The Backyard Revolution: How Greg Peterson Is Rewiring the Food System with Seeds, Soil, and Sanity

What if your backyard could grow more than just grass and HOA complaints?

In this inspiring episode of Preparedness Pro, we dig in with lifelong grower and founder of UrbanFarm.org, Greg Peterson—a man on a mission to transform our broken food system one seed, one garden, and one neighborhood at a time.

He’s talking permaculture, urban farming, seed sovereignty, and how YOU can be part of the solution—even if your “garden” is a porch with personality. Learn how he turned a quarter-acre lot into an edible oasis with 80+ fruit trees, harvested rain like a pro, and launched one of the boldest seed distribution projects in the U.S.

Join us at Preparedness Pro in our Facebook Group or on our blog where you'll find peaceful, practical preparedness advice every day of the week!

Transcript

The Backyard Revolution: How Greg Peterson Is Rewiring the Food System with Seeds, Soil, and Sanity

Kellene: [00:00:00] Welcome to Preparedness Pro, where being prepared isn't about fear, it's about freedom. I'm your host, Colleen, and every episode we explore the peaceful principles of preparedness and self-reliance. No gloom, no doom, just practical solutions for everyday living that help you become more independent and prepared for whatever life brings your way.

From kitchen skills to financial wisdom, emergency planning to sustainable living. We're building a community of capable, confident people who understand that preparedness isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about being free to live your best life regardless of what comes your way. So whether you're starting your preparedness journey or you're a seasoned pro, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

Hi everyone. It's Kellene, the Preparedness Pro. I've got another great show for you today. So my guest today is Part Gardner, part philosopher, and part, how the heck does he grow 80 fruit trees [00:01:00] on a quarter acre lot?

He's basically the Johnny Appleseed of the 21st century. But with, better water conservation and podcast mic. So Greg Peterson is the founder of Urban farm.org and host of the Urban Farm Podcast. But don't let those titles fool you. This guy isn't just teaching people how to grow tomatoes.

He's leading a full blown food revolution, one backyard at a time back in the 1970s while the rest of us were figuring out how to make Kool-Aid without adult. Supervision. Greg was building fish ponds and feeding his family on purpose. He spent the last few decades growing old growth food forest. We're gonna talk about that.

Harvesting rain like it's gold, and turning gray water into liquid life for his plants. We're going to dig into permaculture, the broken food system. What the heck a local seed economy really means. Spoiler alert, it's not just a farmer's market with extra steps. Plus he'll show us how we can all [00:02:00] transform our yard patios or even window boxes into something that's not just pretty but powerful.

So if you've ever wondered whether it's really possible to change the world from your backyard, Greg's here to say yes and here's how. Greg, thank you so much for joining us. 

Greg: Oh my gosh. That was a wonderful introduction. That's the best of the ever best. 

Kellene: Oh, well, thank you so much. I try. Well, I read that you were building backyard fish ponds while most kids your age were trying to master pack man.

Was there a moment back then, knee deep and algae, or maybe elbow deepen compost when it hits you that the food system wasn't just flawed, it was fra flat out fragile. 

Greg: So as you ask that, I'm getting chills, because I don't know where that came from really. It was 1975. I wrote a paper on for my eighth grade biology class on how we were overfishing the oceans.

Now, about 20 [00:03:00] years ago, somebody said to me, I was doing a lecture, and somebody raised their hand and they said, so did you watch Jacques Cousteau when you were a kid? 

Kellene: Yeah. 

Greg: So that's the closest thing I can come to where it came from and it's just what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Kellene: Wow. 

Greg: And 

Kellene: interesting 

Greg: in the middle part of my life.

So I was self-employed. I've been self-employed since I was 15 years old, and in the middle part of my life I tried to get away from. Fish farming and gardening and that kind of stuff. I was in technology for 20 years, from 85 to 2005, but I kept getting pulled back into growing food and it was always, during that time it was always a hobby.

And then after that it became a profession again. So, 

Kellene: well you say hobby, I mean, most teens can't keep a cactus alive. Where did your passion come from? 

Greg: I guess [00:04:00] if you believe in past lives, I have to say that it came from there with a question mark behind it. So it's just 

Kellene: innate in you, is what you're saying?

It was just there. Exactly. It's okay. 

