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Planthropology
Planthropology
119. Plant Hoarding, the Garden Party, and Being an Influencer w/ Destin Noak
Ever wondered how working with plants could transform your life? Destin Noak, known online as the Texas Garden Guy, discovered gardening's therapeutic power during a period of uncertainty after leaving the Air Force in 2011. What began with his father's simple suggestion to till the backyard evolved into a passionate pursuit that would eventually open doors to a fulfilling career.
"It kind of gave me that relaxation, that therapy that I didn't know I needed," Destin explains, describing how working in the garden creates a meditative "white noise" that allows everything else to fade away. This accidental discovery became the foundation for a journey that would lead him from container gardening on an apartment balcony to managing a greenhouse filled with rare plants in his suburban yard.
Destin's pragmatic approach to gardening challenges makes him relatable to gardeners of all experience levels. Living with poor clay soil that "cracks when it hasn't rained for about two weeks," he turned to raised beds and container gardening as solutions rather than fighting an uphill battle. His collection now includes 50 fig trees, numerous desert roses, and rare succulents – all thriving in a modest subdivision lot. For gardeners struggling with less-than-ideal conditions, Destin's success offers both inspiration and practical strategies.
The conversation explores the evolution of Texas Garden Guy from pandemic hobby to multimedia platform, including his co-hosting role on The Garden Party podcast and recent position with Nelson Plant Food. Throughout the episode, Destin emphasizes starting small, growing what you genuinely enjoy, and creating garden spaces that reflect your personal preferences rather than conventional standards. "Your garden can be whatever you want it to be," he insists – advice that liberates new gardeners from unnecessary pressure.
Want to meet Destin and Vikram in person? Join them at Plantapalooza 2025 at Smith's Garden Town in Wichita Falls, Texas on May 31st for a day of plant talk, community building, and garden inspiration. Check out Destin's content across social platforms as @TexasGardenGuy and catch The Garden Party podcast live every Wednesday at 7pm CT.
As always, thanks so much for listening! Subscribe, rate, and review Planthropology on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show keep growing and reaching more people! As a bonus, if you review Planthropology on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and send me a screenshot of it, I'll send you an awesome sticker pack!
Planthropology is written, hosted, and produced by Vikram Baliga. Our theme song is "If You Want to Love Me, Babe, by the talented and award-winning composer, Nick Scout. Midroll tunes are by Rooey.
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What is up? Plant people it's time once more for the Plantthropology podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vikram Baliga, your host and your humble guide in this journey through the sciences and, as always, my dearest friends. I am so excited to be with you today, y'all. I have another wonderful plant person and podcaster on the show for you today. My buddy, destin Nowak, better known across the internet as the Texas Garden Guy, has become something of a plant I'm going to call him an influencer I do it a couple times during the episode and definitely offend him for it but a plant staple in the garden education world in the state of Texas and across the internet. He puts out great content about his home garden, his greenhouse and all kinds of other things.
Speaker 1:Destin and I have gotten to be friends over the past couple of years. I have been on his garden party show quite a bit several times and we've gotten to hang out some and he is just a down-to-earth, nice, genuine, super cool dude. He has so much experience in the plant world in building greenhouses in home gardening and dealing with issues in the garden like poor soils and things like that, and he's mostly self-taught. He is one of the people I get to talk to who's come at gardening just because he loves it, not because he has training in it or anything else. He has learned about growing things himself and I think that's just the coolest thing.
Speaker 1:So after I don't know probably a year of trying to find a good time to have Destin on the show, we finally got it done and I'm so excited that you get to hear from him now. We talk about and you'll hear it a couple of times this episode that, if you're listening to this, when it drops or soon after, you could actually come to Wichita Falls, texas, and meet both Destin and I at Smith's Garden Town at Plantapalooza 2025. More on that later, but for now, let's jump into it. So grab your trowel and your bag of potting soil, give it a good slap and get ready for episode 119 of the Planthropology Podcast with my good buddy, destin Nowak, the Texas garden guy. Dude, I am so excited to get to talk to you today, destin, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, dude. It is my Friday, I'm in a very good mood. I get to go to a nursery tomorrow, so, like it's my kind of day, I'm happy about this.
Speaker 1:That's excellent. Well, thanks for coming on. We've been podcasting together sort of for a while on your show, the Texas Garden Guy, and finally had the opportunity to get you on here and I'm super excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I was getting jealous because you asked everybody else and I was like, am I doing something wrong? I was like why doesn't anyone ever ask me on their podcast? And you're like no, I just haven't gotten around. I was like you're fine, I was just messing with you. But like I did notice that I was like you're fine, I was just messing with you. But like I did notice that I was like am I a bad host? Do I not get invited on other people's podcasts? No, it's so. Honestly, that's such a weird thing Because, like, I think I did it. I podcasted for like two years before I started to like get on other shows, even like interviewing other podcasters, and I started to think the same thing, like am I bad? Bad at this? I promise you're not. You do a great job. But before we get too far down that road, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit? Where are you from? What do you do? How'd you get to where you are today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my name is Destin Nowak. I go by Texas Garden Guy on pretty much all the social medias. I think I even have a Pinterest account that I don't really check. But I'm just south of Houston, texas, in Brazoria County. I've been doing a lot of backyard gardening since I got out of the Air Force back in 2011. When we lived in an apartment, I had a balcony garden, and we live in a subdivision, like a lot of people in the little starter house with a tiny backyard, and so during COVID, I got the wild hair to start recording myself, and so that's when Texas Garden Guy was born. I have about 50 fig trees in a 16th of an acre with a bunch of desert roses.
Speaker 2:I'm a plant hoarder is what I am, that's. I'm a certified plant hoarder and we do our podcast, the Texas garden guy show. That's my old one. The garden party. That's how I met Vikram. We had him on and we were pretty good buddies ever since. I have a lot of people like you that are way more qualified to talk about plants on my podcast than I am, so I enjoy having you as a friend now. We've met once now and we'll meet again soon. Actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But we've got a cool event coming up. Actually, I'm trying to think of when this episode actually releases. I think it's like next week, as this episode comes out.
Speaker 2:That's perfect. Could be good to promote like for the 31st yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're like a week out from a really cool event in Wichita Falls and we'll give you all the details a little bit later in the episode. But if you're in like the Metroplex sort of North Texas area, put it, put May 31st on your calendar to come see us at Smith's Garden Town yeah, and that'll be a lot of fun. But palooza plant plant, a palooza plant, a palooza who can't? Did you come up with that name, or was that felicia?
