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Okay, welcome to another episode of
the crime Pace about and he doesn't podcast.

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I'm here with Jeremy Tidd. I
pronounce your name right? You did?

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Okay? I fuck it up on
every like every other episode, depending

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on who I'm I am doing.
So you know that one's simple. You

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got it. I'm preparing to be
a geriatric Italian a little earlier here,

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but uh but anyway, so,
uh Bonat he runs Bona Terra nursery or

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there in the DC Baltimore area.
We met during the filming of Kill Your

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Lawn. Uh, the four episodes
we shot in that region, and uh,

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I was so impressed with some of
the stuff he does and some of

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those things we talked about, I
decided to have him on the podcast.

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So that's what we're doing here.
Jeremy, how are you? Oh?

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I'm great, and I'm grateful for
the opportunity to get my voice out there.

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And you are talking to me from
a top a large hill. Is

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that correct? Because you were like
you are in the cut, I am

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I if the service cuts in and
out or if the wind comes, it's

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just because my hands are dirty.
I'm out here in the nursery. Okay.

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Sometimes sometimes satellites aren't right above me. So it so it's a it's

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a so, so what's you're on
a satellite phone or just a regular cell

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phone. I'm just on a regular
cell phone tower that sometimes tower reception isn't

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perfect. Okay, I thought it. I thought you had like a like

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a like a satellite phone. I
was like, oh, ship, that's

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my friend Miguel's got one of those. But he lives in Tasmania. So

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maybe one day I would love to
have some Bluetooth on my irrigation system.

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Yeah. Yeah, once once Elon
Musk has thoroughly fucked us. And you

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know there's there's a satellites every fucking
where anyway anyway. So but to get

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so to talk about where you are
right now, I mean, you had

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just said something earlier before I started
recording, that you're still I mean DC,

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that whole area, of course,
has had more development and more time

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to be developed by European settlement than
any other place. Uh in North America.

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It seems like it's you know,
it's got like five hundred years or

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so, but there's but there's still
remote areas like you said that the count

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I'm in a bit of a special
area. And in fact, I didn't

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even know really how special this was
until I happened to have an opportunity to

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move out here. But yeah,
the southern half of an Arundo County has

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like subdivision restrictions, and I'm on
a rather large conservation agiment. And it's

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kind of incredible because like every direction
you drive out of DC, it's suburbs

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forever for at least an hour,
And this place is only forty minutes outside

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of the city and and you get
about thirty minutes away and all of a

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sudden, like all the strip malls
disappear, and really, what what's going

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on? And yeah, there's there's
just a lot of preservation of old tobacco

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farms, a lot of entrenched farming
communities out here that don't want to give

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it up. And it's awesome.
And it gives me the real opportunity to

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you know, get some dew on
my plants and get the good air flow

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without without all of that pollution.
And yeah, got access to a lot

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more local genetics out here then I
always thought I would have to move two

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hours out in order to get to
like a real, you know, semi

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wild place, because most of the
development there. Yeah, most of the

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development. I was amazed, man. I mean I I have not spent

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that much time in a car.
I mean, it feels like so many

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plays in the United States, you
know. I mean Texas is like that.

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From Dallas all the way south of
the border on I thirty five corridor.

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It's just what I call a car
slum, you know, like endless

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suburbs. Yeah, with little Yeah, it's like sprawling out in like La

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some of the other places I considered
moving when I was younger, and and

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and the sprawl here is is starting
to contend with some of that. Like

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I know people that are commuting over
an hour just to get to DC and

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do goverment job. You know.
Yeah, that's it's insane. I mean

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when you're when you have to spend
that much time in a car, Like

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if you're on a subway, a
train or something, it's different. Your

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time is your own. But when
you're forced to be in that car,

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it's just it's never mind the impracticality
of it either. I mean, every

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person sitting in this giant fucking I
mean the amount of space it takes for

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all the fucking cars and the car
thing in America isn't saying, but god

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damn it, it's hard to live
a life like that. I can see

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how it's got to be unfulfilling if
you have to spend that much time commuting

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in a vehicle. You know,
well, and it's it's so relevant to

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you to the killer lawn makes so
much. So much of the reason people

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are driving so far is for lawns. It's like all this waste and time

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to like, you know, so
you can have a little green patch of

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dead zone. Yeah, well that's
I mean, that's what what's crazy is

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that's all people really have. That's
all that's been offered, you know,

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the suburban lifestyle. It hasn't been
planned for. It hasn't been planned for

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density or public transit or you know. That's why it's like, God,

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I just I to travel outside of
America and see what other options are available

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in terms of public transit, other
living situations, density, but still having

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parks and like open spaces, you
know, not having to sit in a

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fucking car, having walkable you know, places to live. It's so nuts.

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So but anyway, all that is
said, so tell me how you

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got in the native plants because you
run a huge nursery and you, I

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mean you make you mix your own
soil, you make your own biochar,

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which takes the place of pearlite,
which I thought was really fucking cool.

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How did you get into all this
stuff? Well, I guess how far

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back you want me to go,
because it really started when I was I

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was still in single digits. I'm
trying to make a living for myself.

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But uh uh, I suppose really, really the synthesis of the nursery all

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started with, uh, you know, my roots as an artist and wanting

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to make art. And I found
the traditional route to making a living on

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art kind of materialistic, and you
know, I wanted I work. I

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wanted to work more in four dimensions. I wanted to work, and with

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time, I wanted to work with
living things, plants, plants and being

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outdoors like really thrilled me. So
kind of just got got a couple jobs

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right out of high school and started
working on it. And it wasn't long.

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I mean I started at a golf
course of all places, and a

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plant nursery and it wasn't long before, like you know, my passion for

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plants really blossomed at that nursery,
and like learning more as much as they

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could about plants. And you know, they never once mentioned were native plants

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while I was I was at that
place for a good three or four years.

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No, I imagine, yeah,
it's got to be a foreign concept.

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Yeah, totally, you know,
you know, it was. It

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was an aha moment, like the
moment you know, there's a lot of

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things in my life where you know, I just never thought about it.

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And then the moment someone was like
native plants support native ecosystems, it was

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like a sea change. Suddenly,
you know, I wanted nothing to do

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with these foreign plants that aren't you
know, because I'm I'm in love with

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the ecosystem and I want to support
it, you know. And and it

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was it was a sea change moment
for me when I when I heard the

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word native plants and thought about the
consequences of non native ones like it.

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It didn't it didn't take any pushing
or shoven to get me to think,

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like, you know, this is
what's important, this is what I want

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to do. Yeah. I think
that's what's required is viewing things differently.

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Like when I I used to you
know, scoff at the native plant thing,

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I thought it was like this elitist, fucking annoying you know, no,

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was not native. Uh yeah,
well the fucking freeways not native either,

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jack off, Like it doesn't you
know, like don't fucking give me

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this, Like we live in a
disturbed time, like I didn't, but

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I didn't grasp I was an idiot. I had no context that like,

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oh, there's all these things are
connected. There's this is basically ecology,

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like if growing Nandina domestica or some
other shit that that is just frivolously found

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attractive whatever that means, like talk
about an area of subjectivity. You know,

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it's just whimsical something, you know, that doesn't support all these other

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cool things that grow with it,
whether it's fungi or the microbes or the

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pollinators or the caterpillars or other things
that use these as a host plant,

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the beatles that use these as a
host plant, et cetera. So it

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was really this ignorant thing. And
I still see people, you know,

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denying that, and I don't want
to get mad at them, but it's

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just like, fuck, this fucking
this idiot just doesn't know, not even

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this idiot, but like this this
bonehead, well yeah, you know,

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it's it's it's not knowing. It's
okay, but being so arrogant to like

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not know that you don't know what
is what frustrates me. You know.

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Yep. No. And I've been
pleased because I've gotten a lot of chances

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to reach out to the public and
get more interactions with people. And I've

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just been like blown away with the
number of people that have come to me

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and said things like, hey,
like I I just thought I was doing

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the right thing by going to the
local plant store, like that was that

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was where you know, I just
assumed, like, oh, it's time

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to do native plants, will go
there, whatever's there. And I've had

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a lot of people connect with me
in the last year or two who were

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like, oh my god, I
didn't realize. You know, there's so

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much more to the ecology of a
plant nursery and how like, you know,

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the retail system how it's set up
now, is not focused on what's

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best for the environment. Like if
you want to do what's best for the

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environment, you might have to do
a little bit of legwork to find that

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smaller grower, you know. Yeah, yeah, and just just having an

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ecological mindset too. And I can
forgive people for not having that because everything's

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been destroyed. I mean, especially
where you are, you know, there's

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nothing left. Well I'm yeah,
I'm kind of like, it's not your

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fault. And and I see it
more and more that it's not their fault

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when they run into me and they
you know, I see the light bulb

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go off and they're like, you're
right, I'm going to change my approach,

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like of course, this corporate shit
isn't the best thing for the planet,

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like you know, like, ah, yeah, so yeah, it's

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it's uh, I don't know,
man. I I think people eventually come

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around, but it just takes it
takes a minute to get through to them

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as all. But it's some are
more resistant than others. And I'm lucky

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enough to you know, run in
have a little bubble of like only the

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people that are willing to incorporate new
ideas tend to interact with me. Yeah,

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or at least listen, that's been
pleasant. The most annoying shit that

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I hear, though, is that
humans are invasive. Well, man,

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not really, and it's not really. The definition of the term invasive specifically

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means brought somewhere by humans, not
did it migrate naturally. Well it wasn't

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everything. You know, things have
been moving around the planet forever. Well,

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yeah, it was actually a pretty
rare event that things would move across

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the fucking Atlantic Ocean normally, you
know, in the plumage of a bird

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or on it, maybe on a
raft like a debris raft, and it

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wouldn't happen that much. We can, you know, it's a philosophical time

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machine, you know, our use
of carbon resources and the way we move

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around this planet, like we are
moving into the future every time you jump

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into a car, and the world
hasn't functioned like this ever, and and

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you know, I think a lot
of people don't realize that cars are time

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machines into the future. Like it
used to take two weeks to get halfway

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across the country. Now you can
get halfway across the country in two days.

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Like that's a literal time machine,
right, everything's happening at a faster

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pace. Well yeah, that too. And also like the worst invasives always

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come from, you know, the
ecosystems that have been separated from this one

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for so long, which is normally
across the Atlantic Ocean three thousand miles of

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ocean is a formidable fucking barrier of
course, or the equator, you know,

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and so gone right, right,
and so now that and now we

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can bring we can bring things overnight, but we don't bring all the fungi

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or insects that keep them in check
at least if we're talking about plants.

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And so that's why things behave and
some of our most beloved natives here are

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invasive as hell in Australia and Europe
and other places, you know. Yeah,

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that's why I was just doing stories
on that. While I was traveling

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in Japan, I was photographing all
the evening primros, the broom sedge and

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get a golden rod, like all
this stuff that like here, it's great

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here, and then like it's it's
a nightmare over there. Yeah, and

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you can see it too, because
some of those natives are the ones that

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are able to compete in the disturbed, fucked up areas here, you know,

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like railroad tracks and power line easements, and you know you can pion

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air plants. Yeah. So but
anyway, so so you got you got

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into native I mean when you when
it was put forth to the idea of

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what a native plant is and the
concept of ecology. That's when it took

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off. Yeah, it kind of
took off, and I was I was

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doing a little bit of installation work, kind of trans transitioning away from being

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an employee to being self employed,
which I guess I'd always been working on.

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And yeah, I was doing a
lot of installations, and I was

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having a whole lot of trouble,
uh seeing eye to eye with clients.

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Uh, you know, people want
me to round up me, want me

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to plant a lot of annuals like
and and you know, I was just

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sick of it. And I was
also sick of not being able to source

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plants from ethical sources. Like all
my plants were coming with like petrochemical fertilizers

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on them, they were sprayed with
other chemicals and pristine conditions. They were

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coming from other eco regions, bringing
all kinds of microbes that weren't native to

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the area. And I was just
like, this has got to end,

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Like I can't ethically continue making a
living this way unless I grow these plants

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myself. So that's that's what I
did. For roughly like ten years.

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I was growing myself and my little
twenty by forty foot concrete pad in the

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backyard of my city Rowhouse in DC, and I did that for a while,

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installing rain gardens and conservation plantings for
the city and residential sites. And

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I really got seasoned there, like
I really understand understood more like what it

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took to maintain, what it took
to communicate with clients to have them have

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success, what sort of signs were
successful, which ones were failures. You

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know, your normal designer might you
know, kick out like twenty thirty one

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hundred designs a year, and every
year I was I was going through one

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hundred and fifty to two hundred these
designs and installations and following up with the

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clients and talking to them and learning
and throughout all of that, I kind

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of just the more I learned,
the more I realized, like, the

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way I can really make a difference
is by growing these plants and providing all

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the information that I've learned from the
last ten years of doing maintenance and installations.

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So you were one of so you
you started growing everything from sea basically

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because you realized you had to.
There was no you couldn't get this stuff.

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Well, I made a transition,
so initially in the nursery in my

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backyard because I was doing maintenance at
the same time. Usually my maintenance practice

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resulted in like thousands of extra see
things of native plants in my client's yard.

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So I was digging those up,
putting potting them up, and slinging

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them like six weeks later in installations. And that's how I, like,

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you know, made money off that
little tiny space. Was like, that's

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amazing. You see all my maintenance
clients as a seed factory. No,

228
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that's fucking smart. So you were
going back and digging these up and then

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repotting them and then using those basically
from that's a that's amazing, So they

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would just pop up. Yeah,
through that maintenance, I learned all about

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like you know, propagating. And
you know, it wasn't until I started

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the nursery and I really started looking
into nursery practices and the genetics plants and

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really thinking about like what it means
to to breed planets like and and one

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analogy I frequently present to customers or
people that are asking me about it.

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It's like, you know, you
wouldn't start a breeding colony of or you

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wouldn't start a new dog breed two
dogs. You know you're gonna end up

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with some some some fucked up overbites
and some hip dysplasia and all this other

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stuff, And the same is true
plants, Like you want nice genetic diversity

239
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of plants that are locally evolved to
the local soil and that. You know,

240
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That's what I've been picking up and
learning the last like six years and

241
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incorporating into everything I do, is
like this good genetic stability and the plants

242
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that I'm not bringing to right.
Yeah. Yeah, it's the same thing

243
00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:26,039
of inbreeding. You know, you
get those recessive alleles stucking up. You

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don't have as much in the genetic
toolbox that enables you know, an organism

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to to survive or you know,
survive whatever adversity comes at it, whether

246
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it's disease or environmental diversity, et
cetera. So you don't want those genetic

247
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bottlenecks, you know exactly. Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that. I'm

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trying to get you know, the
most diverse you know colonies to people.