Greg: It's, and it's a gift because I've been very clear. Since I was a young kid, what I'm supposed to be doing. In fact, in 1991, I created a vision for myself. That was 34 years ago, by the way, that I'm the person on the planet responsible for transforming our global food system.

Hmm. And so most days it's a gift. Some days it's a curse 'cause I can't walk away from it. Well, 

Kellene: sometimes it probably feels like a bit of a burden too. That's a, that's a tall order. 

Greg: It can. It can. And I. I stand in that vision as something to get me up in the morning, you know? Mm-hmm. It's like, this is what I'm here to do.

Kellene: Yeah. Well, what's the most unexpected thing that people learn when they start trying to grow their own food? Do you think 

Greg: that it's [00:05:00] actually easy? Yeah, so many people come to me and say, well, I have a brown thumb or a black thumb uhhuh, and it's just 'cause they haven't paid attention. You know, when you plant a basil plant, you have to pay a little bit of attention to it.

And when you plant a fruit tree or 80 fruit trees on a third of an acre, you just have to pay some attention to them. And the nice thing about. Fruit trees is, you can give them an hour a month, and for that hour a month, you can get 50, a hundred, 150, 200 pounds of fruit once a year, which is a. In my opinion, the most delicious food we can eat is a a peach that you walk up to a peach tree when it's ready to eat, and you grab it and it falls off in your hand, and you take a bite of it and it splashes down the front of your shirt because it's so juicy [00:06:00] and it makes your toes tingle.

And in that moment you decide, okay, I never can eat a store-bought peach again. Yeah. 

Kellene: Yeah. If only people knew what, where their produce lies, you know, months before it actually gets into their store. Yeah. Can we talk about that? 

Greg: Absolutely. And so there's this thing called food miles. I. Food miles are the amount of miles that food travels, the average amount of miles that food travels from where it was grown to where it's consumed.

And you wanna take a guess at what that might be? 

Kellene: Oh, , I'm scared. 

Greg: Well, it, it's in the neighborhood of 12 to 1500 miles. 

Kellene: Oh my 

Greg: gosh. Well, think about it. When you buy a. A banana. Yeah, a banana in the United States comes from South America. That's three, four, 5,000. I don't know how far it is down there, but thousands of miles.

And [00:07:00] the big problem with that is that they have to harvest this food before it's ripe. And the big problem with that is that it's not nutrient dense yet. Yeah, your food isn't ripe and ready to eat when they pick it early. And then the big problem with that is that the moment they pick it, it starts degrading nutritionally.

So you already have a. Of fruit deficiency. Yeah, a deficiency, exactly. And then it continues to degrade nutritionally. So one of the biggest reason to grow your own food is because it travels feet rather than hundreds or thousands of miles. And the taste vine ripe fruits and vegetables taste incredible.

Hmm. And then there's the hole, and we're not gonna go [00:08:00] down this rabbit hole. There's the whole ultra processed food thing, 

Kellene: right? 

Greg: That is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, or it already happened and we just don't know it. 

Kellene: So you talk about creating an old growth food forest. Mm-hmm. On a quarter acre in Phoenix, I believe.

Greg: Yep. I was in Phoenix. 

Kellene: Can you walk us through what that looks like and why that's such a big deal? 

Greg: Absolutely. So an old growth food forest is thought processed over decades. It doesn't have to be. , I've now been in Asheville. We moved to Asheville three years ago, and, i've already got things that are coming back over and over again.

So old growth food. Actually, let's step back. A food forest is purposely created landscape that's edible and it's never made sense to me. [00:09:00] Surprise, surprise that it. That why somebody would plant something you can't eat or does that doesn't support food. So pollinators are a good example of something that may not be edible.

And so from that perspective of why plant something you can't eat. If you're only planting things you can, you can eat and. Pollinators. What you end up with eventually is a landscape that's edible and in my case in Phoenix, I lived in on the property for 32 years and I had been practicing permaculture principles on that property for 30 of those 32 years.

And planting fruits and vegetables and seeds that. Recreate [00:10:00] themselves year over year, over year. And one of the things, one of the keys, well, let's talk two of the keys. One of the keys is planting fruit trees. I love planting fruit trees because you plant them once and for an hour a month on them, you get food for decades.

In fact, I had two fruit trees in the backyard at the urban farm in Phoenix. They were citrus trees that were over 100 years old. 

Kellene: Wow. My goodness. 

Greg: And they, and they were still making fruit. 

