My 3 Biggest Gardening Lessons in 2018

What's up everyone? Kevin from Epic Gardening here. Welcome back to Houseplant Corner. Today we have a special episode. My friend Steven challenged me. He's from Nature's Always Right. You might remember him from I think what is now probably the most popular video on my channel, which is called Quitting Your Job to Farm on a Quarter Acre in Your Backyard. That's exactly what he's doing right now to this day. In fact, he's even expanding. So head on over to his channel and check it out if you'd like. But he said, Hey, I want to know what your top lessons of 2018 were in the garden and maybe even in life. So I said, fantastic, happy to do it. And it's going to be a little bit of a different video. This is for the subscribers. You know, this is not one of my how to's on my snake plants or my spider plants or all these plants behind me or things about raised bed or hydroponics. This is just from me to you, what did I learn this year in the garden in 2018? So I have three things for you. One is very practical. One is a little bit more high level. And then finally I'm going to end with one about what I feel is important for me this year, life itself, business, life, garden, everything. So the first one, this book was very transformative for me. It's called Teeming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web. And those last three words are the key. Soil food web. The book's by Jeff Lowenfels. Highly recommend you check it out. To understand the soil food web, first let's rewind to sort of my background in gardening. I came from a hydroponics background. I think the first thing I ever truly grew was hydroponic cucumbers. That was like my first plant that I ever tried. Uh, did not turn out well. I got them to produce fruit, but they were very bitter, very disgusting. And I got a little sad, a little emo and uh, it didn't sour me though. I was still into gardening. So anyways, that's my background. Container gardening, small spaces. In fact, that's what my book's all about. Field Guide to Urban Gardening, which is coming out next year, is all about that. So it stands to reason I did not have the most deep knowledge about a more permaculturist or classic gardening approach. And that would mean that I needed some education on soil. Now the soil food web is basically referring to the complex network of microorganisms and organisms that are all interplaying with each other to do the work in the garden. I mean, they're kind of acting for themselves, but in acting for themselves, they help you and me out and actually free us up from many of the tasks that we once thought were basically mandatory in the garden. So let's go through a really quick overview of it. If you really want the full download, I have an episode on my podcast, and I also would highly recommend you pick up the book. It's probably, I don't know, how much was it? Maybe $15, but $15 to save you hours and hours and hours of work in the garden is a no brainer to me. Anyways, the soil food web. What are we talking about here? Basically what Jeff Lonefels is saying is in order to have healthy soil, you need to have a complex network of those organisms, starting down at the fungal and bacterial level with your mycorrhizal fungi, your beneficial microbes, et cetera. If you can get those into your soil, then things like your nematodes come back in, you have your very small insects, you have your earthworms that start to come back in. And then if you can get that working, your plants are doing very well or at least the underside of the plants, the root systems will be extended by mycorrhizal fungi. Beneficial nematodes will be eating the bad nematodes. So there's a lot of stuff going on there, which is awesome because that means that you have to fertilize less. You don't have to troubleshoot as many problems with your plant's roots. But what about above the soil? Well with the return of everything that's living under the soil, you're also getting the return of a lot of positive things above the soil. You have your pollinators that will start to come back, your beneficial insects that start to come back, your birds even. And so the way Jeff describes the soil food web is if you can heal the soil from the ground up and in fact even below the ground, then you start to see these higher level organisms come back into play. And then voila, you've got birds picking through, eating those cabbage loopers. You've got all sorts of beneficial things going on. So to me, that was my number one most impactful lesson for 2018. Because it took me, it just rounded me out, I think, as a gardener. It brought me from really creative DIY methods for doing urban gardening, hydroponics, microgreens, et cetera, into a larger scale. So the raised bed, the in-ground bed, how do you work and heal that soil? And it's just a really big thing for me this year, which brings us to number two. Number two is observation and gardening as a lifestyle. So I think a lot of people, myself included, certainly when I started out, I almost thought of gardening as like a to-do. Oh, I got to water my plants. I got to pick the weeds. I got to harvest the thing. It was almost chore-ish in its structure in my head. And so for me, when I worked it into my lifestyle itself, certainly it helps actually just running Epic Gardening as a business and life. But you know, I think anyone can do it and probably people can do it much better than me. If you're out there and this isn't a problem for you, well then, number one, I'm envious. But number two, congratulations because the level of just sort of working it into your lifestyle and observing what's going on really helps you develop as a gardener because you're going to say, Oh, you know, I noticed that when I did a foliar feed on this particular plant, it just didn't respond as well compared to this plant. And why might that be? You really start to think for yourself, which is what it's all about. You know, it's great. And of course I'm grateful that everyone watches videos and podcasts and photos and articles and all that stuff. And I certainly do the same. But there's definitely something to be said for time in the garden and, and conscious time in the garden, like practically watching and observing what's happening. And so you're actually getting all that info into your head. You're saying, Oh, you know, it does make a lot of sense that, that if I heal my soil, that the mycorrhizal fungi will start to extend my plant root system and all these little things start to click. You know, there's knowledge and there's wisdom. And the way I think about it in the garden at least is knowledge is knowing a thing and wisdom is seeing that thing actually play out in the real world. Now that's what I'm all about here at Epic Gardening. Number three is going to be just the, just consistency. I mean, it's very practical. It's very simple. And it's a principle of the universe almost. It's not just a gardening thing. But if you are consistent with either your studies of plants or your cultivation of plants, I mean, it's all too easy to forget. I mean, some plants, you might remember these from my pothos propagation video. They're doing well, but I'll be honest with you. I did forget to water them for maybe a little bit too long. And so building a little bit of consistency in the garden is, is really big. Then you don't miss your windows for harvesting a plant or maybe you need to hand pollinate. You don't miss that window. Maybe there's a very sensitive plant as far as watering is required and you don't miss your watering window or you don't overwater. It's just the level of care, self care over time in the garden. And that applies to everything. I mean, if you're working on a business, grinding at it day after day, making small little changes, small little improvements is much better than doing nothing for three days and everything for a day and then rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. And it's the same for our bodies, right? Like if we eat healthy food over time, which is certainly something I personally struggle with, then you don't have to worry about these major issues down the road as much. I mean, never rule anything out, but if I'm not eating burgers 24 seven, heart disease is a little bit less likely, right? Those are my three. The Soil Food Web, this book by Jeff Lohenfels, observation and sort of the gardener's lifestyle, building it into a way of life versus like a thing you have to do. And then just keeping at it in a small way day after day. So that brings us to the end, but I have to challenge a couple people. So I would like to see my friend California Gardening do this video. I love his channel. He's one of the biggest gardening YouTubers out there. And in fact, I learned so much from him when I started gardening that I definitely feel like I owe him a debt of gratitude. And I was fortunate enough to go see his garden last year. So it was fantastic. The video for that will be somewhere in the description if you ever want to check it out. But I would love to see his lessons. And then I would love to see Hidden Harvest Grow Lights lessons. I just got a couple grow lights graciously sent out. So I'm going to be doing a review on those soon. But he's always down there in my comments making notes, giving me suggestions, helping me out. And so I wanted to say thank you to him and extend a little shout out. If there's anything that he would like to say as far as his gardening lessons for 2018, hydroponics maybe, lighting maybe, it would be very interesting. So I would love to know. And until next time guys, definitely grab this book. Maybe it's a holiday treat to yourself. I'll see you next time in the garden. Good luck and keep on growing.