249
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I'm trying to inform them when you
know, I have no minimum among the

250
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number of plants and people who vive. But you know, when anytime they

251
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give me a foot in the door
and ask me about like the health of

252
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their colony. I'm like, well, you need at least twenty of the

253
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Lobilia syphiliticas because you know they're highly
dependent on receding and you want the most

254
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genetic diversity in your colony. So
like, you're gonna want at least twenty

255
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of these, you know, but
not everyone can fit twenty of something in

256
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their yard too. That's why I
don't have the minimum, and you know,

257
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not something is better than nothing.
Yeah, So I'm always trying to

258
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guide people towards thinking about it,
like is this a long lived plant that

259
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like doesn't require you know, making
babies to have a healthy colony, or

260
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or is this is this short lived
perennial that you know you're gonna need a

261
00:17:36,799 --> 00:17:40,400
lot of to develop to have enough
guenetic diversity to make a healthy colony.

262
00:17:40,720 --> 00:17:41,759
Do you so, do you have
you been getting a lot of people,

263
00:17:42,039 --> 00:17:45,599
you know, killing their lawns wanting
to plant native plants lately or what do

264
00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:49,640
you What are the majority of your
contracts you end up with. I would

265
00:17:49,680 --> 00:17:53,119
say, like the people that are
killing their lawns and trying to like,

266
00:17:53,440 --> 00:17:56,880
you know, make new space that
could be somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty

267
00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:03,319
to thirty percent of my clientele.
I'd say another decent portion of that is

268
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contractors. I do a lot of
selling to contractors, and yet frequently they

269
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are killing lawn spaces and installing gardens. So for like landscape landscape contractors,

270
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you mean like, yeah, yeah, they're they're they definitely keep me stable.

271
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They probably represent you know, another
twenty to thirty percent of the clientele.

272
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But I've also been getting like some
local parks and stuff, people doing

273
00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:33,720
restoration projects. I do that,
like, ay, fifteen to twenty percent

274
00:18:33,799 --> 00:18:37,200
of my inventory right now is a
local ecotype that should be pumping up to

275
00:18:37,440 --> 00:18:41,359
like thirty to forty percent in the
next year or two. So definitely,

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like if people are working in restoration, are doing parks, I'm trying to

277
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guide them towards the things that are
locally produced. But that was my focus

278
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:55,160
is on urban gardening. You know, there's all these micro climates that if

279
00:18:55,160 --> 00:18:57,119
people are dealing with, and also
maintenance concerns, Like a lot of people

280
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don't know how to properly maintain lants. So for those you got to kind

281
00:19:02,599 --> 00:19:03,839
of think like, oh, well, you're gonna have a blow and go

282
00:19:04,039 --> 00:19:07,319
operation coming that's gonna blow everything.
Often lay down the layer of multi Well,

283
00:19:07,359 --> 00:19:11,599
we can't have plants there that are
going to be highly dependent on receding

284
00:19:11,599 --> 00:19:15,799
because they're not going to reced in
your multi bed. So let's let's get

285
00:19:15,839 --> 00:19:19,440
your baptizes in their hibiscus and some
of these longer liferennials that aren't as dependent

286
00:19:19,519 --> 00:19:25,599
on receding, or maybe some some
rhizomal stuff in there. Yeah, yeah,

287
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:26,640
well yeah, I was well,
I want to ask you about that,

288
00:19:26,759 --> 00:19:30,880
like what kind of maintenance maintenances require. But but but before that,

289
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I just I mean, we're just
talking about the general region of d C

290
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because I'm sure there's you know,
a lot of people listening that aren't from

291
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that region or know much about it. I mean, there's still a lot

292
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of just horticultural garbage out there,
you know that the then Dina domesticas in

293
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the fucking box woods and the Japanese
barberriers. I mean, all this shit.

294
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These plants that I look at and
it's not the plant's fault. I'm

295
00:19:53,680 --> 00:19:56,480
sure are really important where the native
but I look at these fucking things and

296
00:19:56,640 --> 00:20:03,039
I feel nauseous, like it's it's
like a feeling of being figuratively carsick,

297
00:20:03,079 --> 00:20:04,240
you know, even though I'm not
in a car, it's like that same

298
00:20:04,359 --> 00:20:08,039
feeling. Oh God, Like I
think of these places where I see these

299
00:20:08,119 --> 00:20:12,759
you know, these neatly, neatly
trimmed beds with the edged grass around them

300
00:20:12,799 --> 00:20:17,839
in front of a fucking bank or
a strip mall or some government building.

301
00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:22,079
Uh, and you know, all
lined up evenly spaced. I mean,

302
00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:26,880
it's this fucking really specific landscaping style
that reminds me of places that traumatize,

303
00:20:27,599 --> 00:20:33,079
places that traumatize me as a kid, or like authority figures, or just

304
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:37,720
these really bland, like mothball smelling
fucking people. I don't know, man,

305
00:20:37,759 --> 00:20:42,079
I I really I go somewhere it's
like a roshuch that are associated with

306
00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:45,319
that. When I see them,
I also see like the core of where

307
00:20:45,519 --> 00:20:52,079
this comes from. It's corporate interest. It's massive grow operations that are you

308
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:59,160
know, using you know, poverty
wage labor to produce factory produce large numbers

309
00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:02,759
of these non ave plants because that's
what's easy to grow and that's what's easy

310
00:21:02,839 --> 00:21:06,599
to market. They all got these
fancy little names that make people think like

311
00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:08,200
oh, pink, Princess plan whatever, you know, like I want that,

312
00:21:08,559 --> 00:21:14,319
Like it sounds it's a it's all
marketing, and it's not. It's

313
00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:18,160
not backed on you know, what's
good for the environment. And that's why

314
00:21:18,279 --> 00:21:22,680
it's so ubiquitous is because it was
easy to communicate to people like this has

315
00:21:22,680 --> 00:21:26,279
a keeps you little name, you
want it and uh, you know uh.

316
00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:30,640
And I think that's been a big
effort in my business and it definitely

317
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:34,519
takes a lot of my time is
to like write this stuff down and communicate

318
00:21:34,599 --> 00:21:38,680
these ideas like hey, maybe you
don't want you know, a garden that's

319
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:45,880
that is presented based on corporate interests
or you know, these large scale growers

320
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:49,680
interests like these that's what these gardens
benefit. They don't benefit you, they

321
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:53,359
don't benefit the ecosystem, they don't
benefit the pollina. I mean for me,

322
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for me, it's it's it's like
all that shit is important. But

323
00:21:56,519 --> 00:22:00,119
I don't even say like environment because
it's over the environment, because because this

324
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:04,119
this country is just at such a
like intellectually stupid point right now, like

325
00:22:04,279 --> 00:22:08,400
just so divided. There's so many
people, you know, especially in the

326
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,319
right, who would be like,
oh, good for the environment, Like

327
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:12,640
they don't get it, Like it's
you know, they're just like, ah,

328
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:15,680
what you goddamn krey hugger. It's
like, no, man, it's

329
00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:18,160
the fucking ecosystem. You know,
all these cool like this shouldn't be a

330
00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:22,079
political thing, all these cool relationships
that exist between these organisms that have evolved,

331
00:22:22,279 --> 00:22:26,519
and these relationships have evolved over millions
of years. You fucking don't like

332
00:22:26,599 --> 00:22:30,240
this shouldn't be a political thing,
Like why would you be against this?

333
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:33,480
You know? But you see people, and I mean I've seen people,

334
00:22:33,519 --> 00:22:37,519
at least especially I'm in Texas,
so no surprise, actually be against it.

335
00:22:37,599 --> 00:22:41,240
It's like why would you be against
like having a cool species a month?

336
00:22:41,319 --> 00:22:45,279
You know, I'm like tell you
a little anecdotical story about uh So,

337
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,279
this past spring, I was working
on a native plant bill and we

338
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:52,880
had to wait for like hours to
testify. And the other people that were

339
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:56,160
waiting to testify before us were a
bunch of hunters that were trying to like

340
00:22:56,599 --> 00:23:03,079
extend the season of goose shooting.
And you know, these these were you

341
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:06,519
know, hardcore Republicans. They're like, you know, and they want they

342
00:23:06,559 --> 00:23:10,599
want to hunt, and uh you
know, I and I've had this own

343
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:15,480
experience, this similar experience with you
know my own family, and and you

344
00:23:15,559 --> 00:23:18,559
know, all these these uh you
know and tranch Republicans I don't care about

345
00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:23,440
the environment, do care about like
hunting. They do care. Like a

346
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:27,680
lot of these guys were even talking
to me about like invasive plants, you

347
00:23:27,759 --> 00:23:33,200
know, ruining the feed for the
animals they want to hunt. And it

348
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:37,359
was they were they were stoked that
we were working on the native plant build

349
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:41,200
because to them, all they heard
was like more ship to kill. And

350
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I'm like, well, if that's
what it takes, like you know,

351
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,359
yeah, well, and to be
fair, the deer, the deer situation

352
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:51,400
out there is fucking insane, Like
do you need hunting, Like the predators

353
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:55,640
are gone? You need you gotta
hunt those things their tick farms and they're

354
00:23:55,720 --> 00:24:00,440
they're dangerous on the roads. And
but yeah, and I with them and

355
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,440
what they do, maybe not one
hundred percent in every aspect of what they

356
00:24:03,519 --> 00:24:07,440
want to do, but you know, I think I think hunters and a

357
00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:11,519
lot of these you know Republicans that
may not be so concerned about global warming

358
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,440
or species diversity, they they do
have things that you know, bring them

359
00:24:15,519 --> 00:24:18,839
to the table when it comes to
native plants, and I think it's important

360
00:24:19,039 --> 00:24:23,039
to you know, recognize that and
listen to them and tell them, you

361
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:27,359
know, you know, find the
things that are important to them and give

362
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:33,400
them a reason why they should care. Yeah. Yeah. And also it's

363
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:37,319
just you know, I think there's
just for me too. It's just just

364
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:42,720
stylistically, like I see butterfly bush, that invasive budleya, I see these

365
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:47,119
other plants, and I'm like,
god, that's like that's like I feel

366
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:51,160
like I'm waiting in the fucking waiting
room of the DMV. Someone's jamming a

367
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:53,880
hot poker in my ass and I'm
being forced to listen to like Michael Bolton

368
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:59,480
songs on repeat like that is like, it's just it's such a fucking vibe,

369
00:24:59,519 --> 00:25:03,359
you know it is. I don't
know, but yeah, I guess

370
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,039
that's either here nor there. But
so either way though, So you so

371
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:11,000
when did you get into you were
when? I guess I'm just really curious

372
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:14,160
about your nursery operation, how you
grow these things. You know, I

373
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,240
want to talk about making your own
soil all that, because I found that

374
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:19,759
to be really fascinating. Well,
you know, when I got into it,

375
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:25,839
everything was like ecosystem first, Like, you know, I just kind

376
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:30,039
of believe that if I focus on
what's best for the environment and what's best

377
00:25:30,079 --> 00:25:33,839
for people, people are going to
recognize that, and they're going to come

378
00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:38,200
and they're going to support what I'm
doing. And so every aspect of the

379
00:25:38,279 --> 00:25:42,680
business has been booked at through an
ecological lens, whether it's the amount of

380
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:48,279
fertilizer I'm putting on the plants,
the way I'm sourcing them, the plastic

381
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:52,880
flow through the business, like is
it new plastic coming in? Is it

382
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:59,480
recycled? Is it soil full of
microbes from another ecoregion. Is it soil

383
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,960
was harvested from the permafrost, releasing
tons of carbon on the way, packed

384
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:10,039
in plastic bags, shipped on trucks. You know, it's all, it's

385
00:26:10,079 --> 00:26:15,960
all been considered and and I you
know, I I work every moment.

386
00:26:15,039 --> 00:26:19,799
I have to do this in the
most environmentally friendly way possible. And that's

387
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:25,079
you know, it's just it's just
I can't. I can't feel good at

388
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:30,039
night going to sleep knowing you know
that what I'm doing is taking more from

389
00:26:30,079 --> 00:26:34,640
the planet then then it's giving back. So that's that's why, you know,

390
00:26:34,759 --> 00:26:38,759
that's that's my hobby. Making soil
making biojar. Well it's it's just

391
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,920
impractical tool. You know. The
soil thing is just impractical too, Like

392
00:26:44,039 --> 00:26:45,920
some of the soil you buy.
I mean, it gets really expensive.

393
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:49,599
It's not optimal. It's like if
you could make you if I could make

394
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,640
my own soil and huge batches where
I live, I would totally do it.

395
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,640
Like it's you you save money and
it's just easier. You have to

396
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,920
get all these fucking bags. And
you know, I thought I would say,

397
00:27:02,039 --> 00:27:06,200
you know, it was the biggest
expense of money going out, but

398
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:08,799
you know, I had time to
replace that, and I'm hoping that in

399
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,680
time, I will you know,
get some efficiency to this this system so

400
00:27:14,799 --> 00:27:18,160
that it's eventually less than buying soil. But there's a reason everyone buys soil,

401
00:27:18,559 --> 00:27:22,799
and it's not you know, the
soils. Its fucking expensive, but

402
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,839
it is a lot more expensive time
wise to make it yourself. So if

403
00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:29,720
I had to pay somebody, if
I had to pay someone to do what

404
00:27:29,839 --> 00:27:33,720
I do, I would be bankrupt. Ye in like three months. Well

405
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:37,839
let's talk about what you do.
So what how do you go about this?

406
00:27:37,039 --> 00:27:41,160
Like and how did you figure it
out? How did I figure it

407
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:42,880
out? Uh, you know,
I got a I got a really smart

408
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:48,359
wife that uh that when when I
present her problems like this, she finds

409
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,839
me uh the information to solve it. And I spent a lot of time

410
00:27:52,240 --> 00:28:02,480
listening to podcasts, lectures from great
courses, all these different streams of knowledge

411
00:28:02,519 --> 00:28:06,079
to kind of incorporate it. And
I spent a lot of my free time

412
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:07,759
just trying to look up and see
what other people are doing. You know,

413
00:28:07,799 --> 00:28:11,640
it's a you can't harvest peak the
way you used to in Europe,

414
00:28:11,759 --> 00:28:14,440
so they're going to have solutions to
soil. So I looked into that,

415
00:28:14,599 --> 00:28:18,839
and you found that they are using
woodships that are decomposed and it may not

416
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,599
hold quite the same amount of water. And I think a lot of their

417
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:29,319
applications were agricultural based, and I
saw a lot of their limitations from from

418
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:34,000
the decomposed woodships. It didn't really
apply to growing native plants because they're a

419
00:28:34,039 --> 00:28:41,920
bit more flexible than growing things from
an agricultural perspective, you know. So

420
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:45,279
yeah, I just I started experimenting
and trying. I did a bunch of

421
00:28:45,359 --> 00:28:48,119
trial batches and I was like blown
away with the results. I actually had

422
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:52,960
better growth coming out of my plants
that were in my decomposed chips than I

423
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:57,720
was from the So let's let's talk
about that decomposed woodship based because I noticed

424
00:28:57,759 --> 00:29:04,559
this at my old illegal garden in
Mandela in Oakland, was that I get

425
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:10,839
these you know, chip companies to
make these huge dump truck drops of wood

426
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:12,920
chips. They do it for free, and then after six months, at

427
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:17,799
the bottom of those chip piles,
I would see that it wasn't wood chips

428
00:29:17,799 --> 00:29:21,200
anymore. It was like almost a
not a fine powder, but like a

429
00:29:21,319 --> 00:29:26,359
mealy brown powder, like it had
been decomposed. And that was amusing.

