Transcript
Jennifer Gulizia: Today's guest is Tasha Medve creator of The Purposeful You and author of the newly released The Purposeful Gardener, currently a number one bestseller in gardening books. Tasha lives in Victoria, British Columbia, where her journey into gardening and intentional living began during early motherhood.
Jennifer Gulizia: As she and her husband Conrad prepared to welcome their first child, making conscious, sustainable choices for their home and family became a priority. And that curiosity grew into a passion and eventually a community.
Jennifer Gulizia: After moving to Acreage and building their dream garden, Tasha began sharing how food, flowers, and thoughtful design can transform not just our backyards, but the rhythms of our daily lives. Through her work, she inspires gardeners to grow more food, more flowers, and more joy, creating spaces that are productive, beautiful, and deeply nourishing.
Jennifer Gulizia: In today's conversation, we talk about purposeful gardening, blending beauty with abundance, designing gardens that truly work for real families, and what it means to create a garden that feels like home.
Jennifer Gulizia: Welcome Tasha to the Backyard Bouquet podcast.
Tasha: Thank you so much for having me today.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. What an honor to get to chat with you. And wow, your book just came out and it's already a number one bestseller in gardening books. Congratulations.
Tasha: Thank you so much. I have loved watching everyone get their books and open their books and it's just been a whirlwind of a week. So thank you so much for having me here too.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. Well, I have my copy sitting next to me here today for our conversation. And before we dive into the book, can you take us back to the moment where the purposeful you began? What shifted for you when you were expecting your first child?
Tasha: Yes, so my journey began when I was about five months pregnant. When you start to think about the cleaning products in your home, you're thinking about how can I make this nursery eco-friendly? What's the best way to live healthy and set a good example for my child?
Tasha: And i started thinking about my childhood and my moments in the garden with my mom. and tasting that carrot for that first time. And I started thinking, well, I want to share with everyone my sustainable living journey and everything I'm learning because I wanted to inspire others to make purposeful choices in their lives. So when my son was three months old, i started the Purposeful You as a outlet, a creative outlet to share my journey.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. It's amazing how when you're preparing for that first child, there's so many new thoughts that go through your mind and all of a sudden you have this new responsibility that you're you have to care for someone else and your priorities really shift overnight.
Jennifer Gulizia: How old is your son now?
Tasha: He is six and i have a daughter who's three as well.
Jennifer Gulizia: Okay, so this journey has been a six year journey into growing the purposeful you and now writing the purposeful gardener as well.
Tasha: Yes, it's surreal to say that out loud. Six years.
Jennifer Gulizia: So
Jennifer Gulizia: That's amazing. that's That's a long time to be doing that in the blogging and gardening industry. You talk a lot about conscious choices on your platforms. What did that look like for you in your early days of gardening and homesteading?
Tasha: It started with what can we bring into our homes that is um that is less toxic and less wasteful. So I really did focus on groceries. I started focusing on food. I started focusing on packaged goods. And that's when it really, it really began as a non-toxic low waste blog.
Tasha: And then it grew more gardening because people really wanted to learn to garden. They wanted to feel a little more self sufficient in their own homes. And the gardening content was one of my most popular topics.
Jennifer Gulizia: Well, you were so smart in a sense that maybe you unconsciously created a gardening content right before COVID. because so many people turned to gardening during COVID. So I imagine that so many people started looking to you as you were a couple steps ahead of them already with your garden being established.
Tasha: Absolutely. It was an opportunity to dive into gardening more. I was still, i was on mat leave, but I was self-employed. So I didn't have a very long mat leave and COVID hit. And you really did think about what do you want your daily lives to look like? What is, what do you want to ah provide for your child?
Tasha: that has to do with sustainability and gardening. And that was something a lot of people thought about during COVID.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. How did gardening become such a grounding force for you in particular? Like, what was it about it that drew you to it and made you expand? Was it because people were coming to you and absorbing your content? Or was there something deeper that made you say, this is what I'm supposed to be doing?
Tasha: I love this question. i My kids really brought me back to the garden. They made me see the beauty in a worm, in the bees, and I realized that i just found the that best version of myself in the garden, and I realized that i wanted others to feel this as well, feel this empowerment, Every January, you get to dream about what your garden will look like. You get to decide what varieties you're going to grow this year. Am I going to grow pink tomatoes, purple tomatoes, yellow tomatoes?
Tasha: The hope that gardening brings every year brought me so much excitement that I dove into gardening, I think really before the audience really realized I was into it.
Tasha: And I'll let you know something that changed drastically was i had, well, I lost my dog and I could not post for about three weeks.
Tasha: Couldn't. And i finally posted and I posted before and after photos and videos of the garden. And I wanted to inspire people because this was in January to grow something that's meaningful and beautiful to them.
Tasha: and my account grew from 10,000 to hundreds of thousands of followers. And I think that my dog guided me to saying, this is what you're meant to do in this world. And I just ran with it. I ran with knowing that people want to see garden content. They want to learn from me and my unique techniques and just how I present a honest way of growing and how people should grow for themselves. And I just want to inspire them to find their best version of their selves in their garden.
