It’s that time of year when we are thinking of everything starting a new, and at least for those in the northern states, it is time to plant a garden. Can we garden as blind individuals? Is it really going to make a difference in my budget? Find out in this episode.

 

Click here to listen to the audio podcast and see the show notes…

 

Transcript

Pre-episode Intro

 

Kim: You can read a lot, and it’s wonderful, you know, we’re always about being informed and so forth, but just remember, um, that you’re gonna find a bajillion different ways and methods of gardening. I always tell people, “Nature was doing this stuff long before human beings ever came on to the scene.”

 

Chris: This is the Penny Forward podcast, a show about blind people building bright futures one penny at a time. I’m Chris Peterson, …

 

Liz: I’m Liz Bottner, …

 

MOe: And I’m MOe Carpenter.

 

Chris: And today, we are talking about the finances of gardening. Do you like to garden? Do you think you might like to garden, and you are afraid to get started because you’re unsure of whether you can be successful at it? Well today, we have Kim Elsworth on Clubhouse with us this afternoon, we’re recording this podcast episode live by the way, and she is an experienced gardener who is also blind, and is going to tell us about her experiences with gardening. And we also have one of our hosts, MOe Carpenter, who is going to act as a panelist for this particular discussion, so we will also be talking with her about her experiences with gardening. Kim, MOe, thanks for being here.

 

Kim: Thank you, Chris, thank you, Liz.

 

MOe: Always happy to be here. And talk about one of my favorite topics.

 

Chris: Well let’s get started. Um, most people know MOe already a little bit, so let’s start with Kim. Kim, why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your blindness, and your experiences with gardening?

 

Kim: Okay. Um, so, I am a mother of two grown daughters. I have a grandson. he is three. And I have worked for quite a number of years in the accessible tech industry, doing tech support. And, as far as my blindness, I was born blind, but the eye condition is unknown. It is thought that, that it happened sometime after I was born. So, basically, the last diagnosis they gave me was, kind of a, they called it a pseudo retinitis pigmentosa. Interestingly enough, but, I had a little bit of vision, but I lost all of my vision in 2010 due to narrow angle glaucoma. My gardening experience, I would dabble a little bit with plants that I received as gifts. Um, it first started out with the kids bringing me home little plants for Mother’s Day, and, you know, I could get them to grow, but then I’d transfer them, and they would become deceased. (Laugh.) And my daughters and I were just talking about that yesterday. How that didn’t start out, how that didn’t go so well.” But, one thing that happened was somebody brought me a spider plant, and it was in very poor condition, and I just thought it needed a little bit of tender loving care, and, then, before I realized it, the thing was getting huge and hanging down from the ceiling, and then I was giving little baby spider plants away to people trying to get, trying to get rid of them. And then, uh, that happened with a poinsettia, it was not doing well, and, um, I was able to help it to come back to life, and, and take care of it for a good long time. Then, my actual, really gardening experience, which I do gardening as a hobby. I first want to say that I do not consider myself to be a professional gardener, but I, do enjoy doing it as a hobby, and partaking of nature’s goodness. And uh, so, my husband died in 2016,  and I moved, uh, to Missouri in 2017, and then I began gardening, um, in 2018.

 

Chris: Thank you for that. MOe, how about you? For those of you who don’t know MOe already, uh, MOe is the Penny Forward program coordinator, but tell us about yourself and your blindness and your gardening, for those who don’t know you.

 

MOe: Uh, yeah. I don’t know if we’ve really gotten into my whole background here on the podcast, but I am MOe Carpenter. I live in Central Iowa. I am a mom of four, and I have LCA, and currently, I pretty much have some peripheral vision, but not a lot of other vision, and my gardening experience was, I grew up watering and weeding our family garden, and when I moved into my own home, I wanted to be one of those thrifty, frugal moms, and do everything home grown, and I kind of tried my hand at that, and never was super successful, but now have kind of reigned some tricks and things into making at least the best, um, … wrangling in ways to make it the most successful for my family.