Speaker 2:I? I don't remember. I think maybe I did. I'm one of those. I'm a dad without kids. Like that's what I am. I sing songs about what I'm doing and I make up names for, like, I am a dad without children is what it is. I'm just a full-blown dad yeah, so I don't know me or felicia came up with, I forget that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, so so did you like grow up gardening because you're talking about? You've gotten into the past several years, but was that a thing is when you were a kid, or is that sort of newer later in life?
Speaker 2:so probably like you, I spent a lot of time outside nowadays with with kids the way they are, with the video games, and I mean we had video games back in the day but I feel like we were restricted a lot like on how much you can play them Like, cause I remember during school, when school was out, we'd literally get woken up at seven 30 in the morning when the sun is coming up, kicked out of the house, locked the doors and like it'd be like a what do they call it? Solitary, where they slide the plates to the doors and on the front porch you only come inside if there's a number. Two, because my dad worked shift work. My dad worked a lot of like nights and day shift and stuff and so he'd be sleeping during the day and then having to work all night.
Speaker 2:But my grandma was a big influence, my dad's mother. She grew up in Florida in like the Pensacola area and anybody who knows like nursery industry knows like that's a big like plant nursery area and so she grew up working in the nurseries. And my other side of my dad's family was they're a bunch of a bunch of German and Czech folks and they garden and grew a lot of their own food. They grew up as assistance farmers on like cotton plantations, it's like that. Like picking cotton, picking okra, it's like that. So we grew up growing a lot of stuff, growing a lot of stuff in the backyard, trying to be as self-sufficient because we were just broke. So growing up, my grandpa gardened, my dad gardened, but like I didn't want anything to do with it. Like when we're kids, we don't want anything to do with what our parents think are cool.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until I got out of the Air Force and came back. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, and my dad just says here's I need to till up the backyard. He goes here's the tiller, Just go till, just take your mind off everything, relax, you got some time to kill.
Speaker 2:And so when I started tilling, started working in the garden, my mind kind of just went to like a that white noise in the TV, like back in the day for younger people, back in the day, at like 2 am, the TV would just go fuzz, like there would be no 24-hour stuff, like there'd just be fuzz and just be white noise. And I'd fall asleep every night to white noise. And that's what happens when I'm in the garden sometimes. It's just I get the white noise and everything else kind of shuts off. And that's what happened. It kind of gave me that relaxation, that therapy that I didn't know I needed, and so that's how I kind of got into it, how I got hooked.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, man. And yeah, I mean, just the spending time outside gardening is so good for just your mental and physical health, right, like being out in the sun, being active, like it's so good for you. And you're right, like, my son is definitely into video games Bradley's definitely into video games, but we've been talking about it. He's really excited this year about growing some tomatoes, like. What's funny is he doesn't like at the moment, even like tomatoes, like he's not into it. But I do think, like once he's like oh, grew this, like we got to eat it, like we got to try it. And there's like a lot of science behind that too. They've done tons of studies that kids and adults like when you grow your own food, it like means more right and and people are more likely to eat it absolutely like.
Speaker 2:if you like pizza. If you like pizza. What you could do is you could say, hey, I'm gonna grow all my toppings for my pizza this year. Say I'm gonna grow the tomatoes, grow the tomatoes, mix the tomato sauce, I'm going to grow the basil, I'm going to grow some oregano, I'm going to make my own Italian seasoning. You could like literally talk a kid into making it all of it, growing his own pizza toppings. If you want to go wild, you can teach them how to make wheat, but that's kind of a little hard to do, impossible, but I mean it's a little tough. But you could really talk your kid into growing what they actually like to eat and get them interested in what they want to grow. So it's definitely a cool idea to get your kids involved as early as possible, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, and so kind of go into that. You mentioned like growing things you like, and that's one of the best pieces of advice I think we can give people. Like in the garden is. It's kind of weird. It's like people have this idea of like what a garden, like a home garden, should look like, and they're like I need to grow tomatoes, I need to grow peppers and whatever, like, whatever it is, but then a lot of people end up growing things that are honestly kind of difficult to start out with and they end up growing things they don't want to eat and then they get discouraged and so, like, I think one of the best things you can do is like pick three things you like and just go for it.
Speaker 2:Yep, absolutely. That's always my recommendation. When people ask me, hey, how do I get started gardening? I tell them well, what do you like to eat? Pick one of those, don't. That's the other thing. People will go out and get 50 tomato plants their first year and they get overwhelmed. But, like, if it wasn't for like my wife, I wouldn't even grow squash, cause like I like squash, as you can hear, but it's not my favorite, but like she loves it, so I definitely grow quite a few plants of it. So like, but if it was just me, I'd probably just grow desert roses, plumerias, peppers and tomatoes and figs.
Speaker 1:Figs are a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, figs are so easy. But you're absolutely right, though you should definitely customize this blanket mindset of what a garden is like farmer Brown down the roads got everything.
Speaker 1:Your backyard could be whatever you want it to be. Your garden be whatever you want it to be. That's yeah, I think it's really important. So, as you got started, you mentioned that you were growing things on your patio which you could do in an apartment. You can do in a dorm room like there's. You can grow stuff anywhere you are. But you've really like I don't know taking the bull by the horns here and just seeing like your videos in your garden and all of that, like you've got a ton of stuff too much stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, my dad was over here this past weekend and anytime my dad goes over, my dad's got 100 acres and so anytime, anytime he comes over, he's got a tin he's like a couple acre lot reserved for a pecan orchard, and so we mix in some figs. There's a pomegranate, he's just a pomegranate now too. But Eric told me he comes over, I load him up. My loquat was getting too big for the pot and so I was like, hey, you want a loquat? And he's like, yeah, so he loaded up my loquat, but he was telling me walking around and he was like, dude, he goes.
Speaker 2:If you ever move this is going to be bad, this is going to. Yeah, he's like I don't know which. He goes, it's a lot, and he's like it doesn't look bad, but like I just don't know how you're going to move all this stuff. And it can be overwhelming for sure. But, like when you're living in an apartment, you'd be surprised how much you can grow in containers on a balcony, as long as you have enough sunlight and as long as you can get irrigation.
