In this episode of Ancient Wisdom, we talk with Linda Galvad from @soughtafterseedlings.
We cover the basics of vegetable gardening organically. We also cover the importance of organic foods for your gut. Is your diet making you sick? this is valuable to know what foods are damaging your gut and making you sick.
We cover seeds and why heirloom, non-GMO seeds are better to plant.
Your gut is filled with microbiome and this responds better to natural organic foods. Whereas unnatural foods feed the bad gut bacteria which then causes preference for more bad foods. its a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:51 Finding organic farming
07:41 Regenerative gardening
11:25 Composting
14:35 Plant cell growth
18:40 Keys to planting
21:38 Secondary chemicals
28:19 Eating badly
35:12 Seeds
44:18 Food making you sick
48:57 Oxalates in vegetables
52:25 Organic price premium
58:45 Conclusion
You can find more on Linda Galvad here:
Website https://soughtafterseedlings.co.za/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SoughtAfterSeedlings
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/soughtafterseedlings/
You can find more information on Indigo Jedi here:
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Website: https://www.indigojedi.com
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that when you do anything to do with agriculture or farming, um, your soil is the most important thing that you focus on. It always starts and ends with your soil because that’s what you want to regenerate. And how you do that is you keep your soil healthy. And how you do that is you don’t put chemicals in the soil. There’s two ways to go to go about it. There’s one called hot composting and that’s what we practice. And then there’s cold composting where you just haphazardly put what you call greens and browns. So your carbonri things and your nitrogen rich things together in a pile and let it degrade over time. When you don’t molly cuddle a plant and you leave it to grow in the paste that it should, it develops what’s called secondary chemical compounds and those are related to the taste, the color. um the resilience of the plant. So the higher the secondary chemical compound, the higher the nutrient value. Then you need to change the menu in your head because we are acclimated to eat in a certain way depending on what culture you are. You know the Japanese eat raw vegetables and fish for breakfast. You can’t get healthier than that. Generally a breakfast in South Africa is either um millie meal which is genetically modified or they eat toast. Toast with cheese, toast with sugar laden jam, dairy of some sort or some kind of spread with a preservative in it. So we generally don’t eat well. The by line of GMO, what they’ve always sold to the world is that it’s going to fix the hunger crisis, but there has never been so many starving people in the world, and there’s never been so much GMO. So, you’ve got to think about that. Greetings, seekers of ancient wisdom. We are here today for another exciting episode. Today we’re talking about organic vegetable gardening. And to talk about this very interesting topic, I’ve got Linda Galvad, the founder of Sought After Seedling. She also has an integrative medicine certificate and she’s a health coach. So, Linda, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me on your show. Such an honor. So, Linda, you’ve been in this industry for so long. I mean, sought after seedling has been around for almost 20 years. So, tell us a little bit of how you got into organic seeding and gardening. So my initial experience in this foray should I say how I actually got into it is I studied um criminal psychology and then I met a homeopath about 25 years ago probably more now and she put me on a very strict diet of no wheat, no gluten, no dairy, no preservatives, no sugar of any kind, not even honey. Um, and no mushrooms and no peanuts. Obviously, alcohol went into that. I I just never mention it cuz I’m not a drinker. But she put me on this diet 30 years ago where it was absolutely unheard of. Now, it’s common place. You know, those things are the first things you eliminate in your diet when you’re having any kind of autoimmune problems. And those two things being in psychology and you know criminal psychology is obviously it focuses on I believe the state of the mind very much so and my whole endeavor was to make people happy and having an a background in mental illness and myself suffering from OCD my whole um directive was to help people with mental illness and I realized through my own journey that you can do that by what you put in your mouth. Um I read a very uh poignant thing once and it says the only thing you can control is what you put in your mouth and what comes out of your mouth. And that actually started me on my journey. I’m also a foodie and I found that a lot of things that I needed to make food for myself because there was no such a thing as gluten-free bread and gluten-free anything or dairyf free. There was no such a thing as that. So, I had to make everything from scratch and I had to be really creative and I couldn’t find a lot of these ingredients. So, I thought, well, I might as well import them myself so at least I can use them. And then I spread the word like that. But at that time nobody was familiar with um organic vegetables really. It wasn’t you know it wasn’t an area of interest and no one was familiar with how that massively affects your wellness overall wellness and health. And even the information that was available on gut and how it’s your second brain and how it influences and impacts every part of your wellness uh wasn’t available. The first bit of information that I came across and it was a tiny bit of information was in 2008. I then found more information in 2013. After that a bit in 2015 and from about 2018 going forward there has now been a plethora of information of how what you eat impacts your health. So, I was really early in that and trying to get the message out to people that, you know, eat organic vegetables because it has a massive impact on your wellness, especially your mental health. It just wasn’t going to fly. So, I had to start off by getting into the market very unusual varieties that weren’t around um 14 years ago