430
00:29:26,559 --> 00:29:29,039
Yeah, that's the good ship.
So how long does it take? So

431
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:33,000
it takes it takes roughly four to
five years to take a wood chip pile

432
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,799
to a decent amount of soil for
the whole thing. Yeah, right,

433
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:38,960
for the whole from start to finish. Yeah. So a lot of my

434
00:29:40,119 --> 00:29:42,720
soil was based off of like taking
down and base of plants all around the

435
00:29:42,759 --> 00:29:47,279
farm and running in through the chipper. And I started that process like four

436
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:49,759
years ago, so I was just
getting my first I only started claiming like

437
00:29:49,839 --> 00:29:55,359
hey, we're we've got reduced peat, We've got we've got no peat plants.

438
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,240
It was just this year because it
took that long to make it.

439
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,599
But all so this year, as
I watched, you know, the business

440
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:03,759
kind of starting to scale up,
I'm like, oh shit, I need

441
00:30:03,839 --> 00:30:08,559
to like really quickly find another source
of this decomposed wood chips because I can't

442
00:30:08,599 --> 00:30:14,200
make enough just to sustain what I'm
doing. So I went to dozens of

443
00:30:14,279 --> 00:30:18,279
different you know, tree to arborous
and all these different places, and I

444
00:30:18,319 --> 00:30:22,079
finally found a guy that actually he
was he's peddling it as mulch, but

445
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:26,039
it's decomposed wood chips. So I've
got that, and it really only takes

446
00:30:26,119 --> 00:30:30,839
me a year to take it from
what he was doing to soil ready.

447
00:30:30,279 --> 00:30:34,240
But yeah, once it's ready,
it gets run through a half inch stream,

448
00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:38,440
so that pulls out all the big
chunks. And those big chunks aren't

449
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:42,559
really a problem except they shrink.
So when you go to sell the plant

450
00:30:42,599 --> 00:30:47,079
and at the plant volumes like half
of what it was when you started,

451
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:48,200
you know, people are like,
hey, I thought this was a three

452
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,839
gallon plant, but there's only eight
gallon. Half the soil at the bottom

453
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,279
of the pot. Yeah, so
I had to start sipping it and running

454
00:30:56,319 --> 00:31:00,839
it through and yeah, I get
that and then I'll add like ten percent

455
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:04,519
biochar to it. And then I've
got about five or six different mixes that

456
00:31:04,599 --> 00:31:08,319
I'm making now, depending on you
know, what I'm growing, whether it's

457
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:12,559
burns or perennials. Right, because
because you can't just grow it in the

458
00:31:12,599 --> 00:31:15,960
wood the decomposed chip mix, right, I mean you get that wood that

459
00:31:17,079 --> 00:31:22,279
wood fluff, because I mean you
could. It's just like not very nutrient

460
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:25,799
I mean, it's got pretty diverse
set of nutrients because all the micros.

461
00:31:26,039 --> 00:31:30,400
Yeah, but like you can't quickly
bring a plant to market in a viable

462
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:34,799
amount of time without subsidizing some of
the nutrients in it. Well where the

463
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:37,920
catfish comes in, Okay, Okay, so that way I want to talk

464
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,720
about that. So, yeah,
you're making your own fish meal. But

465
00:31:40,759 --> 00:31:45,920
I mean, as far as drainage
goes in like a pod of just decomposed

466
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:48,759
wood chips, I mean, isn't
it that's going to be lacking in drainage

467
00:31:48,799 --> 00:31:51,799
and texture? And yeah, I
mean it's great if you want to grow

468
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:57,480
some some you know, virus or
hibiscus or some other swampy plant. Yeah,

469
00:31:57,519 --> 00:32:00,039
you don't have add anything to it, but the moment you need something

470
00:32:00,119 --> 00:32:06,279
that's you know, growing in in
uh you know, the first soil to

471
00:32:06,319 --> 00:32:08,440
as some mineral content. Yeah,
you got to add that drainage, you

472
00:32:08,519 --> 00:32:12,279
gotta, you know, you've got
to add something to fluff it up.

473
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,519
And so what do you do?
What do you add for the drainage.

474
00:32:14,559 --> 00:32:17,680
Then that's the biochart. That's the
biochar does most of the drainage. I

475
00:32:19,119 --> 00:32:23,000
have found that it's not quite enough. That was something I learned this year.

476
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:29,079
But like you know, sometimes even
with like if I just do a

477
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:35,759
mix of like ten percent compost,
ten percent biochar and eighty percent decomposed wood

478
00:32:35,839 --> 00:32:38,680
chips, that sometimes it was clogging
up and going a little bit anaerobic.

479
00:32:39,039 --> 00:32:44,680
But I'll be addressing that by adding
some more sand to the mix u next

480
00:32:44,759 --> 00:32:46,839
year. So tell me, tell
me what the tell me about the biochart.

481
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:50,279
How do you do the biochart,
because that's really interesting, is the

482
00:32:50,759 --> 00:32:52,759
r This is taking a place in
silite, right, it's taking the place

483
00:32:52,799 --> 00:32:57,680
of parl Yeah, yeah, it's
taking the place of paralyite. It's it's

484
00:32:57,799 --> 00:33:01,160
a hotel for microbes. Basically.
You know, when you burn it down,

485
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:06,039
you're left with just like the cell
walls. Because that's what the that's

486
00:33:06,079 --> 00:33:08,000
what it's made out of is you
know, that's where all the carbon goes

487
00:33:08,039 --> 00:33:13,400
in the plant, is to make
the cell walls. So all those are

488
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:15,880
you know, it's void space.
So it can hold the air, it

489
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:19,680
can hold the microbes, it can
hold water, it can provide a path

490
00:33:19,759 --> 00:33:22,359
for infiltration and water to flow.
So from start to finish, I mean,

491
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:24,119
but what do you do? I
mean you woul because you would mentioned

492
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:28,440
use a fifty five gallon drum and
tell everyone like what you're doing, you're

493
00:33:28,519 --> 00:33:32,640
taking fucking would preferably low density,
would right? You want softer woods like

494
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:37,400
poplar or something. Yeah, yeah, the best the best woods for it

495
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:39,960
are gonna be woods that you know, while they're growing, they're full of

496
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:44,960
water, like all their cells are
very fluffy. Yeah, that's gonna be

497
00:33:45,079 --> 00:33:51,440
like you know, you're fast growing
pioneer plants and you know your your your

498
00:33:51,519 --> 00:33:54,200
trees ideally, so that's gonna be
willows, that's gonna be poplars, it's

499
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:59,319
gonna be your sweet goums, and
you can even get away with like cherries

500
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:01,759
and pine means. But yeah,
the best things are going to be,

501
00:34:02,559 --> 00:34:07,880
you know, being cut down that
princess tree and turn that into bioshar it

502
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:14,199
makes excellent and the tree of Heaven, both of those. You know,

503
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,360
if you're if you're looking to get
a double bang for your buck, cut

504
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:21,400
down an invasive and turn it into
what is princess? Oh that's that's uh

505
00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:27,320
oh god, polonia. Yeah,
that's so weird. That is that's a

506
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:31,239
bad invasive out there. Huh.
It can be in some places, particularly

507
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:36,639
in urban areas, not so much, and like you know, second generation

508
00:34:37,199 --> 00:34:40,079
or second growth forests is not so
bad. But yeah, in urban areas

509
00:34:40,159 --> 00:34:44,800
you'll you'll find a fair amount of
it, and it's pretty easy to do.

510
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,960
Yeah, disturbed areas where the where
the landscape has already been the you

511
00:34:50,039 --> 00:34:52,119
know, original plant cover, native
plant cover has already been removed, right

512
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:57,519
yep. Yeah, but you know, fast growing pioneer species, you know,

513
00:34:57,639 --> 00:35:00,639
you can be able to harvest them, and fast growing pioneer species habitat.

514
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,440
Yeah, it's huge leaves, huge
leaves. I didn't really there are

515
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:08,760
there in lamy Alas. They're in
the the mint order they yeah, yeah,

516
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,760
but they huge fucking leaves. I
saw some coming up in a friend's

517
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,360
yard in Brooklyn, and I was
like, what the fuck is this because

518
00:35:15,639 --> 00:35:17,400
you know when they grow so fast. Yeah, I've never I had never.

519
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:22,760
That was a new one for me. But ye. So I'll dry

520
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,760
the wood out and I'll chop it
down. I try to keep all the

521
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,400
chumps like, you know, more
no more than four to six inches,

522
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,320
so that they can you know,
get to the center of the burn pretty

523
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:37,239
quickly. And I'll start it,
you know, I'll start a small fire

524
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:40,719
in the bottom of the burn barrel
and uh, you know, the first

525
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:45,280
thing that burns off of it is
all the gases and all the other elements.

526
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,079
The last thing to burn on it
is the carbon. And you'll you'll

527
00:35:49,159 --> 00:35:53,840
see when the carbon starts to form
CO two because you'll get that white layer

528
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:58,519
of ash and that's just you know, everything left over that doesn't burn.

529
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:01,800
And once you start to see that
white layer building up on the outside,

530
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:07,920
then I'll put it in a low
oxygen environment by cutting off the oxygen and

531
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,639
putting more wood on top, so
you smother it. Basically, you dump

532
00:36:10,679 --> 00:36:14,400
more wood on it smother. Yeah, I cut off the oxygen. I

533
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:16,719
put some freshed up to burn on
top so that can keep burning off all

534
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:21,800
the other elements above it while cutting
off the oxygen to the stuff below.

535
00:36:22,159 --> 00:36:25,119
And this is in a fifty five
gallon steel drum, and you're just hanging

536
00:36:25,159 --> 00:36:29,119
out there, you're drinking a couple
of beers. In my case, I'd

537
00:36:29,159 --> 00:36:32,559
be drinking na beers, maybe having
a stogy on like a nice beautiful fall

538
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:37,320
day. Yeah, and the whole
process can take four to six hours,

539
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:43,519
but throughout that four to six hours, it maybe only takes like forty five

540
00:36:43,559 --> 00:36:46,400
minutes of your attention. So I'll
usually I'll grab, you know, a

541
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:51,639
little community of seedlings I've got that
needs to go in the nursery. I'll

542
00:36:51,679 --> 00:36:55,880
sit at the potting bench and I'll
be slamming seedlings in the plugs and courts

543
00:36:55,920 --> 00:37:00,920
and gallons while I'm watching it,
waiting for it to for the flames that

544
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,679
die down. When the flames die
down, then I'll start checking on it,

545
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,119
waiting for that that ash to start
building up, and I'll just throw

546
00:37:07,119 --> 00:37:10,480
another layer on it, and you
know, it's a nice, nice little

547
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,280
We'll have a nice relaxing day where
like all I got to do is sit

548
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:20,800
there and you know, maybe I'll
listen to a podcast or or watch some

549
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:23,199
videos or whatever, watch a movie
while I'm potting stuff up and make the

550
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:27,679
bio chart at the same time.
So yeah, out it sounds nice so

551
00:37:28,159 --> 00:37:30,880
at the end, but basically,
you know, you let it burn,

552
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,159
you smother it. You let that
layer burn, you smother that. Eventually

553
00:37:34,159 --> 00:37:37,639
you've got these levels of how many
levels do you have in a fifty five

554
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:40,760
gallon drum man up with like four
or five? Well, I'll probably I'll

555
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:45,559
probably go back and add another layer
onto it, maybe up to like ten

556
00:37:45,679 --> 00:37:47,800
to twenty times. Oh wow,
depending on how thick the wood is.

557
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,840
Yeah, I mean you do it
over and over again. Takes like,

558
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,440
you know, fifteen to thirty minutes
for each layer to burn down. You

559
00:37:54,599 --> 00:37:59,280
kind of like break it up and
consolidate it and put a new layer on

560
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,159
top to get everything like kind of
evenly smothered in there. And so are

561
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:06,719
how big of a are you put
You're putting logs in there or like cut

562
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:09,119
up stuff from it. So I'll
take logs, I'll dry them out,

563
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:15,400
and then I'll split them to like
usually I try to get each piece split

564
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:20,480
to like two to three inches,
But depending on the density of the wood,

565
00:38:21,079 --> 00:38:23,320
like the denser of the wood,
then the smaller I want the chunks

566
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:30,199
and and the more porous and and
spongy and fast growing. The wood is

567
00:38:30,679 --> 00:38:35,199
the bigger the chunks that I can
put in there are, yeah, because

568
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,559
there's less resistance to burning to the
center. But you know, the goal

569
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:44,800
is to have all the wood like
burnt to the center, but to not

570
00:38:45,119 --> 00:38:49,000
release the carbon. Right. So, and that's so you got this like

571
00:38:49,199 --> 00:38:53,159
ten layer layer cake built up in
a fifty five gallon drama, this load

572
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:59,840
density soft wood. And then when
you get to the top, you basically

573
00:39:00,159 --> 00:39:02,559
let it burn. You're washing those
coals and when they start to get white

574
00:39:02,679 --> 00:39:06,440
around the edges, that's when they're
turning to powder, right, Like the

575
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:08,599
margin starts to turn the powder,
that's when you douse it with water.

576
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:14,079
Yeah, and it takes a you
know, I think some people are kind

577
00:39:14,079 --> 00:39:15,800
of taking aback by how much water
it takes to put it out. I

578
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,679
don't know. I've had a lot
of campfires, so I wasn't really surprised,

579
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:22,239
but like, yeah, a fifty
five callon drum might take you know,

580
00:39:22,639 --> 00:39:27,159
twenty to forty gallons of water to
like be certain that it's out.

581
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,320
You want to be certain that it's
out, right, you walk away and

582
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:31,960
there's still a little bit smoldering in
the bottom. You come out the next

583
00:39:32,039 --> 00:39:36,199
morning and all you got is a
little white powder in the bottom of Yeah.

584
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:40,079
Now it's wasted and all that carbon
is yeah yeah. And so whatever

585
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:44,719
amount of water you think it will
take to put it out, just go

586
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,079
ahead and put a little more on
there. But you're you're basically creating like

587
00:39:47,199 --> 00:39:53,440
a like a crunchy popcorn. You
know I was when you told me this,

588
00:39:53,599 --> 00:39:55,400
I was like, no shit,
of course you could use this like

589
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:59,119
prolite. It's got drainage in it, you know. I think of like

590
00:39:59,199 --> 00:40:02,280
little chunks of charcoal I've you know, found in a fire pit that I've

591
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,440
put out because you know, again, don't let it burn all the way

592
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,119
through. You let it burn overnight, it's it's gone. The next day

593
00:40:07,119 --> 00:40:10,079
it's powder. But you know,
you crunch them and they feel like perlite.

