Dr. Julia Skinner Of Root Kitchens: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Have a plan: You want your garden to connect with your needs and lifestyle. Do you have a giant yard? Do you want to grow veggies, or fruit trees, or ornamental flowers? How much time do you have to garden? Will you have a compost pile, and if so, where will it go? Thinking about how your garden will fit in your life now makes it easy to keep up in the future.
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 Dr. Julia Skinner
Julia Skinner, PhD is a writer, culinary instructor, historian, artist, and gardening enthusiast who regularly writes about composting, reducing food waste, fermentation, and living a low waste lifestyle. She is the owner of Root, Atlanta’s fermentation and food history company, and author of Our Fermented Lives (foreword by Sandor Katz). You can follow her work online at @bookishjulia and @rootkitchens and through her weekly newsletter.
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”?
Sure! Thank you so much for having me. My career has gone through many transformations, and all of them have an impact on me as a writer and a gardener today. I’ve done everything from drive city buses to write books to teaching to working in a commercial kitchen to making handmade books and getting a PhD (which is in Library Science). I’ve always been passionate about food, but it wasn’t until I left my old job in 2018, without anything else lined up, that I took the leap to working with and writing about food full time. In all of my work, community building has been a focus, and I brought that into my current life as a business owner and a writer.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
One thing I’m very grateful for in my career path is that I’ve had opportunities to experience things I otherwise might not have. The communities I’ve built or become part of are so welcoming, and I love to meet and connect with people as I travel to teach, to write, and to research food traditions. Like I talk a lot about in my new book, Our Fermented Lives, community is a critical part of our food stories and food traditions, and community building is a critical part of my work.
I’m not sure I have a most interesting story, but I do have so many wonderful memories and proud moments. One great memory was last summer, when I visited Iceland and had the chance to meet my friends Dagny and Olafur, who opened their home to me and shared a whole host of incredible fermented treats I had never heard of before! There were sausages, and shark, and skate, and cheeses, and the friends they brought over brought drinks from their breweries for us to enjoy. It was such a special night, and we sat up eating and drinking and sharing stories late into the evening. It was truly an example of food and community building in action!
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?
Your work always happens in the context of community: Whatever you’re building or creating, it is connected to your professional community as well as your town/city, friends and family, etc. I encourage people to think about how their work might help or hurt the communities around them. Are people learning new skills or finding joy and creating stronger communities? Or are people being displaced from a neighborhood or being cut off from resources?
In my own work, I partner with community-focused organizations, offer scholarships to my online cooking classes, and encourage people to think about community in their own writing and work.
Set and hold clear boundaries: Creating space to play and rest is critical. You can’t pour from an empty vessel, but you also can’t perform at your best or think clearly when you’re spread too thin. I tell my clients that ‘no one will respect your boundaries as much as you do,’ and encourage them to take up space in their own lives by putting what matters to them at the start of the day. For me, that’s my cooking practice and the more generative aspects of my writing practice. But I also take time off, and don’t schedule any work stuff during that time off, so I can approach what I do refreshed and ready to go.
Curiosity is key: Having a whole range of experiences to draw from has made me a stronger professional, but also a better person. Staying curious helps my mind and body stay flexible, and helps me draw connections between ideas that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. My curiosity, and my passion for learning and exploring new things, has been really critical to my success.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
When you create with intention, anything is possible.
Before I make a decision in my business, I meditate on it and I journal about it: What outcome am I hoping for? What is the ideal result of this decision? How does this decision nurture and support me and my work? Because I approach my business growth and my writing career intentionally, I’m able to make choices that reflect my core values and allow me to do work that excites me and brings me joy.
Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I always have fun projects going on! Right now, I’m ramping up my book tour for Our Fermented Lives, and I have some really exciting events planned around that including book talks and hopefully some classes, demonstrations, and collaborations with folks in my communities.
The book helps people think about food and community, and to get curious about the stories behind our food. But it also shows people that you can make nutritious, delicious food with just a jar, some salt, and some time. Fermented food is truly magic in a jar!
Besides that, I’m writing some really fun new pieces for my newsletter that I can’t wait to share, and planning some great cooking classes.
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?
It is definitely better for all those things than getting vegetables from a big box store! The flavor of homegrown vegetables is vastly superior, too: A tomato fresh from the garden tastes more ‘tomato-y’ than a grocery store tomato ever will. It’s often cheaper too, especially once you start saving your own seeds.
