#2 How to start growing food - No experience needed

If you've been dreaming of growing your own food but keep putting it off because you don't know where to start, this episode is for you.

Laura cuts through the overwhelm and gets back to basics — because growing food doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. It just needs to begin.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why starting small is the smartest thing you can do as a beginner gardener
• What to plant first — easy, forgiving crops for beginners (leafy greens, legumes, salad greens, and root veg)
• How much sunlight your vegetable garden actually needs
• Why you don't need expensive raised garden beds — defined edges matter more
• Why your time and money is best invested in soil health.
• Simple watering solutions, including how wicking beds work
• The most common watering mistake home gardeners make
• How growing from seed saves your money and connects you to the process
• Why growing something new each season keeps your garden — and your motivation — alive
• What nature already knows: nothing grows alone, and why biodiversity matters.
• How to let go of the expectation of a "perfect" organic garden

Whether you have a big backyard or a small courtyard, this episode will give you the confidence to take that first step. 🌱

 Resources mentioned: 

Shop for our WA grown seeds Buy Western Australian Seeds Online - Thrive Sustainability

Download a free seed sowing guide Contact Us - Thrive Sustainability

Wicking bed blog post Wicking Beds - a Smart Way to Grow in Perth's Climate

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Soul Garden Podcast. This is a place for anyone who wants to grow food, save seeds, gain a little more independence, and reconnect with what really matters. I'm Laura, a seed grower based in Western Australia. Each episode we explore growing foods, saving seeds, regenerative farming, and so much more. It's all about working with nature, not against it. So let's get into today's episode This is a fairly new podcast, this is episode two, I thought today's topic would be a good place to start for everyone. So we're gonna be talking about how to start growing your own food. Maybe you're somebody who has always dreamt of having a beautiful, abundant vegetable garden, but just have no idea where to start. Or maybe you have started and you just need a little bit more clarity. Or maybe you've never even considered growing your own food, but you go to the supermarket and pick up that bag of expensive salad and knowing that it's been sprayed with a cocktail of chemicals and just feel "Ugh, there's got to be a better way." This episode is gonna be for you, so keep listening So the smartest thing to do is to just start. But not just to start, start small. I know firsthand how tempting it is just to go all out. I'm like an all or nothing person, and I get these huge dreams and ideas and visions in my head, and I know how that can backfire. So my tip number one is gonna be to start, but to start small. Okay, you may have just moved to a beautiful five-acre block and you're gonna live out your dreams of, you know, being this self-sufficient family, but take it from me, start small. Literally a square meter is all you need to start growing food So no matter the size of your canvas, whether you've got a courtyard, a average size, suburban block, a huge acreage property, just think about starting with one small area, just a few square meters. Have your plans for the future, but keep yourself contained to this one area to begin with, maybe just for the first season or two. So by starting small, you're gonna prevent overwhelm, you're gonna prevent your costs from blowing out, and you're gonna prevent yourself from getting really burnt out and disappointed when you can't keep up with everything. Instead, give yourself that opportunity to get those little small wins. You could start off with a pot of herbs and you're picking your herbs to put into your dinner and you're thinking, "Yes, I didn't actually spend $5 in the supermarket on that, that plastic wrap packet of herbs today. I've picked this, and next week I'm gonna be able to pick this again." Or maybe you've just got a small raised bed and you're growing some salad leaves and, you've just made yourself a salad for lunch and thought, "Yeah, I've just saved myself $5 here." It doesn't take much, but those little wins are gonna give you the confidence and the enthusiasm and the momentum to keep going. Before you plant anything, it's gonna be important to observe the space Take note of how much sun and how much shade that area gets. So as a general guide, flowering and fruiting plants such as tomatoes melons, pumpkins, but even cauliflower and broccolis because your cauliflower and broccolis are actually the flower bud basically. So anything that's fruiting or flowering is gonna need at least six hours of sun per day. This doesn't need to be like six consecutive hours. It could be, a combination of a little bit of morning