Kellene: My goodness. That's 

Greg: piece number one. Piece number two is 

Kellene: fruit. Trees aren't lazy, are they? 

Greg: Oh, they are not lazy. 

Kellene: So what else were you gonna say?

I'm sorry. I. 

Greg: Number two. That's okay. And thing number two is I always plant open pollinated seeds. So there's generally three kinds, and this is , a gross generalization. There's generally three kinds of seeds. There are. [00:11:00] Genetically modified, which we've all heard of, 

Kellene: right? 

Greg: And for the most part, in gardens we don't really have to worry about genetically modified seeds or plants because we're not the market that the companies that do that technology wants to sell to.

So we really don't have to worry about that. And then there's hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds are when they take watermelon A and watermelon B, and they cross pollinate them and they get watermelon C, which is, oh by the way, very sweet and seedless. Now nature has been cross pollinating seeds for millions of years, so hybrids aren't necessarily a bad thing.

, And I do occasionally plant hybrid seeds. And then the third kind of seed is something called an heirloom or an open pollinated seed. And the thing about those seeds is that they're [00:12:00] long-term stable, which means if you save a seed from an Armenian cucumber, excuse me, if you save a seed from a mar, an Armenian cucumber and plant it, the next year, you're gonna get.

Some version, some close version of that Armenian cucumber. So my strategy when I start building a old growth food forest or a food forest in general, is to only plant open pollinated seeds. And what that does for me is that, and then I let them go to seed every year, and they come back year after year after year.

Kellene: Wow. Well, permaculture changed your life, wouldn't you agree? 

Greg: Oh my gosh. It. It did, but long before I ever knew what permaculture was. 

Kellene: Okay, so for the [00:13:00] uninitiated, what's a down to earth explanation of permaculture that won't make our eyes glaze over? 

Greg: Super, super simple. The art and science of working with nature.

In fact, if you type that phrase in to the internet, my name comes in, comes up all over the place. It's really looking at nature and natural systems and then working in the. Flow of them plugging into them so that you're working in conjunction with or in, in the flow of nature. And it, the big premise of permaculture is observation.

You have to stand back and watch what's happening in your space. 

Kellene: Hmm. Go into that a little deeper. 

Greg: Well, nature knows how to do things. Nature knows how to manage. Nature knows how to build. [00:14:00] How to grow. So if we're in our neighborhood, and I'm not just talking about our properties, I'm talking in, you know, within three to five miles of your house.

Mm-hmm. That that is a very similar microclimate to your house. Now in your property, there's gonna be more microclimates that are a little bit different than that, but paying attention to what's working in and around your house and in and around your neighborhood, and then replicating that breeds success.

Okay. If you see nature, so one of the things about growing food that I love is what are called volunteers. Volunteers are plants that plants them, that plant themselves out year over year. [00:15:00] And those are the ones that do the best. So if you are. Letting things go to seed, hence planting open pollinated seeds.

If you're letting things go to seed, those seeds can be spread in your landscape. The ones that are gonna do the best are the ones that pop up on their own. Those are the ones that we call volunteers. I have a bucket of basil here, , at my new place in Asheville, North Carolina. It's a 15 gallon. Tree tub.

You've all seen them. That's what trees come in. And when I arrived here three years ago, I planted some basil plants in that pot. And that first summer, three summers ago, the basil came up. I harvested basil. We used it. It went to seed. I grabbed those seeds, I dropped those seeds back in the [00:16:00] bucket, and the following spring, those seeds came up as basil plants.

And I grew enough in that 15 gallon tree tub. I grew enough basil this past season to make 10 half pints of pesto, plus all the fresh uses that we had of the basil. And then last fall, when that basil was going to seed, I was stripping those seeds off. Dropping them back in the pot, and guess what?

About two weeks ago? Here it is. May 8th, two weeks ago. Little basil plants started popping up the same pot and that pot, I didn't bring it in. I left it out in the weather. And the nice thing about those seeds is the more they do that, the more years I let them go to seed and let them come up and harvest the basil [00:17:00] and put the seeds back, they become more acclimatized to my backyard.

They become more used to my backyard and they do better. 

Kellene: Wow. Well, let's talk food resilience. Speaking of basil being very resilient, 

Greg: uhhuh, 

Kellene: what's the first domino that falls when people don't understand where their food comes from? 