594
00:40:10,159 --> 00:40:15,679
Like that would be a perfect And
I love telling people you can use

595
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:19,639
this, like you can do this
at your own fire pit, like you

596
00:40:19,679 --> 00:40:22,280
know, instead of letting it all
burn out, or putting it out before

597
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,239
all the wood is burned, get
that bed of coals, put it out,

598
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:29,199
and then use that in your garden. And you know, I've looked

599
00:40:29,199 --> 00:40:34,519
into those varying reports on how long
this carbon is inert in the soil,

600
00:40:34,639 --> 00:40:38,599
But I've read everything from one thousand
years to some people suspect up to four

601
00:40:38,639 --> 00:40:45,320
thousand years that this carbon will be
sequestored and inert in your soil, which

602
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:47,960
is a hell of a lot longer
than say like a tree log. You

603
00:40:49,039 --> 00:40:52,599
know, like that's that's got your
carbon locked up until until some fungus decomposes

604
00:40:52,639 --> 00:40:55,920
it and releases it. So,
you know, like you might have a

605
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:00,639
tree, but that might only you
know, a tree might almost questure its

606
00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:06,840
carbon for you know, eight hundred
years to you know, maybe maybe eighteen

607
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:12,840
hundred years at most if it lives
long enough. But this this stuff transforms

608
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:19,199
it into you know, the biocharge
transforms it into an inert form where it's

609
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,280
locked up and it is trapped in
the soil. It's not going back in

610
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:25,039
the apiosophe But so how does it
How does that actually affect the soil though,

611
00:41:25,079 --> 00:41:30,760
because it both kind of retains water
but also makes it less dense so

612
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:32,840
that it can drain. How does
that work? Yeah, Well, the

613
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:39,320
biggest thing that I've read that it
benefits the soil is by being like a

614
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:45,360
hiding spot for microbes. You know, it's like a it's like a safe

615
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:49,719
place for them to sleep, free
of a lot of the other you know,

616
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,840
predators that might be in the soil. And it's just like it's a

617
00:41:52,880 --> 00:42:00,079
little hotel, a place for diversity
in your soil to exist and and you

618
00:42:00,119 --> 00:42:06,079
know do his job of breaking down
organic material and feeding your plants. Yeah,

619
00:42:06,159 --> 00:42:10,239
okay, so but but then but
also like the drainage and the areation

620
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:16,440
factors all seem to be kind of
like bonus from everything I've read. Yeah,

621
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:20,519
because I think about you know,
you think like you know, soils

622
00:42:20,599 --> 00:42:22,199
that don't drain and that don't get
a lot of oxygen, like a clay

623
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:28,519
soil, which is just you know, many many millions of very tiny particles

624
00:42:28,559 --> 00:42:31,320
that are charged and you know don't
let don't basically have any space. I

625
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:36,519
mean, you think about a piece
of a little tiny piece of charcoal that's

626
00:42:36,639 --> 00:42:39,639
porous, It's got a lot of
surface area, it's very lightweight, it's

627
00:42:39,679 --> 00:42:44,880
not that dense, but it provides
you know, texture and surface area,

628
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:47,840
uh for roots as well. I
mean it's yeah, it seems like it

629
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:52,280
would do it'd be a great medium
to add to soil. So now you've

630
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,079
got You've got these decomposed woodchips,
and you only use ten percent biochart,

631
00:42:55,119 --> 00:43:00,480
do you ever find yourself using more
than that? I haven't. I'm going

632
00:43:00,519 --> 00:43:04,400
to run some experiments on that.
But everything I've read is that you start

633
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:09,519
getting diminishing returns when you when you
get more than ten percent. But again,

634
00:43:09,639 --> 00:43:13,880
most of the stuff I was reading
was focused around agriculture, so I

635
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:16,719
think there might be some more flexibility
when it comes to growing native plants that

636
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:23,920
haven't been you know, babied and
designed by domesticated by humans for for the

637
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,920
last two games. You know,
yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,

638
00:43:28,039 --> 00:43:31,000
So so you got the biocheur in
there, you got these decomposed chips,

639
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:36,760
and then you got what else do
you end up using in there? Composts?

640
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:39,760
I'll use composts. Some of it
I make here. The majority of

641
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:45,880
it I get from local producers because
they tend to have stuff that has a

642
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:50,320
lot less weed seeds than what I'm
able to produce on my little with my

643
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,760
little farm tractor. So but yeah, the composts will go into it.

644
00:43:54,079 --> 00:43:59,760
Sand goes into it. I still
have, you know, I used to

645
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:05,920
buy a ton of peat and pine
fines for my UH production practices, and

646
00:44:06,199 --> 00:44:09,400
I still have like a decent stockpile
because when I switched to using the UH,

647
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:15,159
the the decomposed wood chips, I
still had enough soil for like an

648
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:21,159
entire year, enough enough peat based
soil for entire year. So now that

649
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:24,280
I'm using it at like a ten
ten percent of the rate as before,

650
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:29,000
I think I'll probably be you know, cutting a little bit of it in

651
00:44:29,159 --> 00:44:34,440
every year for another five or six
years. But we'll see, yeah,

652
00:44:34,679 --> 00:44:37,920
when when that's gone, there'll be
no more peat in the nursery. I

653
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:40,360
mean, the whole the whole idea
of making your own soil is just so

654
00:44:40,559 --> 00:44:46,079
fucking I mean, it's so it's
so it's so cool, it's so fucking

655
00:44:46,159 --> 00:44:50,239
innovative. It's really uh you know, I don't know. I mean,

656
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:52,239
yeah, it is cheaper to buy, but but I mean you've basically,

657
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:57,039
once you've done that and you've done
it to scale, you could save so

658
00:44:57,199 --> 00:45:00,320
much time. And I think,
I think, yeah, if the production

659
00:45:00,519 --> 00:45:06,760
is large enough, I should be
able to save money because you know,

660
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:09,280
frankly, people, the reason you
can get free chips is because the other

661
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:14,440
option for these guys is to pay
money to dump it. So if I'm

662
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,119
able to scale up in the future, I you know, want to close

663
00:45:17,199 --> 00:45:20,920
all my loops. And one of
the ways I'm going to close the loop

664
00:45:21,199 --> 00:45:25,360
is by accepting compostables from people and
composting them to make the soil. So

665
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:30,559
I think when it comes to that, and especially I've been considering making enough

666
00:45:30,639 --> 00:45:36,719
soil to sell to people. If
I'm selling it at potting soil prices,

667
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:43,719
there's definitely enough money there to scale
up the soil making practices. And really,

668
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:46,880
you know, I think it's good
to make because because right now,

669
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:51,119
the only thing that you can get
on the market, I at any hardware

670
00:45:51,159 --> 00:45:54,880
store or nursery is all stuff that's
been shipped from you know, a quarter

671
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,119
of the way around the world.
Yeah. And also just the fucking peat

672
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:01,679
thing is insane, and I mean
using you know, we need a solution.

673
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,599
It's so nuts. But okay,
so anyway, well let's talk tell

674
00:46:05,599 --> 00:46:07,559
everybody about the catfish. What do
you do with the catfi You're putting catfish

675
00:46:07,639 --> 00:46:12,639
in there as a fertilizer, right, that sounds fucking pretty cool. Yeah,

676
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:17,840
So it starts with right now,
I'm using some incinerated chicken shit to

677
00:46:19,639 --> 00:46:22,519
start the process out. Just because
it's granular and it takes a little bit

678
00:46:22,559 --> 00:46:25,440
of time for the plants to heal
in before they can really start observing the

679
00:46:25,519 --> 00:46:30,760
nutrients. So that's that's our first
little little kiss when they get started.

680
00:46:30,159 --> 00:46:36,400
But uh, but after that,
I switched to a compost T that's based

681
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:45,199
off of fish fertilizer. So the
compost t is made with sugar and molasses

682
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:52,280
to kind of get the bacteria going, and the fish emulsion is used to

683
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,559
grow the fungal community. Plus wait
for a while, weren't you going?

684
00:46:55,679 --> 00:46:59,519
You were going? That's because I
remember Al was really blown away by that.

685
00:46:59,599 --> 00:47:02,280
He was like, and this guy's
getting you know, catfish the like

686
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:07,000
he's making his own was it catfish
or carp? Well? Yeah, so

687
00:47:07,119 --> 00:47:12,639
the catfish is is fifty percent or
a third of the components of my compost

688
00:47:12,679 --> 00:47:15,880
team and is there to feed the
fungus. But also there's some excess nitrogen

689
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:22,800
there that's available for the plants.
So yeah, but that's coming from local

690
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:30,039
waterways and I'm specifically targeting a really
pervasive, invasive catfish that is uh,

691
00:47:30,199 --> 00:47:36,480
you know, destroying a lot of
the Atlantic spawning ground and our waterways.

692
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:38,880
Where does thing come from? Where? Where'd the cat Where does catfish come

693
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:43,039
from? This is this is an
Asian catfish. I'm not sure where in

694
00:47:43,119 --> 00:47:45,079
Asia, but I know it's an
Asian cat God, someone should do that.

695
00:47:45,199 --> 00:47:50,000
With carp there's so many fucking invasive
carp in the Chicago River. No,

696
00:47:50,119 --> 00:47:52,320
I've been I've been looking at it
because I have been thinking like,

697
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:57,079
oh, maybe at some point in
the future I will uh, you know,

698
00:47:57,199 --> 00:48:01,800
find a way to make this and
and sell it, because you know,

699
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:05,960
there's all these signs up at all
these fishing docks and stuff like hey,

700
00:48:06,079 --> 00:48:08,360
you can't put these catfish or you
can't put these invasion fish back in

701
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:12,440
the water. It's illegal to catch
and release them. You actually have to

702
00:48:12,519 --> 00:48:16,039
kill them. And so I've definitely
been, you know, dreaming up schemes

703
00:48:16,159 --> 00:48:22,119
to like get some some fifty five
gallon drums there that are better smell proof.

704
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:24,039
And it's like, hey, when
you catch one of these invasive fish,

705
00:48:24,079 --> 00:48:28,079
if you ain't taken it home,
drop it in this barrel. And

706
00:48:28,519 --> 00:48:31,960
because it because it really doesn't take
much for me to make enough emulsion for

707
00:48:32,119 --> 00:48:36,960
the nursery, Like I can go
out and like one or two weekends in

708
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:42,400
the summer and catch enough catch enough
fish to make enough fertilizer for a year

709
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:45,079
and a half, and you would
be fishing anyway, like you're a fisher,

710
00:48:45,159 --> 00:48:50,239
you're an angler. No, I'm
a vegan really no, I'm just

711
00:48:50,639 --> 00:48:52,880
no, I'm just literally out there. You really do it. But no,

712
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:55,320
but you really do the vegan thing. Yeah, well you're not.

713
00:48:55,599 --> 00:49:00,559
You're not like a lecture vegan.
I mean it's obvious. Yeah, I'm

714
00:49:00,599 --> 00:49:06,679
an environmental vegan. Yeah, okay, a health conscious like you know,

715
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:10,239
I don't want all the heavy metals. Oh yeah, fish in the ocean,

716
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:17,800
and I'm well aware of the cost
on our aquifers and our water systems

717
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:23,559
to produce meat. And uh no, vegan, vegan is righteous. I

718
00:49:23,639 --> 00:49:29,599
think vegan is righteous. I tend
not to want to kill things just as

719
00:49:29,639 --> 00:49:35,800
a general policy. But if the
thing I'm killing is doing more damage to

720
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:40,119
the ecosystem than than me killing it, then then I you know, I

721
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:44,840
give myself a little righteous pass.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's you

722
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:47,159
know, I am by no means
against hunting or fishing or any of that.

723
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:51,039
I just thought and I'm not against
I'm not against vegans at all.

724
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:53,480
I was supported I don't eat red
meat I try to eat red meat.

725
00:49:53,519 --> 00:49:58,119
I mean, you know, I'm
a dietary choices, and vegan is certainly

726
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:00,480
fucking healthier in a lot of ways. I mean the way that some Americans

727
00:50:00,559 --> 00:50:05,440
eat meat, you know, every
fucking day when they're sitting in traffic for

728
00:50:05,519 --> 00:50:07,719
two hours. You know, there, what are these guys, These people

729
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,760
running fucking marathimes every day? You
don't need that. Yeah, it's very

730
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:14,920
you may as well be smoking thirty
cigarettes. But also I'm aware that some

731
00:50:15,239 --> 00:50:19,519
some vegans, like the proselytizing ones. Oh my god, they fucking meanwhile,

732
00:50:19,519 --> 00:50:22,519
but they're some of the most insufferable
people when it comes to the comment

733
00:50:22,639 --> 00:50:25,599
section. Yeah, they're as bad
as any other proselytizer, you know.

734
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:30,199
Yeah, I won't listen to you, right, Yeah, yeah, you

735
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:35,760
know, I'm not not much of
a proselytizer, but when you know people,

736
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:39,199
when it comes up in conversation,
I'll definitely but you go get them

737
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:44,000
catfish though. You Sometimes people ask
me how I get all the things done

738
00:50:44,079 --> 00:50:47,880
that I'm getting done, and it
would be dishonest to not say it's because

739
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:52,719
I eat a diet that gives me
a buck ton of energy, and that

740
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:57,400
diet's vegan. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I

741
00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:59,960
get that now. But but you're
but you you do go out there,

742
00:51:00,119 --> 00:51:04,719
so you'll fish and you'll get these
catfish, these invasive catfish, and then

743
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:08,119
use them as fertilizer. Yeah.
Yeah. It takes about, you know,

744
00:51:08,599 --> 00:51:14,760
sixteen eighteen months for for the microbes
to really break them down and turn

745
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:19,159
turn them into that brown sludge.
It's amazing, it is. It is

746
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,400
not for anyone with a weak stomach. I wish someone would do that.

747
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:24,679
I wish someone would do that with
the feral cats on my block, you

748
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:28,840
know, make it, make a
nice fertilizer out of them. Mix it

749
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:32,079
with some hay or sawdust or something. No offense to coming after you,

750
00:51:32,199 --> 00:51:36,199
but yeah, that would actually work
great, I do. So there's there's

751
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:39,760
some there's some hunters on the property
that hunt deer, and I've so I've

752
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:45,079
been experimenting with deer guts. I
think my first batch should be ready next

753
00:51:45,119 --> 00:51:49,840
summer. I'm not you know,
I'm not so competent and and I'm gonna

754
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,000
put it on the plants I have
for sale. But I am in an

755
00:51:52,119 --> 00:51:54,880
experiment with it with some of my
field grown stuff and see what that does.

756
00:51:55,400 --> 00:52:00,599
But it's looking it's looking like it's
just gonna be good, just as

757
00:52:00,599 --> 00:52:02,079
good as a fish, if not
better. Yeah, so we'll see,

758
00:52:02,679 --> 00:52:07,880
yeah, yeah, yeah see mammals. Mammals. Seems like it would be

759
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:09,599
a little hotter maybe, But who
knows. I don't know. I don't

760
00:52:09,599 --> 00:52:13,639
know anything about that. I just
think it's amazing what you what you're doing.

