They're Controlling You Through Your Food. Escape Before It's Too Late.

We’ve become so disconnected from our food that new generations don’t even know where it comes from. We need to do something about it.

I'm a first-time homesteader who spent most of my life buying tomatoes instead of growing them, and this episode is the honest reckoning I had once I started putting seeds in the ground.

Two generations ago, gardens weren't a hobby or a lifestyle. They were a basic household skill, right alongside cooking and cleaning. Then convenience arrived, supermarkets grew, and the knowledge my great-grandparents took for granted disappeared inside a single lifetime.

I want to talk about how that happened, why the Victory Garden Movement produced more than vegetables, and why the perfect lawn might be one of the strangest trades we've ever made.

If gardening feels intimidating, that's the point I want to sit with. It shouldn't be, and the fix is easier than you think.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[5:13] Practical knowledge disappears within a generation or two without practice

[9:35] The beginner mistake of planting what looks cool in the catalog instead of what your family eats

[12:47] He who controls the food controls the people, and the grocery store rollout may not be a coincidence

[15:46] Gardening is actually a soil project, not a plant project

[19:14] Planting flowers alongside vegetables and why nature never separates them

[25:32] The five reasons we stopped growing our own food, and why lawns are a psyop

Related Gubba Homestead Episodes:

11 Easy Things You Can Do Today to Start Homesteading (From Anywhere)
Why I'm Buying Old Tech Before 2030

Resources Mentioned:

Ultimate Garden Planner

Hello, and welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. I'm Gubba, a first-time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. I discuss everything from homesteading to prepping and everything in between.

Today I want to talk about something that has fascinated me ever since I started growing my own food. How did we go from a country where backyard gardens were as common as mailboxes to one where many people have never grown a single tomato?

More importantly, what have we lost by making that shift, and what can we gain by putting even one seed in the ground today?

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to thank the sponsor of this podcast, my small skincare business, Arvoti. If you've been wanting to simplify your skincare with products inspired by traditional ingredients, you can find my tallow balms, goat milk soaps, Anti-Aging and Hair Serums, cleansing oils, and more. Every order helps support this podcast and my homestead, and I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who chooses to support small businesses like mine.

There is something almost magical about walking through a garden early in the morning. The air is cool, the leaves are covered with tiny droplets of dew, bees are just beginning their work, and everything feels alive.

Every time I step into my garden, I'm reminded that food doesn't begin on a grocery store shelf. It begins in healthy soil, with sunlight, water, insects, microorganisms, and a tremendous amount of patience.

That might sound obvious, but for many people today, it's a realization they've never had the chance to experience. Entire generations have grown up disconnected from the process of producing food because, for most of us, it has always been available with a quick trip to the store.

Ask a group of children where French fries come from, and some will honestly answer, "McDonald's." That isn't because children today are any less intelligent than previous generations.

It's because we've become separated from the process that feeds us every single day. Food has become something we purchase instead of something we participate in creating, and I think that's changed our relationship with it in ways we don't always recognize.

What fascinates me is how quickly that transformation happened. It wasn't thousands of years ago that nearly every household had a garden. It wasn't even hundreds of years ago. For many of our grandparents and great-grandparents, growing vegetables wasn't considered a hobby, a lifestyle, or something reserved for people living in the country.

It was simply part of everyday life. Gardens, fruit trees, and shelves lined with home-canned food were ordinary because producing food was considered a basic household skill. One of the biggest lessons I've learned from homesteading is that practical knowledge disappears surprisingly fast when it isn't practiced. It only takes a generation or two before skills that once seemed completely ordinary begin to feel intimidating or even forgotten.

One of the clearest examples of that was the Victory Garden movement during World War II. Millions of families transformed backyards, parks, schoolyards, and vacant lots into productive gardens that supplied a significant portion of the country's fresh vegetables.

Gardening wasn't political. It wasn't trendy. It wasn't something only country people did. It was common sense. Families worked together, neighbors exchanged seeds and harvests, and children learned alongside their parents. Those gardens didn't just produce food. They produced confidence.

People understood that they were capable of feeding themselves, even if it was only a portion of what their family needed.

There is another lesson hidden inside the Victory Garden movement that I think is just as relevant today. Those families weren't trying to grow everything they ate. They focused on crops that gave them the greatest return for the space they had.

If someone asked me what to plant in their very first garden, I would give almost the same advice today. Grow tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, onions, zucchini, and herbs. Those crops are productive, forgiving, and dramatically better fresh than what you'll usually find at the grocery store. One vine-ripened tomato is often enough to convince someone why gardening is worth the effort.

One mistake I see beginners make all the time is planting what looks beautiful instead of planting what they actually eat. If your family never eats eggplant, don't devote precious garden space to eggplant just because it looked impressive in a catalog. If your family buys lettuce every week, grow lettuce.

