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The Viking Approach to Pest Management (plus ALL the horticultural sorcery) with the Weedy Gardenβs David Trood
408 Plays23 hours ago
I tell a story about becoming a gardening influencer before sharing an animated and long-awaited conversation with David Trood aka. The Weedy Gardener!
Weedy, Jord and I discuss:
π± Creative land access
π± Body as compost
π± Hearing nature's call
π± Being an eye cell for humanity
π± Showing your failures
π± Why to love the small stuff
π± The all important nutrient cycle
π± Decomposing cane toad
π± Pest management, the Viking way
π± Rhizophagy
π± Nitty gritty on why organic produce is healthier
π± From grandpa bod to garden god
π± Weedy Garden Makeovers
π± Sacred social media spaces
π± Why garden?
π§ββοΈ LINKY POOS π§ββοΈ
𧑠Support Reskillience on Patreon π§‘
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
race scallia Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Riskiliens, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
Katie's Gardening Environment
00:00:17
Speaker
I am back home in central Victoria in bountiful, beautiful Jarrah country where warmer days and spring rains are creating the perfect conditions for germination.
00:00:29
Speaker
It has been bucketing down all day to today, which we saw on the forecast. So yesterday i went full tilt planting seeds, knowing they'd receive a big drink of lightning charged sky juice to get them growing.
00:00:42
Speaker
And I was on such a roll. after sowing our pumpkins and squash and beans and leafy greens, that I just started digging random garden beds anywhere. Along the side of the chicken coop, around the big concrete water tank, extra beds for extra seeds that I just had to sow. This land that we're on it hasn't been super well cared for.
00:01:02
Speaker
The past owner was a fan of cars and round-up and ceremonial bonfires of plastic and asbestos judging by the rubble. As a result, there are many quote-unquote weeds like capeweed and bindweed and cleavers, which are symptoms of compacted soil and nutrient imbalances.
00:01:22
Speaker
And even though I'm the first person to tell you that they're here for a reason and they're doing important work, a little bit more diversity would be nice.
Katie's Gardening Strategy
00:01:31
Speaker
So into my impromptu garden beds went calendula seeds, cosmos seeds, chamomile, amaranth, yarrow, angelica, a fancy variety of Californian poppy with a blushing salmon ruffle, plants with a reputation for being tough as nails and also kind of weedy.
00:01:50
Speaker
This is my secret hope, that these hardy herbs will naturalise, that they'll thrive without too much helicopter parenting from me and pretty soon raise a new generation of offspring who'll tumble out of home and into the surrounding garden, sprouting along pathways and fence lines and become the edible and medicinal weeds of tomorrow. I love the feeling of scattering seeds freely and just trusting that they know where to germinate and when, sowing possibilities rather than imperatives, nudging the system, then leaving the rest to nature.
Introducing David Trude
00:02:26
Speaker
And that's how you become a gardening influencer. This week on Riskillians, it is all about weedy gardening with a side of influencer because we are talking to the weedy gardener, David Trude of The Weedy Garden on YouTube.
00:02:39
Speaker
David is an award-winning travel photographer who, after his career was grounded by the pandemic, pulled focus to a small patch of earth in the northern rivers to document his journey as a gardener.
00:02:50
Speaker
I adored watching the Weedy Garden during COVID, seeing the soil life through David's whimsical, fantastical lens, and having the chance to visit him on our recent road trip was really special.
00:03:02
Speaker
When we arrived, David, that is Weedy, gave us a big warm welcome and a tour of his world-famous garden, which was in full spring flush and looking mighty lush with its mangoes and dragon fruit and other subtropical delicacies that are too painful for a cool climate gardener like me to name.
00:03:19
Speaker
Then i was bitten on my pale Victorian foot by a massive bull ant. Maybe you'll hear my foot throbbing during this interview as it swelled the size of a football. And you'll definitely hear my heartthrob, George, who sat in on the conversation and offered some bonus contributions when he would get a word in.
00:03:36
Speaker
It was a real joy to connect with Weedy, and I highly recommend hopping over to his channel if you need a dose of magic. Huge thanks to the Reskillians community on Patreon, who are supporting me to do the thing that I love out of the goodness of their hearts, because you can also just listen for free.
00:03:53
Speaker
It blows me away, and I'm grateful for your generosity every single day. We are at patreon.com forward slash Reskillians, and shoutouts to new patrons, Celine,
00:04:04
Speaker
Emily, Hannah and Amelia, thank you so much. I am also loving on those folks who've written to me recently, quite a few of you, to tell me that you've quit your jobs and moved to communes.
00:04:17
Speaker
I am always here to cheer on your reckless life choices. So email me at katie at katie.com.au. Here's myself and David Trude, the Weedy Gardener, and Jordan Osmond having a chinwag in the back of a van on the side of a hill next to a magnificent garden.
00:04:34
Speaker
Enjoy.
Interview Setting and Discussion
00:04:41
Speaker
So, Weedy, welcome to the Risk Alliance podcast, the roaming Risk Alliance podcast. Welcome to the Weedy Garden because you've got your van parked right next to my garden. It is. You can actually step out of the your vehicle and walk through the gates into the Weedy Garden.
00:04:54
Speaker
It is such a delight. It's a beautiful day. It optimum living temperature. I feel like if I was a plant, I would be growing towards the sun on a day like this. Oh, absolutely. It's one those beautiful days. One of those beautiful, beautiful days up here on the hill. Yeah, it is.
00:05:07
Speaker
Farmy. You can hear the birds too. Can you hear the birds with these microphones? I reckon it'll pick up some of those birds. Who are your friends out there? do you Do you get to know the local birds in the area?
00:05:17
Speaker
The magpies, the little magpies when they're babies, they're they're not human, they're not scared of humans. So they'll follow me around and I'll get little earthworms and feed it by hand until its mum goes, don't go around those humans, they're dangerous.
00:05:30
Speaker
and the You need to learn real skills. Yeah, yeah, yeah. don't know why. It's just the magpies. But the magpie bait magppie babies have not learned to be scared of us yet. So yeah, I've had lots of little baby magpie friends.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, they know where the worms are. They know where the worms are and where all the goodies are yeah in the garden. They're coming out of that chocolate cake soil that you've built. Yeah, but the i'm talking about the birds, I do love the different sounds of the birds. You've got the morning birds and the middle of the day birds and sometimes there's no birds.
00:06:01
Speaker
in the middle of the night when all the night birds have gone to bed then there's the frogs so there's always sounds it's three like three o'clock at four o'clock in the morning it's pretty quiet that's about the quiet time or the frogs have done their business you know gone gone back to bed yeah Yeah, so it's a different orchestra of of sounds throughout the day up here. Do you have cicadas? That must get quite loud. Oh, summertime cicadas are terrible.
00:06:25
Speaker
It's really hard to record, actually. And I haven't found a program yet that I can use that says, remove cicada noise. It's constant... In the background.
00:06:36
Speaker
That is one of the difficult things. So I think I'll have to do something like the old black and white films where they just um walked around and then I'll just do a voiceover. Get someone to play the organ over the sound, for the sound. Something like that. And then go down to the studio and do a voiceover inside, away from the cicadas. Yeah.