sun and some afternoon sun. A little bit of dappled shade is fine, but it needs to get that six hours of sun a day If you only have a space that is in the shade for most of the day and really doesn't get a lot of sun, such as a small courtyard or an alleyway, don't despair. You can still grow some food in that space. But opt for herbs and vegetables and leafy greens that do not need as much sun. So anything where you're not aiming to grow that, that plant for the fruit or the flower is gonna be able to grow with a little less sun. So experiment with that. So some ideas could be like your herbs such as parsley things like rocket and loose leaf lettuces you're gonna have more success with in really shady areas You will need to consider as well the difference between summer and winter. So obviously in the winter you're gonna get longer shadows and the sun is gonna be lower in the sky. So that is gonna be a consideration when you're thinking about positioning beds Now, one idea I think a lot of people do have when they're thinking about starting out is that to grow vegetables, for some reason, they have to buy these expensive raised beds and fill them with shop-bought soil. This just isn't true So raised beds, do look nice, and they can be particularly useful if maybe you are gonna struggle physically to be bending down and tending to your beds. So having a raised bed in that instance is obviously gonna be beneficial. But I do wanna break this misconception that that's what you're gonna need, because it's gonna hold some people back because it can start getting expensive when you're buying like the metal surrounds for the raised beds. So you can grow food directly in the ground. That's how it's been done for thousands of years. However, we will talk about later what you need to do to make that soil suitable for growing your veggies. So whilst you don't need expensive raised beds, I do think edges are important. So of course, there's nothing stopping you from just filling your entire garden with vegetables and having no edges and no pathways., However, for a lot of people, that could end up getting a little bit stressful and quite overwhelming. What I think a good edge does, it gives you psychologically a defined space that you know that, okay, this is the area I have to work with, and this is the area I'm gonna keep clear from weeds. So maybe you've just started off with that small, two square meters of,, area in, in your garden, and if you edge that area anything beyond that area, you can okay, I'm not gonna stress about that. I don't need to worry about weeding that. Maybe I can just mow it, whip- snip it for... But for now, this is my area I'm gonna focus on. So it's more of a psychological thing than something that's actually nature needs. Nature doesn't really need those edges. But I think for us, as the gardeners, I think the edge can be really useful in preventing overwhelm So that edge that we're talking about, it doesn't have to be edging that you go to the hardware store and buy. It really could be made out of anything. I've just been creating some beds, and we're using fallen branches and logs to define the edges of the beds. I've also got another area a friend of mine has gifted me some Hessian sacks that she's been picking up from the local coffee shop, and I've actually just defined the pathways with these Hessian sacks. You could use old bricks, pavers. Take a trip to your local tip or reclamation yard and just see what you can find and get creative with it. Really, all it is gonna be is something that's gonna define that area that you're gonna be tending to If you're creating some garden beds within an area that already has some existing lawn that's when like a more solid, like raised garden bed, for instance, can be beneficial. Any lawn that grows off of runners like couch grass, Kikuyu it's gonna be quite hard to keep out those garden beds. So that's where like a solid edge is gonna be useful. We do have one area where we have put in some raised beds because I knew there was couch grass in the area and that can be quite difficult to keep out of garden beds, those runners get in there. So that's gonna be a time when investing in some solid edges is gonna be beneficial So yeah, we don't need to spend a heap of money on these fancy raised beds or garden edges, and you don't need to spend a lot of money on tools and gadgets. Where you really do need to be investing your time and money is in the soil because that's where it all starts. A healthy garden is reliant on healthy soil and a healthy ecosystem within that soil. So before you put anything in the ground, you're gonna need to work out what type of soil you're dealing with. The easiest way to do that is to pick up a handful of soil and form a ball. So grab a handful of moist soil and give it a squeeze. Form it into a ball. If it falls apart the second you open your hand and feels really gritty and just does not hold any shape at all, that's sand. Whereas if you squeeze it into a ball and it starts to feel