 

Liz: Thanks, MOe. Uh, also, before we go on, for those who are not familiar with the acronym LCA, what is that, if you wouldn’t mind?

 

MOe: It stands for Leavers Congenital Amaurosis, if I can say that correctly. (Laugh.)

 

Liz: Yes.

 

MOe: It’s a mouthful.

 

Liz: Thank you for sharing. Um, we’ll go back to Kim. For someone who may have no experience gardening, or even limited space, what kind of things could they do to kind of get started with gardening?

 

Kim: So, there, there are a couple of things. I actually tried two different things, which was to start out with a packet of seeds. They were peas. And peas are fairly easy to grow, and you can get started, I was anxious to get started, and you can start them in early spring. They like a cooler weather, and that’s, you know, sugar snap peas, garden sweet peas, those kinds of things. And they don’t take long to germinate. So I started with those, and talked to someone at the gardening center in town, told them that I was a novice, and I just wanted to, you know, kind of do a little experimenting, but I didn’t want to get all in the quagmires of reading, ’cause when I started reading online, it was overwhelming and every gardener has their own techniques of, you know, “This is the best thing to do.” One thing I had already decided that I wanted to do was to grow organic, I do not use chemicals, and, um, so I wanted to stay away from that. So I started with a packet of seeds, and started with kind of an indoor,  I have a garage that is climate control, and I, and I bought like a, like a 15-dollar heating pad, and these little trays with these little pods that expand. And different companies have different brands of those, and then, you pop the seed in, and then, after  they expand, and you give them some water, and check on them, and keep them covered, until it’s time to uncover them, which there are directions and so forth that tell you how to do that. And then, I also worked with some seedlings. So those were plants that had already been started by someone else, and you can just pick them up, and … Started with like a couple of cucumber plants. Little did I know that that was gonna really take off, and cucumbers, they grow very well in, in my gardens out back. (Chuckle.) I have raised beds because my hip, uh, I have some difficulty with my hip, so direct in ground gardening doesn’t work well for me, but someone built me some very nice raised bed gardens. They’re about eight feet by two inches wide and about two and a half feet tall. And I have several of those, and, that I can plant in. So you can start with a packet of seeds, and you want to find something, I think if you want a success, or you want to see results quickly, early time things like lettuce, peas, spinach, those kinds of things, are great. Or, if you just, if you’re concerned, and, you know, that’s too much trouble, and you don’t have an environment that’s conducive for that, they have starter plants, which are seedlings. You know, they’ve already gotten them past the, kind of the really fragile stage. And you can just go ahead and, and grow them, and put them over in a little pot, until they get big enough to transfer, you know, into something bigger. They’re a bit like crabs. So you, you kind of, you know, transfer them from pot to pot as they get bigger. Container gardening is probably a good start.

 

Chris: MOe, how about the same question for you?

 

MOe: So, one of my favorite things, which Kim mentioned there at the end, is container gardening. And so, you can do this with your basic pots that you can find in most home improvement style stores. You don’t have to get very expensive ones. Here in the Midwest, we have a store called Menard’s, and that’s where we found some of our favorites. Plastic is technically better than your terracotta pots, although it can vary because terracotta dries out really fast, so if you don’t want to worry about watering as much, the plastic is a better way to go, but then there’s other reasons to not want to go with the plastic. But that would be a great way to start, is just a flower size pot. But that would be my suggestion for the best way to start, and get some, … If you’re doing that kind of thing, and you have a super sunny spot, I would recommend something like an onion, or something like that, ’cause they don’t need a super deep rooting system, or I was telling Chris before this conversation the other day that chives is an excellent way to get started, where you can have something  with some really easy quick success. As, my kids, we planted it once and, technically I didn’t even plant it. We were given an herb garden, and that was the one thing that stuck around, and we just moved it from the planter that it came to us in, and it thrives even in a semi shady spot.

 

Liz: Thanks, MOe. Uh, going back to Kim, in gardening and doing the various tasks that come with that, are there any techniques or strategies that you use to make it more accessible, uh, if those things that you’re doing aren’t accessible on their own?

