How to Grow Your Own Food (Without Being a Homesteader) with Rachael Carter
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music
In this nourishing and down-to-earth episode, I chat with Rachael Carter—environmental science expert, mom of two, and founder of Floraculture Gardens. From compost to kid-friendly harvesting tips, Rachael breaks down how to create a productive backyard garden, no matter your space or experience level. If you’ve ever wanted to grow your own food but felt overwhelmed, this episode will leave you feeling inspired, informed, and ready to dig in—literally.
Why Compost Matters More Than You Think
Rachael shares how a formal background in environmental science led her to discover the missing ingredient in many modern gardens: compost. Despite years of soil science classes, she wasn’t introduced to compost until she started gardening herself. That gap inspired her to teach others how to create thriving, organic gardens without synthetic chemicals—starting with the soil.
Common Gardening Mistakes and What to Do Instead
We talk through the three biggest mistakes most beginner gardeners make:
1. Using store-bought products labeled as “feeds for 3 months” that often contain synthetic chemicals
2. Relying on lifeless soil mixes with no microbiology
3. Assuming native soil is good enough for raised beds (spoiler: Southeast Michigan clay says otherwise)
Rachael emphasizes using compost-based soil, avoiding marketing traps, and prioritizing drainage and soil health from the start.
How Gardening Helps Kids Eat Better (and Try New Things)
One of the biggest takeaways? Kids are way more likely to eat what they grow. Rachael shares real stories of her own children munching on pea pods, snacking on berries straight from the garden, and learning when—and how—to harvest food properly. Her advice for picky eaters? Try growing different varieties. Sometimes that’s all it takes! You’d be amazed how different lettuce can taste when it’s homegrown.
Seasonal Cooking and Simple Harvest Hacks
Rachael’s garden-to-table approach includes freezing, fresh-eating, and skipping the canning completely. She shares favorite seasonal cookbooks (like The Harvest Table) and how growing her own food has helped her cook more intuitively and less wastefully.
The Case for Backyard Gardens in the Front Yard
Why are we hiding gardens behind garages? Rachael makes the case for bringing gardens into your lifestyle—front and center. Not only does it make fresh food more accessible, but it also invites guests and kids to experience food in a whole new way.
Outdoorsy Challenge of the Week
Rachael’s challenge? Take your kids outside and identify a few plants growing in your yard or local park. Whether you use a field guide or a quick Google search, you’ll be surprised what you find—and what’s edible. (Hi, dandelions.)
Connect with Rachael:
https://www.floraculturegardens.com
Instagram: @floraculture.gardens
Resources mentioned:
• The Art of Simple Food Cook Book by Alice Waters
Where to Find Me:
Shop my activity guides and free downloads
Want the full episode? 🎧 Listen to Episode 6: “Kids Belong in Nature: How to Grow Your Own Food (Without Being a Homesteader) with Rachael Carter”
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Julianne Nienberg (00:00)
Welcome to the My Outdoorsy Mom podcast. I'm your host, Julianne Nienberg, mom of three, backyard adventure enthusiast, and your go-to gal for making memories outside with your kids. This is your space to ditch the pressure of perfect and embrace simple, soul-filling time in nature that fits real family life. Each week, we'll talk motherhood, nature play, travel, and entrepreneurship with honest stories, practical tips, and guest conversations that'll feel like chatting with a friend.
Whether you're raising wild little explorers or building a business during nap time, I see you. So grab your coffee, toss some snacks in your bag, and let's make some memories. This is the My Outdoorsy Mom podcast.
Julianne Nienberg (00:38)
Today we're digging into something that connects kids, nature and food, gardening.
Whether you have a backyard, a balcony, or just a tiny patch of sunlight, my guest today is here to show you that growing your own food is possible. It's fun and one of the best ways to get kids engaged with the outdoors. Joining me is Rachel Carter, owner of Flora Culture Gardens, where she teaches families how to grow their own natural veggies and create a garden-to-table lifestyle. With a background in environmental science and a passion for making gardening accessible to everyone, Rachel helps parents
turn small spaces into thriving food producing gardens while getting kids excited about eating what they grow.
Today we're talking about how to start gardening, why kids are naturally drawn to it, and how even busy parents can grow fresh, flavorful food. Rachel, welcome to the podcast.
Rachael Carter (01:26)
Thank you so much for having me here, Julie, and I'm really excited to dig in with you today.
Julianne Nienberg (01:30)
So one of the things that I loved learning about you, Rachel, was that you went to school for environmental science and you've been passionate about environmental toxicology. Like what led you to pursue environmental science and how did that lead you from that to veggie gardening?
Rachael Carter (01:48)
always loved the outdoors. And so when I went to school for environmental science, my goal was, I was really obsessed with like the chemicals. For example, you know, if there is a spill in a river.
How far does it travel? know, is everybody that lives downstream of this? At what point are they safe from this chemical? Things like that really fascinate me and there's equations for all of this. And so learning the transport and flow of chemicals through water and soil and everything like that was really cool to me. And so I went to school for it. And then after then, I started working for the government for a little bit. And then I switched to a private soil and water testing laboratory. I was never good at gardening and
When I went to school for environmental science, we had a soil class where we literally spent 16 weeks, I think is a semester, right? Something like that. And the word compost was never brought up a single time in this entire class. So I am someone who's now like considered educated in soil. And I don't even know what compost is until later when I learn about gardening and learn about growing food. And so as I was starting to put the pieces together, when I
Julianne Nienberg (02:30)
.
Rachael Carter (02:54)
was experimenting learning how to grow food in my own backyard,
it just became so apparent to me that there's this huge educational gap between how food actually grows organically, naturally, what people know about growing food, and then everything else in between, know, gardening has turned into a really big product based.
pastime hobby, guess is how you can call it. But really, it can be a lifestyle for all of us. And you don't need to spray anything to get things to grow. And compost is really like the key to all of that. And it was just looking back at my education, I was so saddened that there was that gap there. And so when I started learning how to grow my own food,
And I had friends and family asking me, are you doing this? And I was talking about it and I was like, OK, there's there might be something to this. I might need to start something to really get the word out about this.
Julianne Nienberg (03:42)
That I think it's so fascinating because the things that you talked about or the things that you learned, you know, there's so much that you know now as a gardener, a very seasoned and like professional gardener practically. And also things that you've learned that you weren't taught, and it comes with wisdom from time and working with different people and working with different families in different soil, different, environments. I have a kind of a tough question for you, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say.
What do you think are, the top three things that are impacting our soil quality? Like if we are just your average gardener here, you and I are both based in Southeast Michigan. what are the things that we as homeowners, as gardeners should be concerned about and, you know, just be cognizant of as we're, planning garden, as we're wanting to grow fresh food for our families.
Rachael Carter (04:29)
I think a lot of the products, again, gardening is very product based. when you go to the typical hardware store, it's really easy to just grab whatever's available and set up your garden. But not all of it is going to create an easy, effortless, abundant vegetable garden. And so the first thing that comes to mind are really like marketing.
toys such as, you know, feeds your garden for three months, like words like that on a package, that is a really good indication that there's synthetic chemicals in there. And so if your goal is organic gardening, if you're using that, you're not organic gardening at all. Even if it says organic or whatever on the package, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that it probably contains synthetic chemicals. So that's the first thing I would say to look away from.
The second thing is just the overall mixture of soil. And so we want something that is alive. Compost is alive. It should have some sort of microbiology within it. It should have bacteria and fungi. And these are what are feeding our plants so that we don't have to feed them chemicals. We're just the vitamins and minerals that we hope we're eating in our food.
Julianne Nienberg (05:20)
.
Rachael Carter (05:32)
They're only getting into our food through the help of all of these microorganisms that live in the soil. So we want some sort of compost-based
component within our soil. But most soils available are just, I guess like a growing medium is the way I would describe it. It's just there. There's no life to it. Potting soils.
Julianne Nienberg (05:43)
.
Rachael Carter (05:51)
know, cocoa core, things like that, there is no biology in there. And so that's the second thing to look out for. You want to read the packaging to see, you know, what exactly are these ingredients and is there a compost-based component to this, like worm castings, or sometimes it'll say, mycorrhizal
fungi was added or something like that. That is sort of a clue that you're in the right direction there. The last thing that I think of too is drainage is a big thing.
You know, raised by gardening, container gardening are really popular and they should be because that is a great way to control. You have a sense of control of what you're growing in and it makes gardening so much easier. But we have to have a well draining, well rounded soil like we just talked about. And a big thing that I see a lot of people do and I feel bad because they just don't know is, you know, they're going into their yard.
Southeast Michigan we have a lot of clay in our soil and they're just like getting soil from another corner of their yard and putting it in a container and calling it a garden. The problem with that is if it is really heavy with clay it's not going to drain and it's not like again it doesn't have that compost-based component so it's not really going to feed your plants either. So really just being aware of what we're growing in and how we're setting up so that we're not cutting corners at that step it makes everything down the road so much easier.
Julianne Nienberg (07:06)
I feel like when we as consumers go to the grocery store, we're looking for organic and we're hoping that the choices that we're making by choosing organic versus conventionally grown or choosing things that are locally grown.
You know, I think there's an assumption or a faith that we have that, you know, our food is being grown properly or that it's being grown with the best and most nourishing soil and things like that. And what I've been learning over the years, you know, as I grow in my awareness of gardening and it's not even, I'm like very basic. I pretty much kill everything that I touch. But what I'm learning is that there is so much that goes behind gardening. Like you said, that things that the average
Homeowner, gardener, beginner gardener doesn't even think about when you're talking about things like compost or just being aware of the different marketing tactics to promote how something can help people grow their gardens in X amount of months. And those are things that I'm so glad you're sharing because the average gardener, homeowner, whatever it is,
I don't think that we know these kinds of things. I go to, you I have gone in the past to my local hardware store and looked around and I've tried to make the most informed decision that I believed I was making, but there's just so much more to it. And I think what you're doing is so incredible because you are teaching the average gardener, the average beginner gardener, what's really important if you want fresh and flavorful food and, nourishing food to give to your families. I love the things that you share.
And we talked about it recently, but just about how, you know, food at the grocery store tastes totally different than the food you grow in your own garden, right?
Rachael Carter (08:44)
Definitely. It's a huge difference. And I think you're spot on too with, you know, a lot of this knowledge, even if you have no goal and no time to grow your own home garden, it's appropriate to know for anybody who consumes food, which is all of us. And so I wish more people knew about all these intricacies and details. For example, organic is one thing. Regenerative agriculture is another thing.
Julianne Nienberg (08:50)
Inhale.