really smooth and a bit sticky, and it holds together, well, that's clay. If you're in the Perth area, depending on where you are, you could have the one end of the spectrum sand, or if maybe if you're up in the hills, like if you're up in Bindoon or somewhere like that, there's a good chance you're gonna have that clay. The issue with sand is the particles are very big and it breaks apart easily. Your water and your nutrients drain through very quickly. At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have clay, which is really small particles and they stick together and it can get quite compacted, which means sometimes if it gets compacted, you don't have enough air in the soil and your drainage won't be so good. So depending on whether you've got sand or clay, you need to make some amendments. If your ball as you open your hand stays intact and just cracks slightly and slowly crumbles, that's more of an ideal texture for growing food. If you've been blessed with nice loam soils, that's what it's gonna be looking like I'm gonna do another podcast episode all about soil because it is such a big, important subject. But for now, if you can just work out whether you have sand or clay or something in between, that's gonna be a good start. And no matter what type of soil you have, the way you're going to improve that soil is gonna be by adding compost and organic matter. The next thing I want you to observe about your handful of soil is the color. So that's gonna tell you a lot about your soil. If it's very pale, pale gray, very pale yellow, it's probably an indication that it does not contain much organic matter at all And that organic matter is needed in the soil to feed the soil food web and to then in turn feed your plants. So if your soil is very pale in color, it is not ready for growing food. You're gonna need to add organic matter like compost to improve that soil. So your soil should be like a nice dark chocolatey brown, dark color So like I said, there's a lot more to soil and improving your soil, and I'm gonna go over this in much more depth in a future episode. So if you wanna hear that one, subscribe to the podcast and I will go over all those details in the future To improve your soil with organic matter, the two best things that you can try and source are either compost or worm castings. These are gonna provide food for the soil food web and your plants. Now, if you do not have your own compost or your own worm farm, look around in your local area for a good supplier. You're gonna be far better off going and buying a trailer of compost rather than buying in bagged soil conditioner products. Proper compost is gonna be far better, and you're gonna get way more value for money Now, if you have decided to go down the route of buying in raised beds and you really do want to just go and buy some ready-made vegetable growing soil mix, do your research beforehand. Not all veggie soil mixes are made equal. So before you go and buy a trailer load of ready-made veggie mix or veggie soil talk to other local gardeners, do your research, ask the supplier if they can do a pH test on the soil. Because one thing I've noticed a lot when I've been running workshops and back in the days when I used to run a nursery and I used to offer soil testing for free, people would bring in soil samples of veggie mix that they had gone out and spent a lot of money on, and they would bring it in. We'd do a pH test, which basically is a test that measures the acidity or alkalinity of the soil, and for veggies, you want it to be somewhere around neutral. A lot of these ready-made mixes were incredibly alkaline and not suitable for growing vegetables in, and this is soils that people had gone out and spent good money on that was being marketed as veggie mix soil. So do your research. Greenlife Soil in Perth, they're actually a really good reputable supplier. But yeah, do your research if you're buying in soils. Next, let's talk watering because if you're here in Perth or any other area in the world where you are getting really long, hot, and dry summers, that can put a lot of pressure on whatever's growing in the ground. If you are solely gonna rely on hand watering you are probably gonna find that your watering can be a little bit inconsistent. Maybe one morning you're in a rush, so you kind of feel like, "Well, I'll quickly water the garden," but you don't give it quite as much as you would have done the previous morning. Or, you know, if you just wanna go away for the weekend, or maybe you ask, you know, one of your kids to water it, it's not gonna be as consistent as if, if you've got a proper reticulation system set up It's really no good thinking, "Okay, I'm gonna go for a week away for a weekend, so I will just give everything a really good soak before I go to make up for those days that I'm not gonna be here to do the watering." Plants do not like surprises. They like consistency. And if your plants are getting stressed through lack of water, they are either gonna do one of two