00:06:52
Speaker
I really love when nature kind of overrules a human situation. Like there's no getting around that. You just have to try and find another way.
David's Gardening Journey
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. so how did you come to be on this patch of land, Weedy?
00:07:04
Speaker
What drew you here? That's a long story. We got time. Well, the reason I'm up on the hill here with the garden is because in 2020 when we had COVID, before then, I was traveling around the world doing photography and making films.
00:07:18
Speaker
And so suddenly I was locked in it at home like everybody else. I've always had a vision of myself as kind of when I'm an old man, people are going to look at me and they're going to go, oh,
00:07:29
Speaker
oh man how how how do you keep so healthy and all that and it's like i just envisioned myself to be living in my garden and eating my own food it wasn't something it was almost like a subconscious thing because it wasn't something i thought about but at this moment i remembered thinking about that and and otherwise kind of like gardening but never knew anything about it i thought you put a seed in the ground at any time of year whatever and it'll grow When I was sitting on the bench up here on the hill, I was looking at my telephone and i saw those videos of people in the supermarkets arguing to each other about a toilet paper that was scarce.
00:08:06
Speaker
And then I thought about how that feeling would be if I was in the supermarket and there was not enough food on the shelves. I'm kind getting bit emotional now about that, thinking about that. and was It was that time where I thought, well, I could do my, if i'm going to be an old man, I'm about 52 at this point, so I could just as well start now. It's a good time to start now.
00:08:27
Speaker
And I went out to the store to find some seeds, to plant some vegetables, but they were all sold out. So I wasn't the only one that had that idea. So I thought a lot of people at this point have got the same idea I have.
00:08:38
Speaker
So I got some seeds from China or something like that. They arrived like five months later, so it was like way too late. But I did get some seeds from some locals and and planted my vegetables. And because I was a photographer before, and because I thought a lot of people would have had that same feeling as I had,
00:08:56
Speaker
I thought I'll record what I'm doing and those people that didn't have a chance to do it or weren't able, didn't have land or maybe we were just too lazy and thought no I'll do it tomorrow.
00:09:08
Speaker
By making my videos and making my YouTube channel and recording what I was doing, I was hoping in the future when my garden was looking beautiful, people would look back and say, oh, I should have started that time.
00:09:20
Speaker
But looking at what I could achieve, they would say, oh, I'm going start now. You know? So that was kind of... um That was kind of how the weirdy garden started. And after COVID was finished, businesses had changed and there wasn't a lot of photography work anymore. I was kind of in the travel photography business and that was like, they were they had taken a big hit. And I was traveling back and forth to Denmark. I had a few ah of my clients in Denmark that I was still working for, but after COVID, though there was just not...
00:09:46
Speaker
really much anymore but the feedback that I was getting from my videos I thought I'll keep doing the YouTube channel instead of pursuing my photography career so that's when I sort of started to think about it as a little business you know and to to build it and to grow the weedy garden It was definitely ah pop of whimsy and possibility in an otherwise bleak situation during COVID, tapping into your channel and absorbing your your vivacity and overflowing enthusiasm for what you were doing up here.
00:10:20
Speaker
But you didn't just not and mic you didn't start with a perfect kind of land ownership model, though, as I understand. You just started with what was available to you, with which was shared land.
00:10:33
Speaker
Can you talk about how you set up, even though you didn't necessarily have your name on the title? Yeah, a lot of people do have... I see a lot of people in in the comments section of my videos going, oh, I wish I could do that, but I don't have any land. But I didn't have any land either, because this land's not mine.
00:10:49
Speaker
The land was not mine until actually yesterday, five years after the YouTube channel started, because we were just renting the house on the property. It's a 47-acre property. Yeah, there's just cows going on on the property, so no one was really using it um And during COVID, I asked the owners, I said, look, do you mind if I put up a vegetable garden? The best spot is up on the hill because that gets kind of full sun.
00:11:10
Speaker
and And they said, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And I said, ive when when I get vegetables, I can share them with you. And if I get chickens, I'll share the eggs with you. And they were happy about that because they weren't using it. And the prospect of um free free food for them was like, that's a bit of a win-win.
00:11:25
Speaker
And were they people you knew you had an existing relationship with? They live on the property. Okay. So there's two dwellings on the property. yeah So we rent the main house and they live on a smaller dwelling. So we we we have just been renting the house and using the land for free.
00:11:38
Speaker
We haven't even been renting the garden space. That's just goodwill of of beautiful people. And that's pretty rare in today's day too, you know. you know what I could suggest people could do if they don't own land already?
00:11:49
Speaker
Because if you don't build structures that are kind of permanent structures, you think about a cabbage plant, it's like it's got a year's it's got a half a year's life. you know you've got If you've got half a year to spend on someone else's land, then you could just grow at least a winter crop or a summer crop.
00:12:03
Speaker
But umm I reckon out there in the world, there's tons and tons of people that have big backyards that can't maintain them and can't look after them and don't know what to do with them. That if someone walked and in their front door and said, knock, knock, knock, hello, excuse me,
00:12:17
Speaker
um I love to grow some vegetables and some fruit and berries in your backyard. If if I do that, can we share it? I'm sure a lot of people would say yes. I literally did that in Melbourne. We had a market garden in someone's backyard in a you know suburb that was known as a food desert. There wasn't a lot of fresh food access there. And the idea was for us to pop up in people's backyards and create fresh food, fresh produce, whilst integrating so much knowledge, a lot of different ethnicities living there and demographics and ages and it just worked so beautifully. wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, and I also know quite a few other market gardeners, young folks who have set up like you have on farmland where a little patch, you know, isn't going to make a dent in this
00:12:59
Speaker
this person's ecosystem and in fact it's going to gift them fresh produce. So it's actually a great
Community Gardening Insights
00:13:05
Speaker
proposition. Yeah, it's what's it called, it should be ah it's the new movement of the future. you know It's the weedy spread. Yeah, I haven't thought about it like that and I've never talked about doing that, but um that's kind of the idea, isn't it? to encourage people to just say, look, if you've got a neighbor who's got cattle and he's got 100 acres, just say, look, can I have I think I've got like, what is it, I don't know, 70 square meters of garden beds, maybe, maybe 100 square meters of garden beds.
00:13:34
Speaker
That's enough food for two people. Wouldn't be funny if everyone kind of woke up from, it's like you'd watch a movie somewhere and there's a funny story and the movie's like everyone wakes up from a dream and they've all got the same idea about growing vegetables and sharing land and everyone just goes, yeah,
00:13:50
Speaker
I was thinking about that too and wow, I had that dream last night too and let's do it and yeah and everyone kind of got this intuitive feeling really seriously to do it. Although it's really nice to be, so I'm not really self-sufficient, I'm going to be living in my van for the next 30 days because I've been away from the garden for 30 days traveling.
00:14:09
Speaker
And now I'm going to do another video where I'm going to stay in my garden over for 30 days and just eat the food that I'm growing. Lots carrots, a couple of pumpkins left. I've got a pineapple coming on, which I'm looking forward to, and some dragon fruit.