761
00:52:13,679 --> 00:52:15,840
I mean, I don't know either, but I'm gonna find out.

762
00:52:15,559 --> 00:52:17,559
I just think it's amazing what you're
doing. You learned all this and then

763
00:52:17,559 --> 00:52:20,880
you're growing. How many native plants
do you have in your nursery. I

764
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:23,719
mean, you said you would given
away about fifty right now, but you

765
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:28,679
said you what did you You said
you'd given you'd planted seven hundred and fifty

766
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:32,440
thousand at some point. Yeah,
So last I'll tell I'll just tell you

767
00:52:32,519 --> 00:52:38,679
from the beginning last winter, I
was looking at some of my seated trays.

768
00:52:39,199 --> 00:52:43,400
That's how I was producing. How
I produce plants for the nursery is

769
00:52:43,639 --> 00:52:46,320
I make community pots and put a
ton of seeds in a tray, let

770
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:50,920
them Germany, and then I divide
them and pot them up. And what

771
00:52:51,079 --> 00:52:54,000
that does is conserve a lot of
water. It conserves a lot of space

772
00:52:54,079 --> 00:52:59,079
in the nursery, and it just
made sense from a production point of point

773
00:52:59,079 --> 00:53:02,320
of view. But I had all
these leftovers. I had like eight thousand

774
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:06,639
seedlings just sitting on the ground.
They'd been sitting there for like three years,

775
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:08,960
and I was like getting ready to
put them in the compost pile because

776
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:13,039
I didn't know what else to do
with them. But at the same time,

777
00:53:13,199 --> 00:53:16,400
I was, you know, struggling
to connect with my customers, and

778
00:53:16,639 --> 00:53:21,119
like I you know, I'd made
this the largest inventory in the DC area

779
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:24,119
and like nobody knew it existed.
So I was I was looking for ways

780
00:53:24,119 --> 00:53:27,559
to advertise and get my name out
there. And I was like, well,

781
00:53:28,039 --> 00:53:31,960
how about I'll just give away these
eight thousand seedlings. And so I

782
00:53:32,039 --> 00:53:39,119
did that and I started like a
competition on social media and gave them all

783
00:53:39,159 --> 00:53:43,480
out. But I got such a
positive response from it, and I got

784
00:53:43,519 --> 00:53:45,760
all this attention and people were so
happy about it. I was like,

785
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:50,639
wait a second, Like at the
time, I had just finished up my

786
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:54,599
contracts the city and I had about
three months to spare on my hands for

787
00:53:55,719 --> 00:54:00,039
you know, twenty twenty three,
and I was like, well, I

788
00:54:00,119 --> 00:54:05,239
wonder how many how many plants can
I grow and in three months time and

789
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:08,000
give out. And I kind of
sat down about five minutes, you know,

790
00:54:09,079 --> 00:54:13,920
had a back of the envelope calculation
of eight hundred thousand plants that I

791
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,800
thought I could grow and distribute.
And I thought to myself, like,

792
00:54:17,519 --> 00:54:21,679
you know, that's not quite a
round number like a million is, Like

793
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:23,840
why don't I just say I'm gonna
do a million? So so that's what

794
00:54:23,920 --> 00:54:28,880
I did. I got to work
right away, I started writing, so

795
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:31,679
it was all funded by me,
and I sat down I wrote all the

796
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:37,400
application process. So there's a few
different ways people can get plants. Now,

797
00:54:37,559 --> 00:54:39,719
there's a group plant grants, So
like if you have a group or

798
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:45,400
an organization and you have a plan
for planting out a native space like a

799
00:54:45,679 --> 00:54:52,880
demonstration garden, if you have a
library or some other Lots of schools applied

800
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:55,440
for that, and basically, you
know, they could apply. They had

801
00:54:55,480 --> 00:55:00,079
to describe what their maintenance was,
to describe their group and what their plan

802
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:06,360
was, and then based on like
their application answers and like how competent they

803
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:12,920
seemed, then I would give them
seedlings from these community pots. So each

804
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,679
one of the community pots had between
like thirty and three hundred plants in it.

805
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:19,639
Yeah, even had as much as
like five hundred plants in them,

806
00:55:20,159 --> 00:55:24,480
and so then they would request them
and uh yeah, I you know some

807
00:55:24,679 --> 00:55:29,960
groups that got only like a thousand
plants. I think one one group walked

808
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:32,119
away with twenty thousand seats. So
these but they were but they were in

809
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:36,239
bulk, right, they were like
they were just little guys. But still,

810
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:38,559
yeah, like even the group that
walked away with the most plants,

811
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:46,039
I mean they had twenty thousand plants
in like inside of like maybe eighty cork

812
00:55:46,119 --> 00:55:51,599
trays. Yeah, like like twenty
thousand plants fit in the back of a

813
00:55:51,639 --> 00:55:53,480
pickup truck, right, But still, I mean, it's it's fucking it's

814
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:57,599
pretty impressive. It's pretty cool.
I mean it's you know, when you

815
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:00,920
when you think about it compared to
like some of the other they're like governy

816
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:02,760
grants that are going on and how
many plants they're getting in the ground.

817
00:56:04,039 --> 00:56:08,480
Like you know, some of these
organizations are spending millions of dollars to like

818
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:15,079
put in all these conservation plantings.
But I recognize this untapped resource of all

819
00:56:15,159 --> 00:56:17,639
this enthusiasm of people in the community
who all they needed was like a little

820
00:56:17,679 --> 00:56:21,559
bit of information in the seedlings and
they would do the rest of the work.

821
00:56:22,199 --> 00:56:24,400
So that's what that's what I tapped
into. I mean, there's been

822
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:29,440
thousands of people that have come and
gotten hundreds or thousands of plants, and

823
00:56:29,559 --> 00:56:32,000
I just give them. You know, it's pretty easy for me to start

824
00:56:32,079 --> 00:56:37,480
these little seedlings, and the hardest
part is just like connecting with the people

825
00:56:37,519 --> 00:56:38,960
and putting them in the hands because
there's a lot of plants. Yeah,

826
00:56:40,119 --> 00:56:44,360
you know, if we say switch
in, I want to ask you more

827
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:46,639
about the nursery thing. But also
I want to I want to talk about

828
00:56:46,639 --> 00:56:50,119
this because I'm curious what you have
to say and asking all the native plant

829
00:56:50,159 --> 00:56:54,199
people. I'm about to fucking interview
Doug telling me next week or the week

830
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:58,599
after. And this is this is
a thing I always hear people say this

831
00:56:58,679 --> 00:57:01,199
shit people who don't know anything about
natives yet and are afraid of it.

832
00:57:01,840 --> 00:57:04,920
You know, they, Oh,
if you're gonna have a yard like this,

833
00:57:05,119 --> 00:57:07,719
it's gonna be full of ticks and
mosquitos. You mostly hear this on

834
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:09,960
the East coast because you don't get
the ticks aren't that bad? The further

835
00:57:10,079 --> 00:57:13,559
west you get, you know,
it depends. I mean, California's got

836
00:57:13,599 --> 00:57:16,039
some tick issues, but you know
it's and for me, it's frustrating because

837
00:57:16,079 --> 00:57:20,079
like, well, you're not gonna
have ticks unless you've got posses of deer

838
00:57:20,119 --> 00:57:23,000
hang out in your yard or a
bad mouse problem, and those are easy

839
00:57:23,079 --> 00:57:25,079
to you know, you have a
dog, chase the deer away, you

840
00:57:25,239 --> 00:57:31,199
fence whatever, you shoot them.
Ticks are a symptom of a sick ecosystem,

841
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:35,639
exactly exactly. So how do or
mosquitos too? The same thing.

842
00:57:35,679 --> 00:57:38,639
They're insects that eat mosquitos. You
know. Doug telling me had something he

843
00:57:38,719 --> 00:57:44,800
put on a presentation about basically creating
mosquito traps with for you know, water

844
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:47,840
with like hay in it, some
organic material that they lay eggs in it.

845
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:51,360
Then you throw a dunk in there
and it kills them all. You

846
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:53,920
know. Well, I'll tell you
I made a retention pond with the intention

847
00:57:54,039 --> 00:57:59,920
of recycling my water this year I'll
be a solar power And before I can

848
00:58:00,079 --> 00:58:04,199
get all the pumps set up,
I had like four billion mosquito larva in

849
00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:07,920
there, and I was like,
oh no, my wife's not gonna help

850
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:12,559
me in the nursery, like I'm
screwed. There's gonna be so many mosquitoes,

851
00:58:12,599 --> 00:58:15,880
nobody's gonna want to come here.
And yeah, I threw those dunks

852
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:20,000
in and that took care of them. It was like a giant trap.

853
00:58:20,079 --> 00:58:22,039
And then all the dragonflies moved in. And I haven't had to put any

854
00:58:22,079 --> 00:58:27,760
dunks in since because there's so many
dragonfly larva in there. They're gobbling them

855
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:30,360
up. Then, is because there's
you know, there's enough diversity here to

856
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:34,719
bring that in. How'd you get
the dragonflies in the balance? How you

857
00:58:34,760 --> 00:58:37,360
get the dragonflies in there? You
put a little sign up or something.

858
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:42,280
Water. No, they just you
put water up and they come. You

859
00:58:42,400 --> 00:58:45,639
got mosquito larva and water. Like, the dragonflies are coming as long as

860
00:58:45,719 --> 00:58:49,440
it's like you know, I don't
think they're gonna you know, they're not

861
00:58:49,519 --> 00:58:52,400
gonna lay put their babies in a
bucket of water. But you know,

862
00:58:52,519 --> 00:58:58,039
you got I heard from from my
brother in law that you know, I

863
00:58:58,079 --> 00:59:01,960
think we just had like a hundred
gallon pond in his backyard and he's got

864
00:59:02,039 --> 00:59:07,119
dragonflies. Yeah, and they're taking
care of the mosquitos for them. Yeah,

865
00:59:07,119 --> 00:59:09,199
I just yeah, dragonflies are natural
predators from mosquitoes, you know,

866
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:12,639
it's so sad that, I mean, we don't even know that, Like

867
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:15,840
so many people don't even know this
stuff, Like we're so disconnected. You

868
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:20,039
know. I feel bad for anyone
that looks at quote unquote nature. And

869
00:59:20,079 --> 00:59:23,079
I don't even like that word because
it's just the real living biosphere. It's

870
00:59:23,119 --> 00:59:27,920
not nature. But you know,
I feel, right, I just I

871
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,360
feel bad for someone who looks at
that and is like, ooh, mosquitoes

872
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:32,800
and ticks, like they just see
the worst in it, like something to

873
00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:37,519
be afraid. Yeah, you don't
want mosquitoes or ticks. Just pave everything,

874
00:59:37,719 --> 00:59:39,519
Just nuke the fucking landscape around.
You won't have any trees, you

875
00:59:39,559 --> 00:59:45,239
won't have any plants, right,
right, it's just God Jesus christ Man.

876
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:47,960
I mean, there's there's ways around
these there's ways to deal with these

877
00:59:49,039 --> 00:59:52,079
things, Like they don't exist in
a vacuum. They have predators, there's

878
00:59:52,119 --> 00:59:54,039
ways to control them. You know. The option is not just getting rid

879
00:59:54,039 --> 00:59:57,440
of all the fucking plants. They're
having a lawn, you know, I

880
00:59:57,519 --> 01:00:02,400
mean where I live. It's it's
mind blowing that people don't grasp the idea

881
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:07,039
of transpirational cooling. It is so
fucking hot down here. It's where the

882
01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:10,199
Gulf Coast transitions to desert, but
we still get just enough rain for it

883
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:15,280
to technically be like a grassland and
a misky woodland. And if you ride

884
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:17,840
by a parking lot on a fucking
one hundred and five degree day, you

885
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:22,000
can feel that it's just a battery
radiating heat late into the night. Whereas

886
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:27,239
if you ride by a field,
all those stomates, those little microscopic gas

887
01:00:27,320 --> 01:00:30,679
poars and the undersides of the leaves
are emitting moisture and taken in co two

888
01:00:30,079 --> 01:00:34,440
and you've got the swamp cooler effect, and it is like thirty degrees cooler,

889
01:00:35,559 --> 01:00:37,320
you know, at night, at
sundown. And people just don't know

890
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:42,400
what thinks about that. I mean, everything here is just increasingly becoming paved.

891
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:45,639
It's fucking mind blowing. Yeah,
people get up in the morning and

892
01:00:45,719 --> 01:00:51,559
they don't know about do Like do
is a real thing in the world.

893
01:00:52,039 --> 01:00:55,159
You know, if you're out in
a world that's alive, you know,

894
01:00:55,719 --> 01:00:59,920
you're in a city, there's no
dew, there's not a stomotons right right.

895
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:02,159
Yeah, And and the heat island
thing is real. I mean I

896
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:06,599
I there's more people talking about that, which is good. But the Heat

897
01:01:06,679 --> 01:01:09,679
Island thing is I mean, that
pavement, that concrete is just getting charged

898
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,519
by the sun, just the same
way a battery does. And then once

899
01:01:13,559 --> 01:01:16,280
that sun goes down, it never
cools off because that fucking heat Island is

900
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:21,679
emitting infrared radiation late into the night, you know, two three am,

901
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:23,480
and then when it finally starts to
cool off, the sun comes up again,

902
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:27,079
and it just it never cools off. And so you get like three

903
01:01:27,159 --> 01:01:30,519
months of that and you've you've instantaneously
made a region, you know, twenty

904
01:01:30,599 --> 01:01:35,000
degrees hotter than it would be.
Oh totally, yeah, No, I

905
01:01:35,079 --> 01:01:37,039
definitely notice when I'm when I moved
out to the nursery, it was like,

906
01:01:37,199 --> 01:01:42,480
oh, it's it's fifteen degrees cooler
here every night. Yeah, because

907
01:01:43,039 --> 01:01:45,559
because of all these trees, because
the bay's here, because there's an ecosystem,

908
01:01:45,719 --> 01:01:49,280
but you know what's left of it, Yeah, it's still here.

909
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,239
It's not even that much, but
enough to make a difference, right,

910
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:57,800
I mean. And just the idea
of turning your your yard, your property

911
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:01,519
into like a classroom for the local
ecology and ecosystem around you is so fucking

912
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:06,800
so enriching, you know, and
it enriches people's lives. It really does.

913
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:09,480
It's like you know that little everyone
becomes that little kid, look lifting

914
01:02:09,559 --> 01:02:13,920
up rocks, looking for roly Polleys
again. Yeah, well I don't,

915
01:02:13,920 --> 01:02:17,360
I don't remember. But there's there's
some there's a term for this effect where

916
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:24,079
like every generation is born into,
you know, a new system and they're

917
01:02:24,519 --> 01:02:30,639
they're used to it. They shifty
shifting baseline. Yeah, there's this shifting

918
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:35,280
baseline of what is acceptable, and
you know, everyone from this generation is

919
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:43,599
missing this baseline of what it could
be. Yeah. Yeah, just total

920
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:46,239
total disconnection. But oh you said, Aaron, I lose you. No,

921
01:02:46,400 --> 01:02:52,280
I'm still here, okay, but
yeah, it's just it's just disconnection.