Rachael Carter (09:12)
one does not imply the other. these are very different things.
If we're looking for food that is organic, it just means that it was grown without synthetic fertilizers or synthetic pesticides put on it. However, Regenerative agriculture is also implying something a little bit deeper. And so if your goal is nutrient dense food,
Julianne Nienberg (09:29)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (09:31)
you're going to want to look for that, which is probably going to come from your local farmers market. But you should ask questions to the farmers at how is this grown? Do you use regenerative practices? Do you use compost? You know, we have to start asking these questions because we can assume because they're at the farmers market that they do. But the reality is many do not because there are subsidies, you know, that exists for farming to to go the opposite way. And so we really all should be asking questions and
Julianne Nienberg (09:42)
you
Rachael Carter (09:58)
to your point of the food at the grocery store, it just doesn't hit the same. know, there are so many studies now that you have to eat, almost quadruple the same amount of produce to get the nutrients and vitamins that our grandparents did, which is so sad. You know, no one has the time or desire to eat eight oranges a day to get vitamin C in their diet. But that's where we're at. And really, this is just from
Julianne Nienberg (10:02)
Mm hmm.
.
Rachael Carter (10:25)
not using regenerative practices which are putting back those vitamins and minerals into the soil. So it has to exist in the soil first. So we have to use regenerative practices to get it there. And then we also have to use that microbiology that lives in compost to get it back up into the plants that we're growing. And so without both of those components,
yeah, it's missing. And the other thing that I find just as a mom, your audience's moms, and this has really been life changing for me, is
When my kids taste out of season food that's been forced to grow or really just conventionally grown food, they don't like it. They tell me it's yucky. And now I taste it too and I'm like, you know what? I don't blame you because this is terrible. It's absolutely terrible. And the truth is, you know, we're forcing...
Julianne Nienberg (10:56)
Mm hmm.
Rachael Carter (11:12)
food to grow in seasons,
it doesn't want to grow. And so it's not photosynthesizing properly. It's not getting the sugars in that plant material, which is what gives food flavor. It gives it that sweetness that we want. And so when you're growing seasonally in great, rich compost beds in your own backyard, it really, the food and the flavor is beyond.
Julianne Nienberg (11:33)
out of this world, right? I know I, you know, I take my kids to the grocery store and gosh, the grocery store is such a great learning experience for young children. I mean, for any child of any age. But one of the things that my kids asked recently is why do all the apples look the same? Why are they all the same size? I said, that's a great question, honey, you know, and it led to a deeper dialogue about how can we...
make choices about our food and how can we, know, talking about farmers and the hard work that they, farmers and gardeners, the hard work that they do to produce food for us, but also what can we be looking for to be a little bit more informed and make wiser choices about the food that we're consuming to nourish our bodies? I think this was several years ago, but one of my kids recently, made a comment at school
that certain foods that aren't organic are sprayed with bug spray. And I said, well, I said, you're not wrong, you know, on a certain level, but it's just so interesting that they do listen to what, what we teach them sometimes, right? They don't listen when I ask them to pick up their toys sometimes, but they're hearing all of these little things. So I love that you've built a
Rachael Carter (12:33)
You
Julianne Nienberg (12:38)
a business where you're able to come alongside families and help really teach them. And I love in your content, you're teaching us so much about what's important when it comes to gardening and providing flavorful, nourishing food for families. Did you grow up gardening? Did anyone in your family, did anyone in your family garden that you might've had like any type of influence or?
Rachael Carter (12:53)
no, no, not at all.
I'm told now by my dad and my brother that my grandma
was very into gardening, but I don't have any memories of that garden. think I was too young at the time to remember it. as I started growing my own and I was terrible at gardening when I started doing this. for three years straight, I would like come home from work every day and I would water it. And I was like, I got this. This is the year. And then like for three years straight, I wouldn't harvest anything. And
Julianne Nienberg (13:22)
Thank you.
Rachael Carter (13:24)
You know, it wasn't until I started learning, like, what is the disconnect here? Why am I so bad? And then there's it turns out it's just simple, like simple things such as like the setup. I say it's simple now because I'm deep into this and I know it, but at the time it was overwhelming because you go to the store, there's all these options. Which one do you pick? No one's there to tell you. Nobody that works there knows the answer.
Julianne Nienberg (13:34)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (13:48)
And so yeah, it's been a journey to get here. So I was never always this good at gardening.
Julianne Nienberg (13:54)
I love how transparent you are in that it took you three years. And I think you and I talked about this, you tried, maybe it was a berry bush, maybe it was a blueberry or I can't remember if it was blueberry tomatoes, but you said you grew, you know, your little bush all summer long only to yield like, you know, tiny little tomatoes or tiny little blueberries. And that resonated with me because
Here I am trying to grow my little garden. I inherited a garden. I know you've been over to my house, but I inherited a garden that was overgrown and required a lot of upkeep. And when you talk about drainage, you one of the things we realized the water just didn't have a way to drain properly. And we were actually running into issues with the foundation of our garage. And so we had to completely demolish the garden, which
I was happy about because it just gives me a fresh start for you to come in and help me and design a new garden. One that's going to be, working harder and smarter, hopefully for our family. But these are all things that you learn through time. I had been doing even before we demolished it recently, we had been doing it for, you know, two to three summers or two to three spring and summers. And each year I remember, OK, this is when I wanted to start these seedlings and
You know, these are the veggies that my family loved. So I'm going to plant those again. And then this is the stuff that nobody liked there. I'm not even going to waste my time because it was just so hard to grow. And I only got three tomato plants and the critters ate everything up. So it really takes time before, if you have no experience, I'm here to say it takes time to figure it out, to learn. And it's just encouraging to hear you now who's someone who's like a master gardener, it has taken you time to get the knowledge and to get the wisdom and to really.
Also get back to the basics of what makes a garden grow well. And that's, the things that you're putting into the soil.
Rachael Carter (15:34)
I will say too, now that I have coached gardening for four years, my most successful coaching clients are first year gardeners that had no idea what they were doing because they didn't have preconceived ideas of what they should be doing. So they were totally trusting of me and they just did exactly what I told them to. Their gardens are insane and so abundant. I have the hardest time working with people that have garden for a few years because they're very
They've already done all this research and their head is filled with all the different like hacks on Pinterest and the internet. And so we have to like spend time undoing all that too.
Julianne Nienberg (16:11)
for those of you who are listening, if you haven't checked out some of Rachel's amazing and beautiful gardens that she has helped families grow, you have to check it out. I'm going to include her Instagram account in the show notes, but these spaces, I love when you show the before and after, like the whole transformation of like an empty
grassy field into these beautiful gardens that are just producing so much great nourishing food for families. And I love even the transformation that you've shown within your own backyard because, you live in an urban environment, right? And you're planting seasonally and you're able to feed your family in, your own backyard. And it's not like a sprawling countryside. You're living in a suburb of Metro Detroit.
and you are doing so much with what you have. I love seeing your reels and your videos and your photos of it.
Rachael Carter (16:59)
Thank you, thank you. And I like to remind people, I am not a farmer, I am not a homesteader, I don't want to be. I don't can anything, I don't have time to can anything because I'm a mom with two small children. Everything that we grow, we either eat fresh or we put it in the freezer. And that process works for us and it's been wonderful.
Julianne Nienberg (17:09)
Hmm.
I'm so glad that you say that because gardening can seem so intimidating. I, as a super beginner gardener, even as you peruse the seed aisles or a seed catalog,
There are so many choices to make. And if you don't know what you're doing, it starts to feel overwhelming. And then you, if you're going down that line, you start to have what I call like mid project for Grest syndrome. Like you're like, I'm too far into this. I have to keep going. I don't even know if I'm going to grow anything, but I have to keep going and we'll see what I produce. But there's just so many things to know. But the way that you put it makes it feel very.
non-threatening, like you're not canning, you're not homesteading, you're not, you don't have a cellar somewhere full of all your canned vegetables. You are simply growing what your family loves and you're using it seasonally. Like I've seen your videos where you pull out some herbs or something that you made with herbs that you froze and you're gonna use it for pasta or like a salad. And I love that because that is really approachable. It's accessible. It feels doable for the average.
mom who's busy, who wants to feed their family fresh food, but doesn't have the time to be canning, to store all these things, to be sterilizing, glass jars. So I love that you share that side of gardening because I think a lot of people, when they start their research, they think this is way too much for me.
Rachael Carter (18:36)
It can totally feel that way, too. And I find like every year I learn more from other gardeners that I respect too. Last year, one of my gardening friends was like, well, no, just in blueberry season, I go and I pick a bunch of blueberries, like pounds of it, and then I freeze it. And then I have fresh in season blueberries for an entire year. And I did that. And my goodness, because now I'm eating flavorful blueberries instead of buying the stuff that doesn't have flavor at the store that my kids aren't going to eat anyways. So just finding simple.
Julianne Nienberg (18:53)
Yes.
Rachael Carter (19:05)
ways to get seasonal, organic, regeneratively grown food into our lives has been so life changing. as moms, all we want to do is encourage our kids to eat better. That's really all of our goals at the end of the day. And
this has been my hack, just finding ways to encourage them to taste food that's grown and in season and to see if they like it. And then when they do, we just...
bring it in. And it doesn't have to be grown in your backyard. I want you to grow it in your backyard, but it doesn't have to be.
Julianne Nienberg (19:35)
Isn't it amazing how when you garden, your kids are so much more curious and adventurous to try the things that you're growing in your garden versus, you you might be dishing it up on a plate one day. I always encourage my kids, you don't have to eat all of it. I'd like you to try one bite. But when they're out in the garden, when we had a garden, they would just go out and pick things. And my daughter,
she attended a nearby nature camp and she learned how to forage too. So she learned what plants and things she could eat. So she'd be out in our backyard like picking grape leaves and saying, mom, we can eat this. Like we can make these to, you we can pick these to make grape leaves. And I said, you know, are you sure? I'm like, are you sure that's the leaf? And she's like, yeah, she's just plucking them and eating them. And I love that, you know, if we allow them to,
come into the garden with us. They are so much more likely to try new things. So I think that's something that you shared is that, if you've got a picky eater, start growing some things, right? What's been your experience with that, with your own kids in growing food and introducing different, plants and vegetables to them and getting them to eat. Do you have any sneaky hacks?
Rachael Carter (20:26)
Yes.
trying different varieties. I never liked salad until I started growing my own lettuce. you know, there's 200 different varieties of lettuce that exist in the world. And in the store, we're only getting like iceberg that can sit on a truck for three days. So my daughter just recently started tasting some of the lettuce that we grow. And she was like, I just really love lettuce. And I'm like, OK, great. What kind is that? Let's just grow all of that. And so, yeah, just trying different varieties because we think that they don't like a certain vegetable.