Jennifer Gulizia: I'm so sorry about the loss of your dog, but what a wonderful way to honor your dog's life and find comfort in such a sad and hard time in life.
Jennifer Gulizia: I've lost several dogs and it's never easy. They become such a huge part of the family. I mean, if you don't have a dog, you don't understand when someone's like, it's my third child or whatever, but they really do become part of the family.
Jennifer Gulizia: So what a beautiful way to honor your dog.
Tasha: They do.
Jennifer Gulizia: I read in your book that you even talk about ways to honor our loved ones in the garden. Did you do something to honor your dog in your garden?
Tasha: I What a beautiful way to honor her in print, you know, forever. i decided to add a section in the book called bringing meaning to the garden.
Tasha: And it's all about bringing children into the garden. and honoring a loved one or a pet and ways you can create meaning and purpose and create a memory in your garden that can last a really long time. Whether that's seasonally, they plant a flower for their loved one or for us, we planted roses for our dog at our entrance gate. And she greets us every time we walk into the garden. and and that's where people can create their own purposeful garden.
Jennifer Gulizia: Yes, that's adding true meaning to the garden. I love that.
Tasha: So I'm very honored I could share that with everyone.
Jennifer Gulizia: Okay.
Jennifer Gulizia: Now, was it because you moved to acreage that you started gardening? Or were you already diving into your garden before you moved on to the property with land?
Tasha: Yes, so we started with a small garden in ground at first with my brother and sister in law, we all live together and they were green thumbs. And I was in a sales job and I was out and about and I enjoyed the harvest, but it took me a couple of years to really think to really get into the gardening and fall in love with that hope and excitement every year. And um so we started with an in-ground garden, quickly went to raised beds.
Tasha: Raised beds were more manageable, less pests. of the Raised bed gardening is my preferred way to garden for families and busy busy lives. And I learned a lot over the years about vegetables.
Tasha: And then I decided to learn more about herbs and flowers and growing in harmony. And then we moved to the acreage where I was able to go through the designing, planning and planting process to create this dream garden to share with the audience of how how you can do this.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that you got some experience prior to moving to your home where you're at now so that you could start over. You had all of this knowledge that you were able to take with you and then design exactly what you wanted the second time around.
Jennifer Gulizia: Did you design by yourself or did you have help in designing your current garden?
Tasha: We designed it all ourselves. It was probably the 60th design that went through. you know, my biggest thing, if someone's going to start a garden at their brand new home, they have to learn the sunlight and take the time to understand their property.
Tasha: So I redrew the the design quite a few times. As we we're watching the sun, as we were using Sunseeker apps that are out there, i highly recommend. You can follow the sun throughout the whole year.
Tasha: And so we we did design a few different different ones before we came to our final, which is a normal process. But I also was able to bring in new things that I was learning online.
Tasha: I was getting inspired by other gardeners. And I saw this one gardener in Alberta, Canada, put a pumpkin arch over her picnic table.
Jennifer Gulizia: Thank you.
Tasha: And I thought,
Tasha: I want to do a pumpkin art. So then I added a pumpkin art to the design. So it really evolved. And i also want to tell people you can do a few different phases of your garden. So our garden has three different phases to incorporate and expand on, which is pretty beautiful.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. We moved to a new farm last year and we did not do much this first year. One of the pieces ah pieces of advice that we were given was to watch for a year before making any any decisions that would create a permanent situation or something that would be harder to redo in the future.
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: Because I want to have a raised vegetable garden on our farm for us and our employees to be able to enjoy the harvest. And I'm so glad that I listened to that advice because where I was picturing having raised beds in a garden, sunlight's not our issue, but water is and the drainage.
Jennifer Gulizia: And we either need to fix the drainage in that area or we need to find another location on the farm. So I love that you mentioned watching and understanding the ground and the sunlight.
Jennifer Gulizia: And then I love that you talked about being able to evolve it, that you don't have to do it all at once, because I think sometimes it's really overwhelming.
Tasha: Thank you.
Jennifer Gulizia: Like it's easy to pick up your book. And I know you talk about this in your book too, but you look at some of these pictures and you go, that's so beautiful, but there's no way I have time to design. all of that in one season. So for someone who has seen a garden like yours that has these beautiful pumpkin arches and these raised beds, what's your advice for getting started?
Tasha: Just get started with two raised beds. Two raised beds, you can learn so much. And i do a lot of templates in the book so that people can do a spring bed and a fall bed and just understand growing food, understand the beginning to the harvest and how different vegetables and fruits grow. And so this book can apply to anyone with two raised beds or 20 raised beds. And I think it's important to have stages of your garden because you're going to evolve. We're all growing as humans. And we I didn't know I never expected to have the flower rose. That was phase two in the book. We talk about beyond the vegetable garden. I fell in love with flowers. And I decided to dedicate 30 rows beside the garden of flowers. And I never expected that in the first year.