Eating something fresh and in season means your food is more nutrient dense than grocery store produce, and because it’s traveling only a few feet rather than hundreds of miles to get to your kitchen, and doesn’t contribute to the agricultural industrial complex, the carbon footprint is smaller.
Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?
Start with something easy: Many of my farming and gardening friends recommend beans as a good first plant, and I agree. Peas are great too in early spring, and lettuces and hearty greens like kale and chard are easy to grow and delicious. I encourage people to pick a few things they like that are simple to grow, and start there. Having success with a couple plants helps build confidence as you learn, so you can knowledgeably branch out further in the future.
As far as resources, check with local community gardens, your local county extension office or agricultural college, and your local library. All of these will have resources on growing a garden that are appropriate to your growing zone, and will be able to point you to community resources as well.
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.
Start small: Even fun projects can feel overwhelming when we start too big. Pick a few veggies that work with your yard and growing zone, and grow out from there as you feel ready.
Have a plan: You want your garden to connect with your needs and lifestyle. Do you have a giant yard? Do you want to grow veggies, or fruit trees, or ornamental flowers? How much time do you have to garden? Will you have a compost pile, and if so, where will it go? Thinking about how your garden will fit in your life now makes it easy to keep up in the future.
Do your research: Understand your growing zone and the growing conditions in your yard (how much sun? How often does it rain? etc) so that you can select plants that work with where you live.
Think low waste: Once you really get into gardening, you’ll have a lot of food to play with! Think about how you can preserve that food and use up as much of it as you can (like making carrot top pesto, for example), to maximize your savings and nutrition and to cut down on food waste. I talk a lot about this in Preserving Abundance, which is a class I teach on reducing waste in the kitchen, and uses lessons I’ve learned in my own experience as a gardener and cook.
Have fun! Gardening is such a joyful activity, and it’s not meant to feel like work. Knowing what you want, and starting small, helps keep it fun and low pressure. I love to encourage folks to use gardening to build community, too: Share your extra produce with hungry neighbors, or connect with other gardening enthusiasts to swap seeds and ideas!
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?
I think a lot of people try to start with overly elaborate gardens and end up just feeling overwhelmed. That’s why I always encourage people to start small.
But I also see people treat gardening like a solo activity: I like to garden by myself, but I also like to share and learn alongside others. Bringing my excess produce to our local free fridges helps feed my neighbors, and sharing gardening ideas with friends helps me feel more deeply connected to the people and plants I care about. I don’t think it’s a mistake to not share gardening ideas and your garden’s bounty, but it definitely makes the experience richer if you do!
What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?
Seed swaps with neighbors, or going to seed banks (sometimes public libraries and community gardens have these!) are great ways to get free or cheap seeds. You can also set up an inexpensive compost pile to cut down on waste and to nourish your soil without expensive and environmentally damaging synthetic fertilizers.
Cutting down on food waste by using all parts of what you grow helps, too!
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. 🙂
In my work, I talk a lot about how we are the connection between our ancestors and the future: We have all this wisdom to draw upon, and knowledge to share, and we can take that to build the future we want. I like making traditional foods like fermented vegetables because it speaks to a slower pace of living, to leaving a smaller footprint on the earth, and to creating something that’s delicious but also sustainable. It doesn’t require a ton of resources or expensive equipment to make delicious, nutritious food.
When we create traditional foods, and grow gardens, and build community through food, what we’re doing is using our kitchens and gardens to connect to our ancestors and to nourish our communities just as they did. And, we’re keeping important food traditions alive for the future.
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. 🙂
When I think about food as a powerful community builder, I immediately think of chef Jose Andres and the absolutely transformative work he’s doing with World Central Kitchen. He is a living example of how food and community connect in so many ways: In our passion for developing wonderful flavors, in our very real boots-on-the ground need to feed people, and in building bridges between cultures and communities. I am inspired by his work every day!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Quite a few ways! I encourage them to join my newsletter: Free subscribers get access to regular issues and occasional recipes, and paid subscribers get exclusive recipes plus all kinds of other content.
My new book is also available for preorder, and it goes in deep on many of the things I’ve talked about today!
They can also visit Root’s website to learn more about my work and to check out my classes and books, and can follow me on social media at @rootkitchens and @bookishjulia
Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.
Thank you, you as well!
Dr Julia Skinner Of Root Kitchens: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.