Greg: Ah,, well, I think the first thing that happens is Hurricane Helene.

Or Covid. So it's when it's when something fractures in our culture and people realize, oh my gosh, I'm not prepared. Mm-hmm. By the way, I thought we were prepared going into Helene. We got hit pretty hard by Helene and the fall of 2024. And [00:18:00] we learned a lot. So being prepared, just exactly what you're talking about is one of the key pieces to our goodwill, to our health, to our happiness.

You know what I mean? 

Kellene: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that. Especially, we're talking about preparedness here. I think that a lot of people who practice preparedness, but who don't actively grow a garden, I think that they think that they can, as long as they stock up on seeds, that they'll be fine. But what are they missing with that thought process?

Greg: Well, the same thing. They're missing if they're buying a hundred pounds of freeze dried food and sticking in the closet. It's the hoarding mentality. And so I've played with this thought process for maybe 15 years. I, I bulk buy, [00:19:00] so I buy from Azure Standard and me too. Um, love them. In fact, I think you had David on your show.

Yeah, we did. We had, I did, I did. Two men rock stars over there absolutely love them. And so I bulk by, but it's all stuff that I use. Yeah. Same with seeds. You know, I have bulk seeds. In fact, we're gonna talk in a little while about my seed up in a box, which is a bulk seed buy. But we also use those seeds.

Those are the seeds we're using every year to put in the ground. And so I think one of the big challenges in prepping with seeds is don't just hoard seeds. 

Kellene: We need to hoard the mentality and , the knowledge that goes with those seeds. 

Greg: Yeah. And use it. 

Kellene: That's what we should be hoarding is knowledge.

Yeah. 

Greg: In, 

Kellene: in my [00:20:00] opinion. Yeah. Yeah. 

Greg: There you go. 

Kellene: Okay, so what's the biggest myth you would say about urban farming that drives you absolutely bonkers? 

Greg: Oh my gosh. There's this bug. Rat mushroom weed in my yard. How do I kill? It? Absolutely drives me nuts. Most bugs are beneficial bugs I. We're, we want them there.

Not 

Kellene: tarantulas, we don't want them there. Not tarantulas. 

Greg: That's true. That's true. And tarantulas are big enough we can move. Yeah. But the thing that bugs me is that the first place people go is How do we kill it? Mm-hmm. They don't go to, well, hold on, what is this and is it a beneficial And it, how's it helping?

Kellene: Okay, so you're not just growing food, you are [00:21:00] actually growing economies. What does a local seed economy actually look like and why does it matter so much right now? 

Greg: So I'm gonna step back from that just a smidge and talk about the food economy. The food economy is something we partic. If you're living and breathing and eating, you're participating in the food economy every day.

And about 15 years ago, a buddy of mine and I put together, , a model called our local food Economy Model. And this local food economy model, it distinguishes seven different areas that need to be strong in order for us to be able to be resilient and grow our own local food. And when I say that, I mean grow enough local food that we're actually feeding our population because it's likely in our lifetimes we're gonna have to grow [00:22:00] food locally in order to thrive.

So. Agreed. Yeah. So one, it's in this thing, it's, it's like educate farmers, create farmers. These are the different areas. Create value added products. Culture, I. And, education and seeds. And what I realized about 15 years ago, I did a week long in-person course called Seed School with Bill McDormand and Bell Starr, and what I realized was that in the case of a covid, the only place locally.

To get seeds are a few big box stores and a few local nurseries. 

Kellene: Mm-hmm. 

Greg: And that's a problem. 

Kellene: Yeah. 

Greg: If you can't get seeds. So part of my local food economy model is a local seed [00:23:00] economy and. That's moved forward with seed libraries, with seed exchanges, with educating people how to gross grow plants and harvest seeds and building the systems in a local space in order to have those seeds available.

And so 

Kellene: talk about what a seed library is for folks who aren't aware. 

Greg: Ooh, they're so cool. Rebecca Newburn. You should have her on your show, by the way. She started the Seed Library Network a while back, and a seed library. Y'all remember well, us. Remember that we used to go into a library and there were card catalogs in libraries.

Yeah. And you'd pull out a drawer and pull a card out of that that has the book you were looking for, and you'd go [00:24:00] run and find the book. Well, it's all digitized now. And they had all of these card catalogs that they didn't know what to do with. So somebody dreamed up. What if we filled them full of seeds?