 

Kim: So, much of gardening is about getting your hands dirty. So if you’re squeamish about getting your hands dirty, wet, and dirt, gardening’s probably not something you’re gonna be real thrilled about. Yeah, there are critters in the garden. There are all kinds of things in the garden. And it’s just nature. There are some things that, if you want to protect your hands, and your arms, something that I do is, I buy gloves, I, I actually have several pairs of gloves. Because it kind of depends on what I’m doing. For my every-day gardening tasks, where I want to, like, feel around, for instance, when I grow tomato plants. Uh, I am actually allergic to the tomato plants. Not the tomatoes, but I’m actually, (chuckle.) highly allergic to the actual foliage on the tomato plants, but I need to be able to feel, and stick my arms deep in there, to get the tomatoes and so forth. So, you can buy these sleeves, they feel a bit like ladies’ panty hose type material. They’re real thin. They’re opened at both ends. One’s a little bit narrower than the other. They’re very stretchy, and, and they’re also good to protect your arms from the sun. You can buy them on Amazon, and I just put them on my arms, and then I wear nitro gloves that are food grade safe, and they have just enough thickness to not allow punctures to take place, but also thin enough for me to be able to feel inside that foliage. So that’s one of the things, and I don’t know that I would say that that’s an accessible thing, but it’s kind of a, um, a good way to protect your skin, and so you can still feel. Uh, I am a braille user, I’m a braille reader, so, I use the garden markers, and no, not, … (Chuckle.) Not markers like you draw with, but, um, they’re, they’re long, you can get them in different sizes. Some are short, but I buy the longer ones, that are long at the bottom, kind of a stick like at the bottom, they’re flattish, and they come up to about a, sort of an  oblong or oval shape at the top, which is great for sticking dimo labels on, and I can poke those into the garden, or I can put them in my herb boxes, ’cause I have about ten herb boxes out there currently, and, you know, that way, I                          know what they are right off. You can also, you’ll get to, when the plants get big, you’ll know by feel what they are, and as you get more experience. But, like, every spring, when I’m starting out new with something, or I’m trying something new, um, I put these in. If you’re not a braille reader, you could do a couple of different things. I have a, a pen friend, and, it’s, it’s actually a device that, um, comes with stickers and so forth, and they have some pretty good, thick, uh, sized stickers that you can put. Uh, they, they have these bar codes on them, and when you put them on, you can take the pen friend and basically, in a nutshell, press the button, record what it is, and so then you can, after that, go out later on, take your pen friend, tap it on the sticker, and it’s gonna say in your recorded voice what it is. Uh, you know, “heirloom tomatoes.” “Pickling cucumbers.” “Sugar snap peas,” or something like that. Something else that’s useful is if you have the ability, the, the means, the monetary means, Aira is available. They’re not gonna be there to tell you how you should garden or anything, that’s not their job. But, if you know that you’re looking for a particular color, uh, because you want to know if this fruit is, you know, the right color for picking, um, certainly you can ask them questions. You know, “Is this bright red?” or, “Is this green here on the top?” And, and, “Are any of these turning brown?” Some of that stuff you can also feel, um, you can, you can definitely, like I feel like I can feel when a plant is diseased or not doing well. But there are some things where, where you can’t necessarily tell. Some very minute details that, maybe there’s specks or dots all over your plants, and it’s good to get them checked on. Um, you know, just, if, and if you don’t have anybody who can see, certainly use, utilize one of the services like Be My Eyes, or, or Aira. They are very, very helpful for things like that. Or you can even just facetime a family member, you know, whatever you’re, whatever is available to you. I hope that helps.

 

Chris: It does. Thanks, Kim. MOe, what are some foods that you can think of that are easy for people to grow, that can save you money on your grocery bills?

