Greg Peterson

Greg Peterson is a GardenComm Region 6 member who recently relocated to North Carolina from Phoenix, AZ. Among his many talents, he runs the The Urban Farm Podcast. One of the most significant values he finds in this GardenComm membership is the community that he is connecting with, especially in connection with their Podcast monthly call.

The Urban Farm Podcast focuses on low desert gardening and fruit trees, water harvesting, permaculture, food forest design and implementation, and online course creation. While the Urban Farm’s online courses are desert-centric, much of what they present is pertinent to other parts of the country.

In 2023, he and his team created a 37-session master class called "Root Camp, your basic training for growing fruit trees in the desert." It’s a free master class designed to help people find success growing fruit trees. Greg says, “Once you have eaten a perfectly ripe peach from a fruit tree that fell off in your hand, you'll never be able to eat a store-bought peach again.”

A huge proponent of planting fruit trees, Greg loves the quote, "The best time to plant a tree is now or 20 years ago". One of the biggest things he loves about planting fruit trees is that you plant them once and get food for decades or even hundreds of years. Greg’s old house in Phoenix had two citrus trees in the backyard that were over 100 years old. He says they are still producing every year.

Greg lived and gardened in Phoenix for over 50 years, where he learned how to successfully grow food in the desert. In 2022, he moved to Asheville, North Carolina, purchased a 4-acre farm, and is now learning how to grow food in a completely different environment. With a deep knowledge of permaculture and gardening in the desert, the environment he is now adapting to is entirely different and presents quite a steep learning curve.

He described his first gardening experience in North Carolina as a "1 on a scale of 1 to 10." Learning from that, he has improved it to a 4 this year! He said, “I heard once, ‘your first garden is your worst garden,’ and while I was somewhat of an expert at growing in the desert, I am a total newbie here.”

We're sure Greg will soon conquer his new cultural conditions and are confident that his garden will be an 11 in just a few more years!