when we started this. And that is what my attraction was. People wanted to grow purple cauliflower because they had never seen it before. And I thought if I can attract people to plant vegetables by giving them unusual things, at least I’ll get them on board that way. And through the years, I’ve now been able to introduce how important it is to grow your own crops, do it organically, and how it influences your overall wellness and health. And that’s actually the journey. So mental health was um my primary focus. Uh that’s how I got into doing what I do. That is so amazing. I mean, we had Gary Jackson on our show uh just a couple of weeks ago and he spoke about the importance of regenerative farming and how you need to look after the soil, grow a multiple number of crops, uh because the different crops help each other and it’s also good for the livestock. I mean, he spent most of the talk um talking about livestock, chickens, cattle, sheep, etc. But when it comes to gardening, like do you also encourage regenerative type of gardening techniques? What does that even mean? When it comes to gardening, the most important thing, and I’m sure Gary touched on this, is what that when you do anything to do with agriculture or farming, um, your soil is the most important thing that you focus on. there five very important things that you focus on when gardening and making a successful organic garden. Um, but with regards to regeneration, it always starts and ends with your soil because that’s what you want to regenerate. And how you do that is you keep your soil healthy. And how you do that is you don’t put chemicals in the soil. It’s an interesting thing how our microbiome, our bacteria in our body, how we keep that healthy is through eating plants mainly and how the plants stay healthy is by having healthy soil. The very same or similar the concept is the same. We need to keep the bacteria and live insects and critters in the soil happy and healthy for them to create a healthy soil environment. So the regeneration works like when you have healthy soil, you’ve grown that soil. You I always say you don’t grow your vegetables. The vegetables are grown by the soil. What you grow is the soil and you have to feed the soil. And by doing that is by creating your own compost and taking again regeneration or a feedback loop by taking all your vegetable scraps, your garden waste. There there’s a plethora of things that you can in fact put into your compost pile which then creates the soil that you need to feed your soil because all the bacteria and living critters get food from that compost, degrading the compost. And then you put that food back into your soil and keep those little critters alive and happy and the bacteria doing what they have to do. It’s them that actually gives the soil the nutrients it needs to grow the plants that you are going to consume. So it goes happy soil, happy plants, happy health. You are what you eat. But it starts with the soil. You know, if you believe in the Bible, we were created from basically soil. And we are going to go back to the soil. So the soil is the beginning and the end. Um, Aristotle said that earthworms are the lungs of the soil. And if you’re going to use any kind of chemical uh fertilizers or pesticides or insecticides, you don’t only kill the bacteria in your microbiome that exists in your inside internally in your gut, but you also kill the microbiome of the soil, you kill the soil as well. So that is why organic gardening is so absolutely imperative to keeping the soil growing and happy and to therefore going on from there keeping yourself happy growing and healthy. So you mentioned the most important thing to have healthy soil is to make your own compost. So, using uh kitchen scraps and and stuff and you just throw them into a pile and leave it for a couple of months and it turns into compost. Is that the the best way to go about it? I mean, I take my kitchen scraps and I put them in this little bucket that I’ve created and I just leave it and also leaves and twigs and stuff from the garden. And you just leave it until it turns into like a soil and that’s your compost, right? Is that is that the best way to go about it? There’s two ways to go to go about it. There’s one called hot composting and that’s what we practice. Basically, it allows the you set up the compost pile. So, you actually put the compost pile together in a way that will make it decompose quicker. That’s what hot composting is. And then there’s cold composting where you just haphazardly put what you call greens and browns. So your carbonri things and your nitrogenrich things together in a pile and let it degrade over time. That version takes longer, but it’s absolutely perfect. And it’s basically a combination of um greens which are live and nutrientrich. So it already when you want to see if something’s a green, think about what it has inside. you know when things start going rotten there’s activity there’s fungus and bacteria happening over there anything that has a live component to it is a green anything that’s absolutely dead like a brown twig or um wood that is completely dried and dying or green or um d grass that has died anything that has no live aspect to it is carbonri and You need to have those things acting on each other for degra um decomposition to happen. And that then breaks down into what we call compost. When you look at compost, you’ll see it’s not sandy and it’s not soil. It’s got little pieces of twigs and leaves and hair. Um all those kinds of things in it. Uh just to give you a quick list, um dog hair, human hair, nails, coffee grinds, tea bags, eggshells, uh grass clippings, um vegetable offcuts, dying flowers, green grass clippings, those are all live and green. So those are the nitrogen rich things. And then you’ve got your um carbonri things which are uh newspaper uh toilet rolls, paper, um dead grass, dead twigs, dead leaves, etc., etc. So, anything that is carbonri, those things are what you put together with your nitrogen, you know, your nitrogen live rich products. I like the I like the phrase that you said uh you know from the Bible we come from soil and this is a concept I always thought about is whatever we plant in the soil you know if I plant an apple seed for