 

MOe: So, in my house, we really like the little snack size peppers. I don’t know if that’s necessarily one of the easier things that you can grow, but that’s one of the great little things that my family will eat. We also do the snack size tomatoes, because those are plentiful when they come on, (Chuckle.) And they will last well into the winter for the birds and things if you have space and can do it outside. And a lot of our other stuff is just little things like herbs and things. I really enjoy eggplant, but that is something not the rest of my family enjoys, so I usually only have a couple egg plants a year. So I don’t know if that would be necessarily saving you money on your grocery bill, but it’s nice to have stuff that’s fresh from home. And I guess another thing that’s not super easy to grow, but something that my family does quite enjoy, is we have grown water melons, and water melons are in the same family as cucumbers, so, uh, you have to keep them a little bit apart because they … I’m not sure, a hundred percent sure that water melons will cross with cucumbers, but there’s a lot of issues with those families crossing. So, just try to keep them separated, and otherwise, they can be quite plentiful.

 

Liz: Conversely, are there any foods that are really harder to grow, or that take a gentler approach to help them along?

 

Kim: That’s a good question. So, I would say like if you’re a strawberry fan, which I happen to be a huge strawberry fan, strawberries are, are great, but there’s lots of different ways that you can try to grow strawberries. You know, there’s hydroponic style, which is kind of a self-watering method. The one particular one that I had was in several tiers. You water the top, it trickles down to the next one, to the next one, and so forth. Those seemed not to turn out as well. Um, it could have been user error, I have no idea, but tried it a couple of different times, and I don’t know, just wasn’t being very successful. However, the strawberries that I grew in the garden bed, they did well, but I didn’t realize until I started doing some research that the first year of their life, you’re not gonna get much. And there’s gonna be a lot of runners, and so forth, but then once the second year came along, they were rather plentiful. But they were just a garden variety strawberry, so they were not as sweet as I had hoped, so this year I’m taking a break from them, from doing them, but I will do them again. trying to think of, of something else. Squash? It’s funny ’cause I was just talking with someone the other day about squash. Some people have great success with squash. I have attempted this a couple of times, and they get to a certain point, and then they, they just, they won’t get bigger. They either fall off, or somebody comes along, and decides to take a, a nice bite out of them. And not that I have a problem with some little critter coming along and doing that, but, you know, like to have a squash or two sometimes. I love them. So, someone was telling me to maybe try, uh, they said that, and I don’t know, so this is just hearsay, that here in the United States, a lot of people don’t actually stake their squash. And they really ought to. And that simply means like instead of letting them grow on the ground, to raise them and stake them up, and to let them grow upwards and grow that way, and you’ll have much better success with, and squash I’m talking like, summer squash, uh, that kind of thing. So, and that’s really what we were trying to grow. Uh, MOe may have some other ideas about other, um, fruits and vegetables, or fruits, rather, that, that are difficult to grow. I guess I haven’t really come across them. Some require patience, like peppers and so forth, they may take a little bit, but once you get them started, they grow like wild fire. So do cucumbers, melons, mostly I would just say, “watch your season.” So, when you go to, to plant vegetables, it is important to know what zone you’re in, and, and also, you know, what vegetables or fruits are going to grow best at what time of your gardening season. Lettuce, um, something that’s very fragile, growing the lettuce and spinach and greens like that in the middle of summer, that is not gonna really cut it. So, um, you want to know what’s best to grow in the beginning part of your spring, later, you know, and what’s gonna do well over summer, and what you can plant again in the fall as it cools down. Because if you really want, you can garden the entire season. Uh, and in some places, I guess if you’re further south, you can grow all year round.

 

Liz: When you were talking about strawberries, you mentioned the word “runner.” What exactly is that, for those who may not be familiar?

 

Kim: So there’s the main root system of your strawberry plant, and then as it grows, that first year, it will really concentrate on growing more branches or limbs, like thin …

 

MOe: Baby plants! (Laugh.)

 

Kim: Yes. Baby plants. And they will, they will work hard on that if you don’t kind of try to curb that. So, it’s okay to go in and, and before I winterize my strawberries, you know, I’ll, I’ll take some of those runners, because I want them to, to concentrate on growing fruit. And, and not so much the runners. But they are baby plants. And they’ll just go everywhere. (Chuckle.)