Speaker 2:I was telling our friend Kelsey, who's in Austin, she has a balcony garden and what we used to do is we unscrewed the faucet diffuser and we put a quick connect adapter with those shrinking hoses and so we literally quick connect the water hose to the kitchen sink and then run it out the balcony and water the garden like that and then, when we're done, just disconnect it. So there's a lot of ways to find that you can do things on the balcony. It's super simple and it's and honestly, container gardening is easier than in-ground gardening like 100%.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Well, and you can control it more, right, Like you can make the soil whatever you need it to be. You can control for weeds pretty well. There's always going to be weeds, Like I think. I think so. So let me get your take on this a little bit, because I think what people end up wanting is like a low maintenance garden, and I try to tell people that's not a real thing. Like there's lower maintenance, there's things you can do to make it easier, but there's never like, like you're you have to work in it. How do you keep in your garden, Cause you have a lot of plants and I know it's something you love, but how do you keep from getting overwhelmed by it? Like, how do you keep doing the things, like even on days when you get home and you're just like well there.
Speaker 2:There are definitely days where I'm overwhelmed. This spring got me really overwhelmed when I opened up my greenhouse and I got a 20 by 12 greenhouse. It's eight foot tall. I had citrus touching the roof. I couldn't walk in my greenhouse so there were certain things that died because my hose couldn't reach all the way back there to water them over the winter.
Speaker 2:But just unloading the greenhouse and trying to, because I have to empty out the greenhouse to put stuff back in, like I have to get everything out to organize it and I'm super OCD. Like even when my wife helps me water the garden, I have a certain way that I pull the hose out to go to this side and like I had to learn like let her do it however, she wants to do it, she's trying to help. So like I'm just OCD. But I enjoy the monotony of pulling weeds. I enjoy monotonous tasks, like at work, sometimes building spreadsheets. I don't mind it, I like that's what pulling weeds is repotting. It's all like monotonous work sometimes and it's like I was saying earlier, with like tilling, it's white noise. It's kind of like I know I'm going to redo this, I know I'm going to transplant this. I know I got to transplant this. It's kind of that white noise again where it's kind of like therapy, you just shut your brain off and pull weeds, like that's my thing.
Speaker 2:And as far as like maintenance free, like you said, there's nothing that is like maintenance free. But hydroponics are pretty low maintenance. They're about as low maintenance as you can get. That lettuce grow farm stand that I got, that tower that's got the pump in the bottom, that's about as low maintenance as you can possibly get. I mean you gotta clean it once every like six months when you swap it out, I mean add some nutrients every once in a while. But like other than that, it's pretty low maintenance. But like you're saying, ants and weeds are two constants ants, you're never going to get rid of all. The weeds, you're never going to get rid of all the ants it's're never going to get rid of all the ants.
Speaker 1:It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1:Nope, no, and I think there's something to that too.
Speaker 1:Like I think like you were talking about these repetitive tasks, but more than that, like something that you care for and that you have to be intentional about caring for, like your garden or specific plants, like it's really good for you.
Speaker 1:I think people, people that get bogged down in, especially I spent years working in the greenhouse, right, like years running a greenhouse, and now I have plants in my office, but it's like four of them instead of a whole greenhouse full of plants, and I think it's easy to get bogged down in the desk job and just, I don't know, some days I get home and I'm just so mentally drained that I just sit there. But Bradley and I have been going out and going so mentally drained that I just sit there and I think being but Bradley and I have been going out and like going to the park now that it's warmer and getting outside, both stays and playing around, and it's like I don't know how to explain it to people that don't experience it that it just clears your head. It really helps, like it's for my mental health at least. It's a huge deal.
Speaker 2:Well, and another thing that I try to explain to people is we all know there's only 24 hours a day, right? You have to get a certain amount of hours of sleep, you know you got to go to work for eight hours.
Speaker 2:So what are you going to do in those 12 hours that you have, or those six hours you have free, eight hours you have free? Are you going to sit in front of the TV, watch a football on Sundays? Are you going to go outside and garden? Are you going to go to dinner? Are you going to go here? You're going to do that. Are you going to go on vacation? Cut out football. I used to be a diehard football fan, watching football every Monday, thursday, play them every game every day of the week. Now I cut out football and I found my production levels got so much higher because I thought about all the hours, because I wasn't just watching the cowboys, I'd watch all the games. So, like you gotta see, you gotta decide what's more important. Is it the leisure or is it the production? Find more satisfaction in production Than I do in the leisure, because then I feel like when I do sit down, I sleep better and I feel like I deserve it when I sit down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So you know, you mentioned the differences between container gardening or we could call that raised bed gardening too and in the ground, and there's definitely some huge ones, I would think, especially in like a heavy clay soil, like you've got down there in your part of the state, like that's got to be such a challenge.
Speaker 2:People ask me about in-ground gardening. I tell them I don't know, because I don't do any in-ground gardening. I'm in a subdivision where they brought in the cheapest fill dirt. It literally cracks. When it is a rain, for about two weeks my ground will just start to crack and you can literally drop an air. I've almost dropped an air pod in the crack and literally it's going to come out like on the other hemisphere.
Speaker 2:So it's insane how bad the soil is. And you mean you, can I tell people you go dig a hole five, five foot deep and come out the next day and it's just still filled with water. It doesn't drain. So yeah, that's why it's so important for me to bring my soil in, because it's just gonna be so much better, better, and I would say the minimum bed depth would be 12 inches. I make like eight inch beds, but 12 inches is probably the minimum, 18 if you can do it. But yeah, you're able to manipulate that soil a lot easier. I mean, from your time in, like the ag extension, like having to do soil samples and amend stuff, like it's a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, for sure. And then why fight it forever? And raised beds are such a great opportunity to and not just like a heavy clay soil. But maybe you're in a more urban environment and you don't have a lot of empty yard space but you have a patio.
Speaker 1:I know we put in some raised beds one time at a local high school and they had this sort of like interior courtyard kind of thing, so it was ringed by the school and there's a courtyard in the middle and there was a couple of trees and some in-ground beds but they were like the size of my desk, like it wasn't much, right. And so we brought in some raised beds, we brought in soil and the culinary class and I think one of the ag classes. We're managing them and growing basil and onions and herbs and things like that. And it was like such a cool deal. And I know there are some like purists out there, some garden purists that are like it's not in the ground, it's not right there's. There are fewer and farther between than I think they used to be. But I think we do what we got to do right.