instance that apple seed has the intelligence and knowledge somehow to pull nutrients from the soil and turn it into a branch, a trunk and eventually an apple. So you’re actually just eating dirt. You’re just eating reconfigured dirt, right? I mean, all that nutrients came from the dirt. It came from the soil. Interestingly, the seed itself actually has enough food within it to grow to a certain point and then the soil starts feeding it. What’s interesting when you said, you know, it becomes a twig and a log and a leaf. What actually happens in plants? They have what’s called meristematic cells which doesn’t they don’t have an identity. They then first it starts off as a meristematic cell and then it becomes an identity. So then it gets instructured. You are now going to become a leaf and you are now going to become a branch. So it starts off with no identity. Um and that has a lot to do with how you can regrow things. So you can basically regrow anything from a leaf anything. Well not a person obviously a plant um because the genetics the cells you know it has all the DNA in that particular part of the plant which then becomes something else. So it almost be it has meristematic cells have no identity. They are then instructed to have an identity and become a part of the plant. So yes, from a seed you do get the leaves, the fruit, the twigs, the branches, and yes, that does all come from the soil. It it grows. It needs the soil to grow into all of that. So you’re 100% right. You know, those things come from the soil. So you mentioned something. This might be slightly off topic, but I think it’s relevant. I read a book called the body electric where a doctor his name was Robert Becker I think and he was investigating salamanders and how salamanders are able to regrow limbs and you know he so he would break off a salamander’s limb and then monitored how the salamander in in about four weeks would regrow a limb like fully regrow a limb. Not like a lizard grows a tail, but the salamander’s limb is like full and it looks almost as new. And he noticed that in the beginning the cells just multiplied and they had no identity. And then over the weeks the cells would then change. So some cells would become tissues, some cells would become nerves, some cells would become uh skin, some would become bones. And it was amazing that in the beginning the cells would just grow and multiply and multiply but then after two weeks or so. And what he noticed was there was a change in the electrical current that the salamander was sending to that part of the body and a slight change in the in the current was the instruction of what the cells should change into. So it was extremely extremely intelligent. Um and it sounds like the plants are doing similar things. Yes, that’s fascinating. And what’s fascinating is that he could measure the instruction through these electrical currents. And I’m sure it actually works exactly the same way with plants because plants do communicate with each other. You know, they communicate with each other through the soil in fact through their root systems um with having a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that in fact extends from the roots. creates uh longer roots. Trees specifically have that and then they communicate like that or they communicate through releasing some kind of enzyme. Um they’re fascinating. Plants are fascinating. They are alive very much alive and living. I know that sounds uh obvious but it it has much more implication than just growing and eating. So you mentioned in the beginning there were five important things to look at when gardening and soil was the the most important or maybe the first one that you mentioned. So what are the other four and maybe we can also elaborate on them. So the five most important things that you have to be aware of when gardening and this is really um simplifying things a lot is one is water. Are you giving your plants enough water or are you giving them too much? Um, the second one is soil. As I mentioned, I’m not giving it to you in order of importance. The third one is sun. How much sun are you giving the plant? Is it getting too much or too little? Generally, you know, more than more than not it’s getting too little. Um, nutrients. How much food is the plant getting? Are you giving it too much or too little? And the last thing is mulching. have to put mulch, which basically is a layer on top of the soil, around the plant, and everywhere where there’s soil to protect the soil. Um, and to keep the weeds at bay, to keep the roots warm, and to allow, especially in heavy rain like we have here, um, it when it rains, it can hit the soil so at such a speed that it can actually compact the soil. So when you have mulch like straw or dead leaves, it needs to be something that’s dead preferably. And there’s reason for that. Um the soil uh that that that allows the water to filter through to percolate through like you would um filtering paper. when you, you know, pour freshlymade coffee beans, um, it allows the bean, the coffee to actually filter through the filter paper and the mulch does the same thing. So, it eases the water impact onto the soil. So, mulch is very important. Those five things are the criterion uh which you should go on and build on to create a successful garden. We can elaborate on each uh if you like. Um I just touched on them. Would you like to go through them individually or actually um no I think that’s enough. Um and and everyone guys, Linda’s got a very active Facebook page. She also has a YouTube channel. She’s got a lot of information. So, if you want to go and dive deeper there, I am going to leave links below this video, go follow Linda on Facebook and YouTube, and she’s got a whole bunch of educational videos explaining different gardening techniques and planting, etc. But I wanted to touch more on um or I wanted to shift a little bit to the organic part, right? So if I go to the supermarket and get my vegetables there, what is so special about organic? I know uh on previous podcast people have spoken about the nutrient density. Organic vegetables are more nutrientdense. Um but is there more to it or is that really it? Well, there’s it’s very important. They are more nutrientdense, which is probably top