Julianne Nienberg (20:47)
you
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (21:10)
But it turns out your kid probably just doesn't like that specific type of vegetable grown at that specific time. It might be in season, it might not, but there's a whole world out there.
of different things that you can try. And so that's one thing. And then like you mentioned, just giving them time. Every time it's close to dinner and my kids want a snack and I say, no, I find them in the garden then all of a sudden eating pea pods and looking for raspberries and they're going and finding their own snacks out there. But, you know, just having it available and giving them access to it too.
Julianne Nienberg (21:32)
Hmm.
Rachael Carter (21:43)
One thing that I really wish would change and I'm hoping will change is the culture around backyard vegetable gardening. We have sort of condemned these gardens to live behind a garage like in the back corner of lots. Like that's just what you do around here. Like if you're building a garden you just like put it back in a corner somewhere that you're never going to actually go to. And I find that by inviting gardens to be closer and part of your lifestyle that makes a big difference too because now you're inviting your kids to walk through it and
Julianne Nienberg (21:55)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (22:10)
to notice and to just experience it.
Julianne Nienberg (22:13)
I that's so true. I'm inspired by your own backyard garden. And then I think the algorithm picks up on that I'm looking at your garden. So it starts sending me different gardens and inspiration. And I love the gardens that are, like you said, they're inviting families could be your kids. It could be guests that you have over to walk through the gardens and to just, you know, take a nibble here, take a nibble there. And what a way to really bring that into your lifestyle.
to invite it into, invite the concept of fresh food into your life, but also to invite others to join you in the garden, to experience that, because you're right, I think sometimes we think about, even looking at my own property, I think about like, all the different places I could tuck a garden in, you know? And really gardens are meant to be enjoyed and they're beautiful and they're producing new life and things that are nourishing to us. Why not put that just on full display? And to your point about kids,
trying different things. You my kids and I went to a farmer's market and we tried a sample of microgreens. And before this, I would have never ever thought to give my kids microgreens. I was like, surely it looks leafy, it looks green, it's got like little seeds sometimes, or little pods. I would have never thought to give it to my kids. And they all tried it and they loved it. My middle son, we bought a little package from
the farmer's market and he would just open the package up at home and just start shoving microgreens into his mouth and talk about a super food, you know, all the nutrients that are packed into microgreens. And he was just like shoveling it into his mouth. And to your point, if we don't provide these experiences for our kids to try different things or try different varieties of lettuce,
they might be missing out on a vegetable that's new to them that they can try and grow to love. So yeah, I think you're spot on with introducing different varieties to our kids. It's something I never thought about.
Rachael Carter (24:01)
Yeah, as adults, we don't get to experience it either. I mean, we grow up with grocery stores just having one thing. A big disconnect when I'm teaching backyard gardeners that are new is they see it growing in their garden and it doesn't look like it does in the store. And they're like, what do I do with it? And it has also been a huge journey for me too to learn how to cook seasonally, to learn how to prepare recipes that include things that don't.
Julianne Nienberg (24:07)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (24:27)
know that do all grow at the same time because most of the recipes that I grew up knowing, you know, it's a little bit of this, a little bit this, but those don't actually grow in my garden at the same time. And so relearning seasonality is a big thing, but then also learning like what do you do with it? How do you prepare it to then cook with it? Because it doesn't look like the grocery store. It's like a whole new thing.
Julianne Nienberg (24:48)
I love your Saturday emails because every once in a while you pepper in a recipe of how you're using your garden herbs
Are there any resources that inspired you or is it just kind of experimentation in your own kitchen and garden with recipes? Do you have any favorite cookbooks or resources or gardeners that inspired you to cook to not only garden more seasonally, but also to cook more seasonally?
Rachael Carter (25:11)
Yeah, I am sort of building up my cookbook collection currently because it takes a lot of work of sifting through cookbooks to find some that are organized seasonally. One of my favorite ones is called The Harvest Table. And it's by two women at Homestead. They co-wrote it. it's organized by, this is the spring recipes. are the summer recipes. And so once I found that, I was like,
Julianne Nienberg (25:22)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Mm
Rachael Carter (25:35)
Thank you. Finally, something that can tell me how I can take everything growing and make a meal out of it. And now I'm finding there are more cookbooks like that. They're just not as easy to find. They're not like the ones that you find at Target. And so I've been trying to grow that collection more. There is a really prominent.
Julianne Nienberg (25:46)
hmm. hmm.
Rachael Carter (25:50)
farmer in Ohio, Farmer Lee Jones. I don't know if you are familiar
with him, but his website has a ton of free seasonal recipes as well, which is really good to check out.
Julianne Nienberg (26:01)
That's amazing. I'm writing that down. I think you're right. And you know what, Rachel, there's a gap there maybe that you can fill with seasonal recipes, I mean, it's so true. I look at these things, or maybe I'm buying cookbooks and they're they're written by people who don't live in the same area as me. what they're creating. I just simply can't replicate seasonally or locally.
given what I have available. So I love that you're on this journey to find more and to really, you know, seek out authors of cookbooks who are writing for the seasons and the seasons that resonate with you and your lifestyle here in Southeast Michigan. I have found there's a couple that I'm really trying to push myself to use more often, but the Alice Waters cookbooks.
Rachael Carter (26:23)
Yeah.
I haven't looked at those. You
Julianne Nienberg (26:45)
Those cookbooks
Rachael Carter (26:45)
recommend them?
Julianne Nienberg (26:46)
are beautiful. Yes. She, I mean, I think she was, she was an author that was based out in New England. I could be totally wrong, but it's all about cooking simply. her illustrations are all like hand drawn and they really teach you about every single vegetable. It reminds me of an old, you know, kind of like a joy of cooking style of cookbook, but about produce and about vegetables and different seasonal things. So that is one that I've had that I've invested in my
Rachael Carter (27:03)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (27:12)
cookbook collection and I try to challenge myself to pull it out more, especially in the spring and summer as I prepare and try to cook just more simply. If you have vegetables and produce that are grown properly with all these things that you've talked about with proper soil, they don't need a lot of seasoning, right? You can simply let them shine with just a little salt and pepper, whatever it is.
Rachael Carter (27:21)
Yes.
Julianne Nienberg (27:36)
They don't need to be drenched in a sauce or anything like that. And that's what I'm finding is as I'm seeking produce that is grown well and grown with all these nourishing things that you've talked about, they just shine on their own. Like they do at the farmer's markets. When my son tried those micro greens, he thought, this is delicious. And all it was was just like a little clump of micro greens. And I'm like, isn't that beautiful that they can learn that this doesn't, it doesn't need ketchup. It doesn't need salt and pepper on it. It's just simply.
you know, the way that they're eating it, the way that it's packed so much flavor.
Rachael Carter (28:08)
It really does. And I totally agree with you. I don't find myself, you know, altering the meals too much. It turns out to like what you're talking about. It's literally measurable, which is kind of like what blows my mind too. It's you can measure the amount of sugar in these plants and they use these devices in like
the wine industry to make sure that there's enough sugar in the grapes before they make wine out of them and when they're making beer. Of course, in like this alcohol industry, we're taking the time to make sure that it's just right. But when it comes to food as a culture, we've just kind of like blown it away and been like, well, it doesn't matter. But I think, you know, as the culture shifts back to caring about how our food is grown more and more.
Julianne Nienberg (28:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (28:48)
Who knows, maybe we'll see these devices on more fields as well.
Julianne Nienberg (28:53)
Well, what I'm seeing, I mean, even just in your business and the families that you work with, I am seeing a shift, and I feel like when I pop into these mom groups, like people want to know where their food is grown. They want to know how it's grown. They want to know what the animals have been feeding before, you know, they
invest in a cow or like I'm part of a cow share and you know we've done it over the last couple years and I will never buy beef at the store again. I mean we're meat eaters so it's like we have a deep freezer full of beef and we get it from a farm in Ohio where they practice regenerative farming practices and it's just hard to even look at beef or meat in the grocery store and it's offered actually a really great opportunity.
Rachael Carter (29:14)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (29:39)
to have a dialogue with my kids about how it's important to know what the animals are eating, right? And I've talked to them about what it means to be grass fed versus grass finished, because so many times, this is going down a whole different path, but so many times people hear, and it's all about the marketing and a grass fed is, know, what we should be looking for. And no one's asking like, what about grass finished and, and, and things like that. And I just think it's such, it's
It's a really great opportunity to have these conversations with our kids because I don't know about you. I wasn't learning about this stuff. I was just, you know, eating whatever was served on my plate. we're millennial moms and we were eating out of cans sometimes, you know, there was plenty of vegetables that were coming from cans from the grocery store that we were eating or at least I was eating. And I never asked any questions about it. And so I love that this has just been, I know for you and for my family too, it's been a great opportunity to have this dialogue and educate our children.
I love the things that you share on your Instagram page. How has gardening impacted just your kids' relationship with nature in the outdoors? I love the things that you share about how they're playing out there, but what have you seen as they've gotten older? What does that look like, their relationship with nature and getting outside?
Rachael Carter (30:51)
I will say most of what they do outside is thanks to you.
The garden has really provided a whole different sense of, you know, what you do outside too and how things shift. I think we're, they've sort of gone beyond, both my kids have sort of gone beyond the like, you plant a seed, you watch it grow.
Julianne Nienberg (31:02)
Hmm.
Rachael Carter (31:11)
But now my daughter's like, I've been there, done that, I'm onto the next thing. And so she's really
starting to try to learn how to garden. this year, last year, I told myself, she's six now, last year I told myself I was gonna teach her how to garden more, but I still think she was a little too young. And so this year I think is gonna be the year that we really dive in more with harvesting and stuff like that. Because it's hard to trust your kids with things like that, but it's important to teach them like.
Once you see how slowly things grow and how much time and care and attention that you're spending just to grow these simple things on your plate, I do see that transfer too to how much importance in weighing in they do when it arrives on their plate. All of sudden it teaches them this appreciation that I don't think if it was coming from the grocery store their whole lives they would ever have to be quite frank.
Julianne Nienberg (32:00)
I think that's so true. I've seen these, I don't know if they're memes or reels where it's like, let's teach our kids.
different native plants, instead of teaching them celebrities names, like let's let's raise them to to learn about these things instead of, the latest music video. I don't even know. Do they make music videos? I don't even know. But I guess I'm aging myself there. But I think it's so true. you're teaching your kids, if we're working so hard to grow these and, we're waiting and, we want a fruitful harvest. I know my sons used to just go out and pluck things. I'm like, what?