Speaker 2:I get the weirdest comments and faces when I tell people I've never done a soil sample. I've never done one soil sample. But I bring in my soil though I bring in all my soils. I don't even get it by the truckload because for me it's easier to manage with the bags because I've got a three-foot gate. It's hard to get I to manage with the bags because I've got a three foot gate. It's hard to get like I have to have some free space to store a pile of soil as well. So bagged soil, I really don't have to worry about testing the soil, unless I was having issues. But luckily I haven't had many issues with soil.
Speaker 1:So that's good, that's good. And so you talked about your greenhouse a little bit, and I know you're a. You said plant hoarder, I was going to say collector. We can cut that however you want. I'm a, I've accepted it. So what kind of things do you have in your greenhouse? What are some of the cooler specimens you've got in there?
Speaker 2:So I started out when I first started gardening with a couple cuttings of figs and I got them off Facebook Marketplace because growing up, growing up, any family in Texas, their grandma had a fig tree in the backyard. So like I wanted a fig tree and so I went and got cuttings and you find out how easy they are to propagate and went from having five fig trees to a hundred fig trees. So, like, I got my license. Make sure if you're going to sell plants in the state of Texas, you go through the Texas Department of Agriculture and get your license, because they will fine you per plant.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a fair price to pay to not get in trouble, yeah. But then over the years I've gotten more into like. A couple of years ago I started getting into dyniums and plumerias, a lot of the or the malvacays, the dog-baiting family, and kind of got me into more succulents and cactus as well. So I hear, lately it's been more Dorstenia gigas, a lot of euphorbias, just a lot more rarer stuff. I'm moving away slowly from lots of big things to lots of small things. I don't know if that's like a Tetris move to where I only have space for small things or what, because if I ever had more property I'd probably go back to getting big stuff until I ran out of room for big stuff, sure, and then I'd get the little stuff. So here lately it's been more cactuses and succulents, getting some rare varieties and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So my greenhouse, though, holds all my tropicals, so palmarias, hibiscuses, cactuses, a lot of like my rare stuff. I put cactuses a lot of like my rare stuff I put in a grow room in my garage every winter. I don't trust my greenhouse to keep it above a lot of your desert roses, succulents. They don't like it below 50 degrees, right, so when it gets like to the high 40s, low 50s, I bring all that stuff indoors in my garage with the heat lamps, space heater lights, and so they never actually really go dormant. But in this part of Texas I'm in zone 9B we only really need a greenhouse per se for about two months out of the year. We had a pretty wild winter this year five inches of snow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:And it hasn't gotten hot yet. It hasn't really gotten hot yet either, which I'm surprised. It's almost mid-May and we haven't gotten to mid-90s yet. It's very strange.
Speaker 1:It is weird. And so as we record this, yeah, it's early first week in May, beginning of the second week in May and we just had some folks here in town from Cancun, from an aeroponics company in Cancun, and it's already hot there, it's always hot there, but they were freezing. And it's already hot there, it's always hot there, but they were freezing. And it's funny because we actually got rain and if you know anything about Lubbock, texas, that's a rare event. So these folks come in and they land and it's raining and 52 degrees. It's the beginning of May and they were like what is going on? But it's been an interesting year. We had a little bit of heat early, so we had maybe a week in the mid-90s the heck in.
Speaker 2:March and then it cooled back off. Yeah, it's been pretty mild. I looked, because I recycle posts, sometimes recycle videos. I'll go back like to the year before, like what was I doing? And I noticed how much bigger my tomatoes were already and I think it's strictly because it was so much warmer already. I feel like it got really warm early last year and it stayed hot. It stayed really hot and that's one thing like for beginner gardeners is, every year is different. If you think you've got it figured out, wait till next season, wait till next spring, because it's just, it's so crazy. Texas weather I mean sweater in general, it's nuts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nuts. That's interesting, so do you. So would you pull all of your plants out of the greenhouse during the summer?
Speaker 2:Well, I take my plastic off.
Speaker 2:So, because I live on the coast here in Houston. I don't have a conventional greenhouse. I've got a shelter lodge at 12 by 20, basically a hoop house, and so the plastic comes off because we start in August. September. We started getting tropical storms, hurricanes, and anybody around this area who's got a hoop house or a greenhouse didn't know what it's like. We had 110 mile an hour winds last year so I pulled the plastic off and I've been able to recycle that plastic for like three years now. This is the third year so I helped help preserve the plastic because the UV rays destroy plastic panels or plastic for greenhouses.
Speaker 2:And then I take the plastic off and I put a shade cloth a 50% shade cloth on top of the greenhouse and so stuff like tomatoes that usually get baked by mid-June, july, that heat I get about an extra month or so of growth being protected from the shade cloth, and Farmer Froberg is the first person that showed me about that. He built a hoop house and grew a whole crop of red snapper tomatoes under a shade cloth and he got a big production, so it helps. A lot of my plants Like citrus will get some sunburn on their leaves, so I keep all my citrus in the greenhouse year round. They stay in big containers but they don't really move. They stay in there okay, gotcha, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because that would be a nightmare in a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah man, it's one of the reason why I grow stuff in containers is because number one my soil soil is terrible. Number two when we first moved into our house and this is another tip for early beginner gardeners when you move into your house, before you dig or plant anything, call 8-1-1. Call 8-1-1. And that's Texas, at least, it's 8-1-1, I think.
Speaker 2:Call 8-1-1, because they'll come out and map out your yard and tell you where the utility lines are, where the fiber is, where the gas line, where the water lines are, and when they did that in my house it looked like I always describe it as, even in the nineties the screensaver. They had all the different colored pipes you know like that's, that's my backyard.
Speaker 2:Look like like pretty much five feet from the fences all the way around. So like I was like, well, I'm not putting anything in the ground. But also I don't plan on being here forever. I want to have stuff with me when I go and so, heaping stuff in pots, next five years or so, when I move out, I'll be able to take it with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:But I also like to show people that you can grow a lot of stuff in containers and get away with it. Citrus trees can live in containers indefinitely 100%.
Speaker 1:I'm jealous that you can grow citrus so well down there. It's just it's too cold here. We can do it in a greenhouse and my mom actually has some couple of Meyer lemons and a key lime and a few other things. Oh, she did so. My stepdad had built her. We had an old shed or they have an old shed out in their backyard that he kind of converted to a greenhouse and everything was staying real warm. But over the winter they check it once a week, once every other week just to water it.
