My guest this week is Gary Pilarchik, author of the excellent new book The Modern Homestead Garden (affiliate link). Gary hosts The Rusted Garden channel on YouTube which guides viewers through all the steps in growing your own food. I love Gary’s no-nonsense, low-stress approach to gardening, and wasn’t surprised to learn that he had a background as a mental health therapist. His understanding of human psychology really comes across in his gardening videos, and in our discussion. I know you’ll get a lot out of it.

Topics we discussed included:

• The role of Gary’s work in my development as a gardener
• What a homestead gardener is
• Mixing nature into your daily life through a garden
• The advantages of greater self-reliance for our food
• Finding greater self-esteem and confidence in the garden
• Realizing that nature does most of the work of growing food
• Gary’s attunement to the psychology of gardeners and his background in mental health
• The overlap between mental health counseling and gardening
• Gary’s special technique for weeding
• Learning life lessons in the garden
• Dealing with self-doubt
• Redefining what “success” means in the garden, and in life
• Recognizing the limits of our control
• Learning through trial and error
• Dealing with the difficulty in thinning plans, and the resulting overcrowding
• The fallacy that you can do things perfectly so that nothing goes wrong
• Letting go of black-or-white thinking
• Health and mental health benefits of gardening
• The amazing experience of eating just-picked vegetables and fruits
• Gardening/farming as part of mental health treatment
• Gary’s involvement with Freetown Farm
• Our society’s devaluing of farming and farmers
• The link between gardening and mindfulness
• Planning your garden and buying seeds in the cold months

Gary Pilarchik grew up (fittingly enough) in New Jersey, the Garden State.

He found a passion for gardening at an early age through his grandfather, and rediscovered it in Maryland while raising his daughter and son.

Gary is a retired mental health therapist and creator of The Rusted Garden Homestead.

His passion led him to making his first garden YouTube video in 2011. His channel is now listed among the YouTube Channels Every Gardener Should Know, which I heartily agree with.

Gary has well over 1200 videos, created to teach and help people enjoy their gardens, and their lives.

He and his wife are currently living in an 1867 farmhouse on two acres, where he is actively building his gardens and edible landscape.

Find Gary online at The Rusted Garden YouTube channel, and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Also, be sure to listen to his new podcast called Gardening Coast2Coast.