Rachael Carter (32:11)
Yeah.
you
Julianne Nienberg (32:32)
a little part of me would just like scream like, no, no, we're working so hard. It's still growing. It's not time yet. But they do begin to see and learn how long or sometimes how quick things are to grow and teaching them the right timing of harvesting these vegetables and when to wait so that it can be ripe or whatever it is, whatever the flavor can be the most flavorful.
And I think there's a lot of learning there. That's a great opportunity. We grew nasturtium. I think you helped me grow some of that a couple of years back. And I just loved that, one, it was a beautiful little flower to grow, and two, it's edible. And my kids had such a blast harvesting the nasturtium. And I said, look, guys, we can put these in our salads. can use it to decorate our food and bread. And also, we can eat it. It was just this beautiful little plant.
And they loved going into the garden and plucking it and then using it in our salads. And it's, is such a great, just learning experience for everybody, you know, for me as a beginner gardener and also for the kids who get to grow up learning these things. I think it makes such a difference in how they look at food. Like you said, how they look at just the life cycle of plants and nature. Talk about an easy way. I don't, shouldn't say easy, but talk about like a surefire way to get kids.
curious about nature is to just watch a plant grow, right? Or to learn in your daughter's case, to learn how to plant something, care for it, grow it, and then harvest it at just the right time so that you can enjoy it in your kitchen.
Rachael Carter (34:05)
Yes, exactly. And there's that saying that convenience doesn't build character. And I've always really loved that phrase, especially when it comes to raising children, because it's hard when they want to pull the carrots too early. It's hard to to find their restraint sometimes to both feed their curiosity, but also, you know, make sure it's done appropriately. But to that point, yeah, it's just it's always been great. And I find
Julianne Nienberg (34:11)
Mmm.
Rachael Carter (34:29)
the reciprocity in the natural world is something that is also important to us. You know, we have chickens and we purposely got different breeds of chickens so that we would know the different eggs so that we could see this egg and go, you know, this came from Chickaletta. And so we know and we can tell Chickaletta, thank you for our food. so having some.
reciprocity and giving back to the garden that gives to us is just like a whole big thing that we're trying to push to. I don't think that they fully understand the depth there emotionally that comes with it, but they're slowly starting to pick up on like we get what we give.
Julianne Nienberg (35:04)
Mm hmm. yes. I one. I love that you have a chicken named Chickaletta. My kids would.
Rachael Carter (35:08)
Absolutely.
Julianne Nienberg (35:08)
have a field day with that.
We're beginning to dip our toes with the idea of having chickens as well. So I'll probably have to come to you for tips on that too. But it's so true, there's just so much thought and it's just this life cycle of the plants, the plants that feed the animals, the animals that help to feed us. And it's just such a beautiful thing to be able to teach your children early on.
where everything comes from and how we are connected and how we're designed to be connected. And it's just such a wonderful learning opportunity.
Rachael Carter (35:38)
the last thing I was going to point out to the earlier that I've made this normal for my children, the easier it is to because now I they just grow up thinking that this is normal. And that was my goal. All of this to them is normal. You just grow your own food. That's what people do. Sometimes they go out of people's house and they go, where's your garden?
Julianne Nienberg (35:41)
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (35:56)
but I wanted this to feel normal.
Julianne Nienberg (35:58)
as a parent, we have such an opportunity to make intentional choices, right, for our family. And I love that that has been something that's important to you. And I love that you're encouraging it, that you're encouraging other families to really see how important it is for their kids, for their families, just nourishing their bodies. To your point, you know, it's like when you start having these conversations and
teaching your kids this young, it does become normal. my daughter, well, she just goes out and forages and to her that's normal. And I'm like, okay, you got to be education. You know, I know that you love to do this, but just making sure that you're like, you're using your knowledge and get a field guide, you know, like make sure you're plucking the right thing. Get something like, get like a reference book.
Rachael Carter (36:35)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (36:39)
But something that I'm even noticing in the nature class that I teach is that, sometimes what I'll do for one of our class sessions outside is just I'll bring a bunch of books about one topic, whether it's wildflowers or a certain animal, and I'll just lay them out on the table and I'll allow the kids to have free play. But then also if there's kids who want to just explore the different books and the different different topics, they'll just come to the table and like flip through the books. And they're getting introduced to, a new topic, whether it's plants, vegetables, different animals.
But I think if we continue to give them an opportunity to learn, whether it's learning from us or learning from a book, they are just so drawn. They have such a natural curiosity for things that are simple and beautiful and true and good. I mean, gardening is such a fertile, like, I mean, no pun intended, but it's just such a fertile ground for kids to learn and to have their curiosity piqued. Now,
Let's say there's a parent listening and they're like, this is all great, Rachel. I want my kids to have this, but I am, I have a black thumb. Like what are three basic tips that they can do to get started in growing their own vegetable garden or growing their own garden and in their home.
Rachael Carter (37:49)
First tip we sort of touched on at the beginning would be don't cut corners with the setup. Don't look at the internet hacks that tell you to like fill half of your raised bed with water bottles. I've seen a lot of crazy stuff out there that are like save money on soil. Just put cinder blocks in there. No, we don't want it. It needs to be.
Julianne Nienberg (38:05)
you
Rachael Carter (38:07)
enough root space so these plants can get healthy, strong, beautiful roots. So do not cut them short on the soil. Don't cut corners. Don't get it from the corner of your yard. Just great soil, period. The second tip is timing. This has been the biggest learning thing for me. When I started gardening, I would go to the store. I didn't know how to grow from seed.
Julianne Nienberg (38:09)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Rachael Carter (38:26)
And so I'd go to the store and I would just buy, you know, in May, whatever's available. But turns out a lot of these stores are selling you things that don't want to grow at that time. And so you take it home and you think that you're a bad gardener, but it turns out you just made a bad purchase. Right. And so really researching, cilantro does not grow in the summertime. And if it does, you have to really baby it because it's
Julianne Nienberg (38:27)
Hmm. Hmm.
Rachael Carter (38:50)
in the heat, it starts to make flowers and seeds. It wants to grow in the cold. And so if you're buying it in June, That's what's going to happen. And you're going to have wasted money and you're going to you're going to think that you are the reason that that happened. And it's not. So researching seasons of food where you live. Best tip. You will have so much more success just from that alone. The last tip is
also
Spending some time researching how to grow from seed and like quantities. I can't tell you how many times I hear that there's this perception of backyard gardening as being like not worthwhile, you know, because you get one green bean or one pea pod or whatever. But then when I go to these gardens, they have a single green bean plant or like a single pea growing. And so I'm like, well, you really needed like
20 bean plants to get enough for a dinner. And I don't want you to spend $4 to buy each plant from a nursery. I want you to spend $4 on a pack of seeds to then pop 20 seeds into the ground. so relearning to like, what, how do I get the most out of this investment? How much space do I need? You don't need much space, but you do probably need more plants than you're thinking. And so just sort of spending some time to orient yourself around that and what your goals are.
Julianne Nienberg (39:39)
and
Rachael Carter (40:06)
can really help make all of it more worthwhile.
Julianne Nienberg (40:09)
That's great advice. I think so many times people go to the stores or they even go to like a local nursery and they don't have a clue. mean, speaking from experience, sometimes I just look around and say, okay, what looks easy, what sounds easy? This was me before I had any idea. I still don't have a ton of, a lot of knowledge and constantly learning, but you just go and you kind of start to pick like what's familiar to you.
Right? In terms of what you see at the grocery store or some things that your family would actually eat. But there is so much behind it when it comes to, you know, your example with cilantro. Like I love cilantro. And as, as someone who's had it in their garden for two or maybe three summers, yeah, it bolts basically by June and in the, in the high heat of July. Forget it. it can be easy to get discouraged when you see that happening. But if you had done, just a little bit more research and realize, okay, I can actually grow this probably from like.
April, May, June, and by the time June comes, it's cilantro is done. You know, it's like it's gone to seed. You can salvage some of the seeds and use it for next year, but it really has a much shorter growing period than than, you know, what we're accustomed to thinking because we just see it in the grocery store 365 days a year, right? there are so many things we need to learn upfront before going and picking out what.
seeds or plants we want to plant in our garden. I think those are great tips. Yes. Now, if you're in the, I guess, Southeast Michigan area and people want to work with you,
Rachael Carter (41:32)
Yeah, and a lot of it is the setup, the buying at the wrong time. These are all points where people think I'm a bad gardener. And I promise you, everybody is good at gardening. We're just probably being sold the wrong things at the wrong time. That's probably the root of this.
Julianne Nienberg (41:54)
whether it's designing a garden, tell us a little bit about what you offer and how people can work with you and where they can find you.
Rachael Carter (41:59)
Yeah, so you can connect with me mostly on Instagram. I'm at floraculture.gardens and my website is the same, floraculturegardens.com. And no matter where you live, I have a virtual coaching group called Growing Gardeners that you can always join. I welcome you at any time. We go through a monthly topic and then we can connect for Q &A.
you know, as you're in your own garden and you have questions, it's really normal for people to post pictures and say, can I eat this? And I'll say, not yet or yes, go for it. And those are the questions that I wish I had answers to when I was learning how to garden. So it was really important for me to make a space like that. But if you are local to me, we can work in different ways. We can do one on one coaching to really get you started.
Julianne Nienberg (42:25)
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (42:42)
gardening side by side and being sure that you feel confident walking through your space and figuring out what tasks need to happen and when, how to do them. But my favorite thing to do is just build beautiful gardens. I am a firm believer that vegetable gardens can be both beautiful and productive. And I just love designing and building gardens that really respect the food that we're growing in and...
Julianne Nienberg (42:54)
.
Rachael Carter (43:04)
it's not hard to convince people to move it closer to their house if it looks nice. And so that's really my goal.
Julianne Nienberg (43:09)
Absolutely.
I've seen some of the beautiful gardens that you've designed and that you've built and it is, it looks just like such an inviting space. looks like the type of space you want your kids running around in, you know, and the type of space that
You want them running around and working alongside you as you're harvesting different things to bring into your table. Hopefully that's only a few steps away. So thank you for sharing that. I will make sure to put all of that information where you can find Rachel in the show notes. And before we wrap up, I always share one outdoorsy challenge that can help families get outside more. So I always ask my guests to share one little tip.
that can help our listeners geJulianne Nienberg (00:00)
Welcome to the My Outdoorsy Mom podcast. I'm your host, Julianne Nienberg, mom of three, backyard adventure enthusiast, and your go-to gal for making memories outside with your kids. This is your space to ditch the pressure of perfect and embrace simple, soul-filling time in nature that fits real family life. Each week, we'll talk motherhood, nature play, travel, and entrepreneurship with honest stories, practical tips, and guest conversations that'll feel like chatting with a friend.