of the list. And the reason why they’re more nutrientdense is when you don’t molly coddle a plant and you leave it to grow in the pace that it should. So, it takes up food when it needs that food instead of being forcefed. I’ll talk more about that. Um, the plant basically grows on its own. basically. And when it does that, it develops what’s called secondary chemical compounds. And those are related to the taste, the color, um the resilience of the plant. So the higher the secondary chemical compound, the higher the nutrient value. It’s like it’s like us people who have had generally a tough beginning to life. They grow up tough. when they are molly coddled and protected from the world, then when something bad happens to them, it’s a huge shock to them and they don’t really know how to cope. It’s the same with vegetables. If you give it a tough upbringing, basically you make the plant stronger and therefore your nutrient content goes up. So there’s that. When we use chemical fertilizers, for example, they are water soluble. So there’s a high level of sodium in them to be water soluble. And basically how that works is when you pour that into the ground because the plant needs to uptake water all the time. It takes that fertilizer up as well which force feeds the plant similar to how duck liver pate is uh created. They force feed the ducks literally by putting a pipe down their throat and pushing the food into their mouths and into their bodies. It’s a very cruel concept. Not a concept, a reality. So, when the plant is force-fed, it gets too much nutrients at a pace where it doesn’t actually need or want them. And what the effect that that has on the plants is the cellulose structure of the plant, the the cell walls are weakened. And it’s then where the disease vectors like aphids and whitefly start attacking the plant and drinking the cell sap out of them because the cellulio cellulose structure has now weakened. So the plant a doesn’t have the resilience it needs. the nutrient content is def there’s a deficiency and the plant is then weakened which means that it can be attacked much more easily by the disease vectors and then how commercial agriculture um mitigates that is they spray with insecticides, herbicides and pesticides because the plants are already weak and have very little resilience. they then need to be helped further to survive by adding these terrible poisons onto them. How that relates to the soil is that it kills all the things in the soil that feeds the soil to feed yourself because it no longer needs them. So, it eradicates them. It now is pushing the fertilizer, these man-made fertilizers into the plant and that’s how the plant is growing. Also the chemicals that are poison that are sprayed onto the plant then goes into the soil and finishes the job. How that works which I mentioned earlier is that it works very similar to our microbiome. Our gut bacteria is in fact not human DNA at all. We are only 10% human DNA. The rest is all bacteria and fungi etc. So how that works when we ingest anything that those bacteria don’t see as um natural or as close to source as possible because everything in fact is has protein in it and that we recognize those proteins. Our bodies recognize those proteins. As soon as we ingest something that is unrecognizable, sugar being one of those things, it creates an inflammatory response. Firstly, it kills the gut bacteria that we need to get our minerals from and nutrients and to create a lot of our hormones like serotonin, which is your happy hormone. It does other things as well. Um, firstly, it kills your your microbiome. So, you’re going to be unhealthy and you’re not going to operate at uh your optimum and you’re going to get sick. Also, it creates an inflammatory response because it sees these things and it says, “What is that? They foreign. I’m going to have to get rid of them.” Creating an inflammatory response therefore brings up inflammation in your body. And that’s how we get sick. And constantly doing that, constantly exposing your body to the things that are in fact um inflammatory causing. um those things those things are what makes us sick. So we have very little uh ability to stay well because we are constantly fighting things that are bringing up the inflammation in our bodies and therefore making us sick. Inflammation has a high acidity in your body and eventually what causes chronic inflammation underscores all autoimmune disease. So it’s a lifestyle thing. Autoimmune diseases are lifestyle. You can prevent them and you can also get them under control by what you eat and how you live. That is so true. I mean yesterday my wife’s friend uh brought some sweets because I think it was Ramadan and Eid so they you know they have a lot of sweets so they brought some cook sisters and lmingtons and some Indian sweets. I generally don’t have any but yesterday I had some and immediately the rest of the night my gut was not feeling well. I immediately got brain fog which I very rarely get and you know I was so tired. It’s like what’s going on? I’m so exhausted and tired and I realize, oh, okay, it’s that little bit of artificial sugar or the processed sugar that I had that my gut is not used to. And very quickly I felt it because, you know, I obviously don’t have that very often. But I mean, people who are having that regularly, that’s that’s just become part of their general lifestyle, hasn’t it? Absolutely. I always say to people when I when I do these talks, I always say to them, you need to change the menu in your head because we are acclimated to eat in a certain way depending on what culture you are. You know, the Japanese eat raw vegetables and fish for breakfast. You can’t get healthier than that. Um we don’t. Generally a breakfast in South Africa is either um millie meal which is genetically modified predominantly in this country or they eat toast toast with cheese toast with sugar laden jam toast with sugar laden peanut butter because it’s not you know pure peanut butter. um dairy of some sort or some kind of spread with a preservative in it. So we generally don’t eat well. That is generally the breakfast menu that people have. Bacon fried you know huge fried lots of fat red meat. Um all those things are not good for you. So I always say