So seed packets are about the same size as a library card, a card that goes in there, right? Yeah. So what a seed library is, is a collection of seeds often, housed at a library that you can go check out a packet of seeds and. Take it home with the agreement that you're gonna grow those seeds, and here's the best part, you're gonna learn how to save those seeds and bring them back to the library.

So yeah, that's cool. It's a true lending library for. Garden seeds. 

Kellene: That's [00:25:00] cool. That's cool. Okay, so let's talk, , the next thing that's, you know, on my mind, so to speak. It's all over the place with you. So tell us about the Great American seed up. How is it different from just handing out seed packets at a garden club meeting?

Greg: Well, there you go. So back to my story. 15 years ago discovering that the only place you could find seeds in a, in a an emergency is at a big box store. And so I decided in 2011, 2012 that I was gonna start a seed bank in Phoenix. So I went out and bought a great big freezer. 'cause you can actually store seeds long term in a freezer.

And I bought. 800 pounds of like 80 different varieties. Not 800 each, but 800 total of about 80 different varieties of open pollinated seeds. And I stuck them in the [00:26:00] freezer. And I went back to my teacher, bill McDormand and said, okay, I got a seed bank. And he looked at me and he said, Greg, it doesn't solve the problem.

And it was like, well, hold what? Hold on. I have a seed bank. We, we got it covered. He said, Greg, there's 4.7 million people in Phoenix, Arizona. If there's a problem in Phoenix, this doesn't solve it. So he and I brainstormed and we created this event called the Great American Seed Up, and it's a year of once a year event.

We do it in the fall every year, and we have over a hundred different varieties of open pollen pollinated seeds, and we put them in popcorn buckets. So the. At the Armenian Cucumber Station, there's a popcorn bucket of Armenian cucumber seeds. There's a scoop, a plastic Ziploc bag, and a business [00:27:00] card that says everything on it that you need to know about the seed.

And we give people a tally sheet and they come into the room and. Basically scoop to their heart's content. Now, one of the things that we do is the scoops are five to 10 times larger in volume than what you get in a normal packet of seeds. Mm-hmm. So our, our basil seed is four grams, and I recently purchased a packet of basil and there was a half a gram of seeds in there.

And our price on that, I believe is a dollar and a quarter. Wow. So you're getting eight times as many seeds for half the price, because I think I paid $2 and 89 cents for that packet of seeds. And the reason we can do this is because 90% of the cost of a packet of seeds is in the packaging and marketing of [00:28:00] it.

So basically what we're doing is we're giving people the opportunity to come in and package their own seeds. And I. At a super discounted rate. 

Kellene: Wow. That's amazing. 

Greg: 10 years. We're 10 years. I, 

Kellene: I wanna, I wanna be 

Greg: there, right? Oh, it's amazing when we get 300 people in this 10,000 square foot room and they're all scooping seeds.

Oh yeah. And attending classes. 'cause we always have education that comes with it. 

Kellene: That's gotta give you goosebumps, Greg. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. And it is, it is. Awesome. So, so we're going along, we did our first one, I think in 2015. Was our first Great American seed up. We do 'em yearly. And in 2020 what happened? We got Covid.

Mm-hmm. And we, you know, it's, we can't do an event with 500 people at it. Not that year anyways. 

Kellene: Not unless you were Home Depot. 

Greg: There you [00:29:00] go. , So Belle, our business partner Belle, is, bell Bill, Janice and I created the Great American Seed up and. , Belle comes to us and says, let's do a box of seeds.

We'll call it seed up in a box. And what we do is we package 10 packs of seeds. So we bundled these packages so that basil I spoke about a little while ago, it, rather than a, four gram single pack, what we send out is 40 grams. And in that package. Is a business card that says this is basil and it's a teaspoon and it gives you 10 business cards and 10 Ziploc bags so that then what your job is when you get it, is to separate it by 10.

And our bundle, our basic [00:30:00] bundle of 20 di 25 different varieties of, of seeds is, I think, I think it's 180 bucks, right around 180 bucks. And it, when it comes down to it, you get 25 varieties, 10 packets each. So you're getting 250 packets of seeds. 

Kellene: Mm-hmm. 

Greg: 80 cents a packet. 

Kellene: That's awesome. That's great. So 

Greg: yeah, basically it's, these packages are designed for community gardens, for church gardens, for school gardens.