Whether you're raising wild little explorers or building a business during nap time, I see you. So grab your coffee, toss some snacks in your bag, and let's make some memories. This is the My Outdoorsy Mom podcast.
Julianne Nienberg (00:38)
Today we're digging into something that connects kids, nature and food, gardening.
Whether you have a backyard, a balcony, or just a tiny patch of sunlight, my guest today is here to show you that growing your own food is possible. It's fun and one of the best ways to get kids engaged with the outdoors. Joining me is Rachel Carter, owner of Flora Culture Gardens, where she teaches families how to grow their own natural veggies and create a garden-to-table lifestyle. With a background in environmental science and a passion for making gardening accessible to everyone, Rachel helps parents
turn small spaces into thriving food producing gardens while getting kids excited about eating what they grow.
Today we're talking about how to start gardening, why kids are naturally drawn to it, and how even busy parents can grow fresh, flavorful food. Rachel, welcome to the podcast.
Rachael Carter (01:26)
Thank you so much for having me here, Julie, and I'm really excited to dig in with you today.
Julianne Nienberg (01:30)
So one of the things that I loved learning about you, Rachel, was that you went to school for environmental science and you've been passionate about environmental toxicology. Like what led you to pursue environmental science and how did that lead you from that to veggie gardening?
Rachael Carter (01:48)
always loved the outdoors. And so when I went to school for environmental science, my goal was, I was really obsessed with like the chemicals. For example, you know, if there is a spill in a river.
How far does it travel? know, is everybody that lives downstream of this? At what point are they safe from this chemical? Things like that really fascinate me and there's equations for all of this. And so learning the transport and flow of chemicals through water and soil and everything like that was really cool to me. And so I went to school for it. And then after then, I started working for the government for a little bit. And then I switched to a private soil and water testing laboratory. I was never good at gardening and
When I went to school for environmental science, we had a soil class where we literally spent 16 weeks, I think is a semester, right? Something like that. And the word compost was never brought up a single time in this entire class. So I am someone who's now like considered educated in soil. And I don't even know what compost is until later when I learn about gardening and learn about growing food. And so as I was starting to put the pieces together, when I
Julianne Nienberg (02:30)
.
Rachael Carter (02:54)
was experimenting learning how to grow food in my own backyard,
it just became so apparent to me that there's this huge educational gap between how food actually grows organically, naturally, what people know about growing food, and then everything else in between, know, gardening has turned into a really big product based.
pastime hobby, guess is how you can call it. But really, it can be a lifestyle for all of us. And you don't need to spray anything to get things to grow. And compost is really like the key to all of that. And it was just looking back at my education, I was so saddened that there was that gap there. And so when I started learning how to grow my own food,
And I had friends and family asking me, are you doing this? And I was talking about it and I was like, OK, there's there might be something to this. I might need to start something to really get the word out about this.
Julianne Nienberg (03:42)
That I think it's so fascinating because the things that you talked about or the things that you learned, you know, there's so much that you know now as a gardener, a very seasoned and like professional gardener practically. And also things that you've learned that you weren't taught, and it comes with wisdom from time and working with different people and working with different families in different soil, different, environments. I have a kind of a tough question for you, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say.
What do you think are, the top three things that are impacting our soil quality? Like if we are just your average gardener here, you and I are both based in Southeast Michigan. what are the things that we as homeowners, as gardeners should be concerned about and, you know, just be cognizant of as we're, planning garden, as we're wanting to grow fresh food for our families.
Rachael Carter (04:29)
I think a lot of the products, again, gardening is very product based. when you go to the typical hardware store, it's really easy to just grab whatever's available and set up your garden. But not all of it is going to create an easy, effortless, abundant vegetable garden. And so the first thing that comes to mind are really like marketing.
toys such as, you know, feeds your garden for three months, like words like that on a package, that is a really good indication that there's synthetic chemicals in there. And so if your goal is organic gardening, if you're using that, you're not organic gardening at all. Even if it says organic or whatever on the package, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that it probably contains synthetic chemicals. So that's the first thing I would say to look away from.
The second thing is just the overall mixture of soil. And so we want something that is alive. Compost is alive. It should have some sort of microbiology within it. It should have bacteria and fungi. And these are what are feeding our plants so that we don't have to feed them chemicals. We're just the vitamins and minerals that we hope we're eating in our food.
Julianne Nienberg (05:20)
.
Rachael Carter (05:32)
They're only getting into our food through the help of all of these microorganisms that live in the soil. So we want some sort of compost-based
component within our soil. But most soils available are just, I guess like a growing medium is the way I would describe it. It's just there. There's no life to it. Potting soils.
Julianne Nienberg (05:43)
.
Rachael Carter (05:51)
know, cocoa core, things like that, there is no biology in there. And so that's the second thing to look out for. You want to read the packaging to see, you know, what exactly are these ingredients and is there a compost-based component to this, like worm castings, or sometimes it'll say, mycorrhizal
fungi was added or something like that. That is sort of a clue that you're in the right direction there. The last thing that I think of too is drainage is a big thing.
You know, raised by gardening, container gardening are really popular and they should be because that is a great way to control. You have a sense of control of what you're growing in and it makes gardening so much easier. But we have to have a well draining, well rounded soil like we just talked about. And a big thing that I see a lot of people do and I feel bad because they just don't know is, you know, they're going into their yard.
Southeast Michigan we have a lot of clay in our soil and they're just like getting soil from another corner of their yard and putting it in a container and calling it a garden. The problem with that is if it is really heavy with clay it's not going to drain and it's not like again it doesn't have that compost-based component so it's not really going to feed your plants either. So really just being aware of what we're growing in and how we're setting up so that we're not cutting corners at that step it makes everything down the road so much easier.
Julianne Nienberg (07:06)
I feel like when we as consumers go to the grocery store, we're looking for organic and we're hoping that the choices that we're making by choosing organic versus conventionally grown or choosing things that are locally grown.
You know, I think there's an assumption or a faith that we have that, you know, our food is being grown properly or that it's being grown with the best and most nourishing soil and things like that. And what I've been learning over the years, you know, as I grow in my awareness of gardening and it's not even, I'm like very basic. I pretty much kill everything that I touch. But what I'm learning is that there is so much that goes behind gardening. Like you said, that things that the average
Homeowner, gardener, beginner gardener doesn't even think about when you're talking about things like compost or just being aware of the different marketing tactics to promote how something can help people grow their gardens in X amount of months. And those are things that I'm so glad you're sharing because the average gardener, homeowner, whatever it is,
I don't think that we know these kinds of things. I go to, you I have gone in the past to my local hardware store and looked around and I've tried to make the most informed decision that I believed I was making, but there's just so much more to it. And I think what you're doing is so incredible because you are teaching the average gardener, the average beginner gardener, what's really important if you want fresh and flavorful food and, nourishing food to give to your families. I love the things that you share.
And we talked about it recently, but just about how, you know, food at the grocery store tastes totally different than the food you grow in your own garden, right?
Rachael Carter (08:44)
Definitely. It's a huge difference. And I think you're spot on too with, you know, a lot of this knowledge, even if you have no goal and no time to grow your own home garden, it's appropriate to know for anybody who consumes food, which is all of us. And so I wish more people knew about all these intricacies and details. For example, organic is one thing. Regenerative agriculture is another thing.
Julianne Nienberg (08:50)
Inhale.
Rachael Carter (09:12)
one does not imply the other. these are very different things.
If we're looking for food that is organic, it just means that it was grown without synthetic fertilizers or synthetic pesticides put on it. However, Regenerative agriculture is also implying something a little bit deeper. And so if your goal is nutrient dense food,
Julianne Nienberg (09:29)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (09:31)
you're going to want to look for that, which is probably going to come from your local farmers market. But you should ask questions to the farmers at how is this grown? Do you use regenerative practices? Do you use compost? You know, we have to start asking these questions because we can assume because they're at the farmers market that they do. But the reality is many do not because there are subsidies, you know, that exists for farming to to go the opposite way. And so we really all should be asking questions and
Julianne Nienberg (09:42)
you
Rachael Carter (09:58)
to your point of the food at the grocery store, it just doesn't hit the same. know, there are so many studies now that you have to eat, almost quadruple the same amount of produce to get the nutrients and vitamins that our grandparents did, which is so sad. You know, no one has the time or desire to eat eight oranges a day to get vitamin C in their diet. But that's where we're at. And really, this is just from
Julianne Nienberg (10:02)
Mm hmm.
.
Rachael Carter (10:25)
not using regenerative practices which are putting back those vitamins and minerals into the soil. So it has to exist in the soil first. So we have to use regenerative practices to get it there. And then we also have to use that microbiology that lives in compost to get it back up into the plants that we're growing. And so without both of those components,
yeah, it's missing. And the other thing that I find just as a mom, your audience's moms, and this has really been life changing for me, is
When my kids taste out of season food that's been forced to grow or really just conventionally grown food, they don't like it. They tell me it's yucky. And now I taste it too and I'm like, you know what? I don't blame you because this is terrible. It's absolutely terrible. And the truth is, you know, we're forcing...
Julianne Nienberg (10:56)
Mm hmm.
Rachael Carter (11:12)
food to grow in seasons,
it doesn't want to grow. And so it's not photosynthesizing properly. It's not getting the sugars in that plant material, which is what gives food flavor. It gives it that sweetness that we want. And so when you're growing seasonally in great, rich compost beds in your own backyard, it really, the food and the flavor is beyond.
Julianne Nienberg (11:33)
out of this world, right? I know I, you know, I take my kids to the grocery store and gosh, the grocery store is such a great learning experience for young children. I mean, for any child of any age. But one of the things that my kids asked recently is why do all the apples look the same? Why are they all the same size? I said, that's a great question, honey, you know, and it led to a deeper dialogue about how can we...
make choices about our food and how can we, know, talking about farmers and the hard work that they, farmers and gardeners, the hard work that they do to produce food for us, but also what can we be looking for to be a little bit more informed and make wiser choices about the food that we're consuming to nourish our bodies? I think this was several years ago, but one of my kids recently, made a comment at school
that certain foods that aren't organic are sprayed with bug spray. And I said, well, I said, you're not wrong, you know, on a certain level, but it's just so interesting that they do listen to what, what we teach them sometimes, right? They don't listen when I ask them to pick up their toys sometimes, but they're hearing all of these little things. So I love that you've built a
Rachael Carter (12:33)
You
Julianne Nienberg (12:38)
a business where you're able to come alongside families and help really teach them. And I love in your content, you're teaching us so much about what's important when it comes to gardening and providing flavorful, nourishing food for families. Did you grow up gardening? Did anyone in your family, did anyone in your family garden that you might've had like any type of influence or?
