Darryl Rentz: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Preserving your harvest: You’ve put all that work into creating a nice garden and soon enough you’ll start producing tons of delicious veggies. But you can only eat zucchini or tomatoes for so long before you get tired of them. That’s why it’s important to know how you want to preserve your harvests. Canning and freezing are the two main ways I preserve my food, with a heavy preference to freezing which locks in the nutrients better. It’s also easier. All you need to do is get a chest freezer, clean and prepare your harvest, and throw them in the freezer.
As we all know, inflation has really increased the price of food. Many people have turned to home gardening to grow their own food. Many have tried this and have been really successful. But others struggle to produce food in their own garden. What do you need to know to create a successful vegetable garden to grow your own food? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food” we are talking to experts in vegetable gardening who can share stories and insights from their experiences.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Darryl Rentz.
Darryl lives on a farmette with his wife Sarah, two dogs, three horses, and ten chickens. Darryl has been gardening since 2016 and is on a journey of growing most of the produce his family eats in a year. All while working a normal job.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
My wife actually introduced me to gardening when we started dating and I was immediately hooked. I am always striving to become more self-sufficient and learning how to grow my own food is such a big part of achieving that. I started growing in pots in my townhome before upgrading to a small garden bed when I moved into my first house. Now with a small farm, I’m building the garden of my dreams. Currently I have an 1,800 square foot garden.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Since I’ve moved to the farm, and especially since the pandemic, I’ve had a lot more friends become interested in gardening and learning how I manage mine. So far the most interesting thing I have encountered is the opportunity to provide fresh, organic produce to a local nutritionist. It’s satisfying knowing that healthy food is making its way to others in my community. Another interesting thing that happened this year is that my wife surprised me with ladybugs and a praying mantis ootheca for biological pest control (which we hatched and released into our garden!) One important thing to remember if using biological pest control is to make sure you are using native insects… for example, carolina mantis vs. chinese mantis. Invasive species can do a lot of harm, while native are beneficial.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I think the three most important traits for a successful gardener would be: patience, perseverance, and curiosity.
Patience is important because plants require time and some attention in order to do well. I start my plants from seeds, so I’m already planning and getting my seeds set up in February. That’s two months before I even put plants in the ground.
Your plants require you to maintain them with things like water and weeding. It’s not always easy to find the time to do these things, but if you can become scheduled the payout is well worth it. This also applies to processing and storing your food. When I have a big harvest I can spend the next several days preserving it all.
Lastly, curiosity is a useful trait because you never know what you’ll find out. Maybe you discover a new vegetable you like, maybe a certain crop grows well in your area, maybe you find a different technique that gets better results. For instance, this is the first year I’ve tried growing ground cherries. I have never eaten one before and it turns out that I love them.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’m a perfectionist by nature, so my garden mantra is “it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be good” I can’t dedicate all the time I’d like to immaculate weeding, or perfect watering, or the perfect layout. I can’t stress about getting everything just right, but I do aim for 80%.
Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
My next milestone will be growing lettuce year round. I never want to buy lettuce again. I will use cold frames outside in the cooler months, and grow it indoors during the winter. I’d like to teach others how to do this as well, since many of my friends and people I meet are interested in growing more of their own lettuce.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about creating a successful garden to grow your own food. Can you help articulate a few reasons why people should be interested in making their own vegetable garden? For example, how is it better for our health? For the environment? For our wallet?
There are so many benefits to having a garden. This topic could be an article itself, but let’s stick with the top three reasons.
Produce you grow on your own costs less than at a grocery store. By a lot! My wife is Italian and so we eat a lot of pasta. And we are picky with our sauce. The one that we prefer costs $8 a jar. Every time I put it in my grocery cart I cry a little. But I can grow all the ingredients in my garden, and make a ton of sauce that will last throughout the year at a total cost of maybe $20.
I live on the east coast. A lot of the produce that is in grocery stores near me was grown in California, which is basically a desert on the other side of the country. It takes a lot of water to grow crops in a desert, and it takes a lot of fossil fuels to get it to the other side of the country. The more produce that is sourced locally, the less of an overall impact we have on the environment by conserving more water and lessening emissions.
Speaking of long distances, the farther away your food is sourced, the older it is. Vegetables start losing their nutrients after they are removed from the plant. So plucking it from your own garden is as fresh and healthy as you can get. In addition, you control what you put on your plants. I grow organically because I don’t like eating things that were grown in or washed with poison.
And as a bonus, growing your own veggies is a fun and cheap hobby!
Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?
When beginning a new garden, start with a sunny spot in your lawn or patio. Even starting with a few plants in pots is a nice way to test the waters. The classic veggies to start with are a few tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. These are easy to grow plants that can produce a lot per harvest. But above all… grow what you like to eat!
