Natalie Forstbauer Of Heart & Soil Magazine: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Make sure your garden is always covered or mulched — never leave it bare. When we leave the garden bare at the end of the season and “clean it all up” leaving the soil “black,” the soil loses its healthy, diverse soil structure. It’s important to cover gardens with leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, or a cover crop when the season is finished. It helps retain moisture too! One year I only covered half the garden with straw and the other half was left bare. Within weeks, the bare soil was dried up while the part that was mulched remained moist for the entire summer without watering.
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 Natalie Forstbauer.
Natalie Forstbauer is an organic, biodynamic gardener/farmer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Heart & Soil Magazine. She is a TEDx speaker, author, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivor. She is passionate about global regeneration and seeing people healthy, living their best lives. Raised on an organic farm, trained in Polarity Therapy, complimentary medicine, neurofeedback and transformational leadership she believes regenerative farming, gardening, and living are the pathway forward for soil health and personal health.
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”?
I was born and raised on a certified organic vegetable and blueberry farm in the Fraser Valley, just outside of Vancouver, BC. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of farming and gardening including animals, grains, vegetables, berries, and growing flowers and herbs.
Learning no-till gardening on a larger scale has been quite the learning curve, and it is the most cost-effective, efficient, and effective way to garden. I think all backyard and home gardeners should be doing no-till when they can.
I’m also a brain injury survivor. Gardening played a big part in my healing journey. It helped me with cognitive functioning, relieving anxiety, reduced my headaches, improved my focus, and helped with my overall well-being. Gardening helped save me and heal me.
If we taught every child, every home, and every community how to garden and grow food, the world would be a different place. There would be food on every table and healing of people’s hearts.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
When I was 18 years old, my parents bought a new piece of property that had been farmed using chemicals. The land was desiccated and lifeless when we started farming it. I wondered what my Dad saw in the land and why my parents would buy land that felt like moon dust.
Over the next few years, I got to witness that very soil come to life with all sorts of little critters and earthworms. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. When I saw that, I knew the earth and land could heal themselves and literally come back to life after desertification if we change the way we farm and work with nature.
Since then, I have witnessed many pieces of land come to life through regenerative organic, biodynamic, and natural farming practices. It’s powerful and awe-inspiring.
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?
Tenacity — I landed with a major brain injury in 2003. I didn’t know my name, that I had just written a book, or that I was the oldest of 12 after the accident. I had to relearn many things, like how to cook, think, focus, write, and garden. Tancity gave me the depth of character to work through the hard moments with grit. It helped me stay focussed on what I could do and let go of what I “thought I should be able to do” after the brain injury.
Vision — I have a clear vision of what thriving planet earth looks like and feels like. People work in harmony with nature, animals, and each other. The vision drives me, gives me hope, and guides my decisions. It helps me connect with collaborators and others with similar values.
Collaboration — I believe we are stronger together, we prosper in the community, and we are more successful when we work together. There has never been a more important time to harvest the wisdom of our elders and to cultivate the wisdom of our youth. One of my favorite things is seeing science linking and confirming the efficiency and wisdom of ancient practices like composting, biodynamic preparations, Korean natural farming, rotational grazing, intercropping, and the benefits of wild indigenous foods. We are seeing more and more sharing of information at gatherings online, at conferences, and in personal conversations.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Watch, listen, observe, love.”
These words are my mantra. Many of my mentors have shared them with me: my dad, mom, grandparents, and many people I’ve interviewed for Heart & Soil Magazine. Although the journey will be similar from person to person, or from garden to garden, there are always subtle nuances to note, and learnings to harvest. It’s in quiet observation that you learn the most about yourself and nature. Let love lead you in your thoughts, actions, and learnings. That is where the magic happens and where we are most open to noticing what there is to learn, and what’s opening up to be cultivated, seeded, harvested, and composted.
Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We just launched a free Heart & Soil Living Facebook group where people come together to learn and share information about regenerative farming, gardening, and living for personal health and global regeneration.
The group is a spin-off of Heart & Soil Magazine, launched in January 2021 to help improve soil health and human health through regenerative farming, gardening, and living so that we have a beautiful healthy thriving planet to live on for centuries to come. We are working on building nutrition security for all, by connecting people to the power of healthy soil and the impact it has on human health and climate change. In its first year, Heart & Soil featured over 80 contributors from 14 countries with a reach of over 4 million. Each new issue of the magazine is an exciting new project.
Our goal is to see the impact of Global Regeneration through regenerative farming and gardening within the next decade.
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?
Gardening is abundant. Research shows it improves your personal health emotionally, mentally, and physically. It saves you money, and helps sequester carbon, mitigating your carbon footprint to improve the environment.
Gardening in healthy soil builds your microbiome, relieves stress, and connects you more deeply to the present moment.
Organic food grown in your own backyard and found at your local farmers’ market is the freshest and most nutritious food you’ll ever eat. Food that lands on grocery store shelves has often traveled for days and thousands of miles, and sometimes even halfway around the world. From the moment food is picked, it starts to lose nutritional value. Studies show that food can lose 15–90% of its nutritional value by the time you eat it. The food you grow in your own yard without chemicals is rich in nutrients, life force, and beneficial microbes!
Having your hands in the soil is shown to help improve your health. Gardening is a mood booster, helps you get more natural vitamin D, and is a great activity to improve your memory and cognitive and executive functioning. It nourishes connections to self, family, and community and is helpful to relieve anxiety. People who garden gain a sense of confidence and empowerment as they grow their own food and are able to provide for themselves.