922
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:55,679
And that's what I I love getting
people into it because it's getting people

923
01:02:55,719 --> 01:02:59,480
into this more because it's you see
it fucking risk their lives. You see

924
01:02:59,519 --> 01:03:01,280
them, you know, you see
them be like, wow, no way,

925
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:05,760
I didn't know that. That's so
cool. What were you gonna say

926
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:07,079
about Doug? I love that guy? Oh, I know, I don't,

927
01:03:07,159 --> 01:03:09,840
you know, I didn't. I'm
surprised he was willing to come into

928
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:13,400
podcast because we have, you know, we have very different styles, and

929
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:15,320
I'm you know, he doesn't.
I'm just glad he doesn't think I'm some

930
01:03:15,719 --> 01:03:20,119
I heard you saying you wanted him
on there on one of your previous podcasts,

931
01:03:20,159 --> 01:03:21,880
and I was like, yeah,
you should get on there. Yeah,

932
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:23,079
I'm just I'm glad he doesn't.
You know, he doesn't do me

933
01:03:23,119 --> 01:03:27,360
as too much of a degenerate to
uh you know, but anyway, but

934
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:29,840
no, he's coming on next week
and then he's trying to reach out to

935
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:32,559
people. Yeah, think about Doug. To think about Doug is that man

936
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:39,199
is like a fucking rock star to
this, to to these like retired ladies

937
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:43,679
and like, you know, running
a nursery. I gotta say that,

938
01:03:43,719 --> 01:03:49,559
like that's a huge part of my
customer basis. Like the these these women

939
01:03:49,679 --> 01:03:52,639
that are they want to make a
difference. They care about the environment,

940
01:03:52,159 --> 01:03:58,480
and you know they've just retired and
uh, you know, Doug makes them

941
01:03:58,559 --> 01:04:01,920
swoon for the environment. Of those
retired ladies are crime pay fans to do

942
01:04:02,039 --> 01:04:05,599
that. A lot of those retired
ladies are crime pays fans too. You'd

943
01:04:05,639 --> 01:04:10,880
be surprised, man, they are. They're they're hit they're so cool,

944
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:14,880
they like, you know, they
I wasn't expecting it when I got deeper

945
01:04:14,960 --> 01:04:18,880
into the growing plants and and and
more into the community of people that care

946
01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:23,920
about this. And no, they're
they're making stuff move. Those are the

947
01:04:23,920 --> 01:04:27,079
people that are like coming out here
to volunteer to help me. These are

948
01:04:27,079 --> 01:04:30,760
the people that are like open minded. I'm just like you guys are blowing

949
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:33,519
me away. You're amazing. Yeah, And like Doug, Doug is like,

950
01:04:34,320 --> 01:04:38,440
you know, a rock star to
them, and uh, you know,

951
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:42,039
he's just he's all that generation and
the ladies love him, you know.

952
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,599
Yeah, yeah, I just found
a bunch of astro fight them seeds

953
01:04:45,639 --> 01:04:46,920
on my desk. Where the fuck
did that come from? That's cool.

954
01:04:48,199 --> 01:04:50,960
Well they smell. I wonder if
they rotted. Fuck anyway, But uh,

955
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:56,400
all right, well uh anyway.
So, but regarding the nursery,

956
01:04:56,480 --> 01:05:00,679
like so, I want to talk
about more more things that are regionally connected,

957
01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:02,320
you know, more impertinent to the
region you live in, because let's

958
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:05,840
talk about that. Like DC,
there's not much habitat left there is.

959
01:05:06,079 --> 01:05:11,199
It's a lot of just it's basically
like a giant suburb. Like the whole

960
01:05:11,239 --> 01:05:15,280
area around there is a giant sun
was it was turned to farm land when

961
01:05:15,519 --> 01:05:20,159
when the colonists came because the Bay
and all this Piedmont was like perfect for

962
01:05:20,280 --> 01:05:25,159
farming. And then it's also an
easy target. You know, it's on

963
01:05:25,239 --> 01:05:30,159
the ninth Corridor, Like it's an
easy target for suburbanization, and like,

964
01:05:30,719 --> 01:05:32,159
yeah, it's it's run them up, it's a run away from us.

965
01:05:33,440 --> 01:05:40,719
And but yeah, it's also an
opportunity for people to change as they as

966
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:44,679
they you know, become aware of
like the importance of supporting the ecosystem and

967
01:05:45,159 --> 01:05:48,440
creating that balance. And oh,
I love what what Sam Droghi said,

968
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:54,400
liking it to a brick house instead
of a jinga block. And you know,

969
01:05:54,559 --> 01:05:58,199
I think it's it's it's our chance
to you know, support that brick

970
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:01,159
house. You know, some pieces
don't start falling off of it. And

971
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:05,280
yeah, I mean that's that's why
when you asked me, when your team

972
01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:09,400
approached me about the you know,
kill your law, like, yeah,

973
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:12,000
I'm your guy, you can count
on me, you know, yeah,

974
01:06:12,039 --> 01:06:14,480
well they they found you. I
didn't even know. I mean I've I've

975
01:06:14,519 --> 01:06:16,800
been like burning the candle at both
ends here and you know, fucking they

976
01:06:17,159 --> 01:06:18,800
mentioned it. They're like, oh, you're really gonna like this guy,

977
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:21,199
Jeremy. I was like, oh, okay, cool and I it turns

978
01:06:21,239 --> 01:06:25,400
out, of course I did.
But but getting into uh, I mean,

979
01:06:25,639 --> 01:06:29,480
how did you get in to native
plants? I guess like because there's

980
01:06:29,559 --> 01:06:31,480
just it's so hard to encounter them
in a lot of the areas there,

981
01:06:31,599 --> 01:06:34,519
Like what would you say? I
mean, I feel bad for kids that

982
01:06:34,559 --> 01:06:38,960
grow up in the suburbs and there's
there's so little even like you know,

983
01:06:39,039 --> 01:06:41,920
you go to like a ditch,
a drainage ditch or a road and bank,

984
01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:44,599
man, it's like half natives and
then half really bad invasives. How

985
01:06:44,639 --> 01:06:47,119
did you encounter these plants? I
think I think a lot of my first

986
01:06:47,280 --> 01:06:51,559
experiences, I I got to thank
my uh my boss at the golf court.

987
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:57,800
She recognized, like my my passion
for learning, uh and and she

988
01:06:57,960 --> 01:07:00,880
gave me the opportunity to be their
head a culturist. And when she did

989
01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:04,039
that, I thought I wanted to
do with the budget, so I'd use

990
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:09,719
plants that were already growing around there. And uh, that's when I started,

991
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:12,880
like, you know, looking up
native plants like that's when I and

992
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:15,599
that's when I started, you know, reading some of the rhetoric around it

993
01:07:15,199 --> 01:07:18,800
just like this just makes sense.
So that was that was really my first

994
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:25,159
native plant garden that I did was
was using the native plants that were just

995
01:07:25,239 --> 01:07:29,239
occurring in the wetlands around this golf
course, and uh, you know,

996
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:31,400
from there, I just kind of
got hoped, you know. I definitely

997
01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:36,559
in the first few years was was, you know, looking more at continental

998
01:07:38,280 --> 01:07:43,079
natives and and what the nurseries were
providing as far as natives. But I

999
01:07:43,119 --> 01:07:46,039
think after like two or three years
of learning more and more I wanted.

1000
01:07:46,159 --> 01:07:51,719
I wanted more of the you know, regional natives and more of the local

1001
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:56,119
you know. Yeah, I started
finding out. Yeah, it took me

1002
01:07:56,199 --> 01:08:00,440
a while to find out about local
ecotype. That was funny how the leco

1003
01:08:00,519 --> 01:08:03,440
type thing didn't click for a really
long I was doing native plants for a

1004
01:08:03,519 --> 01:08:06,599
long time before I found anything out
about that. And it was funny.

1005
01:08:06,599 --> 01:08:12,599
I was going to a mushroom growing
class and we were inoculating some logs and

1006
01:08:12,679 --> 01:08:17,399
I was talking to it to a
biologist there about like my growing practices,

1007
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:20,439
and I told her, like I
was bragging, saying, like, oh,

1008
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:25,600
I've got this patch of b Ostegia
in my tree space, my front

1009
01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:29,119
yard, and I produced thousands of
plants from that, and like I was

1010
01:08:29,199 --> 01:08:31,359
so proud of it, and she
was like, that's actually a bad thing.

1011
01:08:31,880 --> 01:08:38,000
And then like that was another you
know, aha click moment, like

1012
01:08:38,159 --> 01:08:41,119
oh my god, yeah, you're
right. I've just been producing clone after

1013
01:08:41,199 --> 01:08:44,279
clone of this plant. And that's
that's when I was like, oh god,

1014
01:08:44,439 --> 01:08:46,880
like, well, you were producing
cuttings or taking seeds. Yeah,

1015
01:08:47,439 --> 01:08:51,800
no, I was taking clones of
this Oh wow. I had made thousands

1016
01:08:51,880 --> 01:08:56,680
of them from like just a single
patch that I had plant there, and

1017
01:08:57,159 --> 01:09:00,840
and you know, never thought twice
about it. And then this biologists was

1018
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:03,680
like, that's not good for genetic
diversity. As soon as she said that,

1019
01:09:03,880 --> 01:09:08,239
it was like the next day I
was like, you know, feverishly

1020
01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:13,000
collecting plants from seed to grow from
seed, stop doing the clone production,

1021
01:09:13,279 --> 01:09:15,840
and like really got into, you
know, learning more about the genetics of

1022
01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:18,800
it, because it was just like, you know, I'd never thought about

1023
01:09:18,840 --> 01:09:21,159
it, but when somebody brought put
it in my face, it was so

1024
01:09:21,319 --> 01:09:25,960
obvious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah,

1025
01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:30,199
it's shaking up that card deck of
alleles again, and you know, all

1026
01:09:30,239 --> 01:09:34,279
the whole genetic recombination thing, you
know, genetic diversity, et cetera.

1027
01:09:34,560 --> 01:09:38,439
And yeah, a lot of people
don't think about that really that shit really

1028
01:09:38,560 --> 01:09:41,960
is important. You know. Well, you know, I'm just I'm excited

1029
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:45,840
and you know, looking forward to
my next aha moment, because it happens

1030
01:09:45,880 --> 01:09:48,399
every every few years, somebody says
something and I'm like, wait, I've

1031
01:09:48,399 --> 01:09:53,239
been doing I've been doing something wrong, or I can be doing this so

1032
01:09:53,359 --> 01:09:57,119
much better than how I'm doing And
you know, and you can ask my

1033
01:09:57,239 --> 01:10:00,680
office manager when I have these ideas, like we get to work right away

1034
01:10:00,119 --> 01:10:06,119
in implementing them and fixing the system. When did you start Bona Teri Bonatero?

1035
01:10:06,199 --> 01:10:14,359
When did you start Bonatera your nursery. The official LLC started in twenty

1036
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,640
ten, but I had been working
on that. I mean it really started

1037
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:23,039
as like a snow shoveling business,
then went to a lawnmowing business, then

1038
01:10:23,079 --> 01:10:29,760
went to a weeding business, then
went to installation and maintenance business, and

1039
01:10:29,960 --> 01:10:33,199
then you know, through those installations. Around twenty ten, that's when I

1040
01:10:33,239 --> 01:10:36,479
started, like I was always growing
some plants for myself, but that's when

1041
01:10:36,479 --> 01:10:41,359
I started getting serious like this,
this is what I need to be doing.

1042
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:45,479
It's growing my own plants. So
now it's been it's been about thirteen

1043
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:48,680
years of you know, every year
I grew up. I think I started

1044
01:10:48,800 --> 01:10:54,600
at peak in like maybe twenty twelve
in my little backyard. I think the

1045
01:10:54,760 --> 01:11:00,119
best year I did maybe thirteen to
fifteen thousand plants. But yeah, as

1046
01:11:00,119 --> 01:11:03,000
sing as I had the opportunity to
get out on this farm with the conservation,

1047
01:11:03,119 --> 01:11:06,159
he's man. I think it took
me about two years and I had

1048
01:11:06,640 --> 01:11:11,880
grown over fifty thousand plants out here, and I didn't even realize it for

1049
01:11:11,960 --> 01:11:16,079
another year or two that I had
made the largest inventory of all native plants.

1050
01:11:16,119 --> 01:11:19,720
It wasn't until I had a friend
come out here and she saw it

1051
01:11:20,079 --> 01:11:24,800
and she was going to another like, oh, I thought was the largest

1052
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:29,199
producer of native plants in the area
and she was like, oh, you're

1053
01:11:29,239 --> 01:11:30,479
bigger than them. I was like, oh, let me count. I

1054
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:35,680
was like, oh my god,
I actually made the most at that point.

1055
01:11:36,039 --> 01:11:39,319
At that point, it was just
me, Like I didn't even have

1056
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:44,680
my assistant Allec until this spring.
So are you how are you growing these?

1057
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:46,479
You growing them in tubes like under
a shade cloth or how do you

1058
01:11:46,600 --> 01:11:54,640
do it? So they'll start in
those community pots? And I initially started

1059
01:11:54,680 --> 01:11:59,840
with rather large trays, but I
found it easier to pull out a working

1060
01:12:00,079 --> 01:12:02,840
sized chunk when I put them in
cork pots. So yeah, they go,

1061
01:12:03,039 --> 01:12:05,800
they go on those cork pots.
They grow till they get to like,

1062
01:12:06,359 --> 01:12:11,800
you know, their second or sixth
seed leaf whatever, whenever they're ready

1063
01:12:11,840 --> 01:12:14,960
to transplant, and then they go
in there. And I think that's part

1064
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:19,119
of the reason I'm able to maintain
the largest inventory is because every time I

1065
01:12:19,319 --> 01:12:24,800
sell a bunch of plants, I'll
go back to my seated quartz and a

1066
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:27,560
lot of them, you know,
they can hang they can hang out in

1067
01:12:27,640 --> 01:12:31,359
those pots for like, you know, six weeks or up to like two

1068
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:34,680
or three years, depending on the
species. So all kind of just have

1069
01:12:34,840 --> 01:12:39,840
this this reservoir plants ready to be
potted up, and once they get potted

1070
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:43,800
up, it only takes like,
you know, six to twelve weeks for

1071
01:12:45,079 --> 01:12:47,560
the majority of them to be in
a sellable condition. Yeah, okay,

1072
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:51,399
so but you're you're growing them in
mass and then separating them later, like

1073
01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:54,800
just gently. It doesn't I mean, how do you do that? Because

1074
01:12:54,800 --> 01:12:57,119
I know, you know, when
you when you separate these things, that

1075
01:12:57,199 --> 01:13:00,640
messes up the roots or it can
sensitize the role. You got to keep

1076
01:13:00,640 --> 01:13:02,760
them in shaved for two or three
weeks or what. And that's I've got

1077
01:13:02,960 --> 01:13:08,439
I've actually got a video because because
I was giving away all these seedlings in

1078
01:13:08,520 --> 01:13:14,279
these quarts, I actually wrote like
a like a six page document about how

1079
01:13:14,359 --> 01:13:17,079
to separate them, and that goes
into all the details. But then I

1080
01:13:17,199 --> 01:13:23,399
also have the video of me and
it's on the website of me separating the

1081
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:27,239
seed things. And that was in
order to you know, teach other people

1082
01:13:27,319 --> 01:13:30,880
how to do this and uh,
you know, get the most native plants

1083
01:13:30,880 --> 01:13:34,000
in the ground I could, because
that's really ultimately been the goal with the

1084
01:13:34,079 --> 01:13:43,399
business is native plants in the ground. So but yeah, the process it

1085
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:47,840
varies from species the species. The
video is more center around the most difficult

1086
01:13:48,279 --> 01:13:53,520
ones to separate, which is your
fibrous root ones. Yeah, and it

1087
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:59,000
just kind of gives people tips on
like when's the optimal moisture, like what

1088
01:13:59,159 --> 01:14:01,560
sort of temperature in lightning condition,
and should you have them in how do

1089
01:14:01,640 --> 01:14:05,840
you heal them in? Right,
because you're not gonna you're not gonna break

1090
01:14:05,920 --> 01:14:10,159
up a pot of a bunch of
seedlings when it's one hundred degrees outside or

1091
01:14:10,239 --> 01:14:13,319
ninety degrees outside and it's you know, not going to rain for all you

1092
01:14:13,359 --> 01:14:16,319
want to do it like cool season
moisture, I will, I will.

