The Birthing of Thrift Gardening

July 24, 2023

I am a Computer Scientist, but I have always loved gardening. I love to see things grow. With plants, once you put a seedling into the ground and give the right growing conditions, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t sprout.

The year 2022 was a tough year for most people. From time to time, we kept hearing of tech companies laying off workers for the most part of that year. Well, I wasn’t spared either. I was working for a tech company in the United States, and they also let me go. Thanks to online work, for the rest of 2022, I was freelancing and that is how I was surviving paying my bills.

To make matters worse, 2022 was the year the Russia and Ukraine war started. Fuel prices skyrocketed, and the food supply chains were disrupted. Consequently, the cost of living became high. To save on the little money that was coming in, I decided to grow my own produce to reduce my expenses. I’ve always grown my own food. I’ve loved the taste of green, healthy kales, coriander, and green onions from my garden. But those are usually not the most expensive when it comes to buying green produce. Tomatoes usually top the list as the most used and expensive while at it.

As January 2023 started, I challenged myself to grow tomatoes. It is one of those vegetables that I had read people find hard to grow. The closest I had gotten to growing tomatoes are those tiny cherry tomatoes that grow by themselves in the garden. I did some research and settled on the tomatoes of the indeterminate type as my plan was to grow tomatoes throughout the whole year. I went and bought the seedling and propagated them on my seed bed.

A month later, around February 11th, all my tomato seedlings were ready for transplanting into my small garden that I had prepared. All this time, I had no idea if I was doing anything right. But I believed I had done the right research and believed that it would work.

In Kenya, the months between January and March would be considered our “Summer” months. It’s usually the hottest time of the year. Not so hot though as people think Africa is. Where I live, Nakuru, experiences maximum temperatures of 31 Degrees Celsius (not Fahrenheit). Anyway, let me digress so much, the point I was trying to bring out is that there was no rain. I had to manually water the seedlings everyday by hand for about 2 months. I didn’t know they would survive as I had read that tomatoes get attacked by a lot of pests and diseases. And being summer, it was the only green thing around and could be a target for most hungry pests looking for food.

Well, they did well, I documented the journey along the way on my mobile phone. All this time, Thrift Gardening wasn’t even a thing. By the end of March, the heavens had opened, and watering the plants had become easier. The tomatoes were doing well, they had started to flower/fruit, and I was excited.

I remember it was during my birthday on 7th April that the thought of starting a gardening YouTube channel came to be. I had planted some Zucchini plants on my seed bed and the seedlings were now ready to be transplanted. With my limited space, I had nowhere to grow them. So, I resorted to buying the big 20 litres (5 gallon) containers to plant them in. Still, I didn’t have enough money to buy all of them at once. A random thought gave me the idea to repurpose the old sacks that were lying in the store underutilized to plant them instead. So, I did that.

As I was doing that, I thought how many people would love to start gardening but don’t have enough capital like I did to start gardening the fancy way like we see in channels such as Epic Gardening on YouTube which I really love. That’s when I thought of starting a gardening channel, taking gardeners, or aspiring gardeners through my gardening journey so that even them can be inspired to start one with the limited space and resources that they have. I did some channel name research using ChatGPT explaining to the AI what I wanted my channel to be about, and it helped me come up with the name Thrift Gardening. That’s how I started my YouTube channel.

Why a gardening channel? Why not.

It’s a niche not many people, especially in Kenya, want to be associated with. It seems dirty and not cool. In my mind, I always see opportunity. In this regard, that would only mean less competition. I can be a leader in this space and make gardening cool to the millennials and Gen Zs. Most gardening channels are from the United States. They show us how to garden from their perspective. But we as Africans, don’t have winter, fall, summer, or spring. It’s either the rainy or sunny season. This means we can garden all year round, if smart enough. We also eat different kinds of foods here. Let me show the world how to garden from an African perspective.

Gardening aligns with my purpose in life. I love to help people be better. Eat better. Live better. This is my way of contributing to society and making the world better.

Willies Ogola

I am the founder of Thrift Gardening. I enjoy seeing things grow.