Tasha: So in trust the process too.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. Well, you're in good company on this podcast with a whole bunch of flower lovers between flower farmers and backyard gardeners. And part of the reason I wanted you to come on this podcast today is because I've heard from a lot of people who grow flowers and either maybe grew vegetables in the past or are interested in adding them into their garden this year because as food costs are rising, a lot more people I think are thinking about how do I incorporate vegetables back into my flower garden?
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: because costs have gone up so much that we want and knowing where your food comes from. Not everyone has a vegetable farmer or farmer nearby. i know most people do, but there are some people that do need to be able to grow their own if they want to have those fresh, healthy vegetables. So I'm excited for our conversation today.
Jennifer Gulizia: Is your family involved in the garden with you?
Tasha: Yes. Well, my husband listens to all the crazy ideas that I have, and then we decide what we're going to build together. But he grew up on a farm with his grandparents and he always wanted to be on a farm. And he's the big driver behind the blueberry rose and our raspberry rose and our strawberries, because as a child, he remembers searching through strawberries and finding them under the leaves. So it's so beautiful that we both have this passion that we can share together. And our kids have been in the garden since they were in a bassinet. And I'm very grateful. And I think it's so important to get our kids into the garden, learn how how food grows, watch your parents or your parent decide what they're going to grow that year. what What failures did they have? What didn't work? What did work? You know, let's hold worms. Let's watch the sleeping bees in the morning.
Tasha: it I do believe that kids will try more vegetables as well when they grow food.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. I know my daughter is more willing to try something if it came from the garden than something I bought at the grocery store. She's like, I don't have to buy try that. But it it's that curiosity piece of seeing it grow from a seed and wanting to know the next step in that process. I love that.
Jennifer Gulizia: I should jump back to where we were. I got distracted there and wanted to ask you about your family. ah But you mentioned your 30 rows of flowers that you have growing as stage two.
Jennifer Gulizia: Let's talk about that before we go on to stage three. What kind of flowers are you growing in your garden?
Tasha: Yes. So my first year, i decided to add Dahlia Tubers. Now i want to edit for one moment because I say Dahlia. Some people say Dahlia.
Tasha: How do you pronounce it, Jen?
Jennifer Gulizia: Well, I'm in the Pacific Northwest. I say dahlias. And sometimes I have to go, wait, how did I just say it? I swear there's like five different ways to say it depending on where you are in the world.
Tasha: No.
Jennifer Gulizia: And I love that. I love that there's so many different ways to say it. And I'm probably going to leave this in the conversation because I'm sure our audience is laughing and listening, going, yes, I've heard people say it so many ways.
Jennifer Gulizia: And I don't know that there's an actual like don't know. I mean, the American Dahlia Society maybe has a pronunciation of how you're supposed to say it, but I say dahlias.
Tasha: and we
Jennifer Gulizia: And you I love that you say it differently because you're in a different part of the kind or a different part of the world than I am. You're in Canada. So I don't think there's a one right way.
Tasha: and we I agreed. We usually say dahlias and then some people go, I've never heard it that way. And I said, I know Floret says Dahlia, but then i just never know what, to how to say it.
Tasha: So I do think it's Dahlia, Dahlia, tomato, tomato, just have fun with it.
Jennifer Gulizia: Exactly.
Tasha: Right?
Jennifer Gulizia: yeah
Tasha: So I fell in love with my friend's farm and she had a Dahlia farm and I got a lot of tubers from her. i am very, um,
Tasha: I'm very conscious of where I source seeds and tubers from and so I wanted to support my local farm and know that these tubers grow well here and they're, you know, they're environmentally, they're conditioned. So I supported her and I started with five rows of dahlias and then did zinnias, cosmos and straw flowers and sunflowers.
Tasha: And I focused on what I thought were the easiest ones. And I learned a little bit about straw flowers and i quickly became in love with straw flowers. i i don' I think they're very underrated. They are so beautiful and they last forever. You can dry them as you know.
Tasha: um So I started growing more and more flowers and all from seed and really understanding the process. But I started with five only.
Jennifer Gulizia: Okay, I love that. And is that still what you're doing is just five varieties or five types of flowers, I should say?
Tasha: Mostly yes, because I went into the whole perennial world, which we can talk about that in a bit, but you know, work smarter, not harder with perennials. But I think I like to focus on what is also really popular in my area, what I can sell bunches to other florists for weddings. So those were really popular ones.
Tasha: And I hope to do my own workshops, always inspired by you and other female farmers. So this is the female farmer year, right?
Jennifer Gulizia: It is. It's the International Year of the Female Farmer as designated by the United Nations, which I think is so amazing. There's so many incredible females that are growing food, growing flowers, and providing for people around the world. So, and I think it's, I need to look up the statistics and the numbers. I know that they're very, um, disproportionate in percentages of how many women versus men there are in agriculture. So I think it's going to be great to bring awareness. Flower farming, I think we helps balance out that unevenness in the scale, but I love seeing more women get into agriculture. So I didn't realize you sell your dahlias, or not just your dahlias, but your flowers.