I recommend https://squarefootgardening.org/ as resource on the best way to start your gardening journey.
Can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Youtube Video here — https://youtu.be/hqAQVk6i4zc
- Spacing and Layout: The most common complaint I hear from people who want to garden is not having enough room. There are multiple ways to address that problem. I’m a big fan of square foot gardening, this is a technique that allows you to pack in a lot of plants into a bed while also preventing weeds from running amok. It’s important to take note of your outside spaces and create a layout that maximizes things like proximity to your house, sun exposure, and access to water. In general you want your gardens to receive abundant sun from a southern exposure. If you have to favor either morning or afternoon sun, then morning sun is preferred. If the garden is close to your home, you’ll be more likely to tend it. And if water is in easy access, you’ll be more inclined to keep watering.
- Watering and weeding: I prefer deep watering my beds, so I give them a heavy watering every few days. I do more water in the heat of summer, but generally, I only water twice a week unless we have good amounts of rain- then I do less. Make sure your hose is within easy access. Once you get more serious with your gardening, you can investigate automated watering systems which makes it even easier! If you plant in a square foot method, you can expect less weeding. If I’m walking through I do a light weeding, maybe once a week. And a more heavy weeding effort once a month. Once your plants are well established, you’ll find the need for weeding to be less. Additionally, adding untreated grass clippings as “mulch” around your plants is great to both keep down weeds and reduce the need for watering.
- Soil health and composting: Just like you want to eat healthy, your plants want to eat healthy too. If you put a shovel in your garden bed what do you come up with? Are there a lot of worms in the soil? Is the soil dark in color, crumbly, and moist? Those are all signs of healthy soil. If it looks like yours needs improvement, then all you need to get started is compost. I definitely recommend creating your own compost. It’s easy and free. Dedicate a space to creating your own compost from food scraps and plant waste in a pile and let nature turn that into healthy material to add into your garden beds. No need to fertilize if you have enough compost. Living on a small farm with horses, we have all the compost we’ll ever need..and more.
- Choosing plants and where to plant them: Determine what types of products your family likes and how much of that you eat a year. For instance, my wife and I favor lettuce, peas, brussels sprouts, broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers. Once you figure out how many of each plant you’d like, you need to determine where is best to plant them. All plants have different height and space requirements, so make sure to plan around that. In general I keep my shorter plants towards the south and my taller plants towards the north. That way the tall plants don’t cast shadows on the shorter ones. One exception I have with that is my plants that prefer cooler weather like lettuce or spinach. Those are quite happy to have some shade, especially in the heat of the day.
- Preserving your harvest: You’ve put all that work into creating a nice garden and soon enough you’ll start producing tons of delicious veggies. But you can only eat zucchini or tomatoes for so long before you get tired of them. That’s why it’s important to know how you want to preserve your harvests. Canning and freezing are the two main ways I preserve my food, with a heavy preference to freezing which locks in the nutrients better. It’s also easier. All you need to do is get a chest freezer, clean and prepare your harvest, and throw them in the freezer. Most frozen veggies easily keep for a year, so it’s perfect! One additional thing I like when I’m making something like pasta sauce is throwing a party. When I have a ton of tomatoes, I get a few friends to help process, cook, and can the sauce. They get a few jars, I get helping hands, and it is fun.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a garden? What specifically can be done to avoid those errors?
One big mistake I see made is growing produce you don’t necessarily like. Last year I grew 20 lbs of turnips. I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten one turnip in my life before that. I didn’t know what to do with them all! Focus on growing what you know you like.
The other main mistake I see is starting too big and then not keeping up with it. Start with a few pots and maybe a small bed. It’s easy to add a bit more each year if you handle it well and enjoy it.
What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?
Gardening shouldn’t be an expensive hobby. There are so many ways to repurpose old things into fences, borders, and supports. I use sticks and pallets. If you want, you can let a plant or two of your favorite crops go to seed and then keep those seeds for next year. And always compost! Composting is a free way to make great and healthy soil.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Ideally, I like the idea of helping people grow their own lettuce year round. Lettuce is a crop that many people buy on a regular basis. Which is a great part of our diets, but unfortunately requires lots of water and is typically grown in the area of our country that is running out of water! You’ve seen lettuce prices jump and that’s going to continue. Lettuce can be easy to grow locally, and if more Americans produce or buy local lettuce year round it would help the environment as well as cost less.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I’d like to have breakfast or lunch with James Prigioni (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9V_-gqJsZNOy4v_HqbRz3w). I watch most of his videos and have gotten so many tips and ideas from him. He is an inspiration to me and I owe him a meal for all that I learned from him. But I would also want to meet his dog Tuck, since he sometimes steals the show in his YouTube videos.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can find me on instagram @leopold_wolfgang
Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.
Darryl Rentz: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.