00:14:21
Speaker
I do have some dry some dried bananas and some frozen bananas. I'm going use those. So there's enough now. i did I did the same experiment like three years ago, and it wasn't a lot to eat. There wasn't a lot of um there wasn't a lot of sweet stuff, a not a lot of fruit, and it was a bit boring.
00:14:37
Speaker
I'm getting sidetracked now. I really, I do want to go into this idea, I mean your experiments and also the notion of feeding ourselves and what it actually takes. But before we do, unless you have a good tangent, you want to go down. Just a little bit of the same tangent before about, it's not, it's not about setting up your garden for just in case things go to shit.
00:14:59
Speaker
Excuse the French. because that is that is like that's a really nice thing if it happens but that's not the reason you should think about doing this the reason you should think about doing this is that when you start eating food that comes out of the ground that is part of a nutrient cycle that we belong to you you start eating the food that you're growing and eating food that's grown in compost and not just fertilized with synthetic fertilizers um your your whole body your whole body and your mind and your heart and your
00:15:31
Speaker
and your awareness and and your health and your joints you know and your feeling in the morning and all that that all kind of changes and becomes a lot more chilled and it's because you're putting in the right ingredients in your body think about a compost and you want to have a really nice garden right really healthy garden you gotta think about what you're putting in your compost you're not going to throw all sorts of trash in your compost because you want to make beautiful compost soil so what's our compost it's our mouth It's everything we put in our mouth is our compost. Our compost is our stomach.
00:16:02
Speaker
So why not put the best ingredients in in in your in your garden, in your stomach? you know And so when you're making compost soil and you're feeding your plants with that compost soil and then you eat them, you totally... i don't think you can get any better than that.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I love your emphasis on the the joy and the feel-goodness of doing this as opposed to the fear... the fear tactics that some people can employ to try and should us or we should ourselves into doing something because it's resilient or because we're planning for the apocalypse i think tapping into you know the loamy smells of the soil and the feeling of your feet on the grass when a bull ant isn't biting you or the taste of the celery boiling it's like that's that's what it is about because ultimately that's the deep wellspring of motivation that we need to
00:16:50
Speaker
to do this beautiful stuff which does make a
The Joy of Gardening
00:16:52
Speaker
difference. Like what were saying before about how this is just kind of how humans used to live and it's just tapping back rather than this being the alternative you're saying this is just this is what's a normal and kind of our normal world at the moment is the abnormality in a way.
00:17:08
Speaker
and I don't know, think being connected in that way, like you said before about having your shoes off and you're connected to the earth. I mean, there is scientific sort of studies talking about electrons in our body and how our cells need these electrons to kind of function because we're like an electrical appliance, just like a drill.
00:17:25
Speaker
A toaster. And a toaster and a mobile telephone, you kind of need to charge them up. So being in the garden does that and um and you know watching your vegetables grow and watching your plants grow and the birds and the sounds. it's It's nice for me to say, I live out here in paradise in the northern rivers on a hill far away from me anywhere and all these beautiful sounds are kind of all around me and that's one part of of um what i think my channel is inspiring to a lot of people because where i'm living is kind of very rare on this planet today you know a lot of people think oh if i was in paradise where would it be it'd be like in weedy's garden can confirm that it feels that good in person yeah so talking more about the felt our felt senses i'd love
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, like how we feel and how our bodies feel and using that emotional intelligence rather than head mind, brain mind. yeah How did you feel in your life before the garden?
00:18:24
Speaker
And did you do feel like there was something missing missing when you were traveling around, going to 40 different countries on these work assignments and you had grown food as a small child, but that wasn't your reality for those years? Did you ever feel like there was a part of you that wasn't being...
00:18:40
Speaker
nurtured or tended like you needed a garden but you just didn't quite know it um that's an interesting question and when you don't know it at the point in your life then you don't know it so you can't go back and go yes i felt like that because you don't know it but i can say that when i did land in my garden and i did take my shoes off and i did spend couple of years then i realized there was something more that I was not getting before something new I realized that I was experiencing and um I've been with been a creative photographer I've always used my intuition and my creativity and my little vision in my mind to get my work done but I feel that being up here
00:19:25
Speaker
I kind of feel like, you know, if the earth was a being just like you, just like me, just like weedy. Weedy, I've got eyes, I've got a nose and beard, I've got cells in my hair and I've got cells in my heart, I've got cells in my bone.
00:19:40
Speaker
So of all these 50 trillion cells that make me, me. And if there's, if if if I trip, my body will try and straighten itself up. If there's a fly flying towards my face, my my hand will come up automatically.
00:19:53
Speaker
My body wants to protect itself. My body, if I scratch it, it'll heal. You know, my skin will grow over it again. So my body, so I see the earth is like, that's just another body. And I am like one of the cells that belongs to that body, right?
00:20:08
Speaker
And so, like i was saying before, if if I feel like i want to shoo a flyaway, my muscles and my scenes my sinews and all that will work together somehow for my arm to move to brush the flyaway.
00:20:19
Speaker
those in Those single cells, those single muscle cells must be getting the information from somewhere to do something. right so I kind of feel it's like, oh, I just got a call from headquarters. I've grab the guy beside me and pull him in tight.
00:20:31
Speaker
you know And that's the second. yeah And so um having having sort said that as a little picture, i believe that the earth is a living thing. And I'm connected to it as in I'm part of it like I'm a seller.
00:20:45
Speaker
And doing what I'm doing here in the Reeder Garden compared to taking photos of businessmen and um things for advertising and things to kind of keep this big mechanism rolling, selling stuff.
00:20:59
Speaker
that I'm putting my energy and my creative focus into and into creating videos that are kind of, it's almost like the voice of the earth is kind of, I can hear it and it's saying, say this, say this and to tell them this, tell them this. I feel like i'm I'm an eye cell for humanity. So my eyes is like, that's my job. I'm kind of, my job is to,
00:21:18
Speaker
for the body of humanity to kind of be the eyes to show what I can, show what I can of this message, if you want to call it, don't know you call it a message or a feeling or it's just, if I kind of tune in and say, oh hey, earth.
00:21:37
Speaker
um I want to do what I can to protect you and to heal you. What what what do you want me to do? you know And I'll get an idea. it'll be like It'll be almost like... It's not like I can hear this voice and it goes, oh you should do this.
00:21:48
Speaker
I just get a feeling of of some idea for a photograph or a little video or something. And it'll just feel really right. It'll feel like what a nice gut feeling that gave me. You know what I mean?
00:21:59
Speaker
And then I'll go and create it in reality and do the action and create a little sequence or something that I'm looking at that I can share. that I kind of do it because I kind of, I want to touch people out there. I just don't, I don't want to go, run I run run run ah want to make something that's really, it's like, okay, if I'm, if on if the earth is talking through me, then it's like, serious, what do you want me to say? And and it's indeed it's interesting and it's important and it's, um,
00:22:24
Speaker
it's it's got feeling in it, you know what i mean? And that's what I try to do with my videos to get a bit of music, you know what it's like? You you've got some raw footage of me walking past the garden, it doesn't mean nothing until you've got some nice music, and then a bit of narrative of what was I thinking as I was walking through the garden, as you're looking at me in the sunshine.
