Grow Your Own Vegetables, Author at Grow Your Own Vegetables

Spirit Gardening [Stage 2] How do you “Be Ease”?

Have you ever had a job where it felt like your boss might’ve been looking over your shoulder?

Like they were “just checking in” to make sure you’re working?

When you have a boss like this, it’s easy to pick out work that makes you “look busy”…

(Even when you don’t have any real work to do.)

It may sound strange, but this is relevant to your garden too…

Because many gardeners I’ve met treat their garden like a “job” where they have to constantly stay busy. Or they start to feel like they won’t get their payday of a harvest at the end! They say they HAVE to be working when they’re in the garden.

And they put a lot of pressure on themselves for not doing enough planting, weeding, pruning, watering, harvesting…

Sometimes it can feel like their mantra is “There’s always SOMETHING to do!”

But is it actually true that working all the time gives you a better garden?

Well you might want to consider these truths…

A seed that gets the right amount of sun and moisture will sprout. 🌞🌱Nature flourishes and thrives without any help from us. I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes doing less IS more. Especially in your garden.

That’s what today’s stage of Spirit Gardening, Ease, is all about.

But how do you “do ease?” Here’s a helpful question to ask yourself…

When do you feel the most “at ease”? 😌

Think about going to your favorite coffee shop to meet your best friend. You feel relaxed and comfortable. You can tell your friend anything and not feel judged. You can even just sit in silence observing the goings-on around you and feel at peace!

That is “doing ease!” And it’s something you can achieve in your garden every day.

When we’re “at ease,” we’re most observant of the world around us. You can take in the little things in nature and, most importantly… listen to what your plants are telling you!

Being at ease is also a state of being with yourself. You’re trusting your intuition and what you feel is right for your garden.

I’ve learned more about what my garden needs from taking a few minutes a day to just sit among my plants than I have in hours of diligent tending and weeding.

And going to your garden shouldn’t feel like going to work. It should feel like visiting with your best friend. You want to sit in your garden and observe. Breathe, relax and enjoy being among your plants.

So that’s your goal for this stage of Spirit Gardening.

Have one day this month where you just SIT in your garden and be at peace instead of “doing” your next project.

Of course, if you want to know more about how to “do ease” in your garden. Or how to turn down the volume on the “boss” in your brain telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, register below for my FREE live QA event.

In this training I will answer your questions about the 5 stages of Spirit Gardening and how they can help you get more joy and abundance from your garden.

Peace and Ease,
Stacey

P.S. — Watch Stage 3 tomorrow where I show you how to have more FUN in your garden while growing even more than ever before!

Save Your Spot

“How to Practice Spirit Gardening LIVE Q&A” with Stacey Murphy

April 5th, 2023
[10am PT / 1pm ET]

Join Stacey LIVE to help you answer any gardening mindset questions or challenges you have.

Spirit Gardening Stage 1
Spirit Gardening Stage 3: Coming Sunday, April 2nd
Spirit Gardening Stage 4: Coming Monday, April 3rd
Spirit Gardening Stage 5: Coming Tuesday, April 4th

Enjoying Stacey’s Spirit Gardening Series? Share your ‘AhHa’ moments with us!

Spirit Gardening [Stage 1] How to wonder more and worry less in your garden

“It feels like turning on a ‘light switch’ in your brain.”

That’s how one of my students described this meditation. Because in just one, simple visualization meditation you go from a world in your garden that is…

• Small
• Lonely
• Hard
• Full of challenges

…to a world that is…

• Big, unlimited potential
• Connection
• Easy and flowing
• Surrounded by solutions

And yes, you can do this all with ONE simple visualization exercise in your garden!

Pretty neat right? 😄

The real secret to this meditation isn’t anything complicated or confusing. It is just a simple reframing of your mind to go from a closed state to one of abundance. I’ll tell you more about how I came across this in a minute…

But first, let me introduce you to the first stage of Spirit Gardening that we’ll be exploring together today…

Wonder!

This is the first step to gaining more joy, hope, and energy in your garden. You start here because it is all about one thing… being curious!

When your mind is in a curious state it’s almost impossible not to find happiness… because Mother Nature is so freaking cool and mysterious!

She’s like an elusive mistress of sorts… 😉

When you start with a curious mind everything else will start to just get easier. And the way to start is so simple, I’m pretty sure a 3-year old invented this. All you have to do is say to yourself…

“I wonder why ________ ?”

And you can do this anywhere, anytime! Just find a comfy chair or a place to sit in or around your garden. Then look out at your plants and just start to ask questions. Here are a few primers for example…

• Are there plants around you that you didn’t notice before you sat down?
• Do leaves or flowers stand out to you that didn’t before?
• How about any insects or birds?