Speaker 1:They don't need a whole lot in the winter. But a I don't know if it was one fox or a pair of foxes had gotten in to the greenhouse but couldn't get back out, and they were in there for a week and just wreaked havoc on all of her plants Because they were just stuck and like. So she lost some stuff. But so you can do like a citrus appear in a container if you're real careful, yeah, but no, I'm jealous of people that it's like oh, it's fine, it's happy, whatever yeah, the.
Speaker 2:I did an experiment, so I had a. I had a meyer lemon that someone had given me. I think it was, I think it was ungrafted, I think it was just a limb that someone had probably gave to me, but it had never put, it, never put out a limb like a lemon for me at all, and I had it in a rolling container. And I had a frost Satsuma in one of those rolling containers too, yeah, and I was like, okay, we're going to get snow, we're going to get a freeze. I'm just going her out here to see what happens and the frost satsuma held up. It held up. The meyer lemon did not, obviously, but the frost satsuma held up and they say that they're. The frost varieties are cold tolerant down to 10 degrees, which doesn't necessarily always mean 10 degrees in the container right sure 10 degrees like cold.
Speaker 2:They mean like mature roots in the ground. So I was surprised that it held up as well as it did and it dropped all its leaves but it came right back the graft. It didn't add very little dieback, it was nuts.
Speaker 1:It's pretty impressive. That's super cool, super cool. Well so, looking at the time, this is actually a great time to take a quick break, and you've been. Before we go to a break, you've been sort of alluding to all the stuff you teach people about plants and all the cool stuff you get to do as a plant communicator. I was going to call you an influencer, and you really are, but I don't want to offend you, you're an influencer.
Speaker 2:I hate the term influencer so much.
Speaker 1:And I know you do. So when we come back we're going to talk about how Destin's an influencer and about a new gig that he's got. Well, hey there, welcome to the mid-roll Fancy meeting you here. How are your houseplants? Are they doing? Well? I hope they are. Give them a nice little stroke on the leaf just for me. Tell them I sent you. Hey, thanks for listening so far. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I have. It's been a lot of fun talking to Destin and, again, I love just getting to talk to my friends on this show.
Speaker 1:Speaking of that, there are a couple of things coming up that I just want you to be aware of. Not really big format changes, but since Planthropology started, it has been loosely tied to my job right here at Texas Tech University as a professor in the department, and I was talking to my department chair and we're at an interesting time of transition in the department. I said, hey, what do you think about me sort of carving this out and making it a side project of my own? And so he was like yeah, that's fine. In fact, I'm starting another podcast with a colleague called Deep Roots through my college here, and more information on that soon. You'll hear plenty about it, I promise. But plant topology now is kind of just my thing and I have nothing but respect and admiration and I'm so grateful to Texas Tech and the Department of Plant and Soil Science for supporting it this far and it means the world to me and just a big final thank you to them. It's not the last you'll hear about this, but I just wanted you to know that some things are changing just a little bit. I think some of the guests I'll bring on may change just a little bit the format of some of the episodes, but same old Plant Anthropology, the same thing you have come to expect.
Speaker 1:If you want to support the show, go leave us a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you can. If you want to pick up some merch, go to planthropologypodcastcom. If you want to financially support the show, go to buymeacoffeecom. Slash planthropology and for the price of a coffee you can buy me coffee and hosting fees and other things, now that I'm slightly less supported by a university. Aside from that, I've got a couple of new projects coming up Again.
Speaker 1:Follow me across the internet as the Plant Prof or as Planthropology, but I also just started a sub stack newsletter and this will be deeper dives into some of the stuff we talked about on here, a lot of the stuff I talked about on my social media, so follow me. You can find me at Vikram Baliga. You can look up the plant prof. And my newsletter is called office hours. You've got questions. That may be a place that get answered, so go subscribe to that.
Speaker 1:There's a link in the description and we talked about in the beginning of the episode and we talked about later in the episode as well, that we've got an event coming up at Smith's Garden Town in Wichita Falls, texas, on May 31st 2025. So if you're anywhere in the Metroplex, anywhere close to Wichita Falls and would love to come see us, we would love to see you there. So again, that's Smith's Garden Town May 31st, all day, while the nursery is open, and come see us for Plantapalooza 2025. And without any more blabbering, let's get back to the episode. So I apologize for calling you an influencer.
Speaker 1:I know, that's like a gross word. Someone called me that the other day and I was like you have got to stop, like you've got to stop with that.
Speaker 2:It's not so. I don't. The term influencer I don't have a problem with is when people call themselves influencers. Like it just sounds. It sounds cringy. You know what I mean? Like oh, I'm an influencer. Like when I put people aside, I create gardening content. When I put people aside, I create gardening content. I create a backyard gardening content. That's what I do. I'm not trying to influence. If someone calls me an influencer, it's okay, but for me to call myself an influencer, it just sounds cringy as hell. And when people tell me they're an influencer too or something like that, I'm like dude, don't do that man, I'm just a gardener who has the camera on sometimes. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:It's like giving yourself a nickname, right, oh?
Speaker 2:dude, like Texas Garden Guy, I give myself that nickname.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm the plant prof, I do it too, like we're all doing it. We're all out here doing it, whatever, I guess not. Well, hey, you're in good company, but let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about the garden guy, because it's really grown into something super cool. Yeah, it's evolved, it's definitely evolved. Uh, when I started out doing the social media stuff it was I think my first handle was like hoa homestead, because I was watching all these homesteading channels and I was like, oh, I'm gonna show what it's like doing stuff. And uh, yeah, and then it was just my name and then I was literally on a group chat with Farmer Froberg and Gardening with Des. I was like, hey, I got to come up with a name, like if something rolls off the tongue, and I was like I've had chat GPT and I came up with it in five minutes. But like, so we came up with like Texas garden guy and I was like that's it. I was like, yeah, and as it's evolved, I'm trying to. I used to be the guy that was like spring all the time and I feel like as a gardener and as like in a content creator, I've really evolved. You ever go back and watch like your first videos. How bad is it, dude?
Speaker 1:How bad like you know, I'm always like should I delete this Like? And I never do because it's, it's out there or whatever. But there's a few of my old ones that I'm just like oh, what was I doing? Like, what was I thinking?