00:22:42
Speaker
and And all these little touches with sound effects, and then what am I listening to as I'm walking, what does the grass sound like under my feet as I'm walking through the shot? You just put those little four elements together and you get something that's like, ooh, that was nice.
00:22:53
Speaker
So there's the three things isn't there that you've got to do with the
Educational Gardening Videos
00:22:56
Speaker
video. It's got to be entertaining and educational and inspirational. So the inspirational part I can do with my photography and then the sound and all that.
00:23:05
Speaker
The inspirational, yeah, just living in the garden on this property is kind of just got to kind of film around me really. That's the inspirational part just comes by itself. But then there's a part of the videos that I have to have, which is the learning part, the education.
00:23:18
Speaker
and down and because I've got the YouTube channel and I've kind of dived into that, okay I've got to educate myself and my videos have to be educational so I'm going into this deep dive of knowledge about how to grow food and it's like when you buy a little red car, a little red Volkswagen car, suddenly you see little red Volkswagens everywhere, you know?
00:23:39
Speaker
It's like seeing this garden to be my livelihood, it saves me from being in the supermarket one day when there's no more food and and and and so on So there's lots of good reasons why I'm going to put my full amount of energy into it.
00:23:50
Speaker
And with the YouTube channel, it's also my living and my livelihood. and something I can hopefully use to buy this property and and build a house one day that I can retire in.
00:24:01
Speaker
So in that sense, it's really important. So if I'm going to grow, and as well, if if you're going to go to all the trouble of making a bed and filling it up with soil and turning compost soil and planting a vegetable, you want to kind of know how to do it properly so and you only have to do it once, you know.
00:24:15
Speaker
doing research into things and my search for knowledge and my search for oh, what about this and what about this and how do you do that and so on. It's kind of, it goes really deep because I'm collecting all this information and I've got to put it together into a story. So it's really easily coherent and really easily sort of sucked into the people that are watching as in absorbed, you know. And the style I have is like, if if i can if I can say it to a six-year-old and he gets it, that's that's everyone else should get it.
00:24:44
Speaker
You know what i mean? And um I've watched a lot of videos on YouTube about things like gardening and yeah it's different if you get into the horticultural language that you kind of lose a lot of people. I kind of just say it as it is and say it really simple.
00:24:59
Speaker
Try and be like a little bit childish about it, you know, if you want to do it like that, but not being childish because I think we've all got a child inside of us, right? So it's kind of just approaching that one, that child inside of everybody.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's certainly a skill to keep things digestible for a range of people. And it's actually such a gift to be able to do that because you can go right down the carrot hole to use your phrase. Yeah, exactly. And then lose people back there. Lose a lot people. I have this thing that's called, some people call the pub. Like if you say something at the pub.
00:25:33
Speaker
And um if you get most people to understand what you said, then it works. Or if you say something to a thousand people, you know, if 10 people go, that was amazing. it's like, and 990 go, what did he just say? Then it's no good. It's no good.
00:25:47
Speaker
I want to try and reach those thousand and say, I want to say something to the thousand. And 999 go, I understood that. And 10 of them go, already knew that. Yeah. There's something about that that is, speaks to me of beginner's mind which is a beautiful thing and you've taken people on this journey right from the start for you too and i actually feel like there's a lot of humility even you just describing how to speak to people in plain language i think parts of us can want to sound really important and pompous and technical and appeal to that one percent of people who might go wow pat you on the head you're such a clever cookie but you are
00:26:23
Speaker
happy to keep it simple and take people on this journey with you as you learn. What do you think gives you that confidence to fail in public if you need to, to run an experiment that might not necessarily work and to learn? That's easily answered because if I do put on a show and go, oh, it's Whitty here and this is how you do this and this is how you do that.
00:26:43
Speaker
and um And then two months later I realise, shit, that was wrong. then i'm ah sick and Then I'm in trouble, you know So if i if I make it like, basically I've made it clear several times, not on all videos, but saying, hey everybody, I'm a photographer, I'm not a gardener.
00:26:57
Speaker
lot of people are asking me for garden tips and I'm saying, how would I know I'm a photographer? Just remember that, you know? so being so being a photographer, And not a gardener has made it easy for me to say, guys, I'm a photographer in my garden. I'm going to try and grow some carrots.
00:27:11
Speaker
And so if I make a mistake, it's not that bad because I'm not a gardener. I think it's enjoying the journey along the way is it' sort of a way to kind of put it. I'd like to answer that question you said before a bit better. go It was about not being perfect. And how do you feel about kind of showing you you oh yeah your failure your failures?
00:27:30
Speaker
I think that's really important. Because I don't want people to look at my channel going, oh, I'd never be able to live up to that standard. That's amazing. Because I'm only showing all the good stuff. No way. It's really important that people know that, you know, that turned to shit and that didn't work. And oops, I made a mistake.
00:27:45
Speaker
I said on that video, oh, got to do this, to that. And it actually wasn't wrong. I don't usually do that kind of thing. But it's almost like, oh, I haven't done anything on a video where I've said, this is how you do it. And then I've come back and said, well, that was wrong. I haven't done that yet.
00:27:59
Speaker
But it's more, yeah, to show things that are failing. We watched the electroculture video ah recently and that was super intriguing because we've got friends using the copper coils on ah on trees that they've planted and it was cool to see your experiment with those garden beds and what worked and what didn't and what was hard to control for. so Yeah.
00:28:20
Speaker
It turned out that that was really, it's about it's a bit hard to make an experiment like that because you're kind of doing experiment with little toys. Electro culture is a kind of ah yeah, it's a real sort of serious business. Yeah. It's a kind of a complicated technical yeah system, which I don't think my conclusion was that I don't think anyone with a garden really wants to go through all that trouble.
00:28:38
Speaker
If you want a bigger broccoli, just plant two. I like how that video ended. It was just like, well, this was interesting, but it was kind of a waste of time. And it was like, it was good. yeah You laughed out loud. well Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:50
Speaker
We do one thing I love on your video is one of the many is the way that you zoom zoom out and zoom in so you zoom out and we see the planet Gaia as herself from space and then you zoom right into the tiniest little organism in the soil and I love how much you love the small stuff whilst keeping it in perspective of the whole organism why do you love the small stuff so much Well, the small stuff is the most important.
The Science Behind Gardening
00:29:16
Speaker
After I made my garden, I heard from a friend of mine that all the plants and all the trees, all the plants in the world, they live from bacteria farts. And I was like, what are you talking about? and And it's like all the plants that are growing in the ground, getting their food from bacterias, from their farts and their poo and and then their bodies.
00:29:39
Speaker
And it's like no way. And and there's more, than's if you get all the animals on the planet, on the on the in the air in the water on the land and under the ground you've got all the ones under the ground they weigh 90 percent and all the ones above the ground they weigh 10 percent of all the animals in the world so you got like nine times more weight in volume of animals under the ground and that's mostly bacteria and fungus so that's why it's important and once you understand the nutrient cycle of how things work how things grow
00:30:10
Speaker
then then you understand why it's so important. So the reason I think that the this microscopic life is so important is, well, no one knows it's there. You can't see it with your bare eyes.
