#4 From Seed: The practical magic of growing your own food

In today's episode I'm going to be talking about a basic skill, something that I consider should be a life skill but in reality probably most of the people that are going to be interested in learning this skill are going to be home gardeners and people that want to grow their own food.

But I think basically anybody who wants to eat should know how to do this.

So we are going to be talking about growing from seed, specifically vegetables and food crops.

And it's something I really wanted to talk about quite early on in this podcast, because like I said, I think it is a basic skill.

But over the years, when I've been talking to customers and other gardeners, I've been I'm surprised to realise that a lot of people don't even try growing their food from seed and they just default to buying in punnets that have been already grown.

The other thing I hear quite a lot is people have tried and they've had too many failures and just find it a little bit too hard.

There's quite a few things that can go wrong and they've just defaulted back to growing from these punnets and ready-grown food.

veggie seedlings from the shops so back in the day when i used to run the nursery i used to grow a lot of our veggie seedlings and herbs that we sold in the shop myself so i um I learned pretty quickly what can go wrong when I was doing it on that scale, growing those veggie seedlings for sale.

I'm going to share my experiences with you today because I know it can feel a bit tricky and a bit intimidating at first but honestly once you understand a few key things such as like soil depth, timing, watering and what your seedlings need as soon as they germinate and push through the soil, it can become one of the most satisfying and easy skills And it's going to open up a whole world of opportunity to you in your garden and in your diet as well.

And that would be one of those first advantages, I'd say.

One of the biggest advantages is, yeah, the amount of variety that you can then grow opposed to just like buying those, you know, punnets from your hardware store.

There are so many different varieties out there.

So if you can master this skill of growing from seed, you're probably going to become a bit like myself and a professional seed holder.

But you're going to have so much access to some really cool varieties that are out there.

I'd say as well the cost saving angle is massive.

A packet of seeds versus a punnet of six seedlings you get so much more for your money and of course if you save your own it becomes essentially free and that's something I really encourage our customers to do like all our seeds that we grow and sell are open pollinated so you can save seeds from them.

There's also something I think is really special about growing from seed that's probably overlooked a lot of the time and that's just the experience of it.

You start with this tiny object that looks inert like it doesn't have any life in it at all and then you give it the right conditions and it cracks open and pushes up through the soil and over time becomes this living plant that feeds you.

I just think it's like witnessing magic.

It's so cool.

And I just think in a world where a lot of people are really disconnected from nature and struggling a little bit in that way, I just think it's a really amazing process to be part of.

And you don't have to live out in the country to enjoy this skill.

You can just be in an apartment and raising seeds on your balcony and have that connection to nature.

And I think that's really special.

So That would be my number one reason for growing from seed.