People have used them as wedding favors. I have a couple of people every year that they buy a big bundle or two and they host a potluck. Everybody brings some food to the potluck, and while they're at the potluck, they're sitting around packaging seeds and they all take away as many packets of seeds as they want.

Kellene: That's awesome. That's a great idea. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Kellene: Well, you've worked with rainwater and gray water [00:31:00] harvesting for decades. What are the real benefits and how hard is it for the regular homeowner to start? 

Greg: , Well, the benefits are, it's there. And in Phoenix, Arizona where we get seven inches of rain. I used to get this all the time.

Well, why bother? We only get seven inches of rain and my first response is absolutely bother because we only get seven inches of rain. Mm-hmm. . Often what happens in Phoenix, Arizona is that water gets pushed off into the street and away wherever away is, and it can't be utilized, 

Kellene: right? 

Greg: , So first and foremost, in places that are dry, utilizing that resource, that water resource is super duper important.

Now, three years ago, I moved to a place that gets 40 inches a year. So the other side of the coin. Is we have a water problem here sometimes, [00:32:00] and so managing the rainwater so that it doesn't flood our spaces is really important. Hmm. So on both sides of the coin, there's, there's benefits of harvesting. Now I'm a huge proponent of not putting water in tanks.

Tanks are very expensive. The first. Two or three or four iterations of your rainwater harvesting system should be a direct the rainwater where you want it in your landscape, and then plant around that. Hmm. So set up basins around your landscape. Put that water in the basins and plant your fruit trees around those basins so that when it rains, the water goes into those basins, percolates in waters your fruit trees.

Kellene: You've been doing this for 30 years, what has the soil taught you mm-hmm. [00:33:00] About life and failure and second chances? I'm sure you've got some wisdom for us in that regard. 

Greg: Oh my gosh. , There's five components. So you said soil? Yeah. Most people have dirt. Dirt is highly compact, clay or sand, or it's not soil.

There's five components of healthy soil. They are dirt, airspace, water, organic matter, and everything that's alive in the soil. And without a nice balanced soil, good luck growing anything. A friend of mine in Phoenix about two decades ago, moved into her house, dug up some dirt out of her backyard, put it in a pot, and planted some things, and everything was dead within three days because she, and she learned lessons from that because she didn't have the.

The [00:34:00] soil built correctly. I've often said when I do a garden bed, if I'm doing a raised garden bed, I will spend $30 on the garden bed and $300 to put the soil in it because you get what you pay for. And I. Building that healthy soil, a nice mixture of dirt, airspace, water, organic matter, and everything that's alive in the soil.

Once you get that balance, the food that grows out of there is more nutrient dense. It's better for you and it's tastier. And, , the key component, the key fix here is adding organic matter. 

Kellene: So what have you learned that you can, , that you can trace that over into your life? How, how is what you've learned about the soil transformed into your life?

Greg: Soil biology. That soil, if you have dead soil, even if it's nice, there's a nice component of dirt, aerospace, water, and organic matter. [00:35:00] If there's not life in that soil, your plants suffer and they don't do as well. So nurturing that life, going no-till is really important. , Adding only organic fertilizers is really important, , because organic fertilizers don't burn.

The life in the soil and not using chlorinated water on your gardens. What's the chlorine in the water for? It's to kill bad, bad bugs in the water. Mm-hmm. But if you're using chlorinated water in your garden, you're negatively impacting the life, the microbial life that's in that soil. So, to answer your question specifically, same for our stomach.

We have this biological, microorganisms in our body, in our gut that when we throw chlorinated water at it, it [00:36:00] hurts it. When you throw highly processed food at it, it hurts it. Mm-hmm. So. There's a really tight correlation between gut health and soil microbial health. 

Kellene: I wanna, I wanna make, make sure I get to these last couple of questions here.

Mm-hmm. Let, let's talk legacy. What do you hope this growing movement looks like 50 years from now? 

Greg: Well, it's starting. I'm seeing more and more and more people, backyard farmers, influ, a lot of influencers out there, people growing food in their front and backyards. I believe that the with a capital T solution, in fact, let's make the totally all caps, so we're screaming it the.

Solution to our global food problem is growing food right where we live. Mm-hmm. Grow it in your front and backyard and grow. Grow food in your front yard, show it off. Let people see how [00:37:00] easy it is to grow food. And the legacy for me is.