If everyone loves salsa, plant tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cilantro. If you constantly buy fresh herbs only to throw half of them away because they spoil, dedicate one small bed to herbs instead. Your garden should support your kitchen. The most successful gardens are the ones that reflect the meals your family already enjoys.

After World War II, life changed rapidly. America experienced tremendous economic growth. Suburbs expanded, highways connected cities, supermarkets became larger, refrigeration improved, and food transportation became more efficient than ever before. Families suddenly had access to foods from all over the country, and convenience quickly became one of the defining goals of modern life.

At the same time, convenience gradually replaced participation. Instead of growing tomatoes, we bought tomatoes. Instead of preserving peaches, we bought canned peaches. Instead of saving seeds, we drove to the grocery store whenever we needed something.

None of those decisions seemed significant on their own, but together they slowly changed the relationship people had with food. We became excellent consumers of food while becoming less familiar with producing it ourselves.

Ironically, I think that's one of the reasons gardening has become even more valuable today than it was fifty years ago. It's one of the few activities left that encourages us to slow down and work with nature instead of constantly trying to outpace it.

You stop asking, "How can I make this happen faster?" and start asking, "What does this plant need?" That shift in thinking changes more than your garden. It changes the way you approach challenges in the rest of your life as well.

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear is that you need acres of land to grow meaningful amounts of food. I imagined gardening only became worthwhile once you owned a large homestead with fields, barns, and rows upon rows of vegetables. Then I started paying attention to what people were producing in surprisingly small spaces.

A single raised bed can provide months of fresh salads. A handful of tomato plants can produce more fruit than one family can eat fresh. Herbs thrive in containers. Potatoes grow beautifully in grow bags. Strawberries flourish in raised beds, and many vegetables are perfectly happy in five-gallon buckets.

The truth is that gardening isn't really about the size of your property. It's about developing the habit of growing something. Every gardener starts the same way—with one seed, one plant, and one season of learning. You don't have to recreate a nineteenth-century farm. You simply have to begin.

One thing I wish someone had explained to me earlier is that gardening isn't really a plant project. It's a soil project. When I first started, I spent far too much time thinking about fertilizers, fancy tools, and expensive seed varieties.

Over time I realized healthy soil solves more problems than almost anything else you can buy. Rich soil holds moisture better during hot weather, drains more effectively during heavy rain, feeds beneficial organisms, and creates stronger, healthier plants from the very beginning.

That's one of the reasons compost has become one of my favorite tools on the homestead. It isn't glamorous, and it probably won't go viral on social media, but year after year it quietly improves everything in the garden.

Kitchen scraps, leaves, grass clippings, and garden waste all become valuable resources instead of trash. Nature has been recycling nutrients for millions of years, and compost simply allows us to participate in that process. If you're wondering where to invest your time as a beginner gardener, spend less time worrying about gadgets and more time building healthy soil. Your future harvests will thank you.

One lesson every gardener eventually learns is that failure isn't the exception—it's part of the process. Every experienced gardener has stories about seeds that never germinated, tomatoes that split after a heavy rain, or seedlings lost to a late frost. If I could give my beginner self one piece of advice, it would be this: don't expect perfection.

Your first garden isn't supposed to look like the ones you see online. It's supposed to teach you something. Every setback is simply another lesson, and over time those lessons become experience. That's why I always encourage keeping a simple garden journal. Write down what you planted, when you planted it, what thrived, and what struggled. After just a couple of seasons, you'll have a personalized guide that's far more valuable than trying to remember everything from memory

Another thing I wish more people knew is that gardening isn't one giant event that happens over a single weekend. New gardeners often think everything has to be planted at once, but nature doesn't work that way.

Cool-season crops like peas, spinach, lettuce, and radishes are often planted weeks before warm-season crops like tomatoes and peppers. Some vegetables can even be planted multiple times throughout the season so you continue harvesting instead of getting everything all at once. Once you understand that rhythm, gardening feels much less overwhelming because you realize it's a series of small jobs rather than one enormous project.

One of my favorite parts of gardening is how it reconnects you with the seasons. Instead of simply checking the weather on your phone, you begin noticing the natural signs around you. You pay attention to when the lilacs bloom, when pollinators return, when the soil finally warms enough for planting, and when the first leaves begin changing color in the fall. The garden slowly teaches you to observe instead of rushing. Before long, you're paying attention to rainfall, wind, insects, and sunlight in ways you never did before.

That brings me to another tip that has made a remarkable difference in my own garden. Plant flowers alongside your vegetables. Many people separate flowers from food in their minds, but nature certainly doesn't.