1093
01:14:16,520 --> 01:14:20,319
I can do it year round,
depending on the species. But you know,

1094
01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:24,119
you when you get into the heat
of the summer, you gotta follow

1095
01:14:24,199 --> 01:14:27,279
those rules, like you gotta.
You can't do it, you know,

1096
01:14:27,520 --> 01:14:29,520
out in the sun. You have
to do it in the shade. You

1097
01:14:29,640 --> 01:14:32,720
have to have uh, you know, adaptled like condition to heal them in

1098
01:14:32,800 --> 01:14:35,720
because if you damage the roots,
you take them out of balance. You

1099
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:39,680
reduce the amount of water they can
absorb. I you reduce the amount of

1100
01:14:39,680 --> 01:14:44,079
water they can transpire, You reduce
the amount of photosynthesis they can go through.

1101
01:14:44,199 --> 01:14:46,640
So bring them into balance by putting
them in a low like condition where

1102
01:14:47,359 --> 01:14:50,640
they're not photosynthesizing as much, they're
not getting as hot, and they don't

1103
01:14:50,680 --> 01:14:54,479
need as much water, right right, Yeah, it's put it's put them

1104
01:14:54,520 --> 01:14:57,119
in shade for a few weeks after
you separate them, right so they can

1105
01:14:57,199 --> 01:15:00,279
recover. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, shading humanity, Yeah,

1106
01:15:01,600 --> 01:15:04,199
yep, yeah, man, it's
I mean, it's it's fucking great.

1107
01:15:04,199 --> 01:15:06,840
So how big is the nursery?
I mean, how many plants do you

1108
01:15:06,920 --> 01:15:10,479
have? Right now? People can
come come through there and check it out.

1109
01:15:10,479 --> 01:15:13,760
If they're in the region or what. Yeah, yeah, people can

1110
01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:15,680
come through here. It's all appointment
only right now, because it's pretty much

1111
01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:21,560
just me out here. Part of
my reduced plastic plan is, like it's

1112
01:15:21,640 --> 01:15:27,000
not set up as a place to
come and browse. It's also part of

1113
01:15:27,359 --> 01:15:31,520
my plan to make sure people are
getting the right plants for the right location.

1114
01:15:32,079 --> 01:15:35,479
You know. I feel like the
typical stores are all kind of set

1115
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:40,079
up for like these impulse bis like
oh this is blooming, I'll buy this

1116
01:15:40,199 --> 01:15:43,800
and figure out where it goes after
And I know it's a pain in the

1117
01:15:43,840 --> 01:15:46,800
butt for people, and it definitely
hinders me from reaching all my customers.

1118
01:15:46,960 --> 01:15:51,039
But I kind of insist that people, you know, look up their plants

1119
01:15:51,119 --> 01:15:56,399
and make a plan that matches their
site before they buy their plants. So

1120
01:15:56,479 --> 01:15:58,720
they got they got to show up, They got to show up knowing what

1121
01:15:58,800 --> 01:16:02,119
they want. Basically basically, yeah, you're going to do. And you

1122
01:16:02,199 --> 01:16:08,159
know, I could if I raise
my prices and and you know, uh,

1123
01:16:08,840 --> 01:16:13,119
set up a store like I could
set this up for the average person

1124
01:16:13,199 --> 01:16:16,159
to walk in and come out with
plants, but that's not really my demographic

1125
01:16:16,279 --> 01:16:19,720
or my market. You know,
the people I'm trying to reach. Are

1126
01:16:20,039 --> 01:16:25,479
the people that are willing to do
the research and are willing to, you

1127
01:16:25,560 --> 01:16:29,239
know, make sure that their plants
are well taken care of, and so

1128
01:16:29,399 --> 01:16:30,680
there are a bit there is a
bit of a hurdle. It's not the

1129
01:16:30,800 --> 01:16:33,840
easiest thing to come buy from me, but people that do buy for me

1130
01:16:33,920 --> 01:16:38,880
are well informed. I provide plenty
of information for them. They all have

1131
01:16:39,239 --> 01:16:44,159
access to consultation services and design services
and if they need them. So I

1132
01:16:44,479 --> 01:16:47,319
go to great lengths to make sure
that when somebody is buying a plant for

1133
01:16:47,479 --> 01:16:50,800
me, it's not going to its
grave, because that's a waste of carbon

1134
01:16:50,920 --> 01:16:56,079
resources, that's a waste of soil, that's a waste of plastic. So

1135
01:16:56,159 --> 01:17:00,800
it's really important to me that my
consumers are and formed well. Plus it's

1136
01:17:01,239 --> 01:17:04,920
fun, you know. I feel
like that's the most environmentally friendly way for

1137
01:17:05,000 --> 01:17:09,159
people to get plans. Yeah,
and you're not meant to be you know,

1138
01:17:09,680 --> 01:17:12,479
you don't want to be a fucking
retail nursery. Like with that setup,

1139
01:17:12,520 --> 01:17:15,119
it's like people people come by.
That's what I do it with.

1140
01:17:15,319 --> 01:17:16,640
My friend Mike keep over here in
Olange, and I call him up a

1141
01:17:16,800 --> 01:17:19,720
Mike might be seven pm on a
Sunday, But fuck it, I'll try.

1142
01:17:19,800 --> 01:17:23,199
He might be out there fucking around, you know. Anyway, So

1143
01:17:23,279 --> 01:17:25,359
I call him, Hey, can
I come by grab some stuff? Oh

1144
01:17:25,439 --> 01:17:28,119
yeah, sure, And he knows
I'm gonna come by. It's gonna take

1145
01:17:28,159 --> 01:17:30,600
ten minutes. I'm not gonna be
browsing. I'm gonna I know what I

1146
01:17:30,640 --> 01:17:32,399
want. I'm gonna grab the ship
then I'll leave. It's real simple,

1147
01:17:32,479 --> 01:17:35,760
you know. Yep. And I
think you know, once people get into

1148
01:17:35,800 --> 01:17:41,840
my system and understand how it works
and they know me, you know,

1149
01:17:41,960 --> 01:17:45,479
they I have people that you know, return customers. They come by all

1150
01:17:45,520 --> 01:17:46,920
the time and just pick stuff up, and I'll bill you a leader,

1151
01:17:47,239 --> 01:17:50,880
and like it's real, you know, it feels it feels like a country

1152
01:17:50,960 --> 01:17:55,560
store where like you know everyone,
Yeah, that's sick. That's the way

1153
01:17:55,640 --> 01:17:58,960
to do it. That's nice.
But but but yeah, and and yeah,

1154
01:17:59,119 --> 01:18:00,960
because I do it that way,
I'm able to keep prices over,

1155
01:18:01,119 --> 01:18:05,199
I'm able to do it in the
most environmentally friendly way possible. And you're

1156
01:18:05,279 --> 01:18:08,800
totally right. Like, when I
think about my life and what I want

1157
01:18:08,840 --> 01:18:12,399
to do, you look at these
retail stores and and their job isn't growing

1158
01:18:12,479 --> 01:18:17,720
plants. Their job is ordering materials, ordering, you know, ordering stuff

1159
01:18:17,760 --> 01:18:21,680
for resale, stocking shells, and
like that is not what I want to

1160
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:26,399
do, you know, yes,
and all kinds of dovetails together with my

1161
01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:30,199
environmental plan and the way I just
want to live my life, you know,

1162
01:18:30,520 --> 01:18:31,760
yeah, totally. I mean,
you grow some really rare, rare

1163
01:18:31,800 --> 01:18:35,399
stuff too. I'm looking at your
website now, has you got a ripario

1164
01:18:35,600 --> 01:18:40,279
sita? This this rare mallow?
What is it? Virginia mallow, Virginia

1165
01:18:40,399 --> 01:18:44,079
fan pedals is the name of it? Is that still? Is that still

1166
01:18:44,159 --> 01:18:45,399
on there? Yeah? It's not
supposed to be there. Oh you don't

1167
01:18:45,399 --> 01:18:48,479
grow that? No more? It's
done. No, no, I'm not

1168
01:18:48,600 --> 01:18:53,479
selling. Well, you know,
I'll tell you that that came to be

1169
01:18:53,680 --> 01:18:57,720
in a circuitous way and I didn't
really think about it too much, but

1170
01:18:58,840 --> 01:19:01,520
but yeah, that was that was
is bestowed. Some seeds were bestowed upon

1171
01:19:01,680 --> 01:19:05,640
me by a river keeper and yeah, I found out it was like,

1172
01:19:06,319 --> 01:19:12,840
uh, from a rare colony patch. And you know, I just kind

1173
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:15,720
of feel like I don't know enough
to set up a breeding colony of that

1174
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:20,399
and do it right. I'd like
to. I'd like to someday know enough

1175
01:19:20,680 --> 01:19:26,199
to be able to do that and
work with some local ecologists and have like

1176
01:19:26,279 --> 01:19:30,479
a real breeding program for it.
But yeah, for now, that one's

1177
01:19:30,520 --> 01:19:33,079
been taken off the shows. Okay, all right, but maybe there would

1178
01:19:33,119 --> 01:19:36,760
still be seeds somewhere if you had
it, people would be I don't know,

1179
01:19:36,920 --> 01:19:41,920
there might there might there might be
seeds somewhere for someone in the now.

1180
01:19:42,279 --> 01:19:44,640
Yeah, yeah, yeah, god, there's Yeah, you're man,

1181
01:19:44,720 --> 01:19:49,640
you're your catalog's really really fucking great, man. So so how do people

1182
01:19:49,680 --> 01:19:53,800
get bold of you? I've got
about thirty or forty new species to add

1183
01:19:53,920 --> 01:19:57,720
to it. I really, I've
found a lot of new places this year

1184
01:19:57,840 --> 01:20:02,119
to get local ecotype stuff, and
I might even be adding some some seeds

1185
01:20:02,159 --> 01:20:08,680
for sale this year of Calli Canthus. Say Calli Canthus Florida is I know

1186
01:20:08,840 --> 01:20:12,600
the western species. I think it's
just Calcanthus accident tells. But one of

1187
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:15,880
the it's one of those early branching
angiosperm lineages. And the flowers smell like

1188
01:20:16,000 --> 01:20:19,119
port wine. It's fucking cool.
I didn't know they would grow in Virginia.

1189
01:20:20,279 --> 01:20:25,680
And yeah, it looks like a
chrysanthemum flower and it's fragrant, well

1190
01:20:25,760 --> 01:20:29,239
some of them are fragrant. Yeah, yeah, I love I love that

1191
01:20:29,399 --> 01:20:32,479
flower. And yeah I found it
in a few I had like this old

1192
01:20:32,479 --> 01:20:38,039
school client and uh, she had
this garden forever. She didn't even she

1193
01:20:38,119 --> 01:20:41,880
didn't know what it was, but
it was like this giant, beautiful specimen

1194
01:20:42,159 --> 01:20:46,720
she had grown under magnolia that thing. Yeah, that's fucking cool. God

1195
01:20:46,840 --> 01:20:49,840
damn. Yeah, your your your
catalog is great. Holy sh it.

1196
01:20:49,960 --> 01:20:53,199
So how do people they just go
to the web? How if they want

1197
01:20:53,239 --> 01:20:56,199
what's the website if people want to
look it up? Bonatara d C.

1198
01:20:57,359 --> 01:21:01,039
Yeah, the website's Bonatara DC dot
com. Yeah. And also I only

1199
01:21:01,199 --> 01:21:06,119
sell exclusively to people within a two
hundred mile radius of me. And that's

1200
01:21:06,560 --> 01:21:09,720
you know a lot of people have
you know, kind of pressured me to

1201
01:21:09,760 --> 01:21:14,960
ship plants. I know there's there's
some some native plant deserts throughout the country

1202
01:21:15,000 --> 01:21:18,600
where you really can't get them.
But you know, I'm kinda I'm gonna

1203
01:21:18,600 --> 01:21:23,960
I'm gonna stick to my guns on
not not being a part of, you

1204
01:21:24,079 --> 01:21:28,600
know, the horticultural cross country trade
where we're but somebody could come to your

1205
01:21:28,640 --> 01:21:31,680
from but somebody could come to you
from like two hundred and fifteen miles away,

1206
01:21:31,680 --> 01:21:35,359
and then just lie, right,
Yeah, anyone can lie to me.

1207
01:21:36,119 --> 01:21:39,840
I'm just kidding. I'm just I'm
sorry. Well, you've got some

1208
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:42,880
cool So you've got some cool shit, you know. You know, I

1209
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:45,000
don't have the time to check up
on everyone, see right, right,

1210
01:21:45,119 --> 01:21:48,960
yeah, but you've got some cool
stuff to me about where you live.

1211
01:21:49,079 --> 01:21:54,319
You know, you're the one that's
going to sleep. They're like, yeah,

1212
01:21:54,640 --> 01:21:57,439
I lied, but at least I
got that fucking Caliicanthus, yeah,

1213
01:21:57,640 --> 01:21:59,760
you know, if that's what,
if that's what you want to do with

1214
01:21:59,840 --> 01:22:01,680
your life over the head. No, but but but I mean you've got

1215
01:22:01,760 --> 01:22:05,920
some well I think too. I
understand and appreciate ecotypes. I think that's

1216
01:22:05,960 --> 01:22:10,760
cool. But also though if again, I think the worst invasives always come

1217
01:22:10,880 --> 01:22:15,359
from across oceans or the equator or
you know, huge amountain learners. Maybe,

1218
01:22:15,399 --> 01:22:17,119
but but it's true. You know
some Well, I've got my own

1219
01:22:17,279 --> 01:22:20,920
I've got my own set of invasives
on the farm. Some of them are

1220
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:25,439
not in other parts of the country. You know, I've got leopard slug

1221
01:22:25,520 --> 01:22:29,640
probably everyone has those. We've got
hammerhead works, oh yeah, yeah,

1222
01:22:29,760 --> 01:22:33,239
I've got all these things that that
are entrenched in this ecosystem and aren't going

1223
01:22:33,319 --> 01:22:36,880
anywhere, but they might not be
somewhere else, and I don't know enough

1224
01:22:38,039 --> 01:22:40,520
they might hit you right on a
plant. Yeah, I don't know.