change the menu in your head. Think of things slowly. Make a list of what you eat that isn’t good and slowly try and change them to a more healthier option. And it’s a slow process. You can’t get somebody to change overnight. It will absolutely not last if they do that. It’s something that they’ll try and do. They’ll generally feel um like they’re going to fail because they generally do when you take on too much and then you lose hope. It’s like when people go on a diet of any kind and then they fall off the rails and then they think, “Oh, that’s it. My diet is done.” And it’s not true. If you fall off the rails, it’s okay. You’ve fallen off the rails. It’s one. The whole point is to get yourself back on track. And that’s really important. And I find that when you are including um the main part of your meal is vegetables and you eating especially if you’re ill, you should include 70% of your your food intake should be vegetables, preferably raw. A lot of people can’t eat raw vegetables. It’s too hard on their digestive system. Um, but if you can take in as much as 70% of vegetables into your diet and exclude a lot of the things I mentioned right in the beginning, you’ve got a good chance of getting things under control. Uh, things like diabetes 2 is in fact completely curable completely um if you eat the right things and eliminate the wrong things. But it’s a slow process. And I always say to people, you know, you’ve been eating in such a way for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years um to change that. It’s going to take you some time. So give yourself that time. Be patient. Uh just, you know, if you fall off the rails, it’s okay. Just get back on just get back on track. And eventually it becomes habits. And in fact, eventually you’ll start craving those good foods. And it’s it’s actually science. It’s also in your head, but it’s science because the foods you feed your bacteria is the foods they crave. That’s why when you mentioned that you ate the sugar and you had these very severe reactions, it’s because you don’t eat them normally. So when you stop eating something, you in fact kill the bacteria that normally take care of those things and digest them. You kill them off. So when you then consume those foods, you don’t really have anything to digest them and then you get these terrible reactions. But the thing is what you feed your gut, those bacteria will grow. So if you feed your gut sugar, your bad bacteria that wants that sugar is going to want more sugar. So you are going to crave more sugar. If you feed your gut bacteria vegetables, you are going to start craving more vegetables. So you just have to do it for a long enough period until that becomes what you crave. It’s an amazing thing. You know for myself if I don’t drink water regularly I don’t crave water. I generally am not a thirsty person. So I don’t drink water. I have to force myself to include water into my diet. But after doing that for a few days I actually start craving water. It’s fascinating. All of a sudden I become thirsty. I’m not really thirsty. It’s just my body wants more water. Um, and I always use that as an example and something that people can try. Um, a lot of people are disciplined and they include water into their diets. Some people with kidney diseases uh can’t in fact drink a lot of water. You know, there’s that misnomer that if you want to keep yourself healthy and your kidneys clean, drink a lot of water. When you’ve got kidney disease, in fact, drinking a lot of water puts strain on your kidneys. So, you know, people shouldn’t shouldn’t drink as much water, like one to two lers of water a day, um, as a healthy person with healthy kidney function can. And you can even drink too much water where you’re drinking so much water that you’re in fact diluting your electrolytes. So, you’ve got to be careful of that as well. When I say too much water, it could be, you know, four liters and up. But um I’m not a doctor so I can’t really be giving medical advice. Uh this is just my own research that I’ve done over the years. That was very very insightful. Very insightful. So Linda, you mentioned GMO and you know G we live in like a GMO world where all the big farmers are getting genetically modified seeds from the big seed manufacturers. Monsanto and you know whoever else and they’ve convinced us that they’re making these seeds for our benefit because these seeds are more resilient and they’re stronger and I don’t know they have better nutrient content or at least that’s the marketing. But what what in your view is the problem with GMO? I mean in my view it’s very unnatural it seems and anything unnatural going into my body is going to cause some havoc but um yeah I mean what in your view is the problem with GMO and and why should we be getting more heirloom seeds? GMO is a very scary thing and unfortunately I’d say 90% of the maze even more um that’s available in this country that is staple food is genetically modified and the by line of GMO what they’ve always sold to the world is that it’s going to fix the hunger crisis but there has never been so many starving people in the world and there’s never been so much GMO so you’ve got to think about that um genetically modified basically has a combination of species that goes into the seed. That’s number one. And you very accurately pointed out that the body doesn’t recognize something that’s unnatural. You know, when you um take a donkey and a horse and you put those together, what is created is a mule. And mules are they cannot reproduce. That should say something to you because when you take different species and you create a genetically modified seed and that’s just the the top of the the the iceberg. There’s much worse seeds than that. There’s seeds called zombie seeds which literally can’t grow unless you put something on them to make them grow. Which just think about that when you’re talking about controlling the food source in our in our world. You know, if you’re going to control the food in the world, you basically have the world as a prisoner basically. So, um, genetically modified, the fact that it is a combination of species, not just plant species, uh, your body will react to that. That’s 100% correct. And another problem with genetically