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Julie HIlsen:
Life of Love With Julie Hilsen. Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love, where we gather with curiosity and love and understanding and compassion, and every week we meet to see how we can add to our life of love and help our earth, because no one can live their best life without this bowl that we live in, this wonderful earth that gives us so much, and so this is a very special episode this week with Greg Peterson. He has devoted his life already to the study of. He’s a lifelong student of permaculture and society and sociology, so he’s he has a long-term podcast. He has several podcasts, but his the biggest one he has right now is the Urban Farm podcast, and he’s coming to us from Asheville, north Carolina, one of my favorite places to be outside and look at art and creation, and I just can’t wait to create this episode with you, greg. Thanks for being here.
Greg Peterson:
Thank you for having me. I’m excited.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, so I’m just. I’m excited too, because you’re just I’ve just skipped over my notes. I wanted to tell everyone that you started out in Phoenix and that you’re bringing joy and knowledge and multidiscipline focused to your commitment to society, nature and sustainability for our health. Oh, that’s a that’s a good resume there thanks oh, thanks for being on life of love.
Julie HIlsen:
I can’t wait to share everything, all the nuggets of wisdom that you’ve picked up and the insight, and it’s just such an important topic to me and dear to my heart. So this is a great, great time for me.
Greg Peterson:
Awesome.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah. So, greg, can you share with my audience what sparked you initially to even care, because a lot of us just take a lot of this stuff for granted. So what sparked you?
Greg Peterson:
Well, I don’t know. I was as close as I’ve ever been able to get to it. I was born with it. Around the time I was 9 or 10, I got my first fish aquarium and I was interested in raising fish to eat, not to watch, in a fish aquarium. And when I was 14, I wrote a paper for my biology class I was what about eighth grade or something like that on how we were overfishing the oceans. And since then it’s just been a roller coaster of our food system, food system, health, learning about it and sharing with people the impact that food has on our life. And you mentioned several terms sociology. I went back to college late in life and got a sociology degree. Interestingly enough, and along the way I discovered this.
Greg Peterson:
I sometimes call it the P word, permaculture, and I like to call permaculture the art and science of working with nature. So in 1991, I’m standing on my front porch and I pull the mail out of the mailbox I’m 30 years old at this time and there’s this flyer in the mailbox about permaculture. And I stood there right this moment, what? 30? Some years later I’m standing there as I’m seeing this real time and it’s this flyer for this thing called permaculture, and I remember running into the house. I was married at the time and I said Michelle, I’m going to do this course, come and do it with me. I have no idea how that flyer found its way into my mailbox and I dove into a 72-hour permaculture design course. And permaculture is, I like to call it, the art and science of working with nature. How do we work in the flow of nature rather than against nature? We human beings, we think we know how to do it better than nature. I have news for you.
Julie HIlsen:
I was just going to say your quote from 1996.
Greg Peterson:
You want me to say it or do you want to read it?
Julie HIlsen:
Yes, I’d be honored for you to say it, because it sets the stage for what we’re talking about.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, our downfall as a species is that we’re arrogant enough to think we can control mother nature and stupid enough to think it’s our job. For me, discovering permaculture I’m getting chills right now as I share this, 34 years later. Discovering permaculture was a wow. There’s something that we can call the way that I think, because, especially back then, what I saw in farming did not make sense to me. I visited a fish farm in 1981 or 82, and they were harvesting the fish, cleaning the fish, and when you catch a fish, you get about 30% meat and 70% everything else, and they were throwing away everything else. They were throwing away 70% of that fish, everything else. They were throwing away 70% of that fish. So back in the early 80s, I put on paper what we would now call a regenerative fish farm and basically what that means is that you have a farm that produces nothing but products, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a product that you sell. It could be a product in the case of the fish, leftovers, fertilizer for your things that you’re growing. So putting together a circular system where everything gets used in the system, because when you think about nature, nature uses everything. There’s nothing to throw away, there’s no pollution, there’s no waste in nature. It all gets used. It all gets used. And when I discovered permaculture it was like wow, we can actually build systems where everything gets used. So that’s been my job for the past 33 years is to figure out how to put systems in place that in permaculture we call them regenerative.
Greg Peterson:
Human beings make a particular kind of system. It is a degenerative system. Degenerative systems, there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. Everything that we’re talking about, everything that we’ve created in our culture, is degenerative. The headphones you have on the desk that you’re sitting in front of the computer, the cars, the roads, our cell phones they’re all. They break down over time and when they break down they get thrown away wherever away is. And so studying permaculture for 33 years at this point has given me an opportunity to look to see how we can put more regenerative systems in place in our culture. And now I want to point out that I said more regenerative because I don’t believe and I’ve been looking for 30-some years for human regenerative systems. I don’t believe we as human beings can actually be totally regenerative. So it becomes a process by which we look at the systems that we have in our life and push them more toward regenerative.