00:30:23
Speaker
So who would have known that like 90% of all the animals on the planet live underground, and that's mostly bacteria. yeah And this whole process of of things like you've got earth, wind, water, fire, and spirit, right?
00:30:34
Speaker
So the earth represents all the minerals, the wind represents all the gases, Basically the earth, wind, water, fire is the periodic table of elements. does emily many How many atoms is there on the periodic table? 92 108 or something like that. think there's 92 natural elements on the periodic table. All these little atoms.
00:30:53
Speaker
I see them all as little Lego blocks. right All these little Lego blocks in the air and in the water and in the soil. Right. And something that's growing is composing itself. It's getting its roots and it's sucking in air and it's sucking in water and it's getting all these little Lego blocks building itself.
00:31:09
Speaker
It's got a little program of what it's going to be. It's going to be an oak tree or it's going to be a little deer or a kangaroo or a human baby. that every single bit of life has got its own little program of what it's going to be.
00:31:20
Speaker
And as things are growing, they're sucking these nutrients out of, like the animals get them through their stomach and the bacteria break down what's going into their stomach and release the nutrients. And everything that's growing in the ground is growing from everything that's dying and is being broken down again. So the bacteria and the fungus is the only ones that can pull those Lego blocks apart of something that used to be a alive to bring it back down to the earth wind and the and the water elements so it can be used again so that process that nutrient cycle the forest is feeding itself all the birds and pooing and all the birds that are dying and all the leaves that are falling it's all this organic matter is just circling around ah leaf it becomes like that in the chlorophyll and you've got all these like you got a bit of newton nitrogen a little bit of magnesium a little bit of carbon little of
00:32:08
Speaker
It's already sucked it up and then it dies and falls on the ground. it It gets pulled apart again and and reused again. The plants don't have to go looking for magnesium again in the rocks because it's already there from the leaves that are already falling around them.
00:32:19
Speaker
and And so that's why I think this, to show visually what it is that's happening underneath the ground in this microscopic world, in a tiny water drop, you've got hundreds and hundreds of little environments just inside a water drop.
00:32:32
Speaker
you know it's like wow and that's the ones that are actually doing all this thing that we can actually be alive yeah that's why i think it's important and i like and i like doing the perspectives because i can with my photography you know and doing time lapse one day i was walking around i think you wonder what it looked like what if a cane toad was like in the compost what do it would look like, because now it looks like a cane toad and at some point it's going to look like soil, so wonder what it looks like kind of in
Creative Gardening Techniques
00:32:57
Speaker
between.
00:32:57
Speaker
so I did that and I got a cane toad and put it in my little studio and and just set the camera on it for like a month and the camera just watched it slowly decompose, something my eye would never be able to see.
00:33:09
Speaker
but my camera can and i can see I can see months and months in a couple of seconds rid with the camera. So I love doing time-lapse and watching plants grow as they wiggle from day to night, you know, and wiggle ah beans a wiggle looking for looking for a place to hang onto to until they find something and then they'll wrap around it and they'll keep growing. It's so cool to watch that on a time-lapse because you can sit in your garden for hours, but you'll never be able to see a bean grow, you know?
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, definitely offering us new ways of seeing is something very powerful because I mean we're only we only see a tiny sliver of the spectrum of light yeah and our time scale is so different to a plant or a beetle so opening up those worlds for us is is a real delight. Yeah so photography is a great little tool for that. Yeah and especially the cane toad time lapse that that really sticks with me and as you're speaking about that I wonder does that give you a sense of comfort or a vision for your own death? Do you imagine just being digested like that? Or do you have a specific desire for something you know for something to grow out of you?
00:34:12
Speaker
um Well, we're all going to end up to be pulled apart again, you know, and all all the atoms that we're made from will all be all be pulled apart again. and And that's how kind of life moves on, you know. I mean, parts of me will be used at some point to... The grass will be growing out of it.
00:34:29
Speaker
you know or I sometimes think what I want to do is I want to live to be like 100 when I'm 100 and have my 100th birthday and have big party it's like okay I'm happy with that and then I'm kind of hoping I'll be turning the compost one day and I'll just go oh shit that's And that's the end and I'll fall into my own compost and no one will know I'm there and I'll just become my own compost up on the Weedy Hill.
00:34:50
Speaker
That would be the coolest way I could imagine. And someone's going to come along years later i go, that's a nice looking compost. I might make that garden and then I'll become a broccoli, part of a broccoli again. That's the perfect circle. you know ah don't want to be put in a box and buried and not nothing can get to me.
00:35:06
Speaker
I'd rather be put in the ground ah you know a couple of a couple of feet down so I can be eaten by the forest I'm glad I asked you that question. You've obviously thought about that. That's an awesome response. That was a spontaneous response, actually. And also what I notice in your garden is how wealthy you are. You know, mangoes, mulberries, dragon fruit.
00:35:28
Speaker
Do you have a sense of true wealth? Yeah, that's what wealth is really, isn't it? Like I said before, if you've got oil or you've got all your Lego blocks growing around you, you can just go and eat and they taste good, then that's um that's like the kind of one of the surefire ways to reach your full potential.
00:35:49
Speaker
I'd like to be old, but I don't want to be... i want to be healthy and old. I want to be... was just planted some herbs, actually, last week that are good for your longevity. So if I'm going to be 100, then I have to start eating those... drinking those teas that I planted recently.
00:36:03
Speaker
But that's what wealth is, really, isn't it? It's about... um Being happy, being happy about where you are and having love in your life, someone that loves you. That's really important. And yeah, eating good food.
00:36:16
Speaker
It's actually really, really important that wherever you are in this moment, it's like this is the moment you're in right now, enjoy where you are. Because it's never going to be, you're never going to be happy when you reach that goal because there'll be another one set in front of it way before you get there and
Gardening Philosophy
00:36:31
Speaker
so on.
00:36:31
Speaker
So it's about enjoying the journey on the way, not so much the final final thing. And if you can kind of do that, then you're wealthy as well. I love your approach to pest.
00:36:42
Speaker
I'm not even going to say management. Your integration with the creatures who inhabit this place. And I heard you on a podcast talking you about a party or a campfire that you threw for the caterpillars.
00:36:56
Speaker
Do you remember that? When you had a caterpillar problem and you were asking... them not to eat your stuff please. Okay. I do vaguely remember that. i didn't I didn't remember actually saying that on a podcast. I remember talking with Heather about that.
00:37:09
Speaker
But i've I've kind of, that was probably early in the piece as well. And I think that mentality came from Fyndhorn. finthorn Fyndhorn, I don't know much about Fyndhorn, but Fyndhorn is it's like the Fyndhorn technique is when you say to the caterpillars, hey guys, I'm going to plant something over there for you guys and I'm going to plant something here for for me.
00:37:32
Speaker
So you guys have that or you say nice, nice little thingy, please don't come and do this to my garden and so on. I don't know if that works. I've got a different technique which I call the Viking technique which I think works better and it's still harmless right there's um it depends on what pest you got as well um because the Viking technique does not work on caterpillars but it works on birds and bush turkeys that's basically when you just basically say to them this is my territory but you don't like the finthorn method would say ah this is my territory we love you and all that Sorry, Fintan people.