Tasha: I just started last year and this is the first year I'm doing a few workshops. My word for the year was connect. I want to connect with people.
Jennifer Gulizia: Ooh.
Tasha: Two years of writing a book. I was very in my own world and being on social media and online, I'm talking to myself a lot in the camera. but So I wanted to do workshops this year. I'm in a, um,
Tasha: I'm in Victoria, BC, but I'm in a little pocket of farmland. And so I can i can sell my own produce and flowers. So it's unique to where I live.
Tasha: And I'm just dabbling in that I'm learning right now, what works and what doesn't. And, and I'm learning for people from people like you and all your knowledge that you're sharing with everyone.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. That's awesome that you are selling both your vegetables and your flowers and what a great combination to be able to offer. so
Tasha: Yes, thank you.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that you, for those that are watching the video version of this episode, you can see your dried straw flower behind you. And I love straw flower too. I love these that you said they're underrated because there's so many uses for them.
Tasha: And
Jennifer Gulizia: So let's see here. So you have cosmos, dahlias, zinnias, straw flower, I leaving one out?
Tasha: Sunflower
Jennifer Gulizia: And sunflowers, thank you. And then you hinted at perennials. Is that phase three of your garden?
Tasha: Well, I actually ended up bordering the garden because we have our grass backyard beside it. We bordered our garden right away. And on year two, i dedicated a whole 52 feet by four feet of of native plants to bring in the important pollinators and support our local ecosystem. So I worked with one of our native flower nurseries here, Satin Flower Nursery, and they guided me because it was a full sun to part shade bed as you went every 10 feet because we have really large cedar trees.
Tasha: So it was so neat to work with them with this different sunlight and have this adjacent to the to the vegetable garden. And I tell you, i will always find hundreds of bees on the goldenrod and a million um ladybugs on the yarrow. Like they just, they bring in the best pest control and most natural pest control.
Tasha: So I really started following falling in love with the idea of planting once, cutting down and then it grows back year after year. And I think more and more people need to incorporate that in their vegetable gardens. It can even be in pots around their raised beds just to bring in the the pollinators.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely, because the vegetables need the pollinators just as much as the flowers. So you probably have this great symbiotic relationship going on in your garden between the vegetables and the flowers and then your natives. We're working on adding more natives to our farm.
Jennifer Gulizia: One of our ways that we're going to combat the drainage this year, because we, ah our driveway, our property is about 1200 feet long and
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: over that 1200 feet there's about a hundred foot slope so it's fairly gradual and it's it's consistent it's not like one part drops off and then flattens out but we have so much snow and rain runoff from the mountain down to the river that's below our property that it's i swear there's an aquifer underneath our property this time of year so much of it is underwater so we're working with some people to help us figure out how to excavate and we're going to create trenches along the contour lines of the earth and then when we dig up that land we're going to mound it on the higher side of the land so that water can flow down into the trenches to help with the drainage lower down and on those mounds we're going to be planting native gardens with the flowers to bring in the bees and ladybugs and all of the other beneficials as well but i love that you mentioned the goldenrod i love goldenrod for filler
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: And I sometimes, if I don't harvest that early in the morning, it is so hard to harvest because there's so many bees on it. They absolutely love it.
Tasha: Yes. Oh, I love it too. And I think that's a really good thing to talk about drainage because yes, we had to put four big trenches underneath our vegetable garden.
Jennifer Gulizia: You did.
Tasha: yeah And, and take it away. So it's so important to get, learn your land before you build that vegetable garden. That's so such a good point. And native plants, um, there's so many that are really good in woodland or wetlands. And so we planted, um, Columbine close to the woodland because it's just, it just thrives in the part shade and Columbine is so beautiful. Um, so I fell in love with native perennials. And then of course, um,
Tasha: other perennials like echinacea and different types of rubecchia and veronica and verbena. So I've just had a lot of fun bringing flowers into the garden after growing mainly vegetables for almost 10 years. It's just been really fun to play with flowers and it's brought me so much joy. I mean, that's why I added joy in the book to say food flowers because it brings you joy. The flowers I never expected the joy of seeing that many bees in one space before. It's a beautiful sound.
Jennifer Gulizia: It is, isn't it? We always say in the flower industry that obviously food nourishes our body, but flowers feed the soul.
Tasha: That's so true. I love that.
Jennifer Gulizia: So they may not sustain us in the same way, but I think that they're a necessity that we need in our lives and that everyone deserves to have flowers in their lives. so I love that they you're showing people how they can combine the vegetables and the flowers together.
Jennifer Gulizia: What does phase three of your garden look like?
Tasha: Yes, we just finished that. So phase three, we decided to add more vegetables. And we did a raised metal garden.