Greg Peterson:
So here’s a perfect example. I’m a gardener. I’ve been growing food for almost 50 years. I started in my teens. Again, I don’t have a clue how that happened, it’s just it’s what I’m supposed to be doing here.
Greg Peterson:
And when you eat, there’s scraps right, you have food scraps. And so at the urban farm, the house where I lived for 32 years in Phoenix, we had what I called a regenerative composting system in place, and here’s what it looked like. So we make food, harvest it out of the yard, buy it at the grocery store, buy it at the farmer’s market. We harvest food, we cut up what we cut up and there’s a pile of extra stuff. You could throw that away wherever away is, or you could make it into something, and there were multiple things that I used to make it into at the urban farm. Thing number one was we had chickens in our backyard. Chickens are pets, they’re great diggers, they eat bugs, they eat weeds this is called stacking functions, by the way and they give us eggs every day. So those chickens were turning those food scraps into eggs and chicken poop, and chicken poop is fertilizer for our garden and chicken poop is fertilizer for our garden.
Greg Peterson:
Thing number two that I did at the urban farm was worm composting, and that’s what I’ve done here. So we’ve been in Asheville, north Carolina, now for two years. We bought four acres just outside of Asheville and the first thing that I put in place was a worm composting system. Worm poop or worm castings are gardeners’ gold. They’re absolutely magical to put on your gardens. So what I was doing in Phoenix was I had a large worm composting system that I built and those worms were turning the food scraps into fertilizer. The third thing that I would do with composting is something called black soldier flies. Black soldier flies will eat 50% of their weight a day in food scraps and they make these little grubs. You’ve probably seen them if you have a compost bin. You’ve seen them in your compost bin. You may have seen them flying around your yard. They look like a wasp and they’re these little protein nuggets as larvae that the chickens love to eat. So I was turning food scraps into grubs that the chickens loved.
Julie HIlsen:
So wait, okay. So how do you contain these soldier’s ply things?
Greg Peterson:
Just in a bucket. I set up a bucket system.
Julie HIlsen:
And they’re in there. And you’re supposed to slide the compost in there or your food waste in.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, just put the food scraps on top and they eat it, and then after about three or four weeks, oh so it’s the larvae in there, it’s not like you, open the lid and the flies come out.
Julie HIlsen:
It’s the larvae, exactly I was like how in the world? Because I had some worm compost in my basement.
Greg Peterson:
Ah, very good.
Julie HIlsen:
I did, but it got a little stinky, I don’t know. I wasn’t very good at it.
Greg Peterson:
I think I overfed them. Yes, there’s definitely a process, so it wasn’t.
Julie HIlsen:
My husband wasn’t a big fan of having worm castings in the basement. But you can’t put them outside because they’ll freeze in the winter.
Greg Peterson:
In the winter. That’s right.
Julie HIlsen:
But I love the idea. I totally adore the idea. But the larvae and I have a friend who has chickens and sometimes they have to buy things to feed them, so that’s a really great tip I’m going to make sure that’s in our show notes.
Greg Peterson:
Perfect.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay.
Greg Peterson:
And then the fourth thing I did with the scraps was they eventually made it into the compost pile, if there was anything left, and all of these. What I want to point out, what makes this regenerative is we’ve got food scraps coming in. I’m either feeding it to the chickens, the compost pile, the soldier flies, or the worms Worms they’re all making something else that actually helps me build soil. So then all of that the chicken poop and the compost goes into the soil to grow healthy food that we then harvest.
Julie HIlsen:
We prepare the food, we have scraps and the cycle starts all over again and the cycle starts all over again, and then you don’t have to put that resource out by the curb and pay for someone to come haul it to wherever a way is.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly Well, and here’s a crazy term so in 2008 or 2009,. I was working on a project in Phoenix and we did some research and according to the EPA Phoenix metropolitan there’s 4.7 million people in the Phoenix metropolitan area. They make a certain amount of food scraps that get thrown away every day. I’m going to give you the number. I want you to tell me the timeline.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay.
Greg Peterson:
All right. So in Phoenix. Phoenix makes 1,100 tons of food waste every.
Julie HIlsen:
I say every three days.
Greg Peterson:
Every day. Every day 1,100 tons of food waste.
Julie HIlsen:
So that’s why that major golf tournament’s hosted by the waste management company there every year.
Greg Peterson:
There you go.
Julie HIlsen:
Because there’s so much.
Greg Peterson:
There you go. It’s a crazy amount of food waste and when you throw it away it goes into the landfill. It makes methane. When you compost it, when you turn it into soil, it helps you grow healthy plants and I know that was a long way around the barn to get to regenerative. But those kind of systems, when we connect all the dots in a circle, that’s how nature works and that’s what we do in permaculture is we look to see how we can mimic natural systems so that they’re circular, not linear.
Julie HIlsen:
And that goes with your quote. I mean, you don’t have to recreate the wheel, just see what’s going on around you and go with the flow. You don’t have to carry it all on your shoulders. Just be a participant that doesn’t inhibit right, I love that go with the flow.