00:38:11
Speaker
You can put that in or out. doesn't matter to me because I i think it's it's real to understand that in real life, in territories like... that's what That's what the animal would do if you step into it in front of its den, it'll go, you know, and if you come close, it'll bite you, you know, and that's, they all say that, all the animals, they all say that.
00:38:30
Speaker
They say, this is mine. And you see a snake wandering around the place. If he goes into a territory, he'll back off, he'll turn away and go a different spot. And so I think it's just a matter of saying to these animals that this is my territory.
00:38:43
Speaker
and um you can birds don't understand english but if you can grab a bird and shout down its mouth and go raw this is my garden stay away and tell your friends i'm a big angry man and you don't hurt it you're just scared the living daylights out of it and it remembers that like whoa i got away with the skin of my tail that time don't go back there i think that works better i'm still trying to catch the bush turkey to do that but it's illegal to do that so i can't do that But with the caterpillars and stuff, there's a couple of things in it.
00:39:15
Speaker
If you look at your garden like the savannah in Africa and you've got your vegetables and all that, that's the zebra. And you've got all the caterpillars and the bugs and the aphids and all that, that's the lions, right? So the lions is going to go after the zebra, right?
00:39:29
Speaker
Right. She's nodding her head here, right? And um is it going to go over this after the strongest zebra or the weakest zebra? little weakling yeah the little weakling so the bugs are going to go after the weakest plants first because all the plants have actually got their own self-built in immune kind of sort of defense mechanisms i mean in basically it's like the little animal bites in the leaf and it goes oh i don't like the taste of that it's because the plants can kind of produce these these chemicals that deter certain animals all right
00:40:02
Speaker
um So if a plant is healthy and it's getting what it needs and that is sunshine, that's the number one because the sunshine is the whole motor that
Soil Health and Pest Management
00:40:11
Speaker
runs everything. alright So if it's not getting any sunshine because it's planted underneath a tree or it's planted on the on the backside of your house or if it's planted you know where it doesn't get any sunshine, then it's not going to reach its full potential.
00:40:24
Speaker
It'll grow, but it won't have the ability to make this self-defense very strong. Right. So that's that's ah that's the first place where the bugs are going to go because their job is to kind of clean up, you know.
00:40:36
Speaker
So if you've got a healthy garden and you've got your vegetables and and your fruit trees in good sunshine and they're getting good water and you've planted them at the right time of the year and you've planted that fruit or vegetable or plant that is good for your region,
00:40:49
Speaker
So, you know, you don't want to plant a banana down where you are because it's going to struggle and the it's going to get cold and then it's going to get weak and then it's going to be vulnerable, you know, or in the desert, it's going to be vulnerable because not getting enough water. It's getting plenty of sunshine, but not enough water. So whatever the plant is not getting, that's making it so it doesn't get its full potential, it's making it vulnerable.
00:41:10
Speaker
So one thing is you've got healthy, healthy soil, healthy everything. You should not get any bugs. And I'll take you for a walk around my garden and you can see for yourself. I've got no bugs. If something does attack one of your plants then leave it and let it attack it. That's the weakest one. If you pull it out then it's going to go for the next weakest one.
00:41:26
Speaker
And if you've got a plague of something then you can't do much about that because that's kind of plagues. But generally speaking if you've got like the broccoli another way to do it is to try and confuse the butterfly because the caterpillars are eating your broccoli the caterpillars are coming from eggs they're coming from a butterfly.
00:41:43
Speaker
So the butterfly grew up on the on the on the leaf of the broccoli, so it remembers what to do. So when it gets little eggs itself, it's flying around going, oh, I remember growing up on a broccoli. Where's that smell? Where is that in the garden?
00:41:55
Speaker
And it'll fly down. And if you've got beds and beds and beds and beds of broccoli, all the butterflies from the area will all find it. But if you've got a broccoli there and you've got a bit of garlic next to and you've got a thyme plant and then you've got another broccoli over there behind the carrots got them scattered around, then the butterfly's going to go, where is that broccoli?
00:42:13
Speaker
fucking thought I can smell garlic and I can smell flowers, but that broccoli is like, I'll go somewhere else. So don't plant in rows. Don't plant in rows and put stuff like garlic and smelly stuff and herbs and stuff besides it and around it.
00:42:27
Speaker
Imagine you're getting your seeds and you shake them up in your hand and you throw them on your garden bed so everything comes up a little bit to here and there. that's ah That's the best way to have a garden. there's There's a few ways to deal with bugs and that's that's a couple of them.
00:42:40
Speaker
And that's the basic ways where you don't really need any sprays or anything. Healthy soil, the right plants. um Maybe I'm just lucky here. No, I think your emphasis on soil makes a lot of sense. And I wonder, do you use any amendments, like any liquid feeds or things like that?
00:42:55
Speaker
Kooky, herbal, brews, witchy poo? absolutely yeah Absolutely. I make them all myself. yeah yeah And I've um done lots of videos on those. you want to learn how to make some of those witchy brews. Yeah, I love the witchy brews. It's pretty much just those bacteria that I was talking about before.
00:43:11
Speaker
That ninety almost 90% of the the population of living things on the planet. is the bacteria. A certain type of bacteria, lactobacillus bacteria, they're called, it and they're easy to breed with a bit of rice and a bit of water and a bit of milk a bit of molasses.
00:43:26
Speaker
Really easy thing to do. and there there and And I add that to my compost as well. that's sort of it's like this little I'm these little Pac-Men, these little things that go around and just break down stuff.
00:43:38
Speaker
and um And if they're in a good environment there's lots of food, and then they'll just multiply, multiply, multiply, and then your stuff just breaks down really quickly. So that helps my compost. And I mix that same liquid up in water, in a watering can, and water it around my plants.
00:43:51
Speaker
And you're basically just watering busloads and busloads of these little bacteria that go down in the soil. And if you understand how the plants actually get their food. That's a bit complicated for this podcast. People might not get it, but I'll explain it to you because it's really interesting.
00:44:06
Speaker
I do explain it on a video I made where I'm explaining the difference between organic food and non-organic food. Why the non-organic food is, well, why the organic food is more nutritious.
00:44:19
Speaker
I'm not saying it is more nutritious. I just hear people say that organic food is more nutritious. So I wanted to find out why. Why they say that? And the the reason I found out was quite amazing.
00:44:31
Speaker
And it comes back down to the bacteria again. Did you watch that video? can't remember, wait it was that a while ago? i was Eight months ago, maybe. I probably did. I'm holding two broccolis and it's about these two broccolis I'm yeah comparing.
00:44:44
Speaker
But Rhizophan G is a way that plants get their food. the little Pac-Man is in the soil and he eats a bit of dead frog. Right? And then the plant's roots come in the ground and it's making photosynthesis and producing sugar and pops some of the sugar down and squirts it out its roots.
00:44:59
Speaker
Right? Little bits of sugar. And the bacteria, they like the sugar. So they're attracted to live really close to the end of the root of the plant because they like the sugar. Although they also like the cane toads, they also like the sugar. And they're so small and the root is so big because they're so small that the end of the root is sort of soft and the sugar, this sugar exodus is like a film on the end of the root and the little bacteria goes well and it goes inside the plant.