Speaker 2:When you're trying to find like what kind of content you're going to make, what your niche is. It's really frustrating because you'll get like a little bit of success and then it'll encourage you to keep making videos like that. So, like some of my first videos were debunking plant myths. So I did a video where I used expired milk. I did like a half and a half dilution and used it for as a uh for powdery mildew, anti-fungal like, and I was like in my whole garden smell like rotten milk for like a month. Like I did the one video and I refuse to do a follow-up it is the electroculture video. Dude, I literally get a dozen comments a day on TikTok. Where's the update? Where's the update? Where's the update? Dude, like I literally hate myself for making that video because it keeps giving dude, the electric, the electric.
Speaker 2:And I've been seeing I don't know what it is, but I've been seeing more videos of people talking. Today I saw a video of a guy. He drove a ground copper rod into the ground, put a copper cable on it to a copper bowl, filled it with water and salt and then he stood in it and meditated and he's talking about grounding and I was like what am I even? And this dude has like 700 000 followers on instagram and he preaches the book of electroculture. Dude, like more power to you, dude, do you? I feel like everybody should do whatever they want to do, but, like man, it's just the sum of the things, dude, some of the things yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it feels like my algorithm is like betraying me, like actively betraying me, because something will pop up and I'm like man, why, like, why would you think I wanted this? You make an interesting point that there's kind of two sides to it. I agree with you. Actually, like I I'm out here yelling about bananas and all these weird plant hacks, but like I also think, also think that you know if it makes you happy, if it's not hurting anyone, like whatever, like do it, do you right. But I think where it gets to be a problem is some of these big creators that and, like you said, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of followers, and they end up telling people stuff that doesn't work, yeah, and then they, these folks, spend money and go out and try it and do all this stuff and then they end up disappointed and discouraged from gardening and like that's the opposite of what we should be doing.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I'm I don't want any censorship, I don't want anybody to be like so I did, I'm at the, I'm at. The train of thought is like people should just do whatever they want to do, make the kind of videos. We know what they're doing. They're trolling to get more views and put on them whatever. And if people don't do their own research and it's really on them, this is america make your own decisions. We all have the ability to go put rotten milk out in the yard if you want to like, if you want to spend a thousand dollars on copper, go ahead, whatever. So I mean because I've dealt with it too. I mean I've had videos where I've put out not so great information and it came out and like, well, should I take it down or should I leave it up? And you're kind of torn if it's doing good, because the worst videos do better.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, because people start fighting in the comments, absolutely man.
Speaker 2:So like it's bizarre. But I mean I think we just kind of like I was saying like let people do their own research. Just don't believe everything you see on the internet. Everybody Do your own research and even then it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's interesting. I was talking with a couple of guests before you and he's another garden creator garden guy Muskoka, up in Canada, yeah, and he was talking about how a lot of times he would be like, oh, you can look that up. But then there is something about, and I think one of the good things that we do as garden creators is we can put things in context right, because you Google something and it's like there's 5 million results for something For sure and it's like how do you know what's real, how do you know what works? And so I think we have a cool opportunity and a cool space to really teach people stuff and have fun doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, and I feel like I try to be as responsible as I can with my responses and my content and do as much research as I can do, and I also have. We built this community now of the garden party community, like where we check each other, like speaking of like Chad G PetT earlier, like everybody was creating like the action figure version of themselves, and stuff and our buddy Jeremy over at Dirty Punk Gardening.
Speaker 2:Like he hates AI, he hates Canva, he's the arts, he's an artist man and so, like I sent him like my t-shirt design and I did on Canva and he was like, did you do this on Canva? And I was like, yeah, and he goes, I'll take it and I'll do it how. But like he did an action figure of himself with like ChatGPT, and like he had people coming out of the woodwork to criticize him and like, and that's a sweet guy, he's not used to getting the feedback right it's like and he's because everything he does is so wholesome and nice, like I.
Speaker 2:I was like I went through his comments. I was like there's like two bad comments, jeremy, this is not bad. Like, so we'll go to one of my videos like hey man, I'm sorry. Someone's like what are you growing in your garden? Cake frank. It's like like, go to my video. Look at the comments. These are not that bad. I was like I don't people are so mean dude, but it's so funny though.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because I will go and troll people's comments sometimes, like I mostly stay out of the comment section. I mostly stay out of my comment section. Yeah, doesn't doesn't mean I'm gonna stay out of everybody else's comment section, but like it's not to take people's criticism and when it comes to people teaching you stuff on the internet, you gotta do your own research a lot of times. Yeah, because everything that works in my backyard might not work in your backyard. You know what works in my backyard may not work in the person like literally a mile away. Yeah, the soil type, the shade, it's just it's so different everywhere you got to do your own research.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every garden is unique, for sure, and I think that's again that's a really good message to send, because it's the context matters, right? Like context is everything, and so you could have a weird tree that has roots in the garden and you've got shade and it totally changes the whole thing, which again is a good opportunity to talk about that. Like, when we're out in the garden doing something, it's like oh, there's this tree is going to do this and this, or I put this here for this reason. Yeah, but kind of going back to so, the garden party is a lot of fun, by the way, and if you're out there and you haven't listened to it, you absolutely should. I'm on as much as I can be.
Speaker 1:You're very busy, but it's so much fun it's live. Do you do Wednesday nights? Is it Wednesday nights?
Speaker 2:Every Wednesday at 7 pm, central Standard Time.
Speaker 1:Okay and do and it's, is it, do you have? So I'm just asking like technical, specific questions now Is it through your texas garden guy youtube or is it its own garden party now?
Speaker 2:So it's through the texas garden guy youtube channel and then if you go on spotify apple podcast even on fate we, we live stream on facebook and youtube every wednesday at 7 pm. You can watch it afterwards, obviously there, but you can download it on spotify or apple podcast. We're moving up in the rankings. I didn't know, I didn't know about rating, so podcast ratings. So if you don't already go rate, play topology and give it a five-star rating on Spotify because it matters. And I asked, I did one week of asking people to go rate it and we've gone up 31 spots. We're number 91 in the country right now.
Speaker 2:So's pretty good but the thing to know is like there's a lot of like commercially produced podcasts. Now it's hard to build up the rankings because you have like celebrities and like the big corporations producing podcasts now it's hard to compete with like professional audio oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then you've got some of the big podcast networks that push them out through their channels and they've got a production team, and my production team is this guy, it's just me and I know yours is just you. And so to be in the top 100 is awesome, right? That's incredible. Yeah, interesting about the garden podcast space is it covers so much ground and you'll see some like I'm just going to call some out because they're amazing like in defense of plants is huge, it's a huge podcast. Crime pays and botany doesn't is a huge podcast and these are like top one or two percent shows. But then the gap I think sometimes people understand just on the number side, like social media, has thrown off a lot of our perceptions of things, I think. Because, like on social media, if you get 100,000 views on a video, like that's pretty good, but there's people out there getting tens of millions on videos and on a podcast, if you're getting like several hundred downloads, like you're doing, pretty good.