things. They're either gonna be more susceptible to pests and diseases, but a stress also causes plants to bolt to seed early. They think they're gonna die, so naturally they go, "Oh, quick, we better reproduce." So, you know, your things like your lettuces, rocket, if they're drought stressed, that's gonna be one of the signs that you're gonna be looking out for. If you think, "Oh, well, that hasn't been in the ground for very long, and it's already growing up and sending up a flower," that's possibly because the watering has been inconsistent. So a watering system doesn't need to be anything really expensive or fancy. If you've only just got a couple of garden beds, literally fix up some drip hose and get yourself a little tap timer from the hardware store. It's not gonna cost a lot of money. Obviously, if you're gonna expand the garden, you might be looking into a bigger system. But it doesn't need to be expensive, You're not gonna need to pay somebody to come in and set it up for you. Just a tap timer and some drip hose is gonna do the job just fine During the heat of Perth summers, you are gonna need to water your veggies daily. If there's a heatwave and you're getting temperatures over 40 degrees, I'd even say twice daily. Obviously, the amount you water is also gonna be very dependent on the quality of your soil. Poor quality soil without that organic matter content is going to need more watering. So that's why we were talking about getting your soil right to start with. Now in some s- areas, you may have water restrictions, which is gonna cause you a problem if you're thinking about setting up a retic. So one, one good solution to that is actually to build wicking beds. A wicking bed is a system where instead of watering your plants from the surface of the soil through sprinklers or drip hose, you're actually building a bed where you have a reservoir of water underneath the soil Wicking beds are a really great solution if you're in, a hot dry area like Perth. You'll find that you will save quite a lot of water. Obviously, they are still gonna be reliant on you to fill that reservoir, but if the bed is constructed properly, you can go for, a week without having to refill it. So I'm going to pop a link in the show notes, but I've got a blog post on my website, www.thrivesustainability.com.au. If you go to the Learn to Grow tab, I've got a blog in there and I've got a blog post from a few years ago now when we were building wicking beds that details the construction process. There's many different ways you can construct them. You can use old IBC, like, pods. That's a really easy, cheap way to construct a wicking bed. But I've got some more information on my website so you can have some visuals and that will explain how to build your own wicking bed Now let's get into the fun bit. What are we actually gonna plant first? I think a really useful thing that you can do is do an audit on your weekly grocery shop. So think about the things that you and your family eat the most. Look at maybe where you're spending the most money. Whilst you might want to grow some of those vegetables that you're regularly buying in your grocery shop from the supermarket, it is also worth considering a few varieties that maybe are not so commonly found in the supermarkets. One that I can think of straight away is like the complete hero vegetable in my eyes for any beginner gardeners and anyone actually and that would be Swiss chard, or sometimes it's called silverbeet. The logo I created for my business, Thrive Sustainability, is actually three ruby chard leaves. And the, yeah, the reason behind that is it's just something that I think everybody should grow. It's a really good and much easier to grow alternative to regular spinach. It's very nutritious. It's actually in the beet family, so in the fame, same family as beetroots, but it's, you're just growing it for those leaves. It can grow all year round here in Perth, and we used to grow it, back in the UK, so it's really versatile in all climates. It is one of these vegetables that once you've planted, you can just keep picking those outside leaves, and if you want smaller more tender leaves for salad, you can pick out some of the new leaves too. But if you just keep picking those outside leaves, it's just gonna keep producing for, like, you know, maybe two years before it might then go to seed. And then if you want to let it go to seed, well, even better because then it will just self-seed, and you're just gonna have this wonderful continuous life cycle of this versatile veggie in your garden. So that is my number one. I think everyone should be growing that one. You haven't really cooked with it before, you can just use it any way you do use spinach. So like I said, you can use the tender leaves for salads. The bigger leaves you can chop up, and you can stir-fry them. You can add them to soups. It's a really nice one if you want to make spinach and feta, filo pie. So super, super versatile. It's gonna be one of those sort of go-to