 

MOe: Yeah. Strawberries, they’re almost better to go to the pick your own patches in the spring when they come up. Because you just don’t get as much, for the space that they require, you don’t get a whole lot out of them. Uh, blueberries is also another one that, we go to a place to pick our own. We don’t really garden them at home because they can be quite fickle. Uh, they take a very different soil than most of your other garden plants. So they can be very difficult to keep happy. Especially if you have them around other plants.

 

Anne: This is Anne, and I am wondering, for those of us who live in Hud  housing, or, uh, elderly and disabled apartments, where the idea of trying to grow plants, in their apartment, uh, frankly, has them thinking, “If I’m gonna get serious about this, I seriously need to go to the apartment manager, is this allowed?” Does anyone know, is things like that allowed, or what might you suggest for people like that?

 

MOe: I would assume that there is some level of plants that you are allowed to have. You will need to check with the management, uh, because there could be, especially if it’s a shared space, there may be other people that are sensitive to that particular plant where they don’t allow things, but I know a lot of people have house plants and stuff in nursing homes, and other things. So I don’t see why you wouldn’t be allowed to have something. Uh, the problem with doing stuff that would be sustainable for eating and things is, it’s probably gonna be more on the herb side, because you just don’t have the space and the depth for those root systems for something larger. But it’s a lot of fun to grow herbs, so that shouldn’t be a huge problem. Especially if you have a window, or if you do have access to outside space, there’s, usually you can do some kind of planter as long as you can keep it looking friendly and clean and put together.

 

Kim: Something that one can consider, and again, you still want to ask, just to make sure that it would be okay, but I know someone who has a small area as well. And uh, they do not actually have great sunlight and so forth. There are self contained gardens, where you can grow herbs, or even some greens like lettuce and what not, there’s even little tomato pods you can get. This unit is called the Arrow garden. Now I am not promoting this particular thing. I’m just saying this as a possible resource, and there may be other gardens that go under a different name. But this garden is self-contained unit. It plugs in, has a grow light, comes with its own plant food, and there are instructions on how often to feed the plants, and you just raise the lights as the plants get bigger, and then you can harvest them. They have a quick turn-around time, uh, and the pods, they’re germinated seeds inside these plastic pods. Almost like a K cup. So, that, that’s something to perhaps research and look into. Um, and you can even find them in different sizes, and sometimes they’ll even be on sale anywhere from, you know, sixty-five to, like sixty-five dollars, um, they go up higher in price, of course, depends on what you can afford, but then, you only need to buy the unit one time, and then you could just buy the seed pods afterward.

 

Chip: This is Chip, and I wanted to suggest that Kim may want to discuss an app she uses to identify when plants come up, you want to know whether they’re something you planted, or exactly is that, what that is, is it a volunteer, and if you’re blind, you know, this can be challenging, but she is, as far as I understand it, using an app that helps her do that. So, maybe you want to tell them about that, Kim.

 

Kim: Oh yes. Uh, full disclosure, though, the app does have a subscription. I don’t think it’s too terribly high. It is called “Picture This,” and it does allow me to be able to take a picture of anything. Whether it’s a tree, a twig out in my yard, a plant, something I’ve grown, something that’s weird in my garden that has shown up that I’m going, “What on earth is that?” That’s how I found out about some night shade growing in my back yard, and it will not only tell you, it will not only identify what the plant is, but it will also let you know if your plant is diseased, if it is being infested by caterpillars, which was the case for me last year, and then, uh, it will also tell you things like the history of the plant, the technical name, as well as the laymen term, what kind of lighting, how much sun lighting versus shade it needs, so it gives you, it gives you a really, a wealth of information. And it is, I would say, fairly accurate. You know, I will go, say probably about … about 95 percent accuracy, you know, and if it doesn’t know exactly what it is, you will at least find out in what class plants it is.  Um, so that, that’s helpful. But again, the app is called “Picture This.”