Tasha: So we did metal boxes. And I do talk in the book about finding your garden personality, because you might be more modern, you might be more all natural, you might like whimsy or orderly. And I feel like I have three different personalities in my garden. because i just keep growing with my garden personally. So we did more of a modern metal raised bed garden and we added our dream greenhouse, which we just had our first season in. So the greenhouse is that goal that that you hope for to grow all year round. So that is phase three of our garden and we just completed it, I guess, last summer, but we haven't had a full year with the garden yet.
Jennifer Gulizia: Oh, that's amazing. a greenhouse is such a game changer. We just had one built on the farm. in September, so it makes a huge difference.
Tasha: oh, I'm going out there right now and I'm cutting some greens and we had broccoli and Swiss chard and it's just beautiful. We've had a really warm winter and here in Canada and on Vancouver Island. And so I still have vegetables growing outside, but I would never be able to grow greens all year. And it's just, I feel really fortunate to be able to provide for my family in that way.
Jennifer Gulizia: I know I can't believe it, it's January we're recording in and I'm harvesting kale and beets at the farm, things that self seeded this fall that I didn't even mean, like, I mean, I'm grateful they're there, but I didn't purposely put them there this time of year. i don't think I've ever harvested vegetables in the Pacific Northwest in January before.
Tasha: It's definitely my biggest harvest ever, and especially in the last 10 years. So we're still expecting that snow. it usually gets cold now in February, but it's unusually warm.
Jennifer Gulizia: Yes, it is. Now you mentioned also, and I know you talk about it in your book, you grow vegetables, flowers and herbs. Is that correct?
Tasha: Yes.
Jennifer Gulizia: What herbs do you grow and where do you plant those in your garden?
Tasha: Yes. Ooh, I would love to dive into companion planting. Companion planting was a buzzword this last couple of years, but to truly understand it easy terms, I wanted to to share how I do flowers, food, and herbs and vegetables and and berries in the garden. um So herbs, I like to do perennials in the corners of the bed, like the sage, the oregano, the rosemary. And and then I love to add the annuals with their companions.
Tasha: And so I'll add dill and cilantro. And then in the corners, I'll add flowers with that before the main vegetable in the beds. I usually have five to seven different types of plants in one raised bed because they all work in harmony. It's so beautiful. so you have the tomatoes, the basil, the marigolds, the lettuce, and just having herbs and flowers and vegetables in one bed working together is so beautiful to witness.
Jennifer Gulizia: Are there any herbs and vegetables or herbs and flowers or flowers and vegetables that should not be planted together?
Tasha: Yes, don't plant dill and carrots. They do not work well. Even dill and peas, people say it works. I haven't had that that experience. um There's a lot of things that don't grow well with brassicus, so the kale and the cauliflower. um So in the book, I do talk a lot about different companions and some of my favorite companion planting combinations are in the book.
Jennifer Gulizia: What is your number one favorite companion to plant next to each other?
Tasha: Yes, I don't want to be cliche with the tomatoes and basil. So going to talk about alysium, sweet alysium with brassicus. So if I have Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and then I have radishes in the middle, sweet alyssum taking over the whole bed, like a, literally like a blanket of flowers underneath.
Jennifer Gulizia: Aha.
Tasha: Oh, it is my absolute favorite. And, and they, they're just natural pest repellents too, alyssum. It has a scent that a lot of pests don't like.
Tasha: So that is one of my favorite beds to witness. I think it just looks so beautiful too.
Jennifer Gulizia: That is such a great idea because I always lose my kale in the summer to aphids and whitefly.
Tasha: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: And sometimes I'll plant them as a trap crop at the end of like my sweet peas and then I'll chuck that kale because they just, they're a magnet for them around here. But I use sweet alyssum at the base of my dahlias.
Jennifer Gulizia: And this was the first year in years that I have not done it. And I'm kicking myself to this day because I'm still digging my dahlias. This year with our new farm, we thought we had terminated our cover crop of clover.
Jennifer Gulizia: Well, it was either another seed bed that was laying dormant or we didn't terminate all the way and it grew back. And so i was like, oh, well, I've got something else growing at the base of my dahlias.
Tasha: Thank you.
Jennifer Gulizia: We'll just leave the clover. and I didn't sow my sweet alyssum and I have bags and bags of it still. Well, the clover does not go well with dahlias. I can tell any of you that, that it makes digging dahlias four times harder than it should be. But when I plant the sweet alyssum, my pests are so minimal. It's amazing. The spider might stay away, the aphids, all of the problems that I normally have, and it suppresses the weeds.
Jennifer Gulizia: So I love that you suggested with kale, maybe I can keep my kale alive this year with some sweet alyssum.
Tasha: Yes.
Tasha: Yes, absolutely. It also helps retain water too. It's almost acts as a mulch, a natural mulch.
Jennifer Gulizia: Yeah.
Tasha: I think it's a powerhouse. Not enough people know about it and or use it or put it with it with their vegetables. And thank you for giving me the tip on planting it with your dahlias. I love that. i'm going to try that next year.
