Introductory podcast episode hosted by Nicole Johnsey Burke (author of Kitchen Garden Revival and owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated). The host introduces the show's purpose: surprising stories about food, practical tips for busy people to grow kitchen gardens and personal growth, and weekly episodes aimed at teaching listeners actionable steps to create a more whole and happy life.
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. My name's Nicole Johnsey Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary.
Incorporated and author of Kitchen Garden Revival.
And you guessed it, I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden, but I'm also busy with life as a wife, mom to four wild kids and two adorable puppies.
Wait, switch that.
Four adorable kids and two wild puppies. Yeah, that's it. Despite my crazy schedule, I'm on a mission to never stop growing, both as a gardener and simply as a person. And so I've created this podcast to help you do the same. And each week, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day.
And you'll feel encouraged to take little.
Steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself and in a new and exciting way. Sound good?
I think so.
Now let's dig in.
Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. I'm Nicole Burke, and I am so glad you're here with me. If you heard my voice in episode one, you know, I sounded a little bit nervous. Just bit, a little, little bit. But I'm doing better now because I've got all that experience of that one episode behind me. If you missed episode one, go back and listen to it after this one. Of course, in it, I challenge you to do three things this year to grow yourself with me. They're all doable. Anybody can try them out, and it's gonna make your 2020 so amazing, I promise. So now for episode two, I want to invite you to a party, a special kind of party, a party with me that's going to be happen year long. So this party could be summed up with the word revival. Have you heard the word revival? I'm sure you have, but do you actually know what it means? Well, I just looked it up on Google like, I don't know, five seconds ago so that I could tell you the definition. So Google says that revival means an improvement in the condition or strength of something. It's a noun, by the way. Or it could be an instance of something becoming popular, active, or important. Again, that's the definition I'm focusing on. My middle school kids are studying hundreds of Latin roots in middle school, so I thought it would be only fitting to share the Latin roots for revival with you. So re, which I'm sure you already know, means again, to do something again. And viver, I don't know if that's the right way to say the Latin term means life or to live. So revival is literally to live again, to bring life to something again. I like the sound of that, don't you? I mean, revival just makes me feel, like, full of good stuff. Well, speaking of good stuff, the special party, the special revival I want to invite you to is a kitchen garden revival. Now, kitchen garden may be a term that you need to look up too. And that's okay, because that's a term I had to look up about four years ago. So I had just started my company, Rooted Garden in Houston, Texas, and when I did, I told all my clients, all like two of them, that I was focusing on gardens. And as I started to do client work and produce some fun things for my clients, my mom and I were chatting one day and she said, nicole, I think what your focus should be is kitchen gardens. And I was like, huh, What's a kitchen garden? So naturally I googled that one and found out that mom was right, like she always is. So a kitchen garden is different than what you might picture in your head. When I say a vegetable garden, oftentimes what people picture is rows and rows of broccoli and corn and tomatoes, maybe even a farm, maybe someone pulling in lots and lots of harvest and bringing it inside and canning it and jarring it and fermenting it and, you know, like homesteading kind of thing, off the grid living, if you will. Well, kitchen garden is not that. Kitchen gardens are smaller gardens that are really set up to be more of a focal point in your landscape. They're a place to kind of show off, to go and hang out with your friends and family. And they're tended more regularly than a big farm or a homestead. They're not necessarily stored up like a homesteader would in terms of cans and jars. It's more about using the food in your everyday life and not about tons and tons of work. So the more I thought about this term kitchen garden and started to study it and then use it in my clients garden designs, I realized I kind of loved it. So for me, as a mom to four kids and a business owner, I found that the idea of kitchen gardening fit me so much better than row farming. Or homesteading. While I love the idea and I think it's awesome when people can live off the grid or provide for themselves entirely from their backyard, that just currently doesn't fit what's possible for me. But a kitchen garden gives me this nice taste of what's possible to grow. It gives me a place to escape reality and step outside and learn the seasons and enjoy the magic of food without taking up my whole life, if you know what I mean. And soon I realized that kitchen gardens were a perfect fit for pretty much all of my clients. Many of them weren't looking for a homestead experience