Rachael Carter (12:53)
no, no, not at all.
I'm told now by my dad and my brother that my grandma
was very into gardening, but I don't have any memories of that garden. think I was too young at the time to remember it. as I started growing my own and I was terrible at gardening when I started doing this. for three years straight, I would like come home from work every day and I would water it. And I was like, I got this. This is the year. And then like for three years straight, I wouldn't harvest anything. And
Julianne Nienberg (13:22)
Thank you.
Rachael Carter (13:24)
You know, it wasn't until I started learning, like, what is the disconnect here? Why am I so bad? And then there's it turns out it's just simple, like simple things such as like the setup. I say it's simple now because I'm deep into this and I know it, but at the time it was overwhelming because you go to the store, there's all these options. Which one do you pick? No one's there to tell you. Nobody that works there knows the answer.
Julianne Nienberg (13:34)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (13:48)
And so yeah, it's been a journey to get here. So I was never always this good at gardening.
Julianne Nienberg (13:54)
I love how transparent you are in that it took you three years. And I think you and I talked about this, you tried, maybe it was a berry bush, maybe it was a blueberry or I can't remember if it was blueberry tomatoes, but you said you grew, you know, your little bush all summer long only to yield like, you know, tiny little tomatoes or tiny little blueberries. And that resonated with me because
Here I am trying to grow my little garden. I inherited a garden. I know you've been over to my house, but I inherited a garden that was overgrown and required a lot of upkeep. And when you talk about drainage, you one of the things we realized the water just didn't have a way to drain properly. And we were actually running into issues with the foundation of our garage. And so we had to completely demolish the garden, which
I was happy about because it just gives me a fresh start for you to come in and help me and design a new garden. One that's going to be, working harder and smarter, hopefully for our family. But these are all things that you learn through time. I had been doing even before we demolished it recently, we had been doing it for, you know, two to three summers or two to three spring and summers. And each year I remember, OK, this is when I wanted to start these seedlings and
You know, these are the veggies that my family loved. So I'm going to plant those again. And then this is the stuff that nobody liked there. I'm not even going to waste my time because it was just so hard to grow. And I only got three tomato plants and the critters ate everything up. So it really takes time before, if you have no experience, I'm here to say it takes time to figure it out, to learn. And it's just encouraging to hear you now who's someone who's like a master gardener, it has taken you time to get the knowledge and to get the wisdom and to really.
Also get back to the basics of what makes a garden grow well. And that's, the things that you're putting into the soil.
Rachael Carter (15:34)
I will say too, now that I have coached gardening for four years, my most successful coaching clients are first year gardeners that had no idea what they were doing because they didn't have preconceived ideas of what they should be doing. So they were totally trusting of me and they just did exactly what I told them to. Their gardens are insane and so abundant. I have the hardest time working with people that have garden for a few years because they're very
They've already done all this research and their head is filled with all the different like hacks on Pinterest and the internet. And so we have to like spend time undoing all that too.
Julianne Nienberg (16:11)
for those of you who are listening, if you haven't checked out some of Rachel's amazing and beautiful gardens that she has helped families grow, you have to check it out. I'm going to include her Instagram account in the show notes, but these spaces, I love when you show the before and after, like the whole transformation of like an empty
grassy field into these beautiful gardens that are just producing so much great nourishing food for families. And I love even the transformation that you've shown within your own backyard because, you live in an urban environment, right? And you're planting seasonally and you're able to feed your family in, your own backyard. And it's not like a sprawling countryside. You're living in a suburb of Metro Detroit.
and you are doing so much with what you have. I love seeing your reels and your videos and your photos of it.
Rachael Carter (16:59)
Thank you, thank you. And I like to remind people, I am not a farmer, I am not a homesteader, I don't want to be. I don't can anything, I don't have time to can anything because I'm a mom with two small children. Everything that we grow, we either eat fresh or we put it in the freezer. And that process works for us and it's been wonderful.
Julianne Nienberg (17:09)
Hmm.
I'm so glad that you say that because gardening can seem so intimidating. I, as a super beginner gardener, even as you peruse the seed aisles or a seed catalog,
There are so many choices to make. And if you don't know what you're doing, it starts to feel overwhelming. And then you, if you're going down that line, you start to have what I call like mid project for Grest syndrome. Like you're like, I'm too far into this. I have to keep going. I don't even know if I'm going to grow anything, but I have to keep going and we'll see what I produce. But there's just so many things to know. But the way that you put it makes it feel very.
non-threatening, like you're not canning, you're not homesteading, you're not, you don't have a cellar somewhere full of all your canned vegetables. You are simply growing what your family loves and you're using it seasonally. Like I've seen your videos where you pull out some herbs or something that you made with herbs that you froze and you're gonna use it for pasta or like a salad. And I love that because that is really approachable. It's accessible. It feels doable for the average.
mom who's busy, who wants to feed their family fresh food, but doesn't have the time to be canning, to store all these things, to be sterilizing, glass jars. So I love that you share that side of gardening because I think a lot of people, when they start their research, they think this is way too much for me.
Rachael Carter (18:36)
It can totally feel that way, too. And I find like every year I learn more from other gardeners that I respect too. Last year, one of my gardening friends was like, well, no, just in blueberry season, I go and I pick a bunch of blueberries, like pounds of it, and then I freeze it. And then I have fresh in season blueberries for an entire year. And I did that. And my goodness, because now I'm eating flavorful blueberries instead of buying the stuff that doesn't have flavor at the store that my kids aren't going to eat anyways. So just finding simple.
Julianne Nienberg (18:53)
Yes.
Rachael Carter (19:05)
ways to get seasonal, organic, regeneratively grown food into our lives has been so life changing. as moms, all we want to do is encourage our kids to eat better. That's really all of our goals at the end of the day. And
this has been my hack, just finding ways to encourage them to taste food that's grown and in season and to see if they like it. And then when they do, we just...
bring it in. And it doesn't have to be grown in your backyard. I want you to grow it in your backyard, but it doesn't have to be.
Julianne Nienberg (19:35)
Isn't it amazing how when you garden, your kids are so much more curious and adventurous to try the things that you're growing in your garden versus, you you might be dishing it up on a plate one day. I always encourage my kids, you don't have to eat all of it. I'd like you to try one bite. But when they're out in the garden, when we had a garden, they would just go out and pick things. And my daughter,
she attended a nearby nature camp and she learned how to forage too. So she learned what plants and things she could eat. So she'd be out in our backyard like picking grape leaves and saying, mom, we can eat this. Like we can make these to, you we can pick these to make grape leaves. And I said, you know, are you sure? I'm like, are you sure that's the leaf? And she's like, yeah, she's just plucking them and eating them. And I love that, you know, if we allow them to,
come into the garden with us. They are so much more likely to try new things. So I think that's something that you shared is that, if you've got a picky eater, start growing some things, right? What's been your experience with that, with your own kids in growing food and introducing different, plants and vegetables to them and getting them to eat. Do you have any sneaky hacks?
Rachael Carter (20:26)
Yes.
trying different varieties. I never liked salad until I started growing my own lettuce. you know, there's 200 different varieties of lettuce that exist in the world. And in the store, we're only getting like iceberg that can sit on a truck for three days. So my daughter just recently started tasting some of the lettuce that we grow. And she was like, I just really love lettuce. And I'm like, OK, great. What kind is that? Let's just grow all of that. And so, yeah, just trying different varieties because we think that they don't like a certain vegetable.
Julianne Nienberg (20:47)
you
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (21:10)
But it turns out your kid probably just doesn't like that specific type of vegetable grown at that specific time. It might be in season, it might not, but there's a whole world out there.
of different things that you can try. And so that's one thing. And then like you mentioned, just giving them time. Every time it's close to dinner and my kids want a snack and I say, no, I find them in the garden then all of a sudden eating pea pods and looking for raspberries and they're going and finding their own snacks out there. But, you know, just having it available and giving them access to it too.
Julianne Nienberg (21:32)
Hmm.
Rachael Carter (21:43)
One thing that I really wish would change and I'm hoping will change is the culture around backyard vegetable gardening. We have sort of condemned these gardens to live behind a garage like in the back corner of lots. Like that's just what you do around here. Like if you're building a garden you just like put it back in a corner somewhere that you're never going to actually go to. And I find that by inviting gardens to be closer and part of your lifestyle that makes a big difference too because now you're inviting your kids to walk through it and
Julianne Nienberg (21:55)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (22:10)
to notice and to just experience it.
Julianne Nienberg (22:13)
I that's so true. I'm inspired by your own backyard garden. And then I think the algorithm picks up on that I'm looking at your garden. So it starts sending me different gardens and inspiration. And I love the gardens that are, like you said, they're inviting families could be your kids. It could be guests that you have over to walk through the gardens and to just, you know, take a nibble here, take a nibble there. And what a way to really bring that into your lifestyle.
to invite it into, invite the concept of fresh food into your life, but also to invite others to join you in the garden, to experience that, because you're right, I think sometimes we think about, even looking at my own property, I think about like, all the different places I could tuck a garden in, you know? And really gardens are meant to be enjoyed and they're beautiful and they're producing new life and things that are nourishing to us. Why not put that just on full display? And to your point about kids,
trying different things. You my kids and I went to a farmer's market and we tried a sample of microgreens. And before this, I would have never ever thought to give my kids microgreens. I was like, surely it looks leafy, it looks green, it's got like little seeds sometimes, or little pods. I would have never thought to give it to my kids. And they all tried it and they loved it. My middle son, we bought a little package from
the farmer's market and he would just open the package up at home and just start shoving microgreens into his mouth and talk about a super food, you know, all the nutrients that are packed into microgreens. And he was just like shoveling it into his mouth. And to your point, if we don't provide these experiences for our kids to try different things or try different varieties of lettuce,
they might be missing out on a vegetable that's new to them that they can try and grow to love. So yeah, I think you're spot on with introducing different varieties to our kids. It's something I never thought about.
Rachael Carter (24:01)
Yeah, as adults, we don't get to experience it either. I mean, we grow up with grocery stores just having one thing. A big disconnect when I'm teaching backyard gardeners that are new is they see it growing in their garden and it doesn't look like it does in the store. And they're like, what do I do with it? And it has also been a huge journey for me too to learn how to cook seasonally, to learn how to prepare recipes that include things that don't.