Speaker 2:Right, no for sure. I mean and it's so hard to understand how popular someone is Like we bring in the people we want to talk to. I mean, that's number one. We bring people on like you, whether you have a hundred thousand followers or what. We bring people we want to talk to.
Speaker 2:And so, like I started going through some of these charts and like some of these people, like they have podcasts but they don't necessarily have like a big following on Instagram or and you start going through it and it's like wow, this is different. It's like you can't always assume that like, say, if I have a big TikTok star, come on the podcast, and we only put the podcast out on Facebook, youtube, spotify, and then his audience doesn't always translate, you know. So, like it's hard to know who to bring on. So we just, we are the garden party, we're here to party, we want to party with you and we try to bring in people that people want to hear. And so, yeah, with Phil, and Phil is my configly area, phil's figs is maybe the nicest human on the face of the earth.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then we had Dez on. Like you, originally, vic from was going to be a third member of the garden party. I was trying to steal him.
Speaker 2:I was like dude, I had a logo already. I had a logo designed already. It was going to be me Phil and Vic Room, but I think at the time you had like two podcasts and an NPR show and a family and a class and I think you just taken a new job to the new position and so I it was originally. I was like dude, I'll pay you. I was like, what do I need you for? I got paid for an hour a week. It all worked out. It all worked out because we got Dez and Dez has been on quite a few times.
Speaker 2:I've known Dez out of everybody which, besides Farmer Froberg, I've known her the longest out of anybody and she is just fantastic. And I was noticing I would reach out to a lot of female content creators and gardeners and they weren't always super comfortable coming on and talking to me and Phil and as soon as I got Dez on, it really helped kind of make them feel warm and welcome. It really helped with that. And so now we've had a lot more female content creators and gardeners on and we try to create like a open space for everybody and we also want to hear different opinions because, like you got Phil, he's the East coast surfer. You got Des. She's the Austin hippie. And again me, I'm in Houston, I'm a blue collared gardener and so like it's really a broad spectrum of points of view. So like I think it's a really good, a really good setup and it was worked out for the best.
Speaker 1:It's so nice yeah, well, and something that I think is cool and it's something that I've kind of experienced just through my own content creation, specifically actually through this podcast, but just in general, is the cool stuff just for you personally, that texas garden guys led to like opportunities to go do shows and have merch and like do meetups and meet all kinds of cool people, but but it's also led to like a new gig for you, right, like that's such a cool deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, no, like last year, we were doing our meetups for a couple of years now where we would say, hey, we're going to be at Jorge's nursery, everybody show up and we're going to do a walkthrough, and this kind of led to like every year I do more and more meetups and we'll just do nursery things. And then last year, um, the Texas nursery landscape association reached out to me take over their entire social media, and so I got to. I had no idea what I was getting into, by the way, I had no idea how huge that thing was and like they're like here, won't you be here this time, here this time? And I was like, oh, my God, so I'm doing it again this year. So that is one gig that definitely has been nice. I love that. And I've also built relationships with companies that are in the green industry, like Nelson Plant Food, which I announced last night on the podcast that I've accepted an outdoor sales position with them. So I'll be getting to go travel around in nurseries and plant shops and growers and stuff and stuff that I love to do and also make content for me and them.
Speaker 2:So it's led to me to places that I don't have a four-year degree? I don't have. I don't have a two-year degree. I have like a semester and a half of community college. So to be able to get these opportunities, it tells me I'm doing something right. So that's, that's all. The people that come back every week and listen when you start seeing the garden party podcast is the easiest thing I do and it's the most fun I have because I don't edit anything. I literally we hear a chord and we go live and I get to talk to my garden buddies once a week. That is the most fun I have and it's the least amount of effort. It is so much fun and so to think that has led me to be able to get a position where it's like a full-time job in an industry that I love and I'm passionate about means everything, and I couldn't be more grateful man.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. That's so cool and it's such a. It's a good message too, cause, like you know, we I talk about this a lot on the show, but there are so many ways into plant science and into the plant industry and, whether that's you know, on any side of it, on the content creation, on nurseries, landscapes, food production, like whatever it is you want to talk about in the plant world. I think that's something that's so cool about. You said that we have a kind of a small knit community. Earlier. We may have been talking before the show, but it's true, like right, we have such a cool community and I think we see people coming into it from all walks of life and like all kinds of places, see people coming into it from all walks of life and like all kinds of places, but I I have always felt like our online, in person, whatever. The plant community is so supportive and so cool. I feel like very little competition in the in this world.
Speaker 2:I think it's just such a good group of people yeah, no, every time I, anytime I meet anybody, I, I will say that like me myself get awkward in certain positions, like I get a little overwhelmed with certain things. I'm not, I'm a social butterfly, but like I do get awkward in certain positions, like at the TNLA thing. My wife was videoing me and we're doing a thing and some lady walked up behind my wife and tapped her on the shoulder and she was like I love your husband. And my wife was like who the hell are you? I was like, oh crap, my wife's about to beat some lady. My wife is the opposite. She doesn't like people but like it's definitely different being in situations like that. But every time I meet, like when I met, met you, like it was like we know each other. That's the beauty of the internet we can.
Speaker 2:When I first started doing the podcast thing, I was doing it with me, jorge, and another guy and we were trying to get together once a week in person with schedules and everything, and so when I found out about like doing this stuff online, I I was like that is a game changer, man, because we can have people all around. We've had people from like England. We've had people from Washington on the podcast people from Canada. I mean it's been insane the amount of people we can get on from around the world just through the Internet. So it's so awesome, it's so freaking cool man.