experience, and they definitely weren't ready to start canning and jarring. They just wanted to learn to garden. Many of them were learning to garden for the very first time, in fact. And so they wanted the experience of gardening without all of the overwhelm. So with kitchen gardens, we were able to produce for them these beautiful centerpieces for their yards, where they could not just experience the wonder of the garden, but do so in a pretty small space and get a lot of production out of it. Because kitchen gardens gardens generally are set up with raised beds, you get to produce a lot more vegetables and herbs and fruits from your garden than you would in a row crop setting. All that to say I'm in love with kitchen gardens. So it came as a huge surprise and treat to me when I got an email back Last January of 2019 from an editor, and it said in the subject line, kitchen garden book. And I was like, wait, what? Are you serious? So it was literally a year ago, I got to talk with a publisher about the idea of writing a book all about kitchen gardens. And it was like a dream come true. So I put out the proposal, I guess in February, and by March we had the contract and agreement and I was ready to start writing. So we did so many crazy things in this past year to pull this book together. My photographer, Eric Kelly, first came here to the Chicago area, and our first photo shoot was crazy. We pulled together all these different foods to showcase the different plant families and what to grow, when and which plants grow in which season. And then Eric got to document me putting in my kitchen garden here in the Chicago area. So I had been living here for a while and had been trying to figure out where to put my own kitchen garden. And he got to document the whole process for the book. So that was photoshoot one, then for photoshoot two, we flew to Houston to photograph a lot of my clients gardens. We were in Houston for less than 60 hours. I think we slept twice during that time. And we photographed 19 gardens during those 60 hours. So these were small gardens, big gardens, stone gardens, steel gardens, cedar gardens, and everything, every different size and shape in between. It was amazing. So all of my clients or these 19 clients agreed to let us come in and capture the magic that was happening in their kitchen gardens to get to share in the book. So that was photo shoot number two. And then for photo shoot number three, Eric came back to Chicago in August and got to capture all the growth and change that had happened in my kitchen garden throughout the four months since we had installed it. And that was a total party. So he photographed me harvesting and piling up the things from the kitchen garden. And then at the end of the photo shoot, we actually cooked up a bunch of things straight from the garden and pretended like we were like a fancy family and had a garden to table meal out in the backyard. Well, not in the yard on the deck. But anyway, he got to capture the whole thing. It was so fun and really cool to show the story from the very start of putting in the garden to four months later when we were literally hauling out pounds and pounds of deliciousness from a very small space. So through the year I pulled together the book. I just have recently finished up the edits and the book is now available for pre sale, like for pre order or like whatever you call that, like where you order it before it's available. It comes out in April of 2020, which is the year we're in, thank goodness. And you can actually order it right now on Amazon and Barnes Noble and all those other online places. Amazon does this thing. I'm sure all the online places do this thing, but where they gauge your interest in the book by the pre sales. So every time someone goes on and orders this book before it actually comes out, Amazon goes ding, ding, ding. This is a good book and we should make it available for more people. So they tend to lower the prices and they just do all kinds of sorts of fun things with books that people seem to like. All that to say, if you have any desire to pre order, I would absolutely love you for it. In fact, I have a fun gift I'm going to give you when you pre order and I'll tell you more about that in a second. For this episode, what I want to do besides just tell you these long stories about how we made the book is read you a sneak preview of the book itself. So today I want to read you the preface and the introduction to the book. Does that sound like fun. I think it's fun. Although I've never read my book out loud yet, so this is gonna be kind of, I don't know, has potential to be embarrassing. So here we go. This is the preface and introduction to my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. Have I told you that I told you the word revival and the word kitchen garden, but I don't know if I told you the name of the book is Kitchen Garden Revival. So here we go. Preface what to Expect A few things will happen before you finish reading this book. First, if you don't already, you'll start calling yourself a gardener. It might seem awkward at first. I've been there. But go ahead, take a moment, look in the mirror and say these words out loud. I am a gardener. From now on, when you introduce yourself to others, type out your bio or profile, you'll include gardener and in your list of attributes. Deal. Though this may not yet be the case, gardening is soon to become part