plant store, in the garden store, where you are buying your plants. And the thing is, you don't know it, right? You're just like me buying those fiddle leaf figs. You're just like all the other Americans spending $51 billion on plants. And so what happens is, you buy the plant and you don't know how it's been bred or what it needs. There's no one there educating you on it. And then you bring it home, you try to do everything you think you know is right to do, and that plant either dies immediately or just sits there in the soil and never changes or, you know, immediately gets a disease or whatever. Maybe they don't all end that way, but a lot of the stories, a lot of the $51 billion ends that way. And it's all because the industry is upside down, because it's product focused and not education focused. Had I not paused to ask that woman, that kind woman, it's not her fault, but had I not paused to ask her, she grew those plants, I never would have known. And if I had brought them home and put them in the garden, and they would have just sat there and sat there because they weren't getting their miracle grove fix, then I would have thought it was my fault, right? I would have thought that I don't know how to garden and I don't know how to grow herbs, and I definitely don't have a green thumb, but the piece that was missing was that sentence, that explanation of how they'd grown, the way they'd grown. And without knowing that, I was. Was honestly doomed to failure. Plantkiller. That's right. All right, so wherever you are in your journey of gardening, I hope that today's episode has opened your eyes a little bit to the. The plant industry. The garden industry. The exciting part about it is people are spending money on plants. That's awesome. People are excited about the garden. That's incredible. People want to bring more green into their life lives and into the world. So good. All that is really, really good news. So now what we gotta do is we gotta turn our attention more to education before we buy. So we have to start realizing that just buying something, me just buying yoga pants doesn't make me a yogi. And just buying plants doesn't mean that we actually know a thing about keeping that plant alive. So as soon as I bought my yoga pants, you know, I got online and I. I took a little yoga video, right, to see if I could do, like, the. The warrior pose and stuff, you know? And so as soon as you buy that plant or actually before you buy the plant, it's really smart to start to educate yourself and to start to learn about the plants so that you don't waste your money. I mean, yoga plants are comfortable in themselves. So I think it's fine to buy those even if you don't want to do yoga. But I wouldn't buy a plant if you don't know how to keep it alive. Otherwise, it's just kind of sad when you have to dump it in the trash. So here are three steps to reverse it to help me help you to join the gardenary revolution of flipping the garden industry on its head. Instead of things being so product focused, let's make them people focused, let's make them education focused. So the first thing to do is make a plan to educate yourself. Figure out what you need to figure out before you make a plant purchase. If there's something you're wanting to buy, something you want to create in your own inside or outside your home, do some studying before you Go shopping. The second thing I suggest, and it's not just self. What's the word? Promotion is to hire a coach to get someone to help you. Listen, we're getting coach for all kinds of things these days, right? I mean, my neighbor just sent their pet off for two weeks of pet obedience coaching. Okay, so if that pet, if that dog deserves some obedience coaching, you deserve some plant coaching. I just have to say so. I would definitely invest in some coaching. Get a garden coach to help you. Get a garden consultant to help you plan out your space. There are people who have experience and it's not just, you know, it's literally a way to save yourself time, money and frustration to take some of your money and invest it in some education and some help before you get started. The third step is then make your purchase. So I know that takes a lot of the fun out of the retail therapy, but I promise the after effects are so much better if you do the first two things first. So educating yourself and then hiring help or asking for help from someone who's local and knows what they're doing and then making your purchases. In fact, I'm going to close up by reading from chapter number five from my book. It's the first page, actually. Repeat after me. I will not go to the plant store until I have a plan. Say it again. Did you say it again? I will not go to the plant store until I have a plan. I promise. I'm making this pledge right alongside you. Too many times. My first instinct in starting my garden was to buy plants and it didn't go well. $51 billion later, right? There is a form of shopping you should do before planting your garden though. At the farmer's market, one of the best ways to plan your priorities for your kitchen garden is to regularly visit a farmer's market or join a local CSA for a few seasons. Warning. Once you start, your taste buds will not let you stop. Although I may be able to help you set up and start planting your kitchen garden, it's your local farmer who really knows the specifics of your particular seasons, how to get the timing right, and how to make the most of your climate. When I move to a new town, and I seem to do that a lot, the farmers market is the first place I visit. Local farmers are a wealth of information. If the farmer has beans, lean in and kindly say, hey, these beans look great. When did you plant them? Or if she has the best looking tomatoes, lean in and ask, where did you plant these? They look amazing. Snag a Quick photo each week to document what's on the farmer's tables. Before you know it, you'll have created your own planting calendar. If you see something on the table, you know it was planted just two or three months earlier, depending on the size of maturity. To me, farmers markets, CSA's and kitchen gardens go hand in hand. Although you'll get to enjoy a lot from your own garden, there will be fruits and vegetables you'll need to buy to fill your plate each day. As you start to taste what local and seasonal food is like, you'll be more willing to take a special trip