Check out these resources:
The book: Leaves, Roots, and Fruits
The website: Gardenary
I’d love to know what you’re growing
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Or email miki@leadingbyexample.life (if you’re reading this online)
Hello, and welcome to our final day of gifts, although I hope that these Museletters will continue to feel like gifts in the future.
But today I wanted to share something that, to me, feels like the most fun and actionable thing that I've really gotten into over the past year, and is ramping back up now in the spring, and that is growing your own food.
You know, I grew up on a hundred acres here in southeastern Ohio, and my parents were back-to-the-landers, and they always had a big garden. But somehow I did not get the nuts and bolts of the details of how to garden, and then I lived in cities from the time I was 18 until I was 38 and came back to Athens.
And so just last year I really had my own garden for the first time. And it was really just some pots around my house, and then I kind of went out and helped my parents with their garden out at the farm where they are.
And I kind of looked around for resources, and I mean, we're talking, like, really basic stuff that I do not know. Like, what's compost versus topsoil, and when do you plant things, and how do you water things without killing them, and stuff.
And so, the thing that I found that has been the most helpful, is this book, and this lady. So, particularly, the book is called Leaves, Roots, and Fruits, and she has a whole online set of courses and stuff called Gardenary, and her name is Nicole Johnsey Burke.
But what I really love about it, this whole thing, Leaves, Roots, and Fruits, her whole idea is basically this step-up where you start with the absolute simplest things to grow, and you get more confident as you go.
So leaves, so things like sprouts and microgreens that you can grow inside, even if you have no outdoor space, and then things like herbs that are really resilient and easy to grow and really satisfying. Because I don't know about you, but herbs to me are, like, the gateway drug of growing your own food. Because having fresh dill and basil and parsley and cilantro through the summer, I just adore all those things. They make every dish better.
And then, what you do is you go to, like, lettuces, baby lettuces that, you know, it takes 20 days for them to grow, and you can grow them on a window sill if you wanted to.
And then, you go up to roots, which are like carrots, potatoes, things like that. They're, like, much more forgiving, easier.
And then fruit is kind of the last thing, and that starts with smaller fruits, like tomatoes, and things like that, because they take the longest to mature. They're sort of, like, the most fussy. And then the really long things are things, like squash. So they take, like, a super long time.
But I really she's all about intensive planting, so the beds, if you plant beds, look really beautiful, because it's just, like, all sorts of stuff in there. But the reason she does it is that she's all about you getting more data and more information and more tries. Like, the more stuff you plant, the more you learn what works, what doesn't, you know, like, how to take care of it, whether you like it or not, whether you grew enough or not.
And then I like this way that you sort of slowly progress up. And she just gives you a lot of really tactical details, about how to do stuff. She doesn't assume that you know anything. She teaches you how to build the beds and what goes in the soil and all that kind of stuff.
So, I mean, you can start anywhere with gardening and I recommend that you do, but she has a course called six months of lettuce greens and I think it's a really great place to start. Because what she talks about, which I really agree with, there's so many reasons to grow your own food, aside from even if you don't think that the world is going to collapse and it might be good to know how to produce some of your own food.
But also it's way more environmental. Like, pretty much all salad in the U.S. is grown in, I think, Arizona and California. So if you're not in one of those states, it is being shipped thousands and thousands of miles to you, in these plastic things that you use twice.
But also, if you're just like a foodie, like me, it just tastes a million times better. These tender greens are the kind of things that are really best when they have just been picked. And I've just found it so satisfying to walk out the back door and pick a bunch of little tomatoes and make a tomato salad for myself.
So, I hope you all will think about putting one or two herbs on your windowsill, or having a little outdoor container to grow some—I grew basil last year, and it did amazingly well. I made so much pesto and froze it.
And check out Leaves, Roots, and Fruits; I think, is a great starting point. If you're more advanced, there's lots of other places to go, obviously, but if you're really like me, you're just, like, I don't know anything, I found it super, super approachable.
So, happy birthday to all of you. I've had an amazing, amazing birthday week, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you and continuing to be in more touch.
Lots of love ♥️
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