Julie HIlsen:
It’s, um, it’s concerning because there’s so much, well, like you said, food waste, but then also the way, the way their resources are used to get food from the farm, from the rows of whatever is growing, to the distribution center, to the and I write about this in my book, you know it’s like, if you can buy local and eat local, it’s just more fresh, it’s more nutritious. You get to meet that farmer. Sometimes there’s co-ops, there’s a lot of options that are a lot better for everybody.
Greg Peterson:
Yep Well that’s one of the reasons that Heidi and I decided to move to Asheville is the thriving nature of the food system here, and I’m not talking restaurants, although the restaurants are amazing. I’m talking about the amount of small farms here. The first week we were here, I found out about this organization called ASAP. It stands for Appalachian Sustainable Food, something. The area that I live in used to be a huge grower of tobacco, and when the tobacco market collapsed 30 years, this nonprofit started to teach tobacco growers how to transition to growing other things, and there are literally thousands of small farms in this area of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s amazing to see it’s yeah, so that was one of the big draws for us here.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, well, I mean I was going to ask you. I mean I something came across my feed today and it was called. It was this system and I was going to ask you if you know. Obviously you have your thing in place and it’s awesome, but these things keep coming up. It’s called I think this one is called the well, and you put all your scraps in. In 30 days it creates what they showed looked like soil and then, if you didn’t have a yard to put it in flowers you wanted to give better soil to, they’ll come and pick it up.
Greg Peterson:
Interesting.
Julie HIlsen:
And I never had seen that before. I’d seen that you know we’ll make your waste into soil, but not that somebody who’s living in an apartment could put it. You know, just take the bag and then put it in a box and send it to them.
Greg Peterson:
Oh, there you go.
Julie HIlsen:
So I thought that was really interesting. I didn’t know if you had heard of that, but I guess it’s on my mind and it comes up on my feed. It’s crazy.
Greg Peterson:
I’ve seen systems like this before. They’re not actually true composting systems. I haven’t found one yet that’s a true composting system, because composting is a biological process and it takes months. The couple that I saw they were dehydrating the food, and so is it a good thing. Well, if you are turning your food scraps into something that can you know, eventually go into a garden, yeah, I think it’s a good thing.
Julie HIlsen:
All right. Well, it’d be something, I guess.
Greg Peterson:
Right.
Julie HIlsen:
Well, I have to tell you what freaks people out about this Whenever you’re talking about poop and then food and it’s sort of it’s a stigmatism. It’s like, and you know, I grew up my grandma always had a really great strawberry patch and she’d take her dirty dishwater with all the pieces of food and she’d save the dishwater all day and she’d just give her strawberry patch, this wonderful food, waste water and she had the sweetest, most delicious berries.
Greg Peterson:
I was going to say they thrived, right?
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, they were so happy, so I don’t get all that freaked out about it. I was concerned they thrived, right. Yeah, exactly, they were so happy, so I don’t get all that freaked out about it. I’m an Ohio girl and it’s like you did something different in Ohio, and so sometimes when you talk about like the worm poop or the chicken poop and it being part of it, how can you let people know that there’s a sterilization process or how can you alleviate their concerns about sanitation around it?
Julie HIlsen:
Because I think it’s something everyone thinks when you say it, but not a lot of people want to ask.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, well, the problem that we have with poop in our culture and farming is usually comes up around using human poop for growing food, which is not a good idea. But with worms and chickens we’re so far away from them genetically that, having the stuff that comes out of the rear end, it’s a nitrogen nugget and as it goes into the soil, as it works its way into the soil, it’s changing from that nitrogen nugget and the biology of the soil and I talk about healthy soil and how to create it. We can talk about that in a minute of the soil and I talk about healthy soil and how to create it. We can talk about that in a minute. The biology of the soil, all the microbes and microbial stuff that’s in there, transitions whatever we think might be in there that’s nasty into something that the plants can uptake. So it’s the same process that happens in nature. You know it’s the same process that happens in nature. You know it’s a natural system that happens in nature and when we throw chemicals at it it breaks that system down. In fact, throwing chemicals at our gardens is more problematic than throwing chicken poop and worm poop at our gardens.
Greg Peterson:
Okay, worm poop at our gardens, because what’s happening with the chemicals is they’re negatively impacting the biology of the soil, and in order to grow healthy, happy food that tastes really great, you have to have healthy soil, and there’s five components of healthy soil, and dirt is one of them. Okay, and that dirt usually, if that’s all, you have, good luck growing anything. So what we have to do is we have to facilitate building healthy soil, like what happened in a forest. So in a forest what happens? Leaves fall, branches fall, deer come along, birds come along, they poop. Birds come along, they poop, and the soil in the forest breaks down to this really nice stuff that grows food, that grows plants.