Jennifer Gulizia: Yeah, because otherwise dahlias can be such a monocrop. And when you're trying to be regenerative, it's like, what can you plant with them? And so for us, we have done, we don't plant the sweet alyssum. The one thing I will say is if you're going to plant sweet alyssum or anything with the dahlias, make sure they're up out of the ground. So I usually wait to sow any seeds until my dahlias are almost ready to be pinched. And then I'll sow the sweet alyssum into the ground or not. I just i don't literally even just walk my rows and I sprinkle it because it grows and expands so much. And then I also will put buckwheat. I'll put buckwheat down the centers, but if you're not careful with buckwheat, the buckwheat brings in all the bees, but if it's if you let it go to seed, then it will just keep coming back every year and self-sowing, and it can make it a little hard to harvest the dahlias, but I try and pull it when it's about chest high, but those two are my favorites as a little side tip for with your dahlias.
Tasha: I love that. I think cover cropping is so important for people to learn and I'm really diving into it now being here in on Vancouver Island, I've always covered all my beds with leaves, we just have so many maple trees, and it's been easy to cover with leaves. And I've tried some cover cropping, but I find I don't plant it early enough because I'm so lucky to have such a big fall garden.
Tasha: But then there's other areas that I can start incorporating. So that's something that I want to learn and dive into more is cover cropping for soil health. It's so important.
Jennifer Gulizia: It's so important. We actually hired a soil agronomist for our farm, and i think she's going to be joining me on the podcast later this year to talk about what we've been doing at our farm and how you can cover crop and heal your soil or improve your soil structure.
Tasha: Oh, I love that. Yes, please do. Please do that. Tell her it's needed. and in simple terms, right, there's so much information out there. So just some simple terms and times to plant, um I think is just so important and learning the companions of of what to plant cover crops with is really important.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. One of the things that surprised me with cover crops was that in the past, I'd always done a single cover crop. So a single seed like mustard seed or buckwheat, but really you want to do a blend and they all work so symbioically symbiotically together.
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia: So our last cover crop mix was seven different seeds last summer. And it was beautiful. It had everything from millet and, um, Now, of course, that I'm on the spot, I'm forgetting all the names. We had clover, millet.
Jennifer Gulizia: I can't even remember. There was a grass and rye. Everything, though, in that one other than the clover terminates at the end of the season if you have a killing frost, which was nice.
Jennifer Gulizia: So that's a big thing is making sure.
Tasha: yes
Jennifer Gulizia: My biggest lesson learned on cover crops is only if if you need to use that bed and you're trying not to go until again, You want to have something that self terminates with a killing frost.
Tasha: Yes, i've learned I've learned that one too.
Jennifer Gulizia: So.
Tasha: So that's a good one. It's almost like mint. It's like, way where, why does this keep coming back?
Jennifer Gulizia: Totally. i think the garden is such a great teacher. It's like there's always a new lesson to learn, which leads me to what are some of the lessons you have learned from your own garden?
Tasha: I've definitely learned to trust the process. I think a lot of people, if they're gardeners, they'll know, you know, March, we're so excited. April, we're wondering why nothing's growing.
Tasha: And May, you know, the the ups and downs of the gardening and just trusting the ebbs and flows. I actually go back to my photos of April and May so that I can make myself feel better of where we're supposed to be at because I always want to be that next month ahead.
Jennifer Gulizia: Totally. Uh-huh.
Tasha: So trusting the process. And I think just nature is so beautiful. It is so neat to see food grow. It is so beautiful to see, um, We have lot wildlife and where we live now, the squirrels, the bunnies, the quail, and just seeing everything work. And of course I have to protect a lot of our crops and I've learned the hard way, you know, the bunnies will eat all the carrot tops if I if i leave the cover off for one night, but seeing how the birds and the bees, everything work together, you hear about it, but when you witness it, it is so beautiful.
Jennifer Gulizia: Mm-hmm.
Tasha: I think I just feel that it's just taught me that I found my best version of myself and I love being in there. And it's very, the mental health aspects of gardening is so healing.
Tasha: And I think that even if someone doesn't think they have a green thumb, just plant one herb in the backyard, plant one thing this year and just see how it makes you feel. Plant something easy that doesn't need a lot of watering so you don't feel like if you're going to kill it this year that you don't have a green thumb. But just try. Just start a garden and see how it makes you feel.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. And sometimes when you kill that plant, it's the best teacher. You learn what you did wrong. And most of the time you don't make that same mistake a second time in your garden, I found. But i I still kill plants every year and I've been growing.
Tasha: Absolutely.
Jennifer Gulizia: I just wrapped up my seventh season as a flower farmer. So there's always going to be a new lesson. Every season is a new season. so i love that.
Jennifer Gulizia: Let's see here. um I wanted to talk about your pumpkin arch and your wall of peas, because those are both so unique and so fun.
Tasha: Mm-hmm.
Tasha: man
Jennifer Gulizia: And I feel like you have them in raised beds, but I feel like people could even incorporate them if they're growing in rows, you could still have an arch connecting two rows. How did your idea come to be for those or do you have any tips on growing pumpkins up and over an arch?
