Kevin Espiritu

Well, people will say, I grew this or I can't grow this.

And the way I think about it, at least, is the truth is no one's really ever grown a plant.

As a gardener, what you're really doing is you're putting a plant in the environment in which it knows how to grow best.

And so you're not growing it.

Of course, it's growing itself.

You just have to kind of cultivate that right environment.

So in soil, yeah, it's a lot easier.

Yeah, this one is kind of interesting.

So take like an eggplant.

That's like a classic summer crop.

It loves a lot of sun.

And then take something like maybe spinach, which is a leafy green.

It grows low to the ground.

If you were to give it a lot of sun, the leaves might actually bleach and get damaged.

And you think about it, it's like, well, they're both photosynthesizing.

So wouldn't more light just equal better growth across the spectrum?

Right, and that's, I think really that's what I would think too.

But when you think about it, like all these plants that we grow in a traditional garden, like even take a salsa garden, which we think of as a group of plants that make sense together.

Like you got your jalapenos, you got your tomatoes, you got your peppers, your onions, whatever.

From an evolutionary perspective, though, these plants did not just, like, grow up as a salsa garden somewhere in the world.