Growing your own food helps mitigate the carbon footprint of transporting food, and it helps draw carbon into your soil, sequestering carbon. Home gardening is playing an important role in climate change. World-renowned microbiologist Walter Jehne believes urban farming is going to play a key factor in impacting climate change.
Every little garden makes a difference.
Gardening saves you time and money. Reduce your trips to the grocery store, and grow hundreds of dollars of food with just a few dollars.
Garden fresh food is simply delicious. Taste the difference yourself — grow your own food.
Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?
What do you like to eat? Does it grow well in your climate? Start there.
Keep your garden simple and start small.
Use no-till practices to save money, cut down on fuel, and build soil structure. All you need to start is cardboard, good compost, and some of your favorite seeds to plant.
Find seeds at low cost or no cost at your local seed library, seed bank, or seed swap.
There are many excellent resources. For example, Epic Gardening on YouTube and Heart & Soil Living on Facebook. Your community may have a garden club with information about what grows well in your area. Trust your own power of observation. Watch what works well and what doesn’t.
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.
- Use no-till. This is important and super valuable when gardening because it saves time, money, and resources, reduces weeds, and is better for the environment. Every time you till your garden, you destroy the soil food web and microbial life. Dr. Elaine Ingham has shown us that the soil food web thrives with no-till, or minimal-till practices, and is pulverized with tilling. It kills the earthworms and destroys billions of microorganisms that are necessary to feed your plants, hold water, and sequester carbon. When I moved to my new home, we put up a greenhouse and covered the entire area with a couple of layers of cardboard and good compost. It killed the grass and was easy to do. The cardboard, which doesn’t disturb the ecosystem of the soil as tilling would, breaks down over time and becomes part of your soil. The composted cardboard brings microbial life to the soil in your new garden area, which nourishes the plants.
- Focus on building healthy soil rather than healthy plants. Healthy soil grows and feeds your plants. Instead of using topical sprays and chemical fertilizers to increase the NPK — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, use good quality compost on your garden area to build a diverse soil food web, which feeds the plants. I add a few inches of good compost to my garden beds at the beginning of each season, and/or apply compost tea extracts and biodynamic preparations.
- Make sure you use good compost. Not all compost is created equal. If you can find organic compost, or compost that is made with the soil food web principles, focusing on soil microbiology, that is the best. I make my own compost pile in my yard with kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, yard clippings, and straw. One time we bought compost that was full of weed seeds because it hadn’t been composted properly. Our garden was a mess. Certified organic, soil food web principles or vermicompost are good choices.
- If you decide to use inputs and want to grow chemical-free food, look for the OMRI certified label. OMRI verifies products are safe to use in organic production. When I’m looking to use inputs other than compost, like diatomaceous earth, seaweed spray, or organic fertilizers, for example, I will check to see if it is on the OMRI list to make sure it is safe to use.
- Make sure your garden is always covered or mulched — never leave it bare. When we leave the garden bare at the end of the season and “clean it all up” leaving the soil “black,” the soil loses its healthy, diverse soil structure. It’s important to cover gardens with leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, or a cover crop when the season is finished. It helps retain moisture too! One year I only covered half the garden with straw and the other half was left bare. Within weeks, the bare soil was dried up while the part that was mulched remained moist for the entire summer without watering.
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?
People start with big ideas and a large area, they can’t keep up. Start small. Take on what you know you can handle, and do it well. Farmers run into the same issue — their eyes and ideas are bigger than what they can manage — I initially went too big with my market garden when I moved to my new homestead. See what works well, and add on next year.
Bare soil. Compost your weeds, and place the non-seeding weeds around the plants you are weeding. It may not look as pretty, but you are feeding the soil when you do this, and in turn, it feeds your plants. If you like a clean-looking garden, place straw around your plants once they have come up, to suppress the weeds.
Forgetting to water. Plan your watering days. Make sure you have a timer set to water when you aren’t home or ask a neighbor to help. Mulching will help you need less water and building soil structure using compost and practicing regenerative gardening will also help build the soil sponge. A healthy soil sponge helps soil hold more water, so you need to water it less often. We did a feature on Covert farms that turned their sandy land into healthy soil that needs limited irrigation, even during a drought!
What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?
Use no-till gardening — saves gas and money on equipment.
Find your local seed library, seed bank, or seed swap to source and share seeds.
Save seeds from your own harvest when you can.
Purchase seeds with friends and divide the packets up as needed.
Plant what you will eat.
Make your own compost and use it in your garden.
Use leaves and grass clippings as mulch and ask the neighbors for theirs if you need more.
Get (free) wood chips from your local landscaping companies and city recycling centers to use in your compost and as mulch.
Collect rain in rain barrels to use in the garden.
Focus on healthy soil. You’ll have higher yields and better water retention.
Start with only the basic, most useful tools like a garden trowel, claw weeder, shovel, rake, and wheelbarrow.
Trade food with neighbors and friends.
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. 🙂
A global regeneration movement connecting people to how soil health and food impact their personal health and the health of the planet.
People are hungry to be healthy, self-sufficient, and feel like who they are and what they do matters.
We are living in a time where there is urgency to live with purpose, to have good health, and to make an impact. Heart & Soil connects people to Global Regeneration.
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. 🙂
Jennifer Garner, she’s my people: full of heart, grounded in who she is, loves organic biodynamic regenerative food/farming/gardening, cares about the environment, cares about people’s health, makes people laugh, and amplifies kindness.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Join our community for free on Facebook @heartandsoilliving, follow us on Instagram @heartandsoilmagazine or subscribe to our digital publication, Heart and Soil Magazine.
Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.
Natalie Forstbauer Of Heart & Soil Magazine: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.