Julianne Nienberg (24:07)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (24:27)
know that do all grow at the same time because most of the recipes that I grew up knowing, you know, it's a little bit of this, a little bit this, but those don't actually grow in my garden at the same time. And so relearning seasonality is a big thing, but then also learning like what do you do with it? How do you prepare it to then cook with it? Because it doesn't look like the grocery store. It's like a whole new thing.
Julianne Nienberg (24:48)
I love your Saturday emails because every once in a while you pepper in a recipe of how you're using your garden herbs
Are there any resources that inspired you or is it just kind of experimentation in your own kitchen and garden with recipes? Do you have any favorite cookbooks or resources or gardeners that inspired you to cook to not only garden more seasonally, but also to cook more seasonally?
Rachael Carter (25:11)
Yeah, I am sort of building up my cookbook collection currently because it takes a lot of work of sifting through cookbooks to find some that are organized seasonally. One of my favorite ones is called The Harvest Table. And it's by two women at Homestead. They co-wrote it. it's organized by, this is the spring recipes. are the summer recipes. And so once I found that, I was like,
Julianne Nienberg (25:22)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Mm
Rachael Carter (25:35)
Thank you. Finally, something that can tell me how I can take everything growing and make a meal out of it. And now I'm finding there are more cookbooks like that. They're just not as easy to find. They're not like the ones that you find at Target. And so I've been trying to grow that collection more. There is a really prominent.
Julianne Nienberg (25:46)
hmm. hmm.
Rachael Carter (25:50)
farmer in Ohio, Farmer Lee Jones. I don't know if you are familiar
with him, but his website has a ton of free seasonal recipes as well, which is really good to check out.
Julianne Nienberg (26:01)
That's amazing. I'm writing that down. I think you're right. And you know what, Rachel, there's a gap there maybe that you can fill with seasonal recipes, I mean, it's so true. I look at these things, or maybe I'm buying cookbooks and they're they're written by people who don't live in the same area as me. what they're creating. I just simply can't replicate seasonally or locally.
given what I have available. So I love that you're on this journey to find more and to really, you know, seek out authors of cookbooks who are writing for the seasons and the seasons that resonate with you and your lifestyle here in Southeast Michigan. I have found there's a couple that I'm really trying to push myself to use more often, but the Alice Waters cookbooks.
Rachael Carter (26:23)
Yeah.
I haven't looked at those. You
Julianne Nienberg (26:45)
Those cookbooks
Rachael Carter (26:45)
recommend them?
Julianne Nienberg (26:46)
are beautiful. Yes. She, I mean, I think she was, she was an author that was based out in New England. I could be totally wrong, but it's all about cooking simply. her illustrations are all like hand drawn and they really teach you about every single vegetable. It reminds me of an old, you know, kind of like a joy of cooking style of cookbook, but about produce and about vegetables and different seasonal things. So that is one that I've had that I've invested in my
Rachael Carter (27:03)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (27:12)
cookbook collection and I try to challenge myself to pull it out more, especially in the spring and summer as I prepare and try to cook just more simply. If you have vegetables and produce that are grown properly with all these things that you've talked about with proper soil, they don't need a lot of seasoning, right? You can simply let them shine with just a little salt and pepper, whatever it is.
Rachael Carter (27:21)
Yes.
Julianne Nienberg (27:36)
They don't need to be drenched in a sauce or anything like that. And that's what I'm finding is as I'm seeking produce that is grown well and grown with all these nourishing things that you've talked about, they just shine on their own. Like they do at the farmer's markets. When my son tried those micro greens, he thought, this is delicious. And all it was was just like a little clump of micro greens. And I'm like, isn't that beautiful that they can learn that this doesn't, it doesn't need ketchup. It doesn't need salt and pepper on it. It's just simply.
you know, the way that they're eating it, the way that it's packed so much flavor.
Rachael Carter (28:08)
It really does. And I totally agree with you. I don't find myself, you know, altering the meals too much. It turns out to like what you're talking about. It's literally measurable, which is kind of like what blows my mind too. It's you can measure the amount of sugar in these plants and they use these devices in like
the wine industry to make sure that there's enough sugar in the grapes before they make wine out of them and when they're making beer. Of course, in like this alcohol industry, we're taking the time to make sure that it's just right. But when it comes to food as a culture, we've just kind of like blown it away and been like, well, it doesn't matter. But I think, you know, as the culture shifts back to caring about how our food is grown more and more.
Julianne Nienberg (28:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rachael Carter (28:48)
Who knows, maybe we'll see these devices on more fields as well.
Julianne Nienberg (28:53)
Well, what I'm seeing, I mean, even just in your business and the families that you work with, I am seeing a shift, and I feel like when I pop into these mom groups, like people want to know where their food is grown. They want to know how it's grown. They want to know what the animals have been feeding before, you know, they
invest in a cow or like I'm part of a cow share and you know we've done it over the last couple years and I will never buy beef at the store again. I mean we're meat eaters so it's like we have a deep freezer full of beef and we get it from a farm in Ohio where they practice regenerative farming practices and it's just hard to even look at beef or meat in the grocery store and it's offered actually a really great opportunity.
Rachael Carter (29:14)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (29:39)
to have a dialogue with my kids about how it's important to know what the animals are eating, right? And I've talked to them about what it means to be grass fed versus grass finished, because so many times, this is going down a whole different path, but so many times people hear, and it's all about the marketing and a grass fed is, know, what we should be looking for. And no one's asking like, what about grass finished and, and, and things like that. And I just think it's such, it's
It's a really great opportunity to have these conversations with our kids because I don't know about you. I wasn't learning about this stuff. I was just, you know, eating whatever was served on my plate. we're millennial moms and we were eating out of cans sometimes, you know, there was plenty of vegetables that were coming from cans from the grocery store that we were eating or at least I was eating. And I never asked any questions about it. And so I love that this has just been, I know for you and for my family too, it's been a great opportunity to have this dialogue and educate our children.
I love the things that you share on your Instagram page. How has gardening impacted just your kids' relationship with nature in the outdoors? I love the things that you share about how they're playing out there, but what have you seen as they've gotten older? What does that look like, their relationship with nature and getting outside?
Rachael Carter (30:51)
I will say most of what they do outside is thanks to you.
The garden has really provided a whole different sense of, you know, what you do outside too and how things shift. I think we're, they've sort of gone beyond, both my kids have sort of gone beyond the like, you plant a seed, you watch it grow.
Julianne Nienberg (31:02)
Hmm.
Rachael Carter (31:11)
But now my daughter's like, I've been there, done that, I'm onto the next thing. And so she's really
starting to try to learn how to garden. this year, last year, I told myself, she's six now, last year I told myself I was gonna teach her how to garden more, but I still think she was a little too young. And so this year I think is gonna be the year that we really dive in more with harvesting and stuff like that. Because it's hard to trust your kids with things like that, but it's important to teach them like.
Once you see how slowly things grow and how much time and care and attention that you're spending just to grow these simple things on your plate, I do see that transfer too to how much importance in weighing in they do when it arrives on their plate. All of sudden it teaches them this appreciation that I don't think if it was coming from the grocery store their whole lives they would ever have to be quite frank.
Julianne Nienberg (32:00)
I think that's so true. I've seen these, I don't know if they're memes or reels where it's like, let's teach our kids.
different native plants, instead of teaching them celebrities names, like let's let's raise them to to learn about these things instead of, the latest music video. I don't even know. Do they make music videos? I don't even know. But I guess I'm aging myself there. But I think it's so true. you're teaching your kids, if we're working so hard to grow these and, we're waiting and, we want a fruitful harvest. I know my sons used to just go out and pluck things. I'm like, what?
Rachael Carter (32:11)
Yeah.
you
Julianne Nienberg (32:32)
a little part of me would just like scream like, no, no, we're working so hard. It's still growing. It's not time yet. But they do begin to see and learn how long or sometimes how quick things are to grow and teaching them the right timing of harvesting these vegetables and when to wait so that it can be ripe or whatever it is, whatever the flavor can be the most flavorful.
And I think there's a lot of learning there. That's a great opportunity. We grew nasturtium. I think you helped me grow some of that a couple of years back. And I just loved that, one, it was a beautiful little flower to grow, and two, it's edible. And my kids had such a blast harvesting the nasturtium. And I said, look, guys, we can put these in our salads. can use it to decorate our food and bread. And also, we can eat it. It was just this beautiful little plant.
And they loved going into the garden and plucking it and then using it in our salads. And it's, is such a great, just learning experience for everybody, you know, for me as a beginner gardener and also for the kids who get to grow up learning these things. I think it makes such a difference in how they look at food. Like you said, how they look at just the life cycle of plants and nature. Talk about an easy way. I don't, shouldn't say easy, but talk about like a surefire way to get kids.
curious about nature is to just watch a plant grow, right? Or to learn in your daughter's case, to learn how to plant something, care for it, grow it, and then harvest it at just the right time so that you can enjoy it in your kitchen.
Rachael Carter (34:05)
Yes, exactly. And there's that saying that convenience doesn't build character. And I've always really loved that phrase, especially when it comes to raising children, because it's hard when they want to pull the carrots too early. It's hard to to find their restraint sometimes to both feed their curiosity, but also, you know, make sure it's done appropriately. But to that point, yeah, it's just it's always been great. And I find
Julianne Nienberg (34:11)
Mmm.
Rachael Carter (34:29)
the reciprocity in the natural world is something that is also important to us. You know, we have chickens and we purposely got different breeds of chickens so that we would know the different eggs so that we could see this egg and go, you know, this came from Chickaletta. And so we know and we can tell Chickaletta, thank you for our food. so having some.
reciprocity and giving back to the garden that gives to us is just like a whole big thing that we're trying to push to. I don't think that they fully understand the depth there emotionally that comes with it, but they're slowly starting to pick up on like we get what we give.
Julianne Nienberg (35:04)
Mm hmm. yes. I one. I love that you have a chicken named Chickaletta. My kids would.
Rachael Carter (35:08)
Absolutely.
Julianne Nienberg (35:08)
have a field day with that.
We're beginning to dip our toes with the idea of having chickens as well. So I'll probably have to come to you for tips on that too. But it's so true, there's just so much thought and it's just this life cycle of the plants, the plants that feed the animals, the animals that help to feed us. And it's just such a beautiful thing to be able to teach your children early on.
where everything comes from and how we are connected and how we're designed to be connected. And it's just such a wonderful learning opportunity.