You’ll soon find that just sitting in your garden, wondering, will open a whole new world for you!

And you’ll start to feel excitement and joy around you again.

Now, let me tell you a little secret… the reason I was able to discover this was because I was feeling a little down on myself one day. I felt like I was watching other gardeners have success with plants and crops that I had struggled with for years. And I couldn’t help but feel like I was a little broken.

The voice in my head was asking…

“Why does it seem like there are things that I can’t get for myself?”

When I heard this thought, I decided to sit down and meditate on this for a bit. I asked nature in my meditation to show me that life is full of abundance. And that I too CAN have beautiful things for myself in my garden.

When I opened my eyes, nature was there to greet me with a WONDERful surprise…

All around me were tiny asparagus plants popping up through the soil!

Now normally this wouldn’t be a big deal except that these asparagus plants shouldn’t have been there at ALL in September! Asparagus traditionally shoots up in early summer where I was growing. And by this point they should’ve been tiny, dried up nubs by now.

But here they were… right in front of me!

Nature was showing me the magic of her abundance right there. 😊🙌🌿✨

And it had been there all along. The only difference was that now my mind was primed to see it.

Which is what I want to give to YOU in Stage 1 of your Spirit Gardening Journey… Wonder!

Here’s how.

(This is a shorter version of the full visualizations and meditations you’ll see inside the Spirit Gardening Course)

Just go out in your garden, take a few deep breaths, and close your eyes for 5 minutes. And while your eyes are closed, ask Nature to show you her abundance.

Then open up your eyes and start writing down all your “I wonder why _______?” questions.

Trust me, this process is magical! 🧙‍♀️🧙‍♂️

And after you’re done, I’d love for you to watch my upcoming training.

In this training I help answer any Spirit Gardening questions you have. And if you don’t have any questions yet, that’s ok too. You’ve still got 4 more stages of Spirit Gardening to go through.

In Stage 2 we’ll talk more about the second stage… which will take a lot of the STRESS out of your garden.

Because gardening should be EASY! You’ll see how to have ease in your garden on demand tomorrow. Until then, happy WONDERing in your garden!

Peace and wonder,
Stacey

Save Your Spot

“How to Practice Spirit Gardening LIVE Q&A” with Stacey Murphy

April 5th, 2023
[10am PT / 1pm ET]

Join Stacey LIVE to help you answer any gardening mindset questions or challenges you have.

Spirit Gardening Stage 2: Coming Saturday, April 1st
Spirit Gardening Stage 3: Coming Sunday, April 2nd
Spirit Gardening Stage 4: Coming Monday, April 3rd
Spirit Gardening Stage 5: Coming Tuesday, April 4th

Enjoying Stacey’s Spirit Gardening Series? Share your ‘AhHa’ moments with us!

Benefits of Microgreens & Ways to Enjoy Them

Benefits of Microgreens:

There are many foods that we have come to know as superfoods that can often be difficult to access, such as maca, MCT coconut oil, and spirulina. Depending on where and how you live, these can be very difficult to grow, process, and store.

When buying foods like these, they often have a higher price point as well, which presents its own set of challenges. To me, these are some of the factors that make microgreens the absolutely incredible superfood that they are! Microgreens can be produced very simply in your own home, and there are growing numbers and sizes of retailers who provide seed in bulk specifically for this purpose! While you do still need the space to grow in and a short list of materials to start producing your own microgreens, the setup required is quite straightforward. Once you are established, it becomes what is probably the most efficient superfood to produce yourself!

The benefits of access are the beginning of the “super” quality of microgreens. This still leaves the wondrous world of their vast nutritional content! Beyond the high antioxidant content found in microgreens, they are also found to have significantly higher levels of nutrients, such as vitamin E and vitamin C, than the mature versions of the plant. In an article from NPR, author Eliza Barclay shares about a study conducted by Gene Lester, who is the National Program Leader of Nutrition and Food Safety/Quality for the USDA, alongside colleagues from the University of Maryland, College Park, which was published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. The focus was on analyzing the nutrients in microgreens. They included 25 varieties of microgreens in their sample pool of species while looking at four groups of vitamins and other phytochemicals. What they found means a lot for our understanding of and relationship to microgreens! Their findings showed, ¨leaves from almost all of the microgreens [tested] had four to six times more nutrients than the mature leaves of the same plant.¨ Variation was found from species to species, just as is found in mature species.