Greg Peterson:
And what we do in permaculture is we look how can we build soil in a happy way that grows healthy, nutritious food, and so that’s where my five components of healthy soil come in. Dirt is part of it, and you all have plenty of dirt, airspace, water, organic matter and everything that’s alive in the soil and in the organic matter. That includes poop, and it includes sticks and branches and leaves and mushrooms and all kinds of stuff. In fact, if you have mushrooms showing up in your garden, it’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing If you have mushrooms in your garden. You’re doing something right.
Julie HIlsen:
Nice.
Greg Peterson:
So when you’re starting your garden, the fix is to add organic matter. So remember five components dirt, airspace, water, organic matter and everything that’s alive in the soil. By adding organic matter and I’m talking compost, I’m talking manures, I’m talking leaves one of the best things, and it drives me nuts when people rake up their leaves and throw them away. Here it is again, wherever away is.
Greg Peterson:
And throws them away because those nutrients in those leaves are amazing. Some of the best compost that you can have is leaf mold compost, because those leaves are falling from the trees and they have those nutrients in them and when you’re raking them up and throwing them away, you’re throwing away all those nutrients.
Julie HIlsen:
And I imagine, leaves just the way they’re designed.
Greg Peterson:
They also invite air spaces too because of their shape and they have a little stem. Let’s water get in.
Greg Peterson:
So the good news is is the fix to broken dirt is to add lots and lots of organic matter and one of the things. So I’m a new gardener here in Asheville, north Carolina. There were no garden spaces here in my house there was none of that, so I’m having to build all my own and I’ve been doing raised beds because that’s the quickest way to get garden beds up and running, and I’ve been spending $30 to build the raised beds out of wood and $300 to put healthy soil in the beds. That may sound extreme, but I only have to do it it once, because then what I’ll do next year is I’ll just come come in with some worm castings on top or a little bit of fresh compost, and that adds the nutrition we need going forward very nice yeah, and, and back to your poop question again, the poop has nutrients in it.
Greg Peterson:
It has nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. That’s the NPK that you see on the bag, or the three numbers On fertilizers. You’ll see three numbers. It’ll say 10, 10, 10, or 3, 6, 2, or 5, 5, 5, or one. I saw the other day 30-0-0. And the first number is the amount of nitrogen and the amount of nitrogen makes green. So somebody was putting a 30-0-0 on his lawn.
Julie HIlsen:
They just want it greener.
Greg Peterson:
They just wanted it greener, which is okay to do that. However, usually anything over the number 10 in those numbers is non-organic, and I am an organic aficionado. I only do organic. So the stuff I fertilize with is like 6-6-5 or 1-1-1. And the organic ones are easier for the plants to uptake.
Greg Peterson:
Plus, the organic ones don’t negatively impact the soil life, because it’s that soil life, the microbes and the mycorrhizae and the little bugs and all that kind of stuff that is actually working with the plants and connecting the plants’ roots with the nutrients in the soil. And what you get out of this is better tasting food. Food tastes better and it’s better for you. Plus, from a health perspective, you’re not uptaking those chemicals, because any of those chemicals that you use in your garden end up in your food, end up in your body and then end up with this happening. Your listeners can’t see this, but my right hand this is my right hand all the time. These days they call it an essential tremor and I don’t know what’s too essential about it for me, but it’s a tremor.
Julie HIlsen:
And you think it’s from contaminants.
Greg Peterson:
I do. Yeah, I do. It’s a neurological thing and I have been for the past three years. I’ve been trying to figure out where lead comes from. I have an unusually high amount of lead in my body and we tested everything. We, you know, are just really super conscious about what we’re putting in. We only do organic and Consumer Reports about I don’t know. Three months ago put out a report on lead in chocolate.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, wow.
Greg Peterson:
And I used to eat a couple of pounds of chocolate a month. It was all organic. So you know, when it’s organic we think we’re doing something. Okay, right.
Julie HIlsen:
But we’re not testing for lead in our chocolate.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly.
Julie HIlsen:
If you’re not testing for it, you’re not going to find it.
Greg Peterson:
Right, exactly. So. I’m actually in the process of doing some lead testing on some products, but one of the I don’t know if you saw this a couple of months ago there was this and it happened in North Carolina this family, they, their kids, their, you know, three and five year old, ended up with lead poisoning. So they tested their house, they had the state come in and look for lead in paint, they tested all their food. They, you know they were doing this, doing everything they could to figure it out, and this mom was persistent and she finally figured it out. You know what? She started a national movement. The lead was coming from applesauce.
Greg Peterson:
And the applesauce. They were using cinnamon in the applesauce and the lead was coming from the cinnamon.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, my goodness.
Greg Peterson:
Wherever they were producing the cinnamon, they were cutting it with a product to make it last longer that was high in lead. And so you know all the flags went off at the FDA and you know they did a recall and all that kind of stuff. But those are the kinds of things that we have to start paying attention to and it comes in our food system and you know, this tremor is really propelling forward my mission in life, my mission. So in 1991, several things happened. I discovered permaculture.