year-round vegetables. You can grow it in a pot as well. It's, it doesn't take up heaps of room Next, I'd be recommending some herbs and salad leaves. When you go and you see the price of salad leaves, it can be quite alarming, especially if you're a home grower and you're not used to buying those things in the supermarkets. And also lettuces when they're grown commercially, they- they're exposed to a lot of pesticides, so that's a great one to grow yourself just for those health benefits. If you're picking a lettuce variety, I think one of the best value lettuce varieties you can get is oak leaf lettuce. So those loose leaf varieties, those ones where you can keep picking the leaves as and when you need them, opposed to the,, varieties where you are generally wanting to harvest the whole head, such as iceberg and cos. I grow both, but if you're only gonna go grow one variety to start with, maybe pick oak leaf. That's really versatile. Rocket is another favorite of mine. Again, quite expensive to buy in the shops, but pretty easy to grow yourself. I would say with things like rocket and lettuce, they do like fertile, moist soil. So if you find that they are very bitter or very strong in flavor and bolting to seed quickly, you wanna look at, your watering, like we mentioned earlier, and the amount of organic matter and nutrition in your soil. If you're gonna grow rocket plant it directly from seed. Don't buy a punnet of rocket. It grows so easily from seed, and it's gonna do much better growing directly from seed. Transplanting is probably just gonna cause the plant some stress, and you're not gonna have so much success. It really does like the cooler months, so avoid the peak of summer for that one. Now, salads are wonderful, but we can't sustain ourselves on salads alone. So the next category I think you should really be looking into is legumes, which is peas and beans. Now, again, they're super easy to grow directly from seed. Don't buy punnets of peas and beans. You're really wasting your time. You're just gonna get six little plants, and quite often they will struggle when they're transplanted, which can be a little bit disappointing. You're gonna get far more for your money just buying a packet of seeds. They're really easy to germinate, and you just plant them directly in the ground. You don't need to raise them in punnets or anything first. As long as you're sowing them at the right time of year when the temperatures are right, you can just pop those seeds directly in the ground. Again, I think I will do another podcast about growing from seed in the future, so stay tuned for that one. If you're growing through the cooler months, so if you're planting in autumn, winter, be thinking about growing peas, so podding peas or snap peas, snow peas. Now, through the spring spring and summer, you're gonna be looking at beans. So in Perth, I'd recommend spring planting your dwarf and your climbing beans. And if you're getting more into the peak of summer, your regular beans are gonna struggle a little bit with that heat, but that's where snake beans are great. So during late spring and through summer, snake beans do really well in that heat. So there's a legume for all times of year here in Perth So the next category I would recommend beginner gardeners and anyone for that matter to grow is root veg. So they're a real staple in most people's diets. So things like carrots, beets, radishes if you like a bit of spiciness. Now some people have the argument, "Oh, but carrots are so cheap in the shops, why would I bother growing them?" But really, the flavor of a homegrown carrot is so different from that, those in the shops. Like once you have started growing your own, you may not want to go back to shop-bought carrots. And they're so easy to grow. And again, they're another one that you just grow directly from seed. Do not go out and buy punnets of carrots. It just annoys me so much when I see them in the shop. I'm just shaking my head because carrots do not grow well from punnets. They do not like to be transplanted. So you're growing the carrot for the roots, so that root wants to grow nice and straight and undisturbed. If you plant punnets of carrots, one, again, you're gonna be spending a lot more money for the amount of plants that you're gonna get, but you- they're gonna quite often grow kind of really malformed and you're gonna get these funny-shaped carrots. So just save your money. Just buy a packet of seeds and scatter those small seeds. So they're gonna do well in nice well-drained, friable soil. So if you've got really heavy clay soil, a lot of rocks, you may need to look at improving those. Or just grow them in a pot. You know, just get a good quality potting mix and you can grow some carrots in a pot easily Beetroot is another one that's really easy to grow almost year-round in Perth and Southwest WA. They grow easily direct from seed, A bit like carrots, you don't need to put them in punnets. You don't need to raise them in pots first. You just put them directly in