and support your local farmer. After shopping with the farmers, not at the plant store, it's time to make a planting plan. All right, so that is, you know, a bigger picture for your kitchen garden, but same kind of idea. So you know, you can start even if it's just asking the local farmers, asking the local growers what they do, that is part of educating yourself. And then when you're ready to go to the next level, hiring someone to help you specifically, or just signing up to learn from them and to be educated by them. This, I think, is a way to sustain the growth that we have in the garden industry. Not just sustain it, but to explode it. Because to me, the $51 billion is awesome. But let's be honest, if most of those purchases are like the ones that I made on my fiddle leaf figs, then that kind of growth is not going to stay right. Like, if I bought those fiddle leaf figs and I killed them all because I had no education or understanding of how to take care of them, I'm not going to be very likely to go back to the store and to buy those again or even to buy something else that's similar but different, because I'm discouraged. I'm pretty sure that it's my fault that I killed those plants. And it feels like a big waste of money. Embarrassing and frustrating. But if we can turn the garden industry on its head, if we can change it, where we spend our money, first on education, on consulting, on teaching, and then we go spend money on plants and products, we could literally create an industry that could last and change the world for the better. And one of the greatest things I love about this model is it puts hands in. It puts money in the hands of local heroes. People who know how to grow because they've been growing. People who know how to garden because they have a garden. People who know how to find the best plants, how to grow the best plants and how to do it in the least expensive, most effective way. That's where we put our money first, rather than just in a bunch of products and just in a bunch of, say, retail. You know, with retail, it's so hard to know where that money is actually going. But when you're paying a person, a person with expertise, a person who's done the hard work before you, you know exactly where that money goes. And it goes right back into your local economy for more plants, more gardens, more growth to happen. And I think that is a very lovely, amazing model to keep. When I got to hear stories of people who worked for companies like TaskRabbit or Airbnb or Etsy or Uber, how these local people who previously would never have called themselves entrepreneurs or people who, you know, were kind of at a dead end in terms of their economic potential, suddenly getting to use skills that they developed in their local economy to change the place for the better, not just their own city, but in their own particular home lives. I got excited. What if we could do this with gardening too, where we could put money back into our local economies by supporting the gardeners who know what they're doing and not just support them, like, as a handout, but pay them to teach us so that we can have that same success in our own spaces. That is a model that I get super excited about. It is the model of gardenary, and it is the model I would love for you to grab onto. So let's change the problem with the plant store together. I'm not saying to stop spending your money at the plant store. Lord knows I love spending a dollar, two. A whole bunch of dollars at the plant store. All I'm saying is get educated first. Pay people first who can help you know what to do with those plants and how to care for them when you buy them. And then I think we're gonna see good change, great change, amazing change for the better, for the long haul. That's something I know that will grow all of us in a great way. All right, if you are up for this challenge, you got to go for it. You're gonna have to make some changes. You're gonna have to slow down before you start driving to the plant store. And I have to say, if you're listening to this and you are that gardener, you who knows how to grow locally, who knows how to make the most of the things that are growing in your own space, you should absolutely check out the gardenary garden coaching program. So we have a garden coach society where we bring you through training to teach you exactly how to turn your knowledge into a profitable business. It all starts with a five day Garden Coach Challenge and you can learn more about it on the blog today@gardenary.com blog or just Google Garden Coach Challenge. Pretty sure we're the only ones who have this going on. So take the Garden Coach Challenge and see how you can take your own garden knowledge and experience and turn it into a profitable business that changes the world for the better. So if you're an experienced gardener, think about becoming a gardening coach. And if you're just beginning or you're one of those people who loves buying plants, then consider getting a garden coach coach. All right, I am out. I have talked your ear off all about the plant store. As you can tell, this is a soapbox of mine. I get frustrated when people waste money at the plant store or they don't waste money, but they spend money at the plant store that literally could have just been thrown into the trash. I've done it too many times. I've seen clients and friends do it and I just don't want it to happen anymore. All right, so let's solve the problem with the plant store together and I will see you next week on Grow youw. You see. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I hope you feel inspired to change the plant store problem together with us at Gardenary. Don't forget that today's episode is brought to you by. Hello Garden Coaching. Exactly what we talked about on this episode. So if you are ready to get some help in the garden, you want to get a planting plan or you want to make sure you don't kill those plants you bought from the store? Go order a session@gardenary.com coaches. We will set you up with a Gardenary coach who knows just what to do and can help you through whatever you're facing in your own garden. Thanks so much for listening and being part of the Gardenary change. How we are flipping the industry on its head, focusing on people more than products. We're excited to be doing this right alongside you. Thanks for listening and I will see you next week. Sam.