 

MOe: I’m happy to see we’ve used the same app. (Laugh.) THERE is, or there at least used to be, a, you could get, it was either one or three free pictures a day. I don’t recall if you get quite the backlog of information about the plant, and I’ve had issues with it telling seedlings, but that could be because I’ve only used the free version of Picture This.

 

Chris: I am not a gardener, but I have something that is meant for gardening, that I can envision people using in small spaces inside, that could be pretty cool. What it is, is a container for container gardening. I got it at the container store, ’cause isn’t that funny. Um, and it has very strong magnets on one side of it, that stick very well to a metal door, or to your refrigerator, or something else metal, like if you have steel siding on the outside of your house or something. And it’s, it’s sort of oblong, almost rectangular, but the ends, or the uh, narrow sides, are kind of curved. And it’s maybe about a foot or a foot and a half deep, by about a foot or foot and a half wide, by maybe six inches. So it’s the kind of thing I could envision, we, we bought it for putting , uh, mail in to keep in our kitchen. So whenever we get mail, we throw it into this container and it, it sits there until we do something with it. But uh, I imagine that if there are magnet containers like that, there are also magnet grow lights, and one could potentially do some container gardening like on the side of your fridge.

 

Liz: Going back to what Kim had been speaking about earlier related to growing a garden when you have limited space, and, there’s a, a garden that you can actually buy, and have it kind of in a container, there actually is someone in  Clubhouse who has experience with that, and, uh, Mary, I’m wondering if you could speak to your experience in using that particular garden.

 

Mary: Hello. I, I have a, an arrow garden. I actually just bought a second arrow garden and planted it today too. But in my first arrow garden, I planted it in February, and put six pods of lettuce in it, ’cause it’s a six-pod garden,  and five of them sprouted, um, within about a week and a half after, like setting it up, and now, I actually harvest the lettuce twice a  week, and eat a salad. A decent size salad, from my lettuce. And, there’s like, both red and green lettuce in it. The leaves are very tender. And I really like it. In my other garden, I just started tomatoes, but I don’t have any word about those yet, ’cause, like I said, they’re just starting. So, water wise, it does take a good gallon of water. I can carry it from my guest bedroom where I have it to my sink. It does have glow lights on it. It is not a hundred percent accessible, because it does have some buttons on the front of the garden with lights to remind you to put water in the garden, and to put plant food in the garden. However, I actually just use my Amazon device or my phone to set reminders about putting plant food in once a month, cleaning out the … the water and, and rewatering it like, every two weeks. And then also, you do have to check on the water, especially ’cause it’s gotten warmer out lately, I’ve had to put water in it at least twice a week.

 

MOe: Well, I’ll take the opportunity to give one of the little tips and tricks that I have. And this actually isn’t a blindness specific tip and trick, but I’ve adapted it a little bit. That makes it a little more blind friendly. And a lot of your master gardeners and things will use a stick and string to make lines for where they are planting things. And how I’ve adapted this for blindness is you just leave them in the ground where you are planting so that you know the line where seeds should be. Especially if they’re things like radishes that you would have a lot in a smaller space, and that will help you keep them straight, and you just leave those strings so you know if it’s not very close to that string along the ground, then it’s probably not one of your radishes.

 

Liz: And this question is either to Kim or MOe, in growing foods and things like that, and herbs, have either you, or, do you know anyone, uh, for whom that has been profitable in terms of those individuals, either yourself or whomever, being able to sell their … I want to say wears, but that’s not the right word. Uh, … (Chuckle.) The, the fruits and vegetables and herbs of their labor, if you will?

 

MOe: Not hearing Kim, I’ll go ahead and say that, I don’t personally know anyone in the blindness community that has done this. I am the wife of a man who has a family that is in the farming world here in Iowa. So, they haven’t really sold, per say, the garden vegetables, but I know that they have a friend in their neck of the woods that has done the farmer stand on the side of the highway. So, that is something that I know of, that people do, but it’s not related to the blindness world, and if we really needed to, we could probably sell access produce that we have in that aspect, but it wouldn’t be a super profitable business.