Greg Peterson:
I discovered a book called Ishmael. It’s by Daniel Quinn. It’s a fictional work about a conversation between a gorilla and a man and the gorilla is the teacher and Ishmael is the gorilla and he’s Ishmael is the gorilla. He’s teaching us how to, how our food system has become what it is, and one of the things that they share in the book is that food used to be free. The third thing that happened right, the third thing that happened for me in 1991, which kind of pushed that whole notion forward was a friend of mine went sailing in the South Pacific and they anchored in an island looking for a grocery store and the people on the island kind of looked at them funny and they said go pick your own.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, well, that’s why I was. I loved this book. Wild Edible Plants. You know, like our food, foods all around us. We just need to learn. We have to remember the gifts. We’re abundant. There’s a it’s a myth of separation right and we just have to remember oh, I like that.
Greg Peterson:
I’ve never heard that before. Myth of separation. I’m going to look that one up.
Julie HIlsen:
No, I mean, I just made it up. There’s a special term, there’s a I forget what it is. It’s the. It’s a spiritual concept that you know, the idea that you’re alone, you’re never alone. So I can’t think of the exact term, so I just said myth of separation nice it is a myth we’re all connected exactly, exactly and then.
Greg Peterson:
So the fourth thing that happened for me in 1991 uh, set me seriously on this journey, and that was I did a seminar at a place called Landmark Education. It was their advanced course and they had me create my vision for my life. And the vision now remember this was in 1991. That’s what 33 years ago. I am the person on the planet responsible for transforming our global food system.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh man, that’s a lot to carry.
Greg Peterson:
It is, but I’m not carrying it.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay, good.
Greg Peterson:
It’s a what gets me up in the morning, it’s a vision for myself. It’s not a burden. It’s what has me drive forward. It’s what has me do everything that I’ve done around the food system in the past 30 years Nice, figuring out how to eat local. I’ve said this many times over the past couple decades the most important thing we can be doing right now is figuring out where our food comes from and how to grow our own, because the stuff that’s in the grocery store that’s ultra-processed, is not food. It’s not food. More and more is coming out.
Julie HIlsen:
Like they’re putting this coating on it. If you start looking into it, you get a little bit disillusioned, but there’s hope. There’s hope when you educate yourself and then you realize there’s other options but there’s hope.
Greg Peterson:
There’s hope when you educate yourself, and then you realize there’s other options and it’s easy.
Julie HIlsen:
It’s a matter of three days. You can grow your own sprouts, like you can sprout in your windowsill, in a mason jar, like just look it up people on YouTube. You can make your own microgreens in three days.
Greg Peterson:
I can’t remember his name, but I had a guy maybe five years ago on my podcast and Sprout Salads is his book. He wrote an entire book on how to make a salad out of sprouts on your windowsill in three days. Yeah, isn’t that crazy awesome.
Julie HIlsen:
But we’ve been put in these formulations or these, these commercial consumerism like you go here to buy and it’s. It’s a false narrative. Until you can, you can figure out. There’s other options, like you’ve been fed a way to live and you don’t have to swallow it exactly, I love all those metaphors and that, what you just said.
Greg Peterson:
That that’s amazing. Love it.
Julie HIlsen:
I feel it in my heart and I can’t say that I have a self-sustaining garden in my backyard. But I have my favorite things. I have my blueberry bushes. And I just love my blueberry bushes and I have my fig trees and I have my herbs, and then I grow the things that bring the hummingbirds back my salvia and my butterfly bush. What is it called again, lantana?
Greg Peterson:
They love my lantana.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh yes, and I just saw my first hummingbird right before the eclipse hit on Monday.
Greg Peterson:
Nice.
Julie HIlsen:
Welcome back, guys. You know that’s how I want people to know Just plant and grow what brings you joy, and that’s the first step, and it makes a difference. Just anything you can get in the ground and be proud of and take care of, nurture. You’re creating, you’re sustaining, and it’s beautiful. It doesn’t have to be this big thing, we just have to support it. Mother Nature knows how to do it, we just have to let it.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, so you mentioned sprouts. That’s usually the second thing that I tell people that they can do. The first thing that you can do yeah, the most expensive thing in the grocery store to buy and the easiest thing to grow are Well, green onions are really easy. Yes, they are, and herbs.
Greg Peterson:
Oh, herbs and onions are an herb Basil, basil in a sunny windowsill. You can do it, it’s really that simple, and the key to growing it successfully is make sure you put a nice potting soil in that pot. Remember, I spend $30 on the garden bed and $300 on the soil that goes in it. You get what you pay for when it comes to the soil, and the soil is the basis for growing healthy, happy, organic food.
Julie HIlsen:
So where would you tell people Would they go to, like their local nursery, to buy that potting soil?
Greg Peterson:
One of the things that I tell people to look for is, first, local. If you can do it, there’s this really great. In fact, you can probably get this soil where you’re at as well. It’s called Dirt Craft.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay.