Having people get how important that is and actually go out and do it. I, so I do the Urban Farm Podcast. It's a, podcast I've been doing for 10 years, and about four years ago, this, this guy named John jumped in. To the podcast and started listening, and he was getting ready to retire and he retired and started a 10 by 10 garden and then a 10 by 20 garden and then a 20 by 40 garden.

And then before long he had a 50 by 100 foot garden that he was growing food in and. That was because he was listening to my podcast and two summers ago he listened to one of my episodes and it was an episode where we were talking about going to the farmer's market. So he decided in the fall of. 24, I [00:38:00] believe that he was gonna go to the farmer's market and he went, he harvested food and went to the market and had a blast and had a great time.

And then ac actually, I guess it was the fall of 23. And so in the summer of 24, he, he emailed me, he says, can I share my story? And both for you, Kellene, and me, and really us podcasters out there, this is. The really, really good stuff when we share what we do and share what we know and we share other people's stories, and they actually go out and do something with it.

They go out and do something with it and then they come back and tell us about it. That was just like the best of the best of the best. 

Kellene: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it has. Do you have another story that you can share with us in parting when someone's life has changed because they planted a seed?

Greg: I'm gonna share one of my stories. Great. And it's a story of failure. [00:39:00] And seeds planted. It's 2003 and I decide that with a buddy of mine that we wanna start a plant nursery in Phoenix, Arizona, and it's the fall. And so we get all geared up and before long we have decided we are going to grow.

80,000 plant starts. For the spring of 2004 and we, I, we had the infrastructure set up and things were growing and so on and so on, and everything was looking great in January of 2004. The plants were a little small to sell though, and in February and March of 2004 it rained every weekend and that significantly negatively impacted our sales.

We get to the end of March of 2004 and I have [00:40:00] 30, 40,000 plants left over that are outgrowing their pots and deciding that it's time to give up the goat. So we actually did a fire sale where I gave it all away. Wow. I just did an outreach to my email list. I said, here, come and get this. We're at the end of the season.

Come and you know, so on and so on. And we cleared out most everything. , We did ask for donations at that point and ended up getting about getting about $2,200 worth of donations from the stuff that we gave away. And the lesson for me was. I'm a lifelong entrepreneur. I should have, I should have known this, we should have started with 8,000 plants, not 80,000 plants.

, So that was a hard pill to take. And [00:41:00] the next piece. And this is really the gift in it for me was that oh yeah, that's not really the business I wanted to be in. Mm-hmm. And so it was, you know, in many ways it was a massive business failure on my part. And I've had over 30 businesses in my life and it's the second biggest massive business failure I've ever done.

But I learned a lot from it. And came out of it a better person. And so really the story here is failures happen. You can fail, you can make a mistake. It's what you take from it and learn from it that really matters. 

Kellene: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, I concur. Well share with people how they find 

Greg: you, Greg. Well, urban Farm Podcasts on all the platforms out there.

The seed up in a box, you can find out about it with an explainer video. It's seed up in a [00:42:00] box.com and my main website is urban farm.org. Wonderful. 

Kellene: Well, thank you so much for sharing your valuable time with us today and giving people a little hope of what they can accomplish, whether it's a balcony or a quarter acre or a 10th of an acre, 10 by 10.

, There's so much that you can accomplish in that. I gotta ask you one last question. 

Greg: All right. 

Kellene: What's your favorite kind of fruit tree and why? 

Greg: Oh, depends on the time of year. I have three favorite days of the year. First day of peaches. First day of watermelons. It's a fruit, but not off of a tree. And first day of naval oranges, , peaches, A freshly picked peach.

There is nothing better than when they, as I explained earlier, when it drips down your mouth and it's just incredible watermelons. . Well, they're a nice summertime [00:43:00] refresher and naval oranges. And one of the things that I love about naval oranges, is that they stay on the tree for months. You know, peaches, we have a two week window, naval oranges.

We have a four month window, so. 

Kellene: Nice. Yeah. Well, we just had to ask which of your kids were your favorite, you know? 

Greg: Thank you. 

Kellene: Alright. It's been a delight. Well, thank you again so much. It was a delight to have you. 

Greg: You bet. Thank you for having me. , I love doing this, as you can tell. And you did an incredible job.

Thank you. 

Kellene: Oh, thank you. That's very kind. You take care.

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