of you, part of your identity, and definitely part of your lifestyle. It will be a skill you're proud of, a hobby you enjoy, a gift you share with neighbors, friends and family. Beyond calling yourself a gardener, you'll soon refer to a specific spot on your property as the kitchen garden. You've got the patio, the front porch, maybe the lawn and the driveway. So now let's put Kitchen Garden on the map, too. You're about to have a new, special place, a getaway, an escape from reality. But good news, it's right outside your back door. You're not just going to have a new bio and a new, happy place. You'll also gain a bigger appreciation for the place you call home. The unique aspects of your community, your seasons and your weather will give you a greater appreciation for what your little plot of Earth can do. You'll discover the foods that grow perfectly where you live and those that just won't. You'll see how your seasons are distinct and different, and all these things will make your town, your city, your community. Not just a place where you live, but a spot on Earth you belong to. As someone who's moved a lot, I know this as fact. It feels really good to belong somewhere. And beyond appreciating your particular plot, you'll soon start thinking of food as a wonderful nothing short of supernatural. Not something to avoid, not a calorie to count. After you watch a tiny seed become a huge basket full of delicious salad or a little plant become a giant bowl of soup, you will not be able to unsee it, and you won't want to a carrot is about to become a unicorn to you and it is the very best feeling. Lastly, this book will help you see that you're a change maker, part of something bigger, someone doing real good in the world from now on. When you hear talk of global warming or ice caps melting, when the news talks about local economies, challenges or a lack of natural resources, you'll know that you're doing your part to help and learning to do more. You've got a tangible, doable plan right in front of you to start making change right in your very own backyard. How can I promise so much from one little gardening book? I'm just recounting my story, the stories of the hundreds of clients I've served through Rooted Garden and the thousands of people I've taught through Gardenary. It was just a few years ago when I felt like a total fake calling myself a gardener. I had killed my fair share of plants. As a woman who struggled with an eating disorder for decades, I've seen food as something to avoid or use in an unhealthy way for years. And married to a smart scientist, obtaining degrees and experience all over the country, I've moved more than five times in the last 15 years and wondered how in the world each new place could ever feel like home. And even though it's important to me, I too still wonder if I'm making any real good difference in this world. But it's not an exaggeration for me to say that having a kitchen garden has been part of the answer to almost all these things. And I know it will be for you too. So now that you know how this story will end, let's begin an introduction. What's a kitchen garden? And why? Is it time for a revival? So what exactly is a kitchen garden, Nicole? Is it a garden inside the kitchen? I get this question a lot. Called kailyards in Scotland and known as potagers in France. Sounds so fancy, right? A kitchen garden is a place closely connected with your kitchen and every everyday life. It's a distinct area of your home and landscape where vegetables, fruits, and herbs are grown for culinary use. A kitchen garden can be as small as a collection of garden boxes on the patio or deck. And it can be as large as a formal stone garden that covers hundreds of square feet. No matter the size, the purpose is the a garden that's tended regularly and used frequently in everyday meals. It's not a vegetable patch or homestead. It's much smaller and doesn't require nearly the amount of work that those do. Unlike a farm, which is cleared all at once, planted all at once, and harvested. You guessed it, all at once. A kitchen garden is tended regularly and different from row cropping or a big vegetable patch. A kitchen garden is a space for growing either a small sample of a wide variety of plants or a large amount of a small variety of plants. In other words, you're not going to avoid the grocery store entirely, but you will skip past certain items, which is a very good feeling, by the way. Instead of a rambling field or an entire yard planted with vegetables, a kitchen garden is separate from the rest of the landscape and created to be a central feature. It's not something to tuck behind the garage and hide from neighbors. It's set up to be beautiful, front and center. It's a special centerpiece of your home life, a place to entertain and have guests or just hang out with your family. At the very least, kitchen gardens can provide all the herbs you'll need year round, either cut fresh or dried and stored. Beyond that, kitchen gardens can yield most of the greens you and your family eat. And greater still, kitchen gardens can provide large amounts of beans, peppers, squash, cucumbers and other fresh vegetables in the height of their season, as well as an opportunity for preserved foods for even the coldest winters. The dictionary has its own definition of kitchen garden, but after years of working in my garden and with hundreds of clients and students, here is mine. A kitchen