Greg Peterson:
They’re a soil manufacturer. They’re taking compostables, they’re composting it and the company’s called Dirt Craft. So if you can use Dirt Craft soil, that’s great. I buy it in big three yard totes, so I buy it three yards at a time, the next thing. So Dirt Craft for me is local. If you’re in Phoenix, Arizona, where I lived for 55 years, there’s a, a company called Tanks Green Stuff. They have amazing soil products there. Hank’s Green Stuff they have amazing soil products there. So find local number one. Number two you’re looking for something that’s OMRI certified.
Greg Peterson:
Omri certified soils are grown organically, so they’re not using chemicals and harsh things to make them, and, interestingly enough, the company you just mentioned, miracle-gro, has an OMRI-certified product.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, that’s. Exciting, it’s catching Exactly.
Greg Peterson:
So that’s really what you’re looking for is the OMRI certification.
Julie HIlsen:
OMRI certified.
Greg Peterson:
Okay, thank you, yeah, and I put together an entire series of videos on soil and you can find them at HealthySoilHackedcom, and I put together an entire series of videos on soil, and you can find them at HealthySoilHackedcom.
Julie HIlsen:
Yes, yes, I will put that in the show notes. I have it up. Yes, okay, that’s good to know.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, go there and learn. It’s free and it’ll get you a lot more information about growing your gardens.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, I mean, it’s a concern and when you realize the difference and the benefits and then the joy, the joy of having that and sharing it like you know. It’s like if you can give your neighbor something that you grew like, we always want to bring a gift over, why does it have to be something plastic or something ordered from Amazon? Let’s bring them.
Greg Peterson:
Oh my God, you see how excited I’m getting here right. So this property that we bought is four acres in Asheville. It’s a dream property for me. For the past 20 years I’ve been wanting to go to someplace quiet and off that direction. Off to my left is a road, so the road on the right is the main road. The road on the left is a road into a neighborhood and we have a downstairs garage that sits on the road into the neighborhood. And I had this vision when I moved in here. Oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be cool to put a farm stand out next to the garage? So the way people drive by next to the garage, so the way people drive by, they can, you know, pick up what they want out of our farm stand and drop something in the bucket or not?
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, or Venmo you, I mean, we have all these ways to pay each other now, exactly, so.
Greg Peterson:
So remember the worm composting. Yes, I did worm composting for a year when I first arrived here and I was taking the worm poop out of the bottom and I was adding it to our gardens, and one of the things that I do when I plant fruit trees. That’s one of my big things. I love fruit trees. You plant them once and you get food for decades or even hundreds of years, right. And so when I plant fruit trees, I put a pound of worm castings in each hole. Well, I didn’t have that much, so I was putting like maybe a half a pound in each hole and, magically, in those worm castings were tomato seeds, because you had given the tomatoes that you didn’t get a chance to eat.
Julie HIlsen:
They were part of the compost that the worms had processed.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly, oh my God, exactly. So last season, from June to October in June the tomato plants showed up, so I planted. Last summer I planted 160 fruit trees and berry bushes. Wow, that was part of getting the farm in here, right. In fact, a hundred of them are elderberries. So I’m an elderberry farmer now and one of the things that happened is we had from those worm castings in the rows where the fruit trees are at. We had over 30 tomato plants grow and we were harvesting five pounds of tomatoes a day.
Julie HIlsen:
So you could just put them by the road and be like, hey, who wants to make tomato sauce or whatever you know salsa.
Greg Peterson:
That’s exactly what I did. So we have a Facebook page for our street, so I put a table down there that said free tomatoes from Greg and Heidi’s farm and I posted it on Facebook and the response in the neighborhood was amazing. We got, we had a couple of families bringing us baked goods. We have one guy that works at a nursery. He was bringing us nursery plants just because I gave away that stuff and it was always my intent to put a farm stand down there just to feed people. I don’t need to get paid for it yeah so that was.
Greg Peterson:
That was exactly. Yeah, that was a magical moment for me. It’s like, wow, how cool is that?
Julie HIlsen:
I mean, it’s just that’s what we’re here. We’re here to love each other and have community and feel a part of something and just feel connected. So I just love that you’re finding that in Asheville and you have more peace and you did so much in Phoenix. I was watching YouTube videos from like 10, 20 years ago and you were teaching people how to do vertical. I think it was vertical planting. It was a whole webinar.
Greg Peterson:
Oh my gosh.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah.
Greg Peterson:
Oh, you mean the tower garden.
Julie HIlsen:
The tower garden.
Greg Peterson:
Oh, let me tell you about. I get excited about this stuff. So in 2010, I get this email from a friend of mine in Phoenix and she says Greg, you’ve got to check this out. And she sent me to a I think it was a YouTube video on Facebook about this thing called a tower garden, and a tower garden is a vertical hydroponic growing system. They call it aeroponics, but’s essentially you put the nutrients in the water and the water Waters the plants and it basically looks like An 8 foot tall Christmas tree when it’s Grown out.
Julie HIlsen:
They’re amazing. Some of them are just Stunning.