Coming from a culinary foundation, it always excites me to use an ingredient with such an acute flavor, unique texture, and high amounts of various nutrients. The search for ingredients which bring a special texture or flavor that both stands out and incorporates well is an unending search. Microgreens meet all these criteria, and they do it in a way where they also provide great variation for you to experiment with and choose from. If you would like to make your dish stand out with flavors reminiscent of traditional Italian recipes, a bitter, slightly-spicy microgreen like radish or mustard goes a long way! Something herbaceous? Basil, fennel, or cilantro! Something refreshing? Peas, celery, cabbage, or parsley fit that in my book. Something with a sweeter, rounded flavor? Beets, arugula, or sunflower!

Uses for Microgreens:

In my six years or so working in restaurants, I watched a number of ingredients skyrocket in reputation in our culture. Foods that many of us had not even heard about a handful of years ago are now popping up all around us from small, local cafes to NPR articles to Michelin star restaurants. These quick rises can often leave us with the basic question of what these foods are, let alone what makes them stand out or how to acquire or prepare them.

This stardom can lead to an unfortunate and unnecessary disconnect from these ingredients; however, we plan to address this by helping people connect with these ingredients! We are excited to share how accessible it can be to use microgreens in a variety of dishes in your own home. Microgreens certainly deserve the fame that has gotten them into Michelin restaurants, and by the same rationale, they deserve to be in your home diet as well!

Microgreens can sometimes be confused with sprouts, but the distinguishers between the two are that microgreens must be grown in a solid medium (soil or soil-free mediums) and usually take somewhere between 7 and 14 days to be ready, whereas sprouts are simply sprouted in water and typically take just two or three days. Microgreens are understood to be higher in fiber, more nutritious, and safer in general than sprouts, as sprouts can sometimes develop harmful bacteria in their humid environment.

As mentioned earlier, microgreens provide a distinct, refreshing flavor and texture in cooked dishes or complimentary in salads or cool dishes. Because of all of these attributes, there is a fairly wide diversity of dishes that I like to use microgreens in. They seem to contribute the most to a dish when they are added at the end to preserve their flavor and crunchy texture. Some of the dishes that I enjoy including microgreens with cheese or charcuterie boards, pasta (mixed in after removing from the heat to keep the microgreens fresh), tomato toast, tacos, on top of curry, or with eggs in the morning. Sometimes cutting microgreens down smaller, sometimes leaving them whole!

I hope you feel more acquainted with microgreens after this! Their benefits and simplicity are the biggest takeaway within this. Don’t be afraid to try adding them to your favorite dish! Whether that be pizza, Tom Kha, nachos, hummus, or sushi!

Brandon Beins
Culinary Educator and Human, Plant, & Soil Health Advocate

“My food journey began in high school when culinary classes brought me into the world of creating food. I continued on to culinary school before completing a two year apprenticeship with a local sushi chef. This apprenticeship was really where

I learned to care for ingredients; how to prepare them in a way that shows them respect. In order to really take care of your ingredients you need to start with the soil. I haven’t had many memorable meals that were prepared with unhealthy produce from depleted soils,and most of the memorable meals from my life were simple meals made from ingredients that had themselves been nourished lovingly and prepared the same way. I believe high quality food can be prepared by anyone, and it starts with the soil.”

More Recipes to Enjoy Your Harvest!
Pizza Sandwiches
3 Fast and Easy Zucchini Recipes + How to Quick Pickle
Delicious Microgreens Recipes

3 Keys to Successful Indoor Seed Starting

Growing your own healthy plants from seed can be tricky. Even expert growers have trouble keeping their seedlings alive and well. Luckily, three simple keys are all you need to focus on.

Discover how to start your plants off right so they thrive. Be sure to stick around to the end for a Bonus Key!

Masterclass on YouTube:

Vegetables & Herb Plants 101: Plant Biology and Lifecycle

Do you have a successful seed story? Please share!

Meet Martha: Experience More Joy From Your Garden

Big news!

We are just days away from releasing the the Joyful Garden Docuseries. 😉

But first, a fun story from Martha from our Grow Your Own Vegetables community.

She’s retired (with kids) and living in Ontario.

Enjoy meeting Martha as she shares gardening with kids and her experience with a community garden.

“My little granddaughter, even when she was two, she knew where the carrots were and she would go out there and just pull one up and eat it. And they are so much nicer tasting. She has her own little special plot and she grows tomatoes and cucumbers and things she wants to grow. Things taste better and you can just walk out the door and get what you want out of the garden.”

Listening to her story, you’ll experience even more joy for gardening. (I kind of felt like we were two little kids talking about playing outside in the dirt 😜)