Calendula, zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, nasturtiums, bachelor's buttons, and borage don't just make the garden beautiful. They attract bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects that improve pollination and help create a healthier garden ecosystem. Every year I'm reminded that flowers aren't simply decoration. They're part of the productivity of the garden itself.

People also tell me all the time that they'd love to garden, but they don't know enough yet. I always smile when I hear that because nobody knows enough before they begin. Every gardener you've ever admired once stood in front of an empty patch of dirt wondering where to start.

Gardening isn't something you master before planting your first seed. You master it by planting, observing, making mistakes, and trying again next season. Experience has always been the greatest gardening teacher.

When I look around my own homestead now, I don't just see vegetables growing. I see confidence that wasn't there a few years ago. I see lessons learned through trial and error. I see problems that once felt overwhelming becoming second nature. That's why I always encourage people not to compare their first season to someone else's tenth. Gardening isn't a competition.

It's a relationship with the land that grows stronger every year you keep showing up.
Something else surprised me after I started gardening. It wasn't long before one skill naturally led to another.

Growing tomatoes made me want to learn canning. Growing herbs made me experiment more in the kitchen. Producing vegetables made me appreciate composting. Before long, I found myself baking bread, preserving food, and becoming interested in other traditional skills that had almost disappeared from everyday life. Gardening has a way of opening doors you never expected to walk through.

As I've continued learning about homesteading, I've realized that growing food isn't really about becoming completely self-sufficient. That's a phrase we hear often, but I think resilience is a much better goal.

Every tomato you grow is one less tomato you have to buy. Every herb you harvest saves another trip to the grocery store. Every jar you preserve becomes a meal you've prepared for your future self. Those may seem like small victories, but together they create confidence that's difficult to put into words.

One thing I think about often is how dependent most of us have become on systems we'll never see. Grocery stores do an incredible job of keeping shelves stocked, but very few of us know how that food arrived, how far it traveled, or what it took to produce it.

Growing even a small amount of your own food changes that perspective. It reminds you that you're capable of producing something with your own hands. Gardening isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about remembering what people have always been capable of doing.

If I were starting over today with an ordinary backyard, I already know exactly what I'd plant. Potatoes because they're productive and store well. Tomatoes because nothing compares to the flavor of one picked fully ripe from the vine. Green beans because they produce heavily and preserve beautifully.

Herbs because they're expensive to buy fresh but incredibly easy to grow. Garlic because you plant it once in the fall and harvest it the following summer. Those few crops alone can teach you nearly every fundamental gardening skill while giving you food you'll genuinely enjoy eating.

Another piece of advice I'd give is to grow varieties that perform well where you live instead of simply buying whatever catches your eye at the garden center. Local climate matters. Your growing season matters.

Your soil matters. Spend time talking with experienced gardeners in your community, visit local farmers' markets, or ask your county extension office what grows best in your region. Learning from people who have already succeeded where you live can save you years of frustration.

One thing gardening has changed for me more than anything else is the way I pay attention. I notice where frost settles first in the spring. I notice which parts of the garden dry out after a hot day and which hold moisture longer. I notice where the wind is strongest and where insects seem happiest. Gardening teaches observation, and observation leads to better decisions not just in the garden, but throughout life.

If I had to answer the question that inspired today's episode—why did we stop growing our own food?—I think the answer comes down to five simple ideas. Convenience replaced necessity. Supermarkets replaced backyard gardens. Practical knowledge stopped being passed from one generation to the next. Perfect lawns became more desirable than vegetable patches. And perhaps most importantly, many of us slowly forgot that ordinary families are capable of producing food for themselves.

The encouraging part is that these skills aren't lost. The knowledge still exists, the seeds are still available, and every experienced gardener started exactly the same way—with one seed and a willingness to learn.

I truly believe growing your own food is about much more than harvesting vegetables. It's about rebuilding a connection that many of us didn't even realize we'd lost. It's about understanding the seasons, appreciating the work behind every meal, and remembering that ordinary people have been feeding themselves from the land for thousands of years. Those skills aren't outdated. If anything, they're becoming more valuable with every passing year.

So if you've been thinking about starting a garden, let this be your encouragement. Plant one tomato. Sow one packet of lettuce. Grow a pot of basil on your porch. Start with whatever fits your space and your life. That one plant may seem small today, but it has the power to completely change the way you think about food. Every harvest begins with a single seed, and sometimes one seed is all it takes to begin a lifelong journey.

Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love it if you subscribed to the podcast, left a review, and shared it with someone who's been thinking about starting a garden. You never know—this conversation might be the reason someone plants their very first seed.

Until next time, remember that every homestead begins with a single skill, every harvest begins with a single seed, and every generation has the opportunity to pass on knowledge that can nourish the next. Happy gardening, and I'll see you in the next episode.