Rachael Carter (35:38)
the last thing I was going to point out to the earlier that I've made this normal for my children, the easier it is to because now I they just grow up thinking that this is normal. And that was my goal. All of this to them is normal. You just grow your own food. That's what people do. Sometimes they go out of people's house and they go, where's your garden?
Julianne Nienberg (35:41)
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (35:56)
but I wanted this to feel normal.
Julianne Nienberg (35:58)
as a parent, we have such an opportunity to make intentional choices, right, for our family. And I love that that has been something that's important to you. And I love that you're encouraging it, that you're encouraging other families to really see how important it is for their kids, for their families, just nourishing their bodies. To your point, you know, it's like when you start having these conversations and
teaching your kids this young, it does become normal. my daughter, well, she just goes out and forages and to her that's normal. And I'm like, okay, you got to be education. You know, I know that you love to do this, but just making sure that you're like, you're using your knowledge and get a field guide, you know, like make sure you're plucking the right thing. Get something like, get like a reference book.
Rachael Carter (36:35)
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (36:39)
But something that I'm even noticing in the nature class that I teach is that, sometimes what I'll do for one of our class sessions outside is just I'll bring a bunch of books about one topic, whether it's wildflowers or a certain animal, and I'll just lay them out on the table and I'll allow the kids to have free play. But then also if there's kids who want to just explore the different books and the different different topics, they'll just come to the table and like flip through the books. And they're getting introduced to, a new topic, whether it's plants, vegetables, different animals.
But I think if we continue to give them an opportunity to learn, whether it's learning from us or learning from a book, they are just so drawn. They have such a natural curiosity for things that are simple and beautiful and true and good. I mean, gardening is such a fertile, like, I mean, no pun intended, but it's just such a fertile ground for kids to learn and to have their curiosity piqued. Now,
Let's say there's a parent listening and they're like, this is all great, Rachel. I want my kids to have this, but I am, I have a black thumb. Like what are three basic tips that they can do to get started in growing their own vegetable garden or growing their own garden and in their home.
Rachael Carter (37:49)
First tip we sort of touched on at the beginning would be don't cut corners with the setup. Don't look at the internet hacks that tell you to like fill half of your raised bed with water bottles. I've seen a lot of crazy stuff out there that are like save money on soil. Just put cinder blocks in there. No, we don't want it. It needs to be.
Julianne Nienberg (38:05)
you
Rachael Carter (38:07)
enough root space so these plants can get healthy, strong, beautiful roots. So do not cut them short on the soil. Don't cut corners. Don't get it from the corner of your yard. Just great soil, period. The second tip is timing. This has been the biggest learning thing for me. When I started gardening, I would go to the store. I didn't know how to grow from seed.
Julianne Nienberg (38:09)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Rachael Carter (38:26)
And so I'd go to the store and I would just buy, you know, in May, whatever's available. But turns out a lot of these stores are selling you things that don't want to grow at that time. And so you take it home and you think that you're a bad gardener, but it turns out you just made a bad purchase. Right. And so really researching, cilantro does not grow in the summertime. And if it does, you have to really baby it because it's
Julianne Nienberg (38:27)
Hmm. Hmm.
Rachael Carter (38:50)
in the heat, it starts to make flowers and seeds. It wants to grow in the cold. And so if you're buying it in June, That's what's going to happen. And you're going to have wasted money and you're going to you're going to think that you are the reason that that happened. And it's not. So researching seasons of food where you live. Best tip. You will have so much more success just from that alone. The last tip is
also
Spending some time researching how to grow from seed and like quantities. I can't tell you how many times I hear that there's this perception of backyard gardening as being like not worthwhile, you know, because you get one green bean or one pea pod or whatever. But then when I go to these gardens, they have a single green bean plant or like a single pea growing. And so I'm like, well, you really needed like
20 bean plants to get enough for a dinner. And I don't want you to spend $4 to buy each plant from a nursery. I want you to spend $4 on a pack of seeds to then pop 20 seeds into the ground. so relearning to like, what, how do I get the most out of this investment? How much space do I need? You don't need much space, but you do probably need more plants than you're thinking. And so just sort of spending some time to orient yourself around that and what your goals are.
Julianne Nienberg (39:39)
and
Rachael Carter (40:06)
can really help make all of it more worthwhile.
Julianne Nienberg (40:09)
That's great advice. I think so many times people go to the stores or they even go to like a local nursery and they don't have a clue. mean, speaking from experience, sometimes I just look around and say, okay, what looks easy, what sounds easy? This was me before I had any idea. I still don't have a ton of, a lot of knowledge and constantly learning, but you just go and you kind of start to pick like what's familiar to you.
Right? In terms of what you see at the grocery store or some things that your family would actually eat. But there is so much behind it when it comes to, you know, your example with cilantro. Like I love cilantro. And as, as someone who's had it in their garden for two or maybe three summers, yeah, it bolts basically by June and in the, in the high heat of July. Forget it. it can be easy to get discouraged when you see that happening. But if you had done, just a little bit more research and realize, okay, I can actually grow this probably from like.
April, May, June, and by the time June comes, it's cilantro is done. You know, it's like it's gone to seed. You can salvage some of the seeds and use it for next year, but it really has a much shorter growing period than than, you know, what we're accustomed to thinking because we just see it in the grocery store 365 days a year, right? there are so many things we need to learn upfront before going and picking out what.
seeds or plants we want to plant in our garden. I think those are great tips. Yes. Now, if you're in the, I guess, Southeast Michigan area and people want to work with you,
Rachael Carter (41:32)
Yeah, and a lot of it is the setup, the buying at the wrong time. These are all points where people think I'm a bad gardener. And I promise you, everybody is good at gardening. We're just probably being sold the wrong things at the wrong time. That's probably the root of this.
Julianne Nienberg (41:54)
whether it's designing a garden, tell us a little bit about what you offer and how people can work with you and where they can find you.
Rachael Carter (41:59)
Yeah, so you can connect with me mostly on Instagram. I'm at floraculture.gardens and my website is the same, floraculturegardens.com. And no matter where you live, I have a virtual coaching group called Growing Gardeners that you can always join. I welcome you at any time. We go through a monthly topic and then we can connect for Q &A.
you know, as you're in your own garden and you have questions, it's really normal for people to post pictures and say, can I eat this? And I'll say, not yet or yes, go for it. And those are the questions that I wish I had answers to when I was learning how to garden. So it was really important for me to make a space like that. But if you are local to me, we can work in different ways. We can do one on one coaching to really get you started.
Julianne Nienberg (42:25)
Yeah.
Rachael Carter (42:42)
gardening side by side and being sure that you feel confident walking through your space and figuring out what tasks need to happen and when, how to do them. But my favorite thing to do is just build beautiful gardens. I am a firm believer that vegetable gardens can be both beautiful and productive. And I just love designing and building gardens that really respect the food that we're growing in and...
Julianne Nienberg (42:54)
.
Rachael Carter (43:04)
it's not hard to convince people to move it closer to their house if it looks nice. And so that's really my goal.
Julianne Nienberg (43:09)
Absolutely.
I've seen some of the beautiful gardens that you've designed and that you've built and it is, it looks just like such an inviting space. looks like the type of space you want your kids running around in, you know, and the type of space that
You want them running around and working alongside you as you're harvesting different things to bring into your table. Hopefully that's only a few steps away. So thank you for sharing that. I will make sure to put all of that information where you can find Rachel in the show notes. And before we wrap up, I always share one outdoorsy challenge that can help families get outside more. So I always ask my guests to share one little tip.
that can help our listeners get outside more. What would you share today, whether it's related to getting your kids outside or growing a garden, what's an outdoorsy challenge that you would give our listeners?
Rachael Carter (43:58)
That is a really good question. I think being able, like you pointed earlier, to identify some of the plants that are coming up on your own property is a really great place to start. Many of them, the term weed is, you know, roses could be weeds to some people.
Julianne Nienberg (44:08)
Hmm
Beauty is an
eye of the beholder, right?
Rachael Carter (44:17)
Yeah,
yeah. So figure out what is on your property. Some of it might be, dandelions are highly edible. Most other European cultures eat dandelions regularly. We've just decided that they're weeds. So I think, yeah, get outside with a field guide or something and figure out what's on your property. Is it edible? Is it not? How did people use these? Do they attract insects? What kind?
Julianne Nienberg (44:36)
Great, that's a great tip. So if you're listening, your outdoorsy challenge for the week is to get outside, identify the plants that are native to your property or whatever's nearby, whether it's a local park nearby. Rachel made some great tips and going to the library, you can get a local field guide or you can go online. I think this is a great activity for parents and kids to do together side by side. Side note about dandelions, we had back in Chicago, we had a neighbor, an elderly neighbor who was Greek and he was
always picking the dandelions in his front yard. And he would invite us to come over and he'd make dandelion tea. And he said that his people, in Greece have been drinking and plucking dandelions for decades, maybe hundreds of years. most people look at a dandelion and say, that's ugly. I got to get rid of it or spray it. And they're like, you know, but my kids, know, whether they're sometimes they're making dandelion bracelets with it, but even my daughter knows like we can.
We can use this, can steep it into tea, can, they're edible, they're completely edible and really nourishing. Like if you were to go into the tea aisle, you can buy dandelion tea, right? So I think it's such a great tip that you give to just get outside, go wherever that's nearby, whether it's your backyard or a local park, and just start identifying, getting to know some of these native plants and things like that. So thanks for that outdoorsy challenge.
Rachael Carter (45:34)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Julianne Nienberg (45:54)
Rachel, this has been such an inspiring conversation. I love how you make gardening feel doable and less threatening, even for parents that have no idea what they're doing like me and for parents who don't think that they have a green thumb. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Rachael Carter (46:10)
Thank you, thank you for having me. And if anybody has any questions, please connect with me. I'd love to help you.
Julianne Nienberg (46:15)
Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and passion with us. And for everyone listening, go check out Flora Culture Gardens and you can find more information about her Growing Gardeners coaching program if you're ready to start your own food growing adventure. Until next time, get outside, get your hands in the dirt, and I'll see you back here next week.
Julianne Nienberg (46:31)
Thanks so much for spending part of your day with me. I hope this episode left you feeling encouraged and inspired to get outside and enjoy nature wherever your feet are. If you loved what you heard, it would mean the world to me if you tap those five stars or leave a quick review. It helps other outdoorsy minded moms find the show and grow the sweet little community. And if you're looking for more ways to simplify, slow down, and connect through nature, you can find me over on Instagram at myoutdoorsymom, read the blog at myoutdoorsymom.com, or explore all my digital resources and seasonal guides in the shop.
Everything's linked right there in the show notes. Until next time, take a deep breath, step outside, and I'll meet you back here next week.