 

Kim: I just want to say, this is Kim, uh, I have not actually sold my produce. I’ve certainly gone to a lot of local farmer’s market stands, just little stands, actually. You always know that they came out of that person’s garden because the vegetables and fruits are gonna be different shaped and sizes than what you’re gonna find that are more uniform in the grocery store, but there’s something kind of wonderful about getting something that’s just, you know, grown, right there in your area. We have talked about maybe selling, like one year, I had a ridiculous amount of cucumbers, and I do mean a ridiculous amount. Uh, as I was kind of learning about them, and so forth, um, I also got a packet of seeds mixed up because I labeled it incorrectly, and uh, so that’s, that’s one of the perks of being a totally blind person, and not, uh, having made, and made a little mistake with my seed packets, I had lots and lots and lots of cucumbers and I could have sold them. But we actually pickled them. That’s another thing too. And we hadn’t really talked much about that, but that’s something, like, if you can’t eat all of your produce, if you’re growing a lot, and you’re finding that you can’t really eat it all, you might look into ways of being able to preserve them. Whether it’s drying them, dehydrating them, a lot of vegetables can be blanched and then frozen, uh, you just, you know, quickly give it a boil bath and then you can freeze them. Or, in my, uh, case last year, I pickled a whole bunch of peppers, because we had a lot of banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, and pickled those. Herbs are wonderful. Herbs are the kind of, a lot of them are, they just keep giving every year. So once you plant them, they just got to, they’ll keep coming back, but you can also get quite a plethora of them, and you, you can always dry them. It’s pretty easy to dry, and then you have really fresh herbs that you know where they came from, that, you know, you didn’t use any chemicals or, or what have you, whatever your preference is, but you know that you have these wonderful herbs all winter long. So that’s something that I just wanted to throw in there as well.

 

Chris: Thanks, Kim. We’re, uh, almost out of time, so, for both of you, any final thoughts before we go, starting with MOe?

 

MOe: As is pretty common for me to say, just don’t be afraid to try new things. Because you will have failures, but you can also have surprise successes, and they make it very worth it.

 

Chris: Good advice. Kim?

 

Kim: I would just say, you can read a lot, and it’s wonderful, you know, we’re always about being informed and so forth, but just remember, um, that you’re gonna find a bajillion different ways and methods of gardening. I always tell people, nature was doing this stuff long before human beings ever came on to the scene. So if you just want to go at it, and you don’t want to read really anything, and you just want to find out what happens when you plant a seed, or you get a seedling from the store, and you want to grow it and see what happens, do it. Because she’s exactly right. You’ll have successes and you’ll have failures, but I’m telling you, you’ll have more successes, I think, and you’ll feel really good about it ’cause this was something that you nurtured yourself.

 

Chris: Also very good advice. MOe, and Kim, and everybody in Zoom and Clubhouse, thank you for being here. We appreciate it. We’re out of time. Do you like learning about how to save money, how to make money, how to grow your money, how to be frugal, anything related to personal finance? Especially when it comes to blindness? Penny Forward might be for you. You can find more of the Penny Forward podcast, as well as other content, on our website at

pennyforward.com

and while you’re there, maybe you want to join us. You can do that by clicking the “join Penny Forward” link right near the top of the page. When you join, you will get early access to every Penny Forward podcast episode, access to our online courses, that are all self-paced, affordable, and accessible, and access to our weekly members only group chats, where we talk about personal finance topics, like this, every single week. Again, that can all be found at our website, which is

pennyforward.com

 

The Penny Forward podcast is produced by Chris Peterson and Liz Bottner, with assistance from MOe Carpenter. Audio editing and post production is provided by Brynn Lee at

superblink.org

and transcription is provided by Anne Verduin. there music is composed and performed by Andre Louis. For all of us in the Penny Forward community, I’m Chris Peterson, …

 

Liz: I’m Liz Bottner, …

 

MOe: And I’m MOe Carpenter.

 

Chris: Thanks for listening, and have a great week.