modified seed is that they pour what’s called Roundup ready glyphosate which is highly highly carnogenic. In fact a few years ago for the first time ever Monsanto was um taken to court and they lost because it was proved that glyphosate Roundup Ready is the brand name. Roundup is in fact carcinogenic. highly highly so. And what that basically means it’s a product that they pour around the genetically modified seeds which kills everything around the seed. Any competition that the seed might have in by way of weeds, it kills everything around it so that it can grow. So it basically makes the seed roundup ready. It waits for the Roundup to grow and to have no competition from any other um weed around it and to just grow by itself. It’s called Round Up Ready and the the product is called Round Up which is completely toxic and that is what we ingesting. It’s shocking. Genetically modified foods are shocking. they are really, you know, you’ve got to wonder why there’s such an increase in disease. Um, and that is a massive contributor. Not to say that lifestyle and the way we live, not only the way we eat has a massive contribution to our ill health. A massive contribution. stress is probably um equally as bad as genetically modified crops. Uh heirloom seeds, which you touched on that, is basically seeds that are the original genetics. It has a massive amount of genetics in the plant. It hasn’t been bottlenecked, removing certain things or characteristics from the plant that you don’t have, which they do in GMOs and hybrid hybrid seeds. Now, hybrid seeds are basically the removal of some gen genetics that you don’t want and you creating a plant that you do want with purple leaves and green flowers and you know polka dots. So, you actually creating a plant that you want. There’s nothing really wrong with that. What’s wrong with that is that you’re removing the genetic variability. So when you do that, you decrease the resilience of the plant. For example, the potato famine that was caused by a back a disease that wiped out all the potatoes. And when you remove genetic variability, you bring down the resilience of the plant, making it more susceptible to disease, which can literally wipe them out. hybridizing. Therefore, growing hybrid plants once again you need to make sure that the plant is protected. So again, sprays are used, fertilizers are used to make sure that the plant is completely protected growing in a synthetic environment. You can’t just because the plant’s resilience is not as high. That doesn’t mean you have to do it like that. There’s a lot of hybrid flowers that we all grow in our garden. So there is a place for hybrids in the garden. Absolutely. there is a place it’s not going to kill you. Um, heirlooms have that genetic variability making them exceptionally resilient. They also are true to type which means the children look exactly like the parents. You can predict what the plant is going to look like. They also have um a massive amount of variation. You know, there are over, I think, 600 varieties of tomatoes in the heirloom seed range. It’s fascinating. Um, they are much better tasting than uh other crops. And very importantly, especially in this country, they they are you can seed save. So, there’s a food security aspect there, which is extremely important. When you buy heirloom seeds and they go to seed that plant, you can seed save and use those seeds um for your next generation and so on and so so on. Heirloom is generational and it can also be used in generations to come. This very important for food security heirloom seeds and that’s why we bring our seeds in. And they are heirloom seeds and we encourage people two seeds say for food security. So you don’t have to keep buying your seeds. Although interestingly people do they they have these seeds but they keep buying new seeds. It’s it’s um you know when I go into a store and I see different seeds. I buy them too. I want new seeds. You know, if I see vegetables that I’ve never seen before that are heirloom varieties, I want them as part of my seed bank that I have and I have a massive seed bank. Um, you know, it’s just like buying a new pair of shoes. When you see those shoes, well, for me anyway, you see those new pair of shoes, you want them. Same same with seeds for me. Completely addicted to them. So, I wanted to give an example in my own experience. Um, you know, obviously being in South Africa, we eat millie meal or we eat pup. But every time I’ve had pup in that’s been bought from the store, my stomach gets bloated. I feel very heavy. I feel very uncomfortable. So, I’ve generally stayed away from pup because I just didn’t like how I felt. But a couple of years ago, I went to the Trans Sky and we went um we at the lodge we were staying at, they did like a village walk and we would go and eat in in the village and we went to somebody’s house and they were growing their millie meal in their own yard and it was generational like generation passed down millie meal and they made pup in the house for us and you know I ate the pup and I was expecting this bloating feeling but nothing happened and I feel I felt really so good and I was like a bit surprised because every time I’ve had pup I felt bloated and uncomfortable but this time nothing I actually felt really good I actually felt energized and that’s the first time I really experienced like wow this is you know probably organic it’s it’s probably a generational seed they don’t put any uh fertilizer they not spraying it with pesticide it’s grown in the in the person’s God and my body just loved it and and I felt good. So that was um you know confirmation for me. Not that I needed confirmation but it was just really good to experience it because I think when you experience something is that that’s when you really learn the lesson I would say. Exactly right. And I love that story. I’m going to use that story if that’s okay with you. I’m going to use that story because um when I do these talks when I used to when I started doing these talks many years ago people were I can almost say they weren’t convinced they they really were but as time has progressed and they themselves have felt um the the symptoms like the symptoms you’ve spoken of you know foggy brain uh lack of energy uh your