Greg Peterson:
Absolutely amazing, and so I Actually. Now I had a third of an acre in Phoenix. I had a old growth food forest in Phoenix. Basically, what that meant was that you could just walk out of the yard and harvest food. And in 2010, I bought a tower garden, and what we used to do with the tower garden is we would start it up, because in Phoenix it gets to 110, 115 degrees in the summer. You can’t grow greens for salads like that. So we used to in Phoenix. We used to run the tower garden from March till October and we grew lettuce, spinach greens for salads and we grew it inside.
Julie HIlsen:
Nice.
Greg Peterson:
And so I you know. It’s another technology, it’s another way to grow healthy food for you, and the cool thing about the tower garden is that the nutrients that they were putting into the tower garden is they’re all natural oh good, it’s like well sometimes my friend.
Julie HIlsen:
She told me about the neptunes. It’s like a liquid fish. It smells like fish when you open the fish.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just got some of that as a tester the other day. It’s called FOOP.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh yeah.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, you know, as a podcaster they send me all kinds of awesome things, nice, oh, and here’s the. Omri certified label right there. Oh yeah, omri.
Julie HIlsen:
There, it is right there. Oh yeah, OMRI. There it is right there. O-m-r-i listed. This podcast is available on YouTube so everyone can see the visual, because I really think this is the best to be seen, because this is such an energetic conversation.
Greg Peterson:
Well, you know, it’s the most important thing we can be doing right now, because highly processed, manufactured food is not good for our health. It is not good for us, and you know, they put chemicals in the food products to make them tastier, so they eat more of them, and yeah, it’s not good.
Julie HIlsen:
Genetically modified things are coming up more and more.
Greg Peterson:
Oh my gosh.
Julie HIlsen:
Anything natural flavor, people. That’s fake. It’s not a natural thing. It’s a natural flavor, Exactly.
Greg Peterson:
Have you seen the meme running around on social media that talks about oatmeal one of the major brand of oatmeal and the list of ingredients in the UK? It’s the same product label, but the list of ingredients in the UK is half of what the list of ingredients are in the United States.
Julie HIlsen:
And you think you’re buying oatmeal, but there’s other things.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly, I just buy oats from. Have you heard of a place called Azure Standard?
Julie HIlsen:
I hadn’t heard of that one.
Greg Peterson:
Azure Standard all over the United States and they bring in one load a month. So you place your order and they’ve been around since the 70s and they got a lot of organic products and a lot of bulk products and the truck arrives at the appointed time and 50 people are there to help unload the truck and you get your stuff. And so I buy bulk oats and all kinds of. They have amazing stuff. I bought plant starts there this past month, wow yeah.
Julie HIlsen:
Nashville’s where it’s at man Well this past month, Wow yeah, Nashville’s where it’s at man.
Greg Peterson:
Well, this is everywhere. I used to do this in Phoenix.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay, so it’s nationwide.
Greg Peterson:
It’s nationwide as A-Z-U-R-E standard. It’s an amazing company.
Julie HIlsen:
Nice, I know I have through the Holistic Moms. We do a frontier order, yes, and there’s a lot of bulk in there. But we have to have a certain amount and then it goes to my friend’s house and she has to sort it and it’s a big deal but we still do it. I get my organic cinnamon there.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly, but that makes community part of it. You know I’ve met so many cool people since I arrived in Asheville at the Azure Standard pickup.
Julie HIlsen:
In fact, I saw this Okay, so that’s a great tip If you want to find your tribe, you want to find people interested in this.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly yes, great tip. About a year ago I was picking up and there was this name called Zen Honeycutt. Have you ever heard of Zen?
Julie HIlsen:
No.
Greg Peterson:
Zen Honeycutt is the director and founder of Moms Across America.
Julie HIlsen:
Okay.
Greg Peterson:
And she’s doing all kinds of amazing work. And I mean, I’ve known her name for years In fact I have some friends that are friends with her but I never got to meet her. And it turns out she’s two miles down the road from me.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, I love that.
Greg Peterson:
And I made that connection at my Azure Standard pickup, so it’s a big part of it’s about building community.
Julie HIlsen:
Yes, and just take little steps, you don’t have to. You’re not turning granola. You’re not changing your lifestyle, you’re just adding a little joy.
Greg Peterson:
Right.
Julie HIlsen:
However, you want to do it.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, well, this has been joyful. I mean, how much fun have we had today?
Julie HIlsen:
How much fun. It’s. So great, I know my dream a hawk just flew by well, that’s your third eye, like whenever a hawk comes into your consciousness is that you’re connected to your higher spirituality. That’s a very strong symbol. I have hawks that circle my house all the time. I’m in my podcast room so I can’t see them, but holy cow, that’s really neat.
Julie HIlsen:
I love that. I know I have a dream of my property that I want to have. It’s going to have a spring, a natural spring that I can get the water from. It’s going to have a spring, a natural spring ah, nice that I can get the water from it’s going to have a mountain view it’s going to have.