the ground where they're gonna be growing, so they can grow undisturbed. With beetroots and carrots, you are not gonna be harvesting them all at once. You may need to thin them out to start with if they are growing too close together. And you can even use those little shoots as microgreens on your salads. But then you can start picking those carrots and beets when they're still quite small, like little baby carrots, little baby beetroots and just gradually be thinning them out and using them as and when you need them Now, we are heading towards spring right now, so two spring/summer vegetables I think would be great for beginners would be zucchini to start with. Like, you literally only need to grow one or two plants, and that's gonna be plenty for most families, and you're probably gonna be giving them away. They're pretty easy to grow, so great to get your confidence if you're starting out. And the next would be cherry tomatoes. So if you're gonna pick any tomato variety, pick a cherry type. So we have a few different types in store, Cherry Fox Tomito Yellow is great. But obviously, once you get your confidence, there's just a whole world of different tomato varieties, all different shapes, sizes, and colors. So that's one of the joys of growing your own really is, y- you know, you're not just stuck with these generic hybrid varieties that you find in the shops. There is just so much variety out there. And having access to all those hundreds and hundreds of different varieties of, of interesting vegetables and heirloom vegetables is one of the real advantages to not only growing your own, but learning to grow directly from seed as well. Because sometimes when you go into your hardware stores, the varieties on offer in punnets can be quite limited. So learning to grow your own from seed is a skill well worth mastering Now, some of the main things you need to consider when you're growing from seed is the soil temperature the correct temperature for this variety that I'm growing? So are you gonna be growing at the right time of year? And if you're maybe sowing your tomatoes or chilies a little bit early, you may need to consider growing them inside on a heat mat. Depth is really important. So the real easy rule of thumb is to look at the size of your seed and double it, and that's how deep that seeds needs, that seed needs to be planted. So yeah, temperature, depth, and consistent moisture and consistent watering and conditions. So those are the main things, but I have lots of information on my website. I also have a starting from seed guide. I'm gonna put a link to some of those resources in the show notes here, or you can head to my website, thrivesustainability.com.au for that information So hopefully you will have some wins in your first season. But don't forget, you're gonna need to try and keep this going. So maybe set a little reminder or put a note in your calendar. So at the beginning of each season, think about planting something new. Even if it's just three varieties, either seeds or punnets, but plant something new out into your garden at the beginning of each season, so you're continuously harvesting throughout the year. 'Cause I know it can be quite easy to get carried away, be having an amazing summer season, you know, dealing with all your tomatoes and zucchinis, and before you know it, you're heading into autumn, and all of a sudden you think, "Oh, I don't have so much to pick out of the garden anymore." So yep, set a note in your calendar. Beginning of each season, plant, you know, three, five different varieties out. And each time you are planting out, you also need to be thinking about improving your soil, because don't forget, if you've been harvesting veggies and fruit out of your garden, they've taken nutrients out of that soil, and you need to put, put something back into that soil now. So you need to be top dressing with some compost or getting some animal manure, such as sheep manure, and s- top dressing your soil and feeding that soil and feeding your plants at the beginning of each season too Depending on the amount and the quality of that organic matter you're adding, so the quality of your compost you may need to add some fertilizer. I would always recommend an organic-based fertilizer over Something like pelletized chicken manure or blood and bone is ideal for most veggies. Just a quick word on liquid fertilizers in the veggie patch. They're brilliant because you can your plants can take them up fast, straight through the roots, and even through the leaves if you're foliar feeding. So if something's looking a little bit hungry or not doing too well, a liquid feed gets the nutrients to them quickly rather than something that needs to break down into the soil and that's a slower process. So it's particularly useful in the hotter summer months where you're not gonna be getting a lot of rain to help, you know, break down like a pelletized chicken manure for instance, into the soil. Now I actually like to make my own liquid fertilizers, and I'll