Tasha: Yes, so the pumpkins are actually in the ground. There's no raised beds for the arch.
Jennifer Gulizia: Okay.
Tasha: And I just, um we put some old fence posts that we had and we we bent over two cattle panels. And I saw someone do ah a pumpkin arch, a really small one um online. And that what inspired me, I honestly did not know how big it was gonna be, how it would turn out. And the first year,
Tasha: was such a surprise, such a garden magical moment that I started planting it year after year. And so I can plant pumpkins year after year because I just plant I just put compost there.
Tasha: I just put compost every year for another six to 12 inches. And we have a lot of clay soil. So six inches below is a lot of clay. So I have to mound it a little bit. They're heavy feeders, pumpkin arches. are pumpkins. So if you want to grow it on an arch, don't plant too many plants.
Tasha: Do really, really, really strong compost rich soil or pure compost and find the variety that works for you. So the Moringa variety is such a perfect size because it's big enough where you go oh my gosh, is that pumpkin going to fall in my head, which is the number one question I get asked. And I say, actually, pumpkin vines get stronger as the pumpkins grow. It's this beautiful thing that I've never had a pumpkin fall in my head.
Tasha: um So find the variety that works because it's nice to find pumpkin that isn't too heavy. These ones are around 12 to 15 pounds max, but I can grow 20 to 22 pumpkins at a time on the arch and it's so neat.
Jennifer Gulizia: Wow. how
Tasha: And it's my third year now. Last year I mixed varieties um just to see. I wasn't sure if the cross-pollination would work and obviously I couldn't keep the seeds but I tried to do a fairy tale look with pumpkins with warts on them and pink princess pumpkin and so I'm just having fun every year with the arch. so Get some cattle panels, make sure that you are supporting the pumpkin arch. And in the book, I actually have exact DIY plans on how to do it. And six pages dedicated from start to finish to grow pumpkins in general, but how I grow it over the arch and how I care for it.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. We are planning to rip out an area of grass and put in some raised beds this year. And that was before I discovered your book. And then when I found your book, I thought, oh my goodness, how perfect timing this is because we want to grow more vegetables in and not a huge capacity. We've got lots of amazing vegetable farmers around us, but it would be fun to just allow our daughter to go out in the backyard and pick a few or have that. There's nothing like a fresh sliced tomato from the garden. i as a kid, only had grocery store tomatoes and I never liked them. And when I had that first tomato out of the garden, it was like, this is why people like tomatoes.
Tasha: It's so memorable. I still remember picking my first carrot out of the garden with my mom when I was nine or 10, running to the hose and just spraying it off a little bit, eating it with some dirt on it and thinking that was the best carrot I ever had.
Tasha: So I want everyone to feel that memory. It's very memorable.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. Well, we've talked about a lot today, Tasha. Is there anything i haven't asked you about either about the purposeful you or your new book that you want to share with our listeners today?
Tasha: Yes. First, I want to touch on the wall of peas quickly because you did ask.
Jennifer Gulizia: Oh, yes. Thank you. i did.
Tasha: No worries. The wall of peas are a big part of the garden design because in our last garden, we had raspberries in in a long row and they they had a pest. I can't remember what happened to them, but it was like root bound. So we had to take them all out.
Jennifer Gulizia: o
Tasha: And we were living with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who had two young kids and Quinn was one or two at the time. and we decided let's just fill this with peas. And we did a 20 foot wall of peas.
Tasha: and it was so cool.
Jennifer Gulizia: wow
Tasha: Everyone coming over to our house for dinner and parties, they thought what that is the coolest thing ever. So with the garden, we decided i didn't want a 20 foot um wall.
Tasha: If you have flower rows, I've seen some farmers do, you know, just like sweet peas, you can do 20 foot rows, 50 foot rows. But I decided to put that in the incorporated in the vegetable garden as a screen as a way to I think of the garden as a room. I'm walking into a room and I wanted to create a wall on all four sides. And whether that's a path or our native flower garden, but the wall of peas are our our north side of our garden. So it didn't shade any of the vegetables, but we could create this wall, this statement in the garden. So I don't follow any spacing rules and I plant densely and it has worked for us for four years now. And it is just such a such a neat statement. So I want to inspire people that sometimes you can lose a plant to have space for a new plant and then something beautiful can be created out of that. So like you said, every year is a new year. Every year brings new hope and growing something new. So I wanted to share the wall of peace story.
Jennifer Gulizia: That's a great story. And I love the lesson there too, that something new can sometimes sprout from what didn't work. So that's so beautiful.
Tasha: Thank you. And I'm just so honored to to be here. the Purposeful You started as a way to share my sustainable living journey. And I've connected with so many people now across the world, which I think is beautiful. The internet can be beautiful if you use it in ah in a way that is inspirational and educational. And I'm finding my people online that all have the same passion and values. And i think it's just really neat. So the purposeful you um is just I feel like it's just getting started. This has been such a beautiful thing to grow a following but to write a book and publish a book. And i share a lot of resources and blogs on my website, the purposefully you.com. And I'm just here to connect with people on a real level. I think we're all craving that right?