00:45:22
Speaker
and so the little bacteria goes inside the root of the plant then the plant puts super oxidized super oxides on the bacteria to dissolve the little shell around it which then releases whatever it's got in its tummy out into the plant which then goes up and makes the plant right And then the little bacteria doesn't kill it, but it goes up and and on on a root, you got all the little hair roots coming outside.
00:45:44
Speaker
the bacteria, they come in, they get oxidized, whatever, and they come up and they go to the end of the little hair roots on the plant. And then they'll gather and a whole heap of them gather. And they'll produce these hormones until there's getting so many of them and there's enough hormone that the plant, the root gets a little growth spurt and it will grow a little bit and then the bacteria pop out in that growth spurt, rebuild their little calcium bodies and then start going eating more canetone.
00:46:11
Speaker
And then they come back and they go to for the sugar and they do that, right? So that's how the plant is getting, that's one of the ways it gets its food. And these plants are really smart because they know that these little bacteria they live inside symbiosis with are very important. So they make sure that the seed also has them.
00:46:28
Speaker
So the bacteria will travel all up through the root, all the way out up through the stem, all the way out through the branch, all the way into the fruit, into the seed of the plant. So when the seed falls out into the ground and it starts to get moisture, then the little hair root comes out. The first little hair root comes out. The little bacteria that are colonized inside the root go, oh, here we go. Hormones, hormones, growth, bird pop, pop out.
00:46:47
Speaker
chomp chomp cane toad and then in again to start feeding that little seed so and that only happens when you've got the soil food web which is all these microbes underneath the ground if you've got a field that's been plowed over by the by the tractor and it's been sprayed with fertilizers and weed killers and all that that soil food web that bacteria civilization It either doesn't exist at all, or it's really overpopulated with a certain type of bacteria.
00:47:13
Speaker
So it doesn't make it possible for for plants to eat that way with the rhizophagy, which is called. right So those plants that you pick off that field don't have any bacteria in them.
00:47:23
Speaker
And so with with these plants that have got the bacteria in it, that's the bacteria bodies and a little bit of cane toads and stuff inside the bacteria that we're eating from that leaf is what is giving us the extra nourishment.
00:47:34
Speaker
And if you look about a cow and how a cow eats a grass and how it gets the protein of the grass, it eats the grass, but it can't get the protein of the grass. Grass goes into its big stomach and breeds these bacteria. The bacteria eat the sugar in the grass and that gives the bull sugar and energy.
00:47:49
Speaker
And then the bacteria will die and then they'll move into the other part of the rumen where they get digested. So the bull is eating bacteria steaks. That's how it gets its protein. right And so and so when that happened when I understand that the bat the bull can eat bacteria,
00:48:03
Speaker
and get protein from it, then when we're eating organic food, we're getting bacteria as well. A small amount, but it's still in that cycle of life. It's all part of our and now microbiome and all that. It's all kind of really important.
00:48:17
Speaker
So, you know, don't wash your carrots, they say. Just eat them with the dirt on it. and That's the most healthiest thing because yeah you you are walking in this garden. You are part of this, like, you've got to kind of be part of it. You've got to also eat the soil almost, you know.
00:48:32
Speaker
beautifully explained because because nature's got this beautiful orchestra and symphony have already lined up we just kind of stepped aside from it for a little while for some reason don't know why we did that i think we wanted life easier for us so we sort of slowly and have slowly stepped away from trying to trying to make things easier for us and that's kind of maybe one of the human kind of attributes that we have that's kind of our downfall because we know that if you work hard and you get stuck into it it's like you're It's hard, but that's what you get you get best out of it, right?
00:49:04
Speaker
How do you remind yourself of that? Because it is so easy to fall into that trap. I just go, I've got to turn my compost. I've got have the compost. You're working for the compost pile. Yeah, so I've got to get my exercise with the compost.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, setting things up that you have to tend to or you're beholden to is a great way, I think, of getting yourself out there, even on days you might not necessarily feel like it. yeah it's it's not I've got two full-time jobs.
00:49:27
Speaker
The garden is not something I use a lot of time in to look after. I've got two full-time jobs. I'm a photographer and then and and then I've got three jobs. I'm a photographer and an editor and a social media person.
00:49:40
Speaker
you know So now I use a lot of time filming, editing, doing the business. So people will think, that i can't do I can't have a garden because I've got a full-time job.
Garden Experimentation and Future Plans
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, full-time job and kids, yeah, okay, we now we're talking difficult, right? But it's still doable.
00:49:55
Speaker
just make it a smaller one set it up right in the beginning do it properly do it it do it the right way then it's a lot easier for you you know about mulching and composting and and things like that just to make the environment for your veggies right from the beginning you know you can't just grab a seed and put that poor little seed in some sandy soil somewhere in the middle of winter and hope you're going to get some corn it's like you got to know what you're doing a little bit But once you start to want to know, you start to find out a lot.
00:50:23
Speaker
that's the That's the best part. And every gardener always want to tell you what they're doing right. They always want to share their tips with you, gardeners. It's a funny thing. Well, I was wondering, Weedy, if, you know, we're coming into the growing season, especially for those in more southern climes where we have a very distinct, you know, it's just, it's on yeah in October and November and December.
00:50:46
Speaker
What are you going to be getting up to as we come into this time? Like, are you running any experiments for yourself? Have you got some new ideas? Or do you have any ideas that you might like to give to the listeners, something they could try at home?
00:50:58
Speaker
Actually, I do have a couple of exciting things coming up. One is I'm going to live in my dad's old bus. He's got an old coaster camper bus. Not as nice as yours. I wish it was.
00:51:10
Speaker
i was I just did a video where i was away from my garden. I went to Europe for a month and I came back and I did a video. I was away from my garden. This is what happened. And now I want to do a video where i actually stay in my garden for a month and eat all the food from my garden.
00:51:22
Speaker
I've got eggs and honey. I've got pineapples and dragon fruits and they've got some bananas. They're in the freezer but I still got bananas. That's one thing I was going to do but I was also going to do a video because the size garden I have If I have to put five centimeters of new compost on every year, that means that I have to turn compost like every second day for like 100 days or so.
00:51:49
Speaker
So I'm going to see actually how long it takes me to turn enough compost. And I think it's going to take about 100 days. So it's going to be my 100 day compost workout. What about, what's your tagline? Grandpa bod. From grandpa bod to garden god.
00:52:03
Speaker
If it works, that could be a good thumbnail. A good thumbnail. Yeah, I reckon. So I've got to eat lots of fat and drink lots of beer and stuff for another week or so, so I can not lose it.
00:52:15
Speaker
That's the fun part. So aside from keeping people's eyes, keeping everyone's eyes peeled for those videos, what else have you got on the go that people could...
00:52:27
Speaker
tune into at the moment, Weedy. Well, don't know. it's i don't know i feel like I'm saying it a lot, but I also realize that very, very few of the people that follow my channel even know what I'm doing, and that is these weedy garden makeovers. Yeah, tell us about those.