Julie HIlsen:
I’m going to have my fruit trees. I want blueberries, blackberries I’ll have to ask you about your elderberries but definitely blueberries and blackberries, because I just love that and I well, I’d love to grow mangoes and avocados, but that would probably be at my, the place where I’d go when it’s too cold to be exactly, exactly so.
Greg Peterson:
Elderberries, let’s talk about that real quick. Yeah, I do. I have my podcast, the urban farm podcast, and I’m interviewing in December of 2022, I’m interviewing this young lady who I met here in Asheville. Her name is Samara Price and she is running a elderberry processing company.
Julie HIlsen:
She’s making drinks and it’s so good for your viruses and supplementing your immunity. And.
Greg Peterson:
I said to her Samara, where are you getting your elderberries? And she said well, I get a few here and a few there, but most of them come from Europe.
Julie HIlsen:
And it was hold on what and elderberry honey is so good too, like the bees. Oh my gosh, it’s just so wonderful. I just magic.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah. And so I did a little bit of research and I found that, like 90% of our elderberries in this country come from Europe and I discovered that there is an amazing opportunity. And I discovered that there is an amazing opportunity and I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve had over 30 businesses in my life. I’ve been self-employed since I was 15. And my brain just works this way. I see an opportunity. So I did a little bit of research.
Greg Peterson:
In the moment that I was talking to her, I said, well, heck, I can grow elderberries, not knowing how to do them. So in January of 23, I get a hundred elderberry sticks. Now I’m not talking plants, I’m not talking roots, I’m not talking leaves, I’m talking eight inch elderberry branches, that’s it. And I did a little bit of research and I run a fruit tree education program in Phoenix. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. We have, as I said earlier, I have a very specific way that we plant fruit trees for their success, and so I planted them in four by four, by nine pots and by March. So this was January of 23,. By March of 23, 98 of them had budded out at a 98% success rate Wow. And we planted 92 of them in the ground last summer and they went from 8-inch tall sticks to 3-foot tall bushes when they went dormant in October. And they’ve already broken dormancy this year and a lot of them have grown a foot already, and it’s just April.
Julie HIlsen:
They’re just so happy there.
Greg Peterson:
They are yeah, and so I’m an elderberry farmer.
Julie HIlsen:
You figured out the recipe. I’m sure you found out exactly what they like and then you gave it to them and let nature do.
Greg Peterson:
Congratulations. Thank you.
Julie HIlsen:
Well, you know, see a need, fill a need.
Greg Peterson:
Yes, exactly. Well, that’s what entrepreneurs do.
Julie HIlsen:
Right.
Greg Peterson:
Yeah, I love it.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, greg, this has been great. Oh my gosh, no, no, I love it. Oh, greg, this has been great.
Greg Peterson:
Oh my gosh, no, no, I was just going to tell another story. I’m full of them.
Julie HIlsen:
I got to run because I have. I’ll cut this out, but I have.
Greg Peterson:
I train special Olympic tennis players oh cool On Thursday night, so I got to have dinner ready and I train.
Julie HIlsen:
We have like 18 people come out from.
Greg Peterson:
Don’t cut that out. That’s epic. That is epic Congratulations. That is so cool.
Julie HIlsen:
Oh, it’s just what I do. It brings me joy, right Like I love tennis and I love all kinds of people, and these people are my friends. I’ve been doing it for eight years now, so I mean they’re in my community. People with special needs don’t grow up and leave town and graduate college. Some of our athletes go to college, but usually they’re in our community for their life, with living with their parents and in group homes and this is a way they get exercise and we, we have social time and it’s just really sweet.
Julie HIlsen:
How delightful is that, and we’ve been getting showers, so I don’t even know if it could have rained, since I’ve been down here in my studio, so I’ve got to go check the weather and send out the message. If we’re doing it, oh there you go my phone is blowing up. They’re like Miss Julie, coach Julie.
Greg Peterson:
Well, awesome for you, congratulations.
Julie HIlsen:
It’s just what I do.
Greg Peterson:
Exactly, exactly. So for all you listeners out there, find that peace. For me, it’s teaching people how to grow food. For you, it’s working with young people with special needs to play tennis. How cool is that, and it lights us up.
Julie HIlsen:
Yeah, it’s just fun.
Greg Peterson:
What better is that? You can live a life and.
Julie HIlsen:
God just wants us to be in love with our lives.
Greg Peterson:
Right.
Julie HIlsen:
Whatever that means, like you do that you have a life worth living and don’t let anyone take that away from you.
Greg Peterson:
Amen to that.
Julie HIlsen:
Greg, anytime you want to come talk about plants and growing, and I feel like we could have had a three-hour we could have done a. Joe Rogan today.
Greg Peterson:
Right, exactly, yeah, thank you so much.
Julie HIlsen:
Thank you, and I’m going to subscribe to your podcast too. I’m so delighted to have you in my world. Thank you.
Greg Peterson:
Right back out to thank you.