Acadia Tucker: Seeding resilience through growing perennial and victory gardens
Acadia Tucker is a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and the author of Tiny Victoria Gardens, Growing Good Food, and Growing Perennial Foods. Her books are a call to action to citizen gardeners everywhere and lay the groundwork for planting an organic, regenerative garden.
In this podcast episode, Acadia sheds light on the difference between growing annual and perennial plants in our gardens or community spaces; using gardening as a form of activism and rebellion against the current dominant extractive and exploitative system; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Acadia and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Politician Man by Adrian Sutherland
“When you farm in a way that isn’t constantly yanking up annuals or tilling the ground each spring for a new crop, you’re allowing that carbon to sit underground and be stored where it’s left if undisturbed.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app, and support Green Dreamer on Patreon so we can keep the show going and accessible to a wider audience!
On how planting perennials supports soil health:
"Plants, on their own, naturally draw down carbon dioxide. In the process of making sugars for themselves to eat, they release some of these carbon-rich sugars underground that soil organisms use for food. When soil organisms eat those sugars and die underground, that carbon becomes trapped underground.
When you farm in a way that isn't constantly yanking up annuals or tilling the ground each spring for a new crop, you're allowing that carbon to sit underground and be stored so it's actually sucked out of the atmosphere and stored underground where it's left if it’s undisturbed."
On the ecological problems with turf:
"On its own, there's nothing bad about turf. But what happens is everyone has that picturesque ideal of a green rolling lawn...
In order to get the grass to look that way, you're burning fossil fuels to mow it and cut it, and there's also a lot of fertilizer, pest control, and disease control that gets sprayed all over these lawns to get them to look as pristine as they do."
Final words of wisdom:
“All it takes is to plant one seed before you get hooked for life!”
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