Community Garden Makeover Projects
00:52:42
Speaker
Well, one day i was in my garden doing my YouTube videos, and I thought, what do people like to watch? And they looked like to see my garden, this beautiful garden.
00:52:52
Speaker
I said, what can I give them? I can give them inspiration, and I can give them visuals from my garden, and I can give them the tips that I'm learning. But there's something inside of says, that's not quite enough. What else can you give? Come on, come on. What else can you give?
00:53:04
Speaker
And a little voice inside of me says, you can give someone a weedy garden just like you have. Imagine how happy that would be for that. But then the other part of me said, well, I can't afford to do that, so I can't do that.
00:53:15
Speaker
But then I realized I do have a quite a big community of people that are following the channel and have been inspired and that are getting into gardening and enjoying the joy of that. So i thought, well, what about if I make kind of a sort of like a raffle or something like that? Like if I can get enough people to buy a ticket then that'll be enough funds to raise to be able to buy a whole heap of trees and a beehive and and everything that I've got up on the hill.
00:53:39
Speaker
Worm farm, the compost and the polytunnels and the garden beds. It was kind of like, let's let's see if I can get as much as possible so kind of I can put a weedy garden in someone else's property or someone else's backyard.
00:53:51
Speaker
um So that's kind of what I'm doing at the moment. So it's a competition that people can, they buy a ticket to enter? Well, to be to be fair and to be legal and everything in Australia, it's called a trade promotion, which means i actually have to sell something from my website, and if someone buys that, then they get free entry.
00:54:09
Speaker
So I've come up with this idea and I've worked together with a local artist and we've made up a whole bunch of designs like high resolution digital designs. We call them weedy garden designs.
00:54:20
Speaker
They're kind of made to remind you that you love nature and you love gardening. You know, nice little quirky little designs of vegetables and and things like that. So we sell those on our website and if you buy one of those, you get free entry and I draw a winner out every six months.
00:54:34
Speaker
out of the hat. so But it's only in Australia. yeah yeah This is the last time it's going to be in Australia. Next year I'm going to do an international one, which will be exciting. how's it and you go you physically go there and help design and implement a garden. Yeah, well, how it works is we we we put all the or the um the orders in a bucket and then at on Christmas Day at noon, ah put put my hand in the bucket live on YouTube and I pull out the number.
00:54:59
Speaker
And then I go to my computer and see who bought that ticket and then we call them up online on on live ah YouTube. And then um after that, well, that's when we find out where they are. And then the first thing I do is I fly down to their place to do a recon visit to meet them and to look at their garden and to hear what they'd like to have and to tell them, to show them maybe what possibilities there could be because it's different for everybody.
00:55:24
Speaker
You don't have to have a like a quarter acre like me. You can have a little backyard because you can fit a lot of food into a small area. And if you've got a big property, it doesn't mean we're going to do the whole property. We'll just make a nice little section at least as big as the weedy garden.
00:55:38
Speaker
So I find out what I need to do, then I fly back home, home and then um I start to organize and start to order materials and order trees and beehives and all that stuff. And I then put a call out to the community, the Weedigarten community, which is just through my newsletter.
00:55:54
Speaker
So I don't put it on social media. I only give it to my newsletter, the people that have joined my newsletter and ask who wants to come to such and such a place on such and such a date to do such and such.
00:56:05
Speaker
And I get a bunch of people that put their hand up and we all meet and we end up meeting on a weekend and we just get into it. and I'll make a little video about the whole thing or a little series about the whole thing. Trying to also make lots of tips and inspiration along the way.
00:56:19
Speaker
So it's not just like, yeah, what we did for her. It's like, okay, how do you build a compost bay that's gonna last 100 years? This is how you do it, because we built a really good one, you know, and different things like that. So this' that's how I can kind of keep the Weedy Garden making these with videos.
00:56:34
Speaker
Because there's no money in making videos on YouTube. It's like you can't make videos and make a living from it, unfortunately, and that unless you're going to start sponsoring stuff. And I don't want to sit up in the Weedy Garden and do a little video about my cauliflower and suddenly I'm standing up saying, oh, by the way, you can you can buy this. Have you heard of Roundup?
00:56:53
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You know, ah kind of feel like my videos, I want to respect the people that watch them in that sense that I want to make it a little bit of a sort of a sacred space on YouTube. So I'm not just there selling stuff.
00:57:04
Speaker
Although I'm selling my Weida garden makeovers, but it's kind of win, win, win. it It's a win for the planet because we're getting another garden. It's a win for the winner because they're getting a garden. And it's a win for the Weida garden because it enables me to keep doing these videos that people like to watch.
00:57:18
Speaker
And you can get them from theweidaegarden.com. he and that's that's that's But that's exciting for me and it's exciting not knowing who the next winner is going to be. yeah And um the people that come to help, they're all just amazing.
00:57:31
Speaker
They come from all over Australia. Some people fly in from different cities and hire a car and hire a hotel just to be there for the weekend. It's super cool. yeah I'm going to New Zealand next year to do to do one for um Bryce from Tiny Homes.
00:57:46
Speaker
Tiny Homes channel. So it's going to be fun to do a tiny food forest. And just finally, Reedy, if you had to give, it doesn't have to be cheesy or sleazy, but a sales pitch for someone to have a garden who might not necessarily be thinking about having a garden, but what's so great about having a garden of whatever
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:58:07
Speaker
size? Why does it matter?
00:58:09
Speaker
What's it going to do for people? How's it going to help the planet? That's a good question, but I think that's different for everybody. I really do, because we are so different. All people are different, which is a good thing. It makes it beautiful and div diverse.
00:58:22
Speaker
But for me personally, I feel I'm closely more closely connected to my intuition. um When I eat my own food, I know I'm eating good food. Because like compared to when I go traveling and I stop at McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken or something like that, you know, and I just don't feel good after I've had a meal.
00:58:40
Speaker
I don't feel hungry any anymore, but I don't feel good. And I can really feel the difference now after living this kind of lifestyle, eating good food. So yeah, just, I mean, do it for the way you can feel good.
00:58:51
Speaker
It's called the feel-good factor. That would be the sales pitch. Get the feel-good factor. Grow your own vegetables and fruit and herbs and medicines. Well, thank you so much for having us in your beautiful place. Thanks for having me. It's so cool. You can leave your van here.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah, you could totally leave your van. now I could rent it out to people who come and visit the garden and they can sleep in your van. It's a good van. It was a joy. I'm glad you came. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks i've never done a podcast outside my garden before.
00:59:26
Speaker
awesome and a beautiful van like that's looking out over the big national park born outrageous thank you yeah just looking out over border ranges national park and out the back door it is so beautiful and i did hear the cicadas chime in a couple of times oh okay because it's a bit early yes it's bit early yes they picked up and then just went back down they went back to sleep yeah not ready yet
00:59:51
Speaker
That was David Trude, the Weedy Gardener, who you'll find at The Weedy Garden on YouTube or theweedygarden.com online. What a legend. Next show, we'll be trotting into novel podcast territory with another majestic human I met on the road, and she's helping us to see how both the enslavement and the liberation of horses is deeply tied to our own.
01:00:14
Speaker
Super beautiful stuff. I really hope to catch you then.