sight is getting worse your memory is getting worse. Um your body is not healthy. Osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer, um Parkinson’s, you name it, dementia. when they’ve started experiencing these symptoms and they come to a talk and they see that there is uh you it starts somewhere and they can control it and then they when I talk about you know brain fog and memory loss and lack of energy they start saying that’s exactly how I feel and then they say you know I came to your talk before and you suggested I stop eating sugar and I feel so much better. I’ve had so many people communicating in my talks where they are actually having their own experiences that they themselves can now see that you know they’ve got sick and when they exclude certain things they get better or they can identify with the symptoms that I’m talking about and now they’re finding out why and that really is encouraging to them to go off and try to start eliminating the things that they have bad reactions to. So I love these kind of stories and I often use them in my talks. I relay the stories to people so that they can either um you know affirm that for themselves because they think oh you know that happens to me as well and maybe I should try something different. very important stories like these you know they really underscore what what this information is is is all about you know creating that healthy environment. Yeah. So I wanted to share another story and maybe you can help and and advise there. So I have a small health practice um I also practice homeopathy and energy medicine and radionics and and stuff like that. And I have a number of clients who’ve got gout. gout is is um high acidity in the body and it starts giving them pain in their their joints, ankles, knees, etc. So, I’ve got one patient, he’s about 70 years old and he’s got severe gout in his foot. So, I told him, you need to start eating more alkaline foods, you know, start eating more spinach and kale and dark green veggies and cut out the acid foods. So as soon as I said that, he immediately said, “Every time I have spinach, because he has tried to do this, but he every time he has spinach, his gout flares up and he gets a severe pain in his big toe, in his foot.” So I was like, “This is quite strange. Spinach should be healthy.” But I’m thinking it’s probably because he’s having a GMO spinach full of pesticides. um you know grown an artificial fertilizer and maybe that’s it or maybe there is something in the spinach that’s that’s triggering his gout pain. I don’t know if you have any experience on that. So um I don’t know if this is going to be helpful but spinach actually South Africans just to uh clarify is it spinach as in English spinach little leaves or it’s the the big green what South Africans call spinach but it’s actually Swiss chard? I think it’s probably whatever he got from the supermarket. He doesn’t go to So, so definitely I would say that the chemicals on there has an influence um on on your on your digestive system. So, and inflammation is inflammation. So whether you’re getting inflammation in gouts, you’re getting inflammation in your body. So yes, chemicals will poisons will cause that already and he’s got a weakness. So it will be felt there as well. Another thing is which is very interesting and perhaps you can suggest that he is he cooking the Swiss chard. Yes. Yes. Cooking Swiss chard has something called oxilates. An oxalate is an anti-nutrient which basically this allows you to absorb other nutrients. The only thing is is that it has other benefits that are so exceptional. certain other nutrients, not all. It has other um benefits that are so exceptional that you don’t really worry about the oxalates. But one of the things that gets rid of those oxalates is by cooking it or by eating vitamin C um at the same time, which is very interesting. But if he’s going to have a flare up with eating Swiss chard, because as you said, you named all the green leafy vegetables that have alkaline properties. There’s two things. One thing is eat organic. Three things. Eat organic. Cook your food. Must cook it just in case that’s what’s causing it. Um let him focus more on the cabbages. So the kale, cauliflower leaves. I’m talking about cabbage leaves. Uh broccoli leaves and broccoli. Those kind of things. Let him focus more of those. and he may be eating the Swiss chard with something like tomatoes and tomatoes do um irritate gout cuz they are it’s just it’s just one of those things they are quite acidic. Once again the tomatoes that you buy in store are acidic. When you grow your own tomatoes you get varieties that have very little acid in them and they are organic so they don’t have the extra sprayed crops. So he could he could be experiencing that or um he could as I said inflammation is inflammation. So if he’s eating something that’s causing inflammation it’s going to be exaggerated in his in his gout because that’s actually where his weakness lies if you know what I mean. He’s already got a predisposition that will be aggravated. So suggest that he tries more um the the cabbage family. he must cook it and definitely try organic vegetables and not to include something like red meat and tomatoes. He he should try and stay away from that. Um and if he’s adding sugar into that meal at all or a sauce or tomato sauce, anything that has a high sugar content, then he’s just, you know, he’s he’s not going to get the benefits anyway because as I said, inflammation is inflammation. That is so insightful. We’ve got a perception here in South Africa that organic is just unaffordable. I don’t know if that’s the marketing ploy from the from the other commercial farmers etc. and you know we can’t afford to eat organic. It’s double or triple the price. But actually when I went and looked at uh at Jackson’s fruit and veg section it’s actually not that much more expensive. And if I’m getting so much more nutrients and it’s organic and it’s got no poisons on it, I would say I would argue the opposite. It’s actually cheaper, right? Because you’re paying for the nutrient content. I mean, what’s your view about it? Is organic so expensive that it’s unaffordable for most of South Africans? I always say, have you priced chemo lately? You know, people