Niels Thorlaksson of Lettuce Grow: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Nutrients: the plants need minerals to grow properly and produce tasty fruits. When growing in the ground, this means using fertilizers and soil amendments. However, with the Farmstand the plant nutrients dissolve in water and are added to the reservoir, being delivered regularly to the plants every hour when they are watered.

As we all know, inflation has really increased the price of food. Many people have turned to home gardening to grow their own food. Many have tried this and have been really successful. But others struggle to produce food in their own garden. What do you need to know to create a successful vegetable garden to grow your own food? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food” we are talking to experts in vegetable gardening who can share stories and insights from their experiences.

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Niels Thorlaksson.

Niels Thorlaksson, Director of Horticulture at Lettuce Grow.

With over a decade of experience in plant cultivation and farming, Niels Thorlaksson is the Director of Horticulture at Lettuce Grow. After a BS in Business Administration and a stint employed in financial services, Niels succumbed to his true calling — a horticulture career. Seeing a need for fresh, organic produce, regardless of space and time, he began urban farming in his Santa Barbara community. Starting with a small greenhouse in his mom and dad’s backyard, he served as a boutique farm providing high quality produce directly to local restaurants. Niels then set on a path to empower others to grow their own produce by offering seedlings and support to other growers.

After a fortuitous meeting with Lettuce Grow Co-Founder Jacob Pechenik, he set his sights on working alongside Jacob, and became one of Lettuce Grows first employees in 2017. He continues to be a passionate advocate for the Farmstand.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Refusal to give up. When those difficult days come along, and you want to give up, you have to just keep going and not lose hope, because you can overcome the challenges as long as you face them head-on and never lose faith.
• The ability to learn from my mistakes. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we all make mistakes. Learn and improve where you are weak, and put yourself in a position where you can focus on your strengths.
• Getting help. You can’t do everything on your own. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s all about how well you can work with others to accomplish something great.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho

I think about this all the time, and find that my perspective towards my own life and towards the world around me is brighter when you have an optimistic and positive attitude about the future and that things are getting better every day.

Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We have some really exciting projects in the works at Lettuce Grow! We are taking all we’ve learned since launching the Farmstand and trying to improve wherever we can. We want to deliver even better products and customer experience. We are also working hard on our Lettuce Give program where we donate 1 Farmstand to a school for every 10 Farmstands sold; this gets more farmstands into classrooms and can make a real difference in the children’s lives and their outlook on fruits and vegetables. I love being part of it!

Can you help articulate a few reasons why people should be interested in making their own vegetable garden? For example, how is it better for our health? For the environment? For our wallet?

The food tastes so much better, it has more nutrients since it’s farm-to-table fresh, plus it’s safe from any harmful pesticides. With a hydroponic gardening system such as our Lettuce Grow Farmstand, it’s an incredibly more efficient and easy way to grow. Using 98% less water than traditional soil gardening, it’s less maintenance and saves water for everyone. Lettuce Grow also ships seedlings that are already 2–4 weeks old to your home which takes the hard part of germinating a seed out of the process. Growing your own garden is much more gratifying and I find a lot of joy in sharing fresh produce with my family and friends.

Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?

When someone is thinking about starting a garden, there are a few questions I would recommend asking first beforehand so you can figure out what type of garden is best for you. First, what is your location? Climate plays a big role in how well a garden will perform, so consider moving your garden indoors if you live in an area with harsh weather conditions. Second, what is the season? This will guide you on what plants you should be planting. And third, what is your goal? Is it to grow a variety of herbs for cooking or maybe to grow the biggest watermelon you can, or maybe it’s to have a steady supply of lettuces for salads. If you can clearly define your growing goals you are more likely to reach them.

Can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. Light: plants need light to grow strong. Make sure you plant somewhere sunny if you are growing outside. If you have limited sun, consider growing indoors with a hydroponic garden, such as the Farmstand which offers Glow Rings. This makes it easy to have a garden year-round without needing to adapt to changing weather conditions.

2. Nutrients: the plants need minerals to grow properly and produce tasty fruits. When growing in the ground, this means using fertilizers and soil amendments. However, with the Farmstand the plant nutrients dissolve in water and are added to the reservoir, being delivered regularly to the plants every hour when they are watered.

3. Choosing and sourcing your plants: It is important to select varieties that will work well in your climate and environment if you would like to see a successful garden. It is possible to source certain varieties from local nurseries, but options may be limited. You can also choose to get seeds and start the seeds at home; this can be challenging and takes additional time. Lettuce Grow has a solution for this: we grow seedlings at our nurseries year round and can send them directly to you in the mail. This is the easiest way to make sure to have fun and interesting varieties that you know will do well in your growing environment.

4. Watering: your watering schedule is very important to keep your plants happy. When growing in the ground, there is a range of soil types and growing conditions that may require you to water your plants anywhere from multiple times a day to every other week. Warmer environments require more watering. When growing outdoors, I recommend setting up a drip line to minimize wasting water and so you can have some automation on this task. One of the advantages of the Farmstand is it waters automatically with a timer, so it is much easier to find the right balance of water that your plants need.

5. Harvesting: this is the most important step of all! The produce grown in a garden is meant to be eaten and enjoyed. Make sure you are harvesting regularly, as this will help encourage new growth and keep the plants healthy. As plants reach the end of their life cycle, it is important to remove old plants and start over with new young plants. If you can master the art of rotating through your plants as they become ready to harvest, you will have mastered one of the most difficult parts of growing your garden successfully!

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a garden? What specifically can be done to avoid those errors?

The most common mistakes I see are planting a garden without sufficient sun or light, overwatering, not harvesting from your plants, applying no pest prevention techniques, and not matching what you are growing with the current season.

What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?

One of the best ways to keep your costs down when gardening is to grow with the Farmstand. The value of the products you can get from a predictable and consistent garden like the Farmstand outweighs the challenges and inconsistencies many growers find when planting a garden in soil. It is a common experience for so many growers I’ve spoken with to invest time and money into a garden that ends up not producing as much as they had hoped. This can be avoided using a hydroponic gardening system such as the Farmstand and planting seedlings from our farms. You will be able to achieve higher yields with faster growth times while experiencing less chances for failure.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would love to see a commitment from all parents to share the joys and benefits of growing fresh food at home with their families. Due to changing times and so many more people living in cities, in a way we have become disconnected from our traditional practices of growing and enjoying fresh food together. I would love to see that be reinstalled into the values of our children and that we can carry that on to future generations.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

The best way to follow us is on social media @lettucegrow or to sign up for our email newsletter on lettucegrow.com where we make special announcements. There are many cool things in the works so stay posted!

Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.