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. You chose a great word for this year because as people, especially as AI, I think is growing, people are looking for that authenticity and that human touch.
Jennifer Gulizia: No one wants to lose those connections. I think that's what the garden does. And I think why so many of us always say that flower friends are the best friends because the connections are real and the joy, we we get to experience the joy.
Tasha: I
Jennifer Gulizia: When you experience the joy with someone else, it deepens that connection and that bond. So You couldn't have chosen a better word, I think, for 2026. What a great word you've picked out. And your book is opening up all of these opportunities and connections for you.
Jennifer Gulizia: Where is your book available?
Tasha: Yes, so the book is available on Amazon at Barnes and Noble, Indigo here in Canada. It's available in the UK for pre-order, Australia soon. So the UK and in Australia will be able to get their copies in June and pre-order starts soon. So mostly North America right now. Always check your local bookstores first, support them.
Tasha: And you can go my website, the purpose for you.com. And I have a link there to where all the places you can purchase the book right now or preorder.
Jennifer Gulizia: Amazing. So I've started doing something new in 2026. And before I wrap up, I am starting to ask every guest the same quick fire questions. So if it's all right, I've got a few fast questions to ask you here before we say goodbye today.
Tasha: Oh gosh, okay, on the spot. All right, I'm ready.
Jennifer Gulizia: On the spot.
Tasha: I would
Jennifer Gulizia: What is your favorite flower to grow and why?
Tasha: say marigolds. I love marigolds in the vegetable garden and they can be a cut flower and they have so much purpose in the garden. So I fall in love with marigolds.
Jennifer Gulizia: You know, I used to not like the smell and the smell has grown on me. It's funny how with time, certain things like marigolds and feverfew are two that I couldn't stand. And the more I grow them, the more i like them. So I love that. I haven't had anyone else say that yet. Why do local flowers matter to you?
Tasha: It's important for locals to understand what can be grown in their area. So between native plants and supporting a local flower farm, ah the chemicals and the toxic is the biggest aspect that I want people to know, even at grocery stores, depending on where it's sourced. So sourcing flowers from your local farms that have regenerative practices and organic practices is something that I try to talk a lot about and I think is really important for everyone's health.
Jennifer Gulizia: Absolutely. There was just an article that came out that maybe I can link to in today's show notes. And it talked about the hidden dangers of the chemicals in imported flowers. So I'll link to that in today's episode and I'll share that with you too.
Jennifer Gulizia: Okay, next question here. What is one thing you wish more people understood about the floral industry?
Tasha: Oh, really on the spot here. but
Jennifer Gulizia: really on the spot and you can take it from your lens you're growing a garden with flowers and vegetables so
Tasha: As someone that is new in the industry and still um finding their way, when I talk to different people about where they get their flowers from, especially for weddings or putting it on their cake, I think it is so ah I think it's important for everyone to have understanding of chemicals, but also work collaboratively and not competitively. So for flower farmers here in Victoria to be collaborative and share the same message about the importance is really important.
Jennifer Gulizia: That's a great answer. Okay, this next one. This last year, one of my words of the year was gratitude, and I've decided to carry that into 2026. So I'm asking every guest as their last question. What are you most grateful for that flowers have given you beyond the blooms?
Tasha: The moment to get lost in watching them sway in the wind, like just seeing them sway in the wind, seeing the bees find the nectar, it's just so beautiful. And I think just being able to get lost in the moment of looking at flowers, I'm very grateful for it, slows me down.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love it. Thank you. And I guess that's not my very last question. My last question is for you to be able to connect with our audience today or so that they can connect with you. Where can our listeners find you?
Tasha: Yes, they can find me on Instagram, the purposeful you and Facebook. I also have a website, the purposeful you.com and I have resources and blogs a about sustainable living, easy garden to table recipes and gardening advice. I do have a YouTube and, um, and honestly i respond to every single DM on my Instagram. People don't think it's me. And I go, yeah, they're like you've replied. I said, Yeah, human. So i think don't think because someone has a lot of followers doesn't mean they want to connect on a real level. So send me a DM because I've responded to everyone.
Jennifer Gulizia: I love that. Well, Tasha, it's been so fun to connect with you today. I appreciate you taking time to come on and share with us. I know you're so busy with your book launch right now, and there's so many exciting things coming on. So it means so much that you joined us on the Backyard Bouquet today, and I hope to connect with you again in the future.
Tasha: Thank you so much for having me. it was an honor. I'm looking forward to connecting with your audience and just growing more flow flowers, food and herbs this year.
Jennifer Gulizia: Yes, and if you haven't already, make sure you go pick up a copy of The Purposeful Gardener, or if it's not available in your town, ask your local bookstore to bring it in. Thank you. Bye-bye.