garden is the missing piece in our pursuit of a whole and healthy lifestyle. So why Kitchen Garden? Mental health is quickly becoming the key indicator of overall well being. Depression, anxiety, stress and burnout are serious in themselves, but those challenges are now linked to cancer, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Our minds and our bodies are connected in ways we're just starting to understand. And in this fast paced and demanding world, we've got to find ways to slow down, reconnect with nature, and care for ourselves. Again, you should kitchen garden for yourself. The biggest reason to kitchen garden is for your own happiness. Stepping outside into the garden each day has proven to help do just that. And there's no more practical way to push yourself outside than if the tastiest parts of dinner are growing in your backyard yard. You've got to eat anyway, right? So why not pursue a mindful activity that not only feeds your mind and soul, but also your stomach? A kitchen garden may just be the most practical hobby that you can pursue. You'll learn new skills, get exercise, wake up your senses, and return back inside with an armload of fresh food. You should kitchen garden for your community. Over the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in knowing our food sources, returning to organic growing methods, and appreciating the nutrients available when eating freshly picked food. The kitchen garden is a key part of this. Although the garden won't provide the entirety of your family's fruit and vegetable needs, it gives you a taste of what's growing locally and appreciation for the process of growing organic and natural food and a connection to the growers and farmers in your area. Nearly all my clients with a kitchen garden often also visit the farmers market or have a CSA membership to supplement their gardens. Once they taste a freshly harvested carrot or a tomato just picked from the vine, they cannot return to the ship's stuff at the grocery store. By eating locally, you'll be more connected to your local community, better understanding your particular seasons, appreciating the unique foods you can grow in your area, and supporting people doing great work there. You should Kitchen Garden for the World no matter your position on global warming, we likely all agree that things aren't changing for the better. And although it's not the only contributor, a huge aspect of some of the Earth's troubles is food miles. Currently, most of the food consumed in North America has traveled more than 1500 miles. Actually, I should say in the United States has traveled more than 1500 miles before reaching our plate. The petroleum demand on food is huge, but by growing food in your personal kitchen garden and eating locally from farmers and the csa, you vastly reduce the number of miles your food needs to travel before you eat it. Beyond the miles, food that's shipped across the country or internationally is also heavily packaged. Our plastic consumption in North America is at an all time high high. And a lot of that is due to the enormous amount of plastic used to package our shipped food. The kitchen garden is one part of the answer to this issue. Even if you just grow greens and herbs in your kitchen garden, you'll make a serious cut in your plastic waste in just a few months. Why a Kitchen Garden Revival? Kitchen gardens, though we may have forgotten the term, aren't a new concept. They've been a thing for thousands of years. But somewhere along our way of progress, we lost the kitchen garden. But for our own wholeness and happiness, for the beauty of life in our homes, for the benefit of our community and for the good of the world, it is time for a kitchen garden revival. A revival is a magical thing. It's something I can wish for, but not really something that I or any one person can make happen alone. It's like A seed that starts small and is barely noticeable at first. It must be buried and grow strong roots even when no one notices. There are over a thousand things that could go wrong. But with just the right amount of rain and sunshine and not too many weeds or pests, that seed can grow so big and so fast that no one can tell where the vine begins or ends. I'm hoping this book will be that seed. Fingers crossed. But I'm going to need you to bring the rain and the sunshine. You can begin with just a pot of garlic chives on the front porch or build a formal potager. Wherever you are, there is a kitchen garden that fits you. And if you have a kitchen, and I'm sure you do, you need a kitchen garden. By picking up this book, you're already part of the Kitchen Garden Revival. Your interest to read this far means you're a part of the vine that's growing from that tiny seed. And I cannot wait to see how big you your garden and this movement grows. Welcome to the Kitchen Garden Revival. Phew. Okay, I made it through that reading. That was kind of crazy to read my own writing and not botch it up. So that's the Kitchen Garden Revival. That's the party I want to invite you to join me in this year. Kitchen Garden Revival releases in April, but if you pre order, I want to send you a special gift. I have a course called Kitchen Garden Academy, and it brings you through all the steps to create your own kitchen garden. And at the very start of that course, I have a module with five key questions to ask yourself before you set up your kitchen garden. These are the