Speaker 1:It's very cool and you were talking about meetups and I actually just want to plug our event because it's my podcast. We and I actually just want to plug our event because it's my podcast. We do it if obviously we should. So let's talk about that a little bit. And as we record this, I'm realizing I need to send a video for it, make and send a video for this to promote it. Oh see, you're beating me, You're ahead of me. Let's talk about Plantapalooza coming up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been wanting. I bet we've had Michael Fiore from Smith's Garden Town on the podcast a couple of times and he's a really cool, knowledgeable guy. And I've heard the stories about Smith's Garden Town because Des is from Wichita Falls, originally Cool. I've only spent a very brief time in Wichita Falls and it was not super enjoyable because I was in tech school for the Air Force. Oh yeah, the only thing Wichita Falls is really good for is Oklahoma's people coming over to get 4.0 beer instead of 3.2. Other than that, it's a bit of a garden town.
Speaker 2:So I've heard good things and we've been planning on doing something for a while now and we kind of just bit the bullet and said, hey, we're just going to make it happen, we're going to make it happen. It's a halfway. It's kind of like a halfway point for both of us because you're in lubbock, but I plan on doing some things in the way up to make a weekend out of it. So it's going to be a good time. We're going to have giveaways, we're going to do some live streams. It's a nice place, like people in the dallas area, because I never go that far.
Speaker 2:I never go that far north sure so it's a good opportunity for people like in the oklahoma area there are south oklahoma, dallas and that area to kind of make it their way up there and come hang out, and it's not going to be too hot yet, hopefully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hopefully, if we're lucky.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so that's May 31st at Smith's Garden Town, absolutely In Wichita Falls. Do you know what the times are? I don't remember the times for it.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to be like the duration of the time it's open. I think it's like maybe like 10 to 2 or something, but like we'll be there all day. So I mean, people show up, we'll be there. Yeah, they'll have all of us. It'll be me. You Gardening with Des. Michael Felicia will be there. The real brains behind the operation at Smith's Garden Town is Felicia 100%, 100%. She's what makes that multimedia empire go around. But have you been there before? Have you been there?
Speaker 2:I have not and I'm excited to go see it, yeah yeah, it's supposed to be huge, so I'm excited to go there and I'm sure I'll be leaving with some plants, obviously oh, I was thinking about that and I've got to kind of, so I'll be making a big loop.
Speaker 1:I've got like a work thing in kroll a couple of days before, which is just a it's in the middle of nowhere, like like an hour west of Wichita Falls, and then I'm probably going to go see my dad in the Metroplex after. But I'm like, how do I buy plants to take home and keep them alive in the back of the pickup for a couple of days? And like I just have to take a tarp. It'll be fine, we'll work it out.
Speaker 2:Just be Get some heat tolerant plants, it'd be all right. They like a little humidity in the backseat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be great. It'd be great.
Speaker 2:Let's do what I did Buy small plants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can like tuck in all the corners between stuff. It's perfect.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I mean it'll be exciting because we've met up at TNLA but you were kind of busy with like your booth. It's like we plan on doing like some kind of live stream. I want to do like a makeshift garden party. We'll see how we can go. I know my wife wants to go to the casino before we go, so she's going to spend all my plant money before we go to the meetup.
Speaker 1:So there you go, or maybe she'll win you a whole bunch more plant money.
Speaker 2:Or maybe she'll win me some plant money.
Speaker 1:We're going to go with that.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Think positive man. I'm well, I'm excited about it, I'm excited to hang out and I just appreciate your time and you coming on and chatting we. It was too. We waited too long to do this, but I'm glad we get to do it now. It was a lot of fun absolutely do it.
Speaker 2:Anytime, man, and you're all, you're always welcome. If you want to be a permanent member of the garden party, we'll make it happen you may talk me into it someday.
Speaker 1:we'll see, we'll see. But plug your stuff. Tell us where all we can find oh wait, no wait, don't do that yet. I forgot. I almost forgot. I have done this podcast for six years and at the end of every episode I ask my guests for a piece of advice, and you would have been the first one I forgot because I got so into chatting about stuff. But whatever it is, it can be about gardening, just about life in general. If there was like a thing you wanted our audience to take with them, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Man, that's a great question and I have been told by many teachers that I am a distraction to the others around me. So you would not be the first person you're not the first teacher that told me I'm a distraction. The thing I always tell people is start small with gardening, whether it's smart. We kind of touched on this in the beginning of the podcast. Start small when you're going to garden and start out with stuff you're going to eat. If you don't like okra, then don't buy okra. Obviously there'll be someone in your family who will eat it.
Speaker 2:But I think you've touched on this a couple of times in your podcast about growing stuff and it's just going to waste Like it's just a waste of food. It's food waste. It's a big deal that. And set up a compost pile. Set up some kind of compost for your food scraps like that I have. I have reduced so much stuff that I throw out, including like cardboard and paper. We shred a lot of cardboard and paper. It's my compost. We've reduced so much. We throw away by composting a lot of stuff. So don't buy so much and try to compost stuff so cool.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, it's great advice, great advice. Okay, now tell us where all we can find you.
Speaker 2:Dude, I am the Texas Garden Guy on all the platforms and the Catch the Garden Party podcast with Vikram Soon on the Texas Garden Guy YouTube channel or the Facebook page every Wednesday night at 7 pm Central Standard Time. And we actually just created a garden party Facebook group which I believe has about 600 members already now.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:We're building like a little community, so like if we don't get to your questions on the podcast, then you can definitely go ask it on there, and then people can, kind of we're trying to build a community of people who can help each other out. So it's so. I hate that people will only depend on us for answering questions. We should be a little more self-sufficient by helping each other out. So I think that's what the community we're trying to build.
Speaker 1:Very cool. That's awesome. Well, man, I enjoyed it. That was a lot of fun and I'm excited about seeing you soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah man, Two weeks from now this comes out.
Speaker 1:I think Destin's advice is excellent Start small, but also don't be scared of gardening. Just give it a try. What's the worst that you do? You kill some tomatoes. I've killed some tomatoes. I've killed a lot of tomatoes. But again, if you would like to come meet me and Destin especially Destin, he's cooler than I am Come see us at Plantapalooza 2025 at Smith's Garden Town on May 31st 2025. But aside from all that, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for being a part of Planthropology. You know I love you folks. You know that I do this for you.
Speaker 1:Planthropology is written, produced, hosted all of the things by me, yours truly, Vikram Baliga. Our opening music and closing music is by the award-winning composer, Nick Scout, and our mid-roll music is by my good buddy, Rui and his wonderful lo-fi dad beats. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of it. Again, Keep being kind to one another. If you have not yet been kind to one another, give that a try. We could use a lot more of it. Thanks for being really cool plant people. Keep doing that too, and I will talk to you very, very soon. Thank you.
