"The Plant Prof" talks horticulture! Guest edition

Dr. Vikram Baliga on community gardens, prairies at risk, and how to get your hands dirty

This week, my guest curator is Dr. Vikram Baliga. Vikram is also known as “The Plant Prof” on TikTok, where he’s racked up over a million and a half likes for his funny and quirky videos on all things plants. He’s a professional colleague as well, teaching introductory horticulture and sustainable vegetable production to hundreds of students at Texas Tech each year.

Vikram also has a podcast about plants and people in the green sciences, called Planthropology, which I was a guest on last month. “It’s been one of the great honors of my life to get to talk to people about plants and the environment,” he says.

Last year, he published his first book, Plants to the Rescue! It's a non-fiction children’s book about how plants and cutting-edge advances in plant science can help us fight climate change, pollution, and hunger. Writing the book, he says, was a special experience for him as it gave him the opportunity to essentially write it for his 8-year-old son. The book is geared towards 8- to 11-year-olds, and being able to bounce ideas off his son is something he says he’ll always be grateful for.

Take it away, Vikram!

GOOD NEWS

A one-acre garden located in a former coal mine in Freestone County, Texas has produced more than 10,000 pounds of produce since the first harvest in 2022. Ecological restoration projects like these are going to become increasingly important as we navigate climate change and its effects on our world.

This project is good news because it shows how much of an impact it can have when communities, non-profits, and companies come together. Food insecurity is part of the climate crisis that often gets too little press. Well-run urban farms and community gardens can be incredibly powerful in feeding people efficiently and effectively (though they’re certainly not a complete solution to the problem of hunger). Plus, there is a beautiful kind of symmetry in an old coal mine being retrofitted into public greenspace that helps trap carbon and turn it into food!

This garden is just one piece of what’s needed to remediate a former coal mine, but I am encouraged by how a small portion of this site has been transformed into a space that not only grows plants, but feeds thousands of people. The commitment of money, time, and passion that has been devoted to making a difference in healing the soil and land is inspiring, and could serve as a great model for what can be accomplished when we’re willing to work together.

NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS

Prairies are some of the most important, delicate, and complex ecosystems on our planet. They’re home to a wide diversity of plant and animal life and serve as a MAJOR carbon sink and site of nutrient cycling in our environment.

Unfortunately, poor land and fire management, urban sprawl, and unsustainable agricultural and industrial practices worldwide have drastically decreased the amount of healthy prairie land left. In North America, the Great Plains is a vast prairie that has historically covered more than 1.1 million square miles of land throughout the central US and Southern Canada. And these prairies are in trouble. As this map illustrates, only 38 percent of North America’s native grasslands remain today.

The loss of these grasslands has drastically reduced safe migratory space and habitat for hundreds of species and the land’s capacity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The prairie that remains needs protection: according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, some 93 percent of remaining prairie “is unprotected and at risk of conversion.” The losses suffered in the Great American Prairie is a loss for the world and the climate overall.

Want to learn more? Watch this National Geographic program on the American Prairie Reserve in northern Montana and this short video from The Nature Conservancy on the importance of grasslands and savannas.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Vikram fascinated by a bunch of corn plant when he was a kid (left) and teaching his son about a tree (right)

Get outside and help your friends and family develop and maintain a love for plants, nature, and the world around us.

I can think of no better way to start than by growing a home garden, if you have the space to do so: even if it’s planters on the balcony. Producing a little bit of your own fruits and veggies is a radical and empowering act and gives us all a better appreciation for where our food comes from and what is required to grow it. Better appreciation leads to less food waste, which can be a huge tool in combating climate change.

There’s so much information out there about gardening that it can be hard to know what you should actually do. Should you crack eggs into the planting holes, then put the shells on your tomato plants like little hats? Please don’t do that. What about using bananas to propagate your plants instead of just sticking cuttings in the soil, or fertilizing with banana peel water? I guess it really depends how much you enjoy fruit flies, because that’s how you get them. Should you cover every plant in your home with cinnamon and honey? I’m not sure who told you to do that, but, spoiler alert, you should not.

Vikram reacts to bad plant hacks on his YouTube channel

While weaponized nonsense like the “hacks” above might get you a bunch of views on the internet, it won’t help you be successful in the garden. Instead, go follow some amazing plant creators on TikTok like Epic Gardening and Farmer Froberg who are out there living that green life and teaching people great information about growing food, being sustainable, and having a lot of fun in the process!

Don’t have the space or bandwidth for your own garden at home? You can find other ways to give involved with your community and its natural resources. Volunteering at school and community gardens, taking part in city cleanups, working with naturalist groups, and other community-focused efforts are great ways to get yourself out there and plugged in.

Education is one of our most powerful tools when it comes to climate action. One fun and approachable way to improve access to education about plants, nature, and how they help us deal with climate change is the implementation of public urban green space. From school and community gardens, to pocket parks, to the planters on your patio, every little piece of green in an urban setting is an opportunity for someone to learn.

Thank you, Vikram, for sharing your expertise with us! You can see why I recommend listening to his podcast and watching his videos. They’re very informed, and will help you figure out what you can do that will really have an impact.

If are looking for more resources, Vikram recommends checking out Texas by Nature and the Central Grasslands Conservation website. If you want to laugh while being educated on all things plant related, I highly recommend following him on TikTok. You can also find him on LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and Twitter.

Mon., April 9th at 7:30pm EST - Christians, Climate, and Our Culture Around the World with the Affiliation of Christian Biologists - virtual

Wed., Apr 24th at 5pm EST - New Climate Solutions and Galvanizing for Action, the 22nd Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan - in person, in Ann Arbor MI