are prepared to take that money and spend it on a source like, you know, barbecue sauce, but they’re not prepared to take that money and spend it on organic crops. Now, I’m not going to lie. When you go and buy an organic vegetable in store, it is more expensive. But the funny thing is is that the capital outlay of growing organic crops commercially is quite high. It is um but chemical fertilizers are more expensive way more expensive on an ongoing basis. You see when you’re growing organically you don’t need all those accutrants you don’t need those chemical fertilizers and you don’t need those sprays. So, in the long run, it works out cheaper. But because you’re not using those things, you have to put in other um methods that will then bring down your weed competition that you will have when you grow in, you know, on a large piece of land. And that is a huge problem. Weeds are a huge problem. So, commercial farming, they just eradicate those weeds, but they eradicate everything else with them. all the important stuff. Um so there is a higher um labor there’s more labor that goes into organic farming. There is but there is you can um have a complete loop. So you can take the crops that are, you know, aren’t that you’re not going to harvest or that are even a bit diseased because and depends what like a disease vector like a little insect, not a fungus. Those things you don’t put in your compost. But you take those kinds of things and all your grass clippings and all your, you know, whatever you’ve got in your in your farm and you can easily make your own compost. So there’s a loop um a loop that’s getting closed there. Even your weeds, one of my favorite topics is weeds. You can eat a lot of weeds. And if you recall earlier, I said plants that are tough that are grown in an environment where they are not model molly coddled. They have a much higher nutrient content. So, for example, dandelions, which lit literally will grow out of or purse lane, which grows out of your driveway um between your bricks. They are extremely nutrientdense because they’ve had no aid in growing and they’ve had to draw from very deep within the soil or whatever they can get. So, their nutrient content is exceptionally high. So, I encourage people to actually eat weeds. A lot of weeds are edible. Things like blackjacks are edible. Dandelions are probably one of the the superest of superfoods that you can get. Purse lane. Um, stinging nettle. Another superfood. I always say uh um um shaggy soldier and the other one that looks like it with the little white flower. It’s also unbelievably good for you. Chickweed exceptionally good for you. I always say to people, make sure there are five identifying characteristics before you just go and consume a weed cuz some weeds are very, you know, they’re poisonous and you you shouldn’t eat them. But weeds are exceptionally good for you and you can in fact harvest weeds as a green as a crop. I once had a client in Nutell and they had a cafe and they used to bake their own bread and grow their own food for the cafe and one of their specialties on their menu was a weed salad and it was the it was the most sold product on their menu and they actually had a patch a large patch in their back of weeds. I actually saw it. It was absolutely outstanding the weed salad because you know as I said earlier your secondary chemical compounds determines the taste. So you’ll often find that when you eat organic crops it has a very definitive taste. They’re very sweet or they very they’ve got a very strong carrot taste and that is because of the secondary chemical compound. So the the greater the taste is of something, the higher the nutrient content. And you yourself know, John, you yourself know that when you go and you buy an organic tomato, it tastes nothing like the watered down version. Nothing at all like the watered down version that you’ll buy in store. Even so far as lettuce, nothing like the watered down version that you buy in store. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that is so true. And that’s so so important to note that the organic tastes so much better, but it’s so full of the nutrients that your body needs. I think it’s actually cheaper to buy organic or best to grow it in your own space or garden if you have. Linda, I know you do have to rush off to another meeting. I just wanted to mention just wanted to mention a comment about um what you were saying about dandelion and stinging nettle and all those those are actually remedies that I use in my homeopathic practice. Dandelion is so amazing for the liver. So I give people so many people have liver issues. That’s like one of the most common things I see is uh fatty liver or or liver imbalance. And I give them milk, thistle, dandelion combination. And it’s so amazing how quickly that just sorts out the liver, gets the liver back to balance, helps to detox the liver. And it’s a weed. Can you believe it’s a weed? But it’s like such an amazing plant. So every time I see dandelion, I’m just amazed at its healing properties that it can give people. How long have you been doing um homeopathy? Uh it’s about four years now. Four years now. So I used to work in corporate. I used to work in insurance. Then I had my solar business for about 12 years but I got tired of corporate. So I left it and then I found my way into energy medicine and and homeopathy and stuff like that. And and what is radio? You you mentioned it. Oh radionics. Yes. Radionics. What is that? So, it’s a it’s a way of charging placebo with energy. So, it’s like energy charged medicine. So, I call it energy medicine in a way. Okay. That’s so interesting. Wow. And do you deal with people with Crohn’s? Yes, Crohn’s is very common stomach stomach issue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me on your show. Yes, Linda. We really This was an amazing show. It really builds on from the other podcast I’ve done done with Gary. I also had a very nice show with Nikki Cruden where we spoke about planting. So, this builds on from that. I hope our viewers have learned and enjoyed the information that we provided. And uh yeah, Linda, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for your time. It was lovely to meet you. Okay. So, until next time. Ciao for now.