take you through that in a future episode, so keep an ear out for that one Beyond thinking about your vegetable gardens, like the practicalities, what to plant in what season, et cetera, one of the really important things I want to stress is looking at your garden as a whole ecosystem. If you look to nature for guidance, nothing is growing alone. Nothing is isolated in its own space without other things growing around it and supporting it So when we plonk a raised bed in the middle of like a hot paved area or in the middle of a lawn with not much else growing around it and wonder why, the vegetables are struggling and why we've got such a heavy burden of pests, we need to look to nature and see how things actually work You have no monoculture of, you know, rows of all one type of plant. You have many different plant families all growing within the same space. You have insects, you have small birds, you have a whole ecosystem keeping things balanced. And really, we're gonna have much more success in the garden if we can try to create habitat for all those other organisms If you can find a little space in the corner of your garden next to the veggie patch, I would highly recommend planting some trees and shrubs that are gonna provide habitat and food for, like, the small nectar-feeding birds. So things like grevilleas. I used to have a lot of grevilleas around our old veggie patch in Chittering, and I used to watch all the small little blue wrens, the, the little native robins, and all these tiny small birds coming in, either nesting in, in those shrubs, but also there were birds that would drink the nectar out of those flowers and then straight after they'd be flitting around the veggie patch and getting their protein from any aphids and other pests that are in the garden. So they are not gonna come to your garden unless there is a place for them to feel safe, to make their nests and they are gonna be one of your biggest helpers in the veggie patch. Those small birds are just vital Planting a few flowers around the veggie patch can also really help when it comes to bringing in beneficial insects or even letting just some of your veggies go to seed. So like bees will absolutely love it if you allow like things like your rocket or your broccoli to go to seed. And of course then you might get some veggies self-seeding, which is a win-win situation. Carrots, if you grow a row of carrots and just leave one on the end of the row to fully mature you will get these beautiful big flowers that are excellent at attracting in beneficial insects such as hoverflies. And also again, you're gonna get your carrots self-seeding, which means that, you're gonna have carrots for seasons to come too So before I wrap things up, one point I really want you to remember as you're going forward into this food growing journey is to let go of that idea of it needs to be perfect. Let go of any expectations. Look at your garden not as a machine that has to produce something. Look at it as a living ecosystem because that's what it is. And ecosystems are gonna take time to find their balance. Avoid using harsh sprays and chemicals. All the time you're doing that, you are interrupting that system and you're not giving nature a chance to step in and help you. And I want you to know, nature is always on your side. Weeds are gonna be telling you things about your soil. If a plant is bolting to seed early, it's trying to tell you something about the conditions it's growing in. Nature is not the enemy here. I think the system here that is the enemy is the culture and the conditioning out there that is telling us that we always have to consume and we always have to buy another product to make things work. It's just not the case. So remember, it can take a few years for your garden to find that natural balance and to establish that ecosystem for those beneficial insects to find you and those small birds to start moving in and making their nests. And obviously over time, you're gonna be improving your soil. So if things go wrong, don't panic, don't give up. It does get easier as that ecosystem matures. And just remember, keep noticing those small wins. So ho-hope you have found those tips useful, and I really hope that's gonna give you the confidence and the enthusiasm to go out there and get started. So just remember, an imperfect action is better than none at all. Thanks so much for spending the time with me today at the Soul Garden. If you've enjoyed this episode, please hit Subscribe so you never miss one. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, I'd love it if you left a review. It will really help people find the show. You can shop for our seeds and sign up for our newsletter and find all the links mentioned today in the show notes, or you can head straight to my website, www.thrivesustainability.com.au. And come and find me on Instagram and Facebook at thesoulgarden.au. love to see you there. So until next time, get out there, enjoy your garden, grow something. I'll see you next time. Bye.