questions that I've used for years with my rooted garden clients, and they make all the difference. So when you pre order Kitchen Garden Revival, all you've got to do is send an email to helloardinary.com g a r--e n a r-y.com with your name and your order number. And I will give you free access to this mini course on the five questions you should ask yourself before you start your kitchen garden. These questions are going to open your eyes to things you've never thought about before in terms of setting up your own garden. And they're going to get you ready for the book. So as soon as you get that book in April, you're going to be like, I am ready to dig in. Most of all, I just want to say thank you. If you pre order, as I said, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, all these booksellers, they're getting thousands and Thousands and thousands of books. So they need us to tell them which books we love and we want to see more of. So when you pre order, when anybody pre orders, we're telling them that kitchen gardens and gardening is important to us, and we want to see more books like it. So thanks so much in advance for coming to my party. Have you guys ever gone to a party and you were early? I never have this problem because I'm always late, but if you've ever gone to a party and you're early, you're like, the first one there. It really doesn't feel like a party, right? Like, the party only really gets started once. At least like 50% of the people are there. So that's kind of how I feel over here right now, reading this to you. You, I'm assuming, I'm hoping that I'm the first person at the party and that you guys are about to show up. So thanks so much for listening to the beginning of this book with me. It's been so fun to create this for you this year. And I'll tell you, the magical moment was when I was harvesting all these things from my garden in August and realizing that we'd captured this. This same space four months before. Four or five months before, when it was just grass and dirt. It was that moment when I was pulling all these wonderful things out of the garden that I was like, you know what? I really believe in this. Like, my mom was right. Kitchen gardens are the thing. And I really believe that kitchen gardens are a thing that can change not just our lives and our family's lives, but they are good for our communities, and they're good for the whole planet. There aren't many things in the world like that right where they make you feel good, they're good for your family and your community, and then they're even good for the whole planet. I just don't know that many things that are like that. So that's why I want to spread the love and the revival of the kitchen garden. You know, as our society and civilization and species has grown, we've done a lot of cool things. Like, we've made all kinds of progress and, you know, come up with a million inventions and all sorts of great stuff. And that's good. Progress is good. But as we change as a civilization and as a society and as a species, sometimes we end up leaving behind things from our past and our ancestors that were actually great. And kitchen gardens, I believe, are one of those things. So if you would look back a century ago, probably most of our family members, most of your ancestors all had kitchen gardens, at least some form or fashion of one. A little garden they were tending and eating from regularly. But over the last century, the generations have lost that. We dropped that, especially in the United States. That's a part of our history that I want to take back. I want us to bring it back and to revive it in a new and special way. And that's what I help you do in my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. Okay. Well, my dream is that by the time my children are grown, which is another, say, 10 years from now, my youngest is 8 years old, so in 10 years she'll be 18. And my dream is that by that time this has happened, kitchen gardens are normalized. They're just an everyday part of our ordinary lives once again. And it's just a given that you're gonna say things like, sorry, I can't. I have to plant some new in my kitchen garden this weekend. Or you're going to say, hey, I have a ton of lettuce in my kitchen garden. You want to come get some? Or you can say, hey, I just harvested a ton of tomatoes from my kitchen garden. You want to come over and make some fresh pico? Doesn't that sound like fun? I think so. So I'm betting on the fact that in a decade, at least in a decade, this party is going to be so big and so much fun that the kitchen garden is going to be the center of everybody. Not the center, but the kitchen garden's gonna be a huge part of everyone's life once again. That's my dream, and I hope it can become part of your dream, too. So thanks for listening to my very long invite to my party, the Kitchen Garden party. The Kitchen Garden Revival party. So go check out the book@Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. You can get more details in our show notes today@gardenary.com podcast, there'll be show notes and directions on how to order the book, how to let me know that you've ordered it so that I can send you access to my mini course, which is awesome. You're gonna love it. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. Thanks for bringing back the Kitchen Garden with me and coming to my party. I love you for it. And I'll see you next week. I know. There we go.