1225
01:22:40,800 --> 01:22:43,680
I don't know enough to say like, hey, you have this in your

1226
01:22:43,760 --> 01:22:50,640
ecosystem already, and you know,
our industry is responsible for the vast majority

1227
01:22:50,800 --> 01:22:56,920
of you know, transmission of invasive
plants and insects and art cause whatever,

1228
01:22:57,960 --> 01:23:00,199
and yeah, I just don't want
to be a part of that. Now.

1229
01:23:00,399 --> 01:23:04,159
Yeah, that's that's a respect definitely
on that. But but you've definitely

1230
01:23:04,199 --> 01:23:08,920
got some cool stuff and it's a
fucking great nursery. I hope that,

1231
01:23:09,079 --> 01:23:11,840
you know. That's why I love
doing these pojects. I hope like more

1232
01:23:11,920 --> 01:23:15,880
people that are in the in the
area because I want to cover all the

1233
01:23:15,000 --> 01:23:17,119
US, you know, I spent
so much time on West and I'm trying

1234
01:23:17,159 --> 01:23:20,119
to do the East coast. You
know, they hear these things like oh

1235
01:23:20,159 --> 01:23:23,600
wow, I didn't know about that, or they hear a species mentioned,

1236
01:23:23,600 --> 01:23:26,079
they're like, oh, I live, I live in the Baltimore area.

1237
01:23:26,119 --> 01:23:28,359
Maybe that's close. Maybe I can
come by and check it out. That's

1238
01:23:28,399 --> 01:23:30,399
I didn't know about that, you
know, And it's uh, it's it's

1239
01:23:31,000 --> 01:23:34,239
you know, I'm just getting started, and I'm not going to stop.

1240
01:23:34,399 --> 01:23:39,640
To every person who likes plants,
knows my name or my business, I'm

1241
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:43,119
going to change's going to be.
They're all gonna be touched by my native

1242
01:23:43,600 --> 01:23:45,199
I sell stickers, you know,
I sell these. I make these stickers

1243
01:23:45,239 --> 01:23:48,079
and fucking shirts. I just print
these t shirts in my grass. They

1244
01:23:48,199 --> 01:23:53,560
kill your lawn, and and uh, I want to change it to just

1245
01:23:53,600 --> 01:23:57,199
say kill every lawn, like fuck
it. Like I'm not you know,

1246
01:23:57,560 --> 01:24:00,720
it's a little extreme and it's taken
with a great of salt, but like

1247
01:24:00,800 --> 01:24:03,439
that's what the times need. Like
the the fucking lawn. There's a whole

1248
01:24:03,479 --> 01:24:08,359
ideology behind it. It's just it's
so disconnected and sad, and this shit

1249
01:24:08,479 --> 01:24:12,960
is so fun and cool, you
know, in Foster's life, it's like,

1250
01:24:13,079 --> 01:24:15,199
man, why the fuck not?
You know, it just it blows

1251
01:24:15,239 --> 01:24:16,600
my mind. Like where I live, this is a foreign concept. Like

1252
01:24:17,039 --> 01:24:19,760
my yard's overgrown. The city hasn't
fuck with me yet. I would love

1253
01:24:19,840 --> 01:24:23,720
for them to fuck with me.
I could name every species in my yards

1254
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:26,399
a fucking botanic garden, you know. But like my neighbor just put in

1255
01:24:26,479 --> 01:24:29,439
a sprinkler system for his lawn.
I'm like, man, you realize what,

1256
01:24:29,560 --> 01:24:31,800
Like we just had our first month
of June where it was one hundred

1257
01:24:31,840 --> 01:24:36,000
and ten degrees for three weeks straight. Never before in the courted history has

1258
01:24:36,079 --> 01:24:39,800
that happened. You get check temperature
records, like what are you doing?

1259
01:24:39,920 --> 01:24:42,720
Like he cut down this huge tree
that used to be in his yard that

1260
01:24:42,840 --> 01:24:45,079
gives shade, Like why you live
in a desert, Why would you cut

1261
01:24:45,159 --> 01:24:47,800
down a shade tree. I just
you know, yeah, you won't hear

1262
01:24:47,880 --> 01:24:50,960
heat, hear a she able to
be higher. And it's this is how

1263
01:24:51,039 --> 01:24:54,520
you change culture. You know,
you don't shame and shit on people.

1264
01:24:54,560 --> 01:24:56,560
I mean, I ship on the
lawn, plinty, But I'm I'm not

1265
01:24:56,600 --> 01:24:59,319
shitting on anybody who's got a lawn. But I just I'm not shitting on

1266
01:24:59,359 --> 01:25:01,079
the people at a long I'm just
shitting on the launch, you know,

1267
01:25:01,199 --> 01:25:04,520
figuratively right now, maybe literally I'll
be shitting on the lawn at some point,

1268
01:25:04,920 --> 01:25:08,680
you know, we'll start a campaign, but uh, in there but

1269
01:25:09,079 --> 01:25:13,399
work outside long enough. But but
you know, I think you just you

1270
01:25:13,479 --> 01:25:15,000
know, you you change things by
showing them, and you show them like

1271
01:25:15,079 --> 01:25:19,560
how fucking nice and cool is something
can look as you brought that up,

1272
01:25:19,560 --> 01:25:23,439
because that's the other that's the other
aspect of what I'm working towards. You

1273
01:25:23,479 --> 01:25:26,680
know, a lot of you know, the materials I have are going to

1274
01:25:26,760 --> 01:25:30,439
only be available locally. But you
go on my website and you find like

1275
01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:32,680
all this information and that's open source. Any one can use that. You

1276
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:35,199
can copy and paste it and put
it, put your name on it.

1277
01:25:35,319 --> 01:25:40,760
I don't really care. That information
is there for everyone. So that's everything

1278
01:25:40,800 --> 01:25:46,399
from like my soil prep guides to
my upcoming UH plant descriptions and and all

1279
01:25:46,520 --> 01:25:55,600
my my seed information and UH and
my remote design services. It specifically says,

1280
01:25:55,760 --> 01:25:58,600
you know, hey, like if
you're not from this region, you

1281
01:25:58,720 --> 01:26:01,920
want to use this remote design service
to promote native plants? Like how that

1282
01:26:02,159 --> 01:26:05,479
is? Like you like what I
do? Kick me two books every time

1283
01:26:05,520 --> 01:26:12,039
you use this form or don't.
Yeah, it's it's great. It's great

1284
01:26:12,079 --> 01:26:15,279
work you're doing, man. And
I think that, you know, eventually

1285
01:26:15,520 --> 01:26:18,039
things are starting to change. I
mean I see I see it on the

1286
01:26:18,079 --> 01:26:20,920
horizon already. You know, we've
been all over the country looking at this

1287
01:26:21,000 --> 01:26:26,079
stuff and people are realizing it's the
best is when you see like like someone's

1288
01:26:26,159 --> 01:26:28,800
dad, like someone who's like like
sixty year old man being like, oh,

1289
01:26:28,880 --> 01:26:30,960
this is so cool, you know, getting into it, Like didn't

1290
01:26:30,960 --> 01:26:34,199
get into it till he was fucking
sixty. Now he's like all about these

1291
01:26:34,279 --> 01:26:38,279
different cool plants he's got in his
yard and these different you know, different

1292
01:26:38,760 --> 01:26:41,279
different insects that are coming by,
and it's like, fuck, I just

1293
01:26:41,359 --> 01:26:45,640
love going to hang out there and
you know, enjoying off their new balances

1294
01:26:45,760 --> 01:26:49,079
for a pair of danners and throwing
away those gas cans for pair of work

1295
01:26:49,079 --> 01:26:54,439
gloves, and you know, getting
their microscope out looking at some flowers.

1296
01:26:54,560 --> 01:26:57,199
Are you going back before we end
it? Are you going like what do

1297
01:26:57,279 --> 01:27:00,680
you say, because a lot of
like especially their obasious pals, you take

1298
01:27:00,720 --> 01:27:01,720
them down at the end of the
year or what you got to like or

1299
01:27:01,880 --> 01:27:04,840
just let them let them ride or
the people burn or what do you do?

1300
01:27:06,159 --> 01:27:10,680
It depends. Like in the nursery, so since I don't use any

1301
01:27:10,880 --> 01:27:15,640
like pesticides or our press treatments,
I'm trying to create like a symphony of

1302
01:27:15,760 --> 01:27:18,840
chaos and there, so I'll leave
a lot of my stuff up, Like

1303
01:27:18,920 --> 01:27:23,159
you'll find all the stems and stuff
still on my plants from like the previous

1304
01:27:23,239 --> 01:27:26,840
year because we've got stem nesting insects, we've got lost, we've got spiders,

1305
01:27:26,880 --> 01:27:29,199
we got it all. So I
try to leave it up as much

1306
01:27:29,199 --> 01:27:31,319
as possible. But when it comes
to my field production, I'm dealing with

1307
01:27:31,359 --> 01:27:35,399
a lot of invasive plants and like
wood, he's trying to invade. So

1308
01:27:35,479 --> 01:27:44,119
I use various practices from like solarizing, you know, controlled burns, mowing.

1309
01:27:45,920 --> 01:27:47,399
You know, I'll mow down perennials. I try not to mow down

1310
01:27:47,560 --> 01:27:53,920
like an entire patch every year because
it you know, bucks with the local

1311
01:27:54,399 --> 01:27:58,720
insects and stuff, and I'm trying
to preserve. Yeah, but so I'll

1312
01:27:58,880 --> 01:28:02,479
use a lot of different system but
primarily, you know, I'm trying to

1313
01:28:02,520 --> 01:28:08,239
saturate my soil seed bank with the
natives that I want, and use,

1314
01:28:08,479 --> 01:28:13,520
you know, any means necessary to
suppress the non natives, whether it's it's

1315
01:28:13,640 --> 01:28:18,800
burning, solarizing, mechanical weeding,
or you know, just out competing them

1316
01:28:18,880 --> 01:28:23,720
with natives. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, because just in the in the

1317
01:28:23,800 --> 01:28:26,960
realm of maintenance that a native plant
garden is, like, it does need

1318
01:28:27,079 --> 01:28:30,359
some maintenance. It's much to me, it's much better than just mowing a

1319
01:28:30,439 --> 01:28:33,359
fucking long once a week in the
summer. But but there is maintenance.

1320
01:28:33,399 --> 01:28:36,840
For quite a lot of people come
at me and say they want a no

1321
01:28:38,039 --> 01:28:43,600
maintenance garden, and I tell them
it takes about eight hundred years to get

1322
01:28:43,600 --> 01:28:47,279
an old growth forest started. And
that's what you know. If you want

1323
01:28:47,279 --> 01:28:49,800
to know maintenance garden, we can
go ahead and get started on it.

1324
01:28:50,199 --> 01:28:54,399
But you're not going to see the
results of it. It's your great great

1325
01:28:54,399 --> 01:28:58,520
grandchildren, so right. But also
that's fun. That's what you want if

1326
01:28:58,560 --> 01:29:00,920
you want to know maintenance garden,
start and you know, if you're ready

1327
01:29:00,960 --> 01:29:08,439
to accept that, we transform our
ecosystem so much that it will not become

1328
01:29:08,600 --> 01:29:14,199
a low maintenance situation without information and
understanding on your part. If you're ready

1329
01:29:14,199 --> 01:29:15,520
to accept that, then on your
guy, I can help you, all

1330
01:29:15,600 --> 01:29:18,159
right. But that's the thing though, too, is it's actually it's fun

1331
01:29:18,239 --> 01:29:23,000
to be out there, you know, gardening and fucking around, enjoying the

1332
01:29:23,199 --> 01:29:29,119
enjoying something you've created, you know, healthy cut microbiome. When you get

1333
01:29:29,119 --> 01:29:30,479
a little dirt in your mouth,
it's good for you. Yeah, yeah,

1334
01:29:30,680 --> 01:29:32,600
totally. Man, Well thanks so
much for being down to do.

1335
01:29:32,720 --> 01:29:35,800
Is where can people look up the
nursery I know we mentioned the website.

1336
01:29:35,840 --> 01:29:41,159
It's Bonatera with two rs DC dot
com And what else? Is there any

1337
01:29:41,199 --> 01:29:44,359
other any other shout outs you want
to give places people can read about it.

1338
01:29:44,520 --> 01:29:45,920
Yeah, I mean, but the
website is definitely the primary way to

1339
01:29:45,920 --> 01:29:48,800
get all your information if you want
to, you know, get updates on

1340
01:29:49,159 --> 01:29:55,199
what's going on with me on a
weeklier monthly basinis. My My instagram is

1341
01:29:55,680 --> 01:29:59,239
fun and it keeps you updated on
what's going on, whether plant giveaways and

1342
01:29:59,359 --> 01:30:03,079
any any new updates as far as
what we're trying to accomplish out here on

1343
01:30:03,359 --> 01:30:08,199
and some some good photos of flowers, some tips for maintenance and what's the

1344
01:30:08,319 --> 01:30:14,520
instagram? Is like that? So
what's the what's the instagram? The instagram

1345
01:30:15,000 --> 01:30:18,720
is? What is it? It's
Bonatara DC, I believe Let me we'll

1346
01:30:18,800 --> 01:30:21,319
pull it up. Make sure I
remember the name of my own instagram.

1347
01:30:21,520 --> 01:30:27,439
Oh yeah, there we go,
Bonatera DC. Yeah yeah, okay,

1348
01:30:27,600 --> 01:30:30,600
so ye Bonetara DC. Oh ship, I didn't even spend this isn't Yeah

1349
01:30:30,600 --> 01:30:34,039
I didn't even look at this yet. Wow, holy fuck. Check out

1350
01:30:34,079 --> 01:30:36,880
the cram. That's awesome. Yeah, there's some good stuff on it.

1351
01:30:36,960 --> 01:30:40,199
Man. All right, cool,
well, all right man. Well,

1352
01:30:40,199 --> 01:30:43,319
thanks so much and uh, Jeremy, I appreciate it, my pleasure.

1353
01:30:43,439 --> 01:30:45,560
You give me a call anytime.
I'm happy, all right, brother,

1354
01:30:45,600 --> 01:30:46,920
Okay, take care. Thanks.
Let everybody else have a grocery day.

1355
01:30:46,920 --> 01:30:47,600
Go fucking somebody,