Plant Out Loud

It's the season of abundance in the garden, when the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and more are all starting to come in. I'm taking a pause on the podcast for this season so I can relish it, but I hope you'll join me over @plant.outloud on Instagram. In this episode, I share why I've started using organic fertilizer regularly, how my tomato plants planted out at separate times are all the same size, and why I'm not going to plant carrots in the spring next year. I also share ideas for using l...

Jolena Stewart started Love Energy Nature with one goal in mind: to provide high-quality, bath and body products made without synthetic ingredients. Jolena has struggled with eczema most of her life. When her daughter also suffered with eczema, she started learning more about how to make skincare with ingredients that don’t irritate their skin. Soon, she decided to sell these products to others. She now also offers coaching for families with eczema, with educational workshops and a new member...

Liz Neves is an herbalist, reiki and healing drum practitioner, dream guide, meditation instructor, and mama living and teaching in Brooklyn. She’s the founder of Gathering Ground and author of Northeast Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 111 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness (Timber Press). We have a wide-ranging conversation and talk about how to teach children about plants, three easy-to-identify wild plants, how to celebrate summer solstice, why non-native plants can be just as...

Peter Hoffman is the former chef and owner of Savoy and Back Forty Restaurants in New York City and author of the new book, What’s Good: A Memoir in 14 Ingredients. He is a longtime supporter of the farm-to-table movement and served on the boards of the New York City Greenmarket, the Chefs Collaborative, and is a Slow Food NYC Snailblazer award recipient. On most market days, he can be found on his bicycle at the Union Square Greenmarket.In this episode, Peter and I discuss how plant lives ar...

In this episode, I go solo and share some of the life lessons I’ve learned from the garden. #1 It’s not too late!I’ve always felt late to everything, including gardening. It’s not too late this year or in your life to start gardening! Listen to learn more. #2. Perfect is as impossible in the garden as in life. By nature, plants are not perfect and neither are we. But plants want to grow and so do we. We need to embrace the imperfection of the garden and help nature do its thing. Here is a won...

A Conversation with Sunyatta AmenPlants aren’t always just pretty things to look at on Instagram. Behind them are real human stories, including stories of oppression. To help me tackle some of the tough topics, I spoke to Sunyatta Amen, a fifth-generation master herbalist & natural lifestyle expert. She grew up steeped in ethnobotany behind the counter of the ‘Black Pyramid’ herb shops & vegan juice bars founded by her father in Harlem. She has had a lifelong drive to create beautiful...

Resh Gala is the owner and founder of Hundred Tomatoes. Her intensive planting methods have garnered her a loyal social media following and she was named a 2020 Gardener of the Year by Burpee Home Gardens. She also creates YouTube videos for Kellogg Garden Organics.Resh only started gardening in 2016, when she killed two tomato plants on her patio. That failure led her to learn everything she could about gardening. In 2017, she built raised beds and filled them with top soil...that turned out...

A conversation with Wendy Kiang-SprayWendy Kiang-Spray is a writer and speaker whose articles about gardening and food have appeared in national and local print publications. Her first book, The Chinese Kitchen Garden, is about growing and cooking Chinese vegetables. She gardens in Rockville, Maryland where she also works for the public school system there. I cite The Chinese Kitchen Garden frequently in the book I wrote with The Chef’s Garden and as a newer gardener, I really enjoyed reading...

A Conversation with Linda Shanahan of Barefoot BotanicalsLinda Shanahan is an herbalist, an herb farmer, and a nurse. Since 2008 she has operated Barefoot Botanicals, a certified organic herb farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, with her partner Eric VanderHyde. It is here that she feels all of her worlds come together—she grows plants, makes herbal medicines, and teaches classes in medicine making and community health. Linda believes that the most powerful medicine is building connection ...

A conversation with Beronda MontgomeryBeronda Montgomery is a professor of biochemistry, molecular biology, and microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. She is the author of the new book, Lessons from Plants—a book I just love because it weaves together plant science with greater life lessons. In this episode, we talk about how a plant’s scent is not really for us, why new plant leaves are worth celebrating, and how we might better learn to care for people by caring f...