- I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for over 20 years, and of course with gardening comes a lot of aches and pains.

So I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems, and a fellow gardener introduced me to Jeff Hughes.

After working with Jeff, it dawned on me.

What would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardens and helping their gardeners get garden fit?

[exciting music] Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden, that's our mission.

- Wow Madeline, this is beautiful.

Southern California.

Look at all the hills and the Mission-style buildings, the palm trees.

- It's lovely, it's kind of unique.

- It's beautiful.

- Yes.

- So one question.

Madeline, who are we gonna see today?

- Today we're gonna meet Karl Cook.

- Karl Cook.

- Yes, and he lives at Pomponio Ranch, and he's very enthusiastic about two specific things in his life.

He loves horses.

- Okay.

- And in fact, he is a show jumper.

He enters tournaments all over the world, and as a matter of fact, he's so good at it, Jeff, that he is ranked within the top 15 show jumpers in the United States.

- Well, he is not good at it.

He's great at it.

- Pretty impressive.

The other thing that he's very enthusiastic about is his garden.

He loves vegetables, and that's because he's a vegetarian.

- Well, that makes sense.

If I was a vegetarian, I would love vegetables too.

I like vegetables anyway.

- I do too.

But his mission is to absolutely grow everything he likes to eat.

- That's a lot of stuff, probably.

- That is a lot of stuff.

- Okay.

Wait, those were two things, right?

- Right, those were two things, but there's something else that makes Karl quite special.

- Oh Madeline, come on.

I see the bag coming.

I had to ask.

What have you got in your bag today, Madeline?

- I've got a heavy bag today, Jeff.

So let's see what's in my bag.

- [Jeff] Let's see what's in your bag.

- A squash.

- A squash?

- A bigger squash.

- That's huge.

- And yet another squash.

- Squash, squash, squash.

- Corn.

- [Jeff] Corn.

- A wonderfully shaped squash.

- Another squash.

- And another squash.

- And yet another squash.

- Lots of sweet potatoes.

You love sweet potatoes.

- I love sweet potatoes, but I've never seen one that big before.

- Look at this.

- What is that?

- It's a radish.

- That's a radish?

- He grows carrots, a very large leek, a beautiful round melon.

More squash, look at that lemon, pomegranate trees, and of course, lots of tomatoes.

- Okay, you know what?

Just stop.

Obviously you could go on for miles, but I think we might be getting close.

- I've got a lot in my bag, but what do you see?

- I see a human cornucopia with a pile of vegetables on her lap.

That's what I see.

- It's variety, Jeff.

- It's variety, Jeff.

- Yes.

So most gardeners grow two to three different kinds of let's say peppers or tomatoes, but Karl grows like nine to 15 different types of tomatoes and peppers because he wants to cook something different every night for dinner.

- Oh, okay.

He's a vegetarian.

He grows a variety of vegetables so that he can have a variety of different meals every night, got it.

You gonna be able to get out?

- Not sure.

[soft music] - [Jeff] I think this is a stable.

- I'm sure it is, because Karl said to meet him at the barn.

There he is, Karl.

- Welcome to the farm.

- Thank you.

- It's so nice to have you guys.

- It's so nice to meet you in person.

- Nice to meet you.

- Karl Cook.

It's a beautiful place.

- [Karl] Thank you, thank you.

- [Madeline] It's wonderful driving up and seeing the horses.

- Yep, and it's very peaceful here.

I've been here for six years and I've been really gardening for four.

- Oh my goodness, so a new gardener.

- Yes, I'm still a juvenile, if you will.

- But have you kind of created a vision for yourself about how you want to?

- For me, it's all about edible.

I'm a vegetarian, so then it had extra impetus for me to grow good vegetables, and as I got better, I thought why not start integrating edible stuff into the landscaping around the farm.

If we have to have people take care of plants, they might as well make something for us.

- There they are.

- Yes.

This is one of our first installations.

- These are vegetables?

- They're vegetables.

That's a variety of spinach called malabar spinach.

You can eat it.

- Can I eat it?

- Of course you can.

- I've never seen anybody do that, really do this transition from regular plants into edible plants.

- You just walk out the door and have a little something to eat.

- Correct.

You're just walking past, you know, you need a little snack and you can eat this.

- We've never seen anything like this.

We've been to a lot of gardens.

- As we get better at it, we're gonna keep replacing beds that aren't edible, and we'll just keep adding edibles.

It's a fun journey as a gardener as well, because you're thinking about plants differently.

- So can we go see your vegetables?

- We can go see the vegetables.

- Let's go.

- [Jeff] All right.

Wow, these are gorgeous.

- Aren't they beautiful?

- This is a passion fruit flower.

This variety is super pretty, but for me, I want it for the fruit.

- So wait, you're not growing that for the flower?

- No, it sounds crazy, 'cause the flowers are so pretty.

- Beautiful.

- That's more of a perk than the intent.

This variety and it's companion variety, they grow these big passion fruits.

However, it doesn't self pollinate, so what we have to do is we have to go to its buddy and we literally just rub the pollen on the inside of the flower.

It's a lot of labor, but the fruit is really special.

- It's beautiful.

- So you just come up and spend the afternoon.

- Yeah.

- Hand pollinating.

That's a lot of work.

Well, I can't wait to get into the big vegetable garden.

- Yes, yes.

We should go into the big vegetable garden.

- Can we follow you there?

- Yes, let's go.

[soft music] Well, welcome to the garden.

- Oh my goodness, look at this garden.

Oh, it's fabulous.

- It's thriving.

- [Madeline] So maybe we should start talking about the garden from the ground up, like how do you take care of your soil?

- We built all of our soil.

Because of all the horses on property, we have a lot of waste that comes out of the stalls, so the challenge was how to compost it because it's all wood.

Thankfully our neighbor has a lot of grass clippings that he cuts every week, and so instead of them having to pay to dispose of that, it comes here and we blend it in.

It still takes more time because wood doesn't like to break down, but then what we've done here is we've just built all the soil up, so it's an additive process, not a reductive process.

In the bed area, there's just no sand or rock or anything, 'cause it's just all organic pallets that we've added.

- That must be super for the roots of all your vegetables.

And what about watering?

- Everything here is drip.

Every bed has drip lines and there's a bunch of valves to control the water.

We can tune the water to that particular plant.

Chili peppers need a lot less water than say a tomato.

- The drip irrigation I think does save lots of time too, if you have to do this by hand.

- It's a lot of labor to put the drip tubes in, but once it's in, all you're doing is deciding how much water and how often.

- The other thing, you know, just to say look, standing here amongst all of your plants, huge variety of plants.

- I just like having a lot of varieties so I can eat something completely different every day.

- You must have a system or a way of finding and sourcing seeds and plants.

- The seeds are easy.

It's the internet, finding certain sites that you like, and then when I want to plant something, I just look through all the seeds.

- I see you've got a seed tray there.

Is that how you start them?

- They're all started in trays like this.

I struggled for a long time with seed trays, because they can be really annoying, but this is the best one we've found.

So feel that.

- [Madeline] This is amazing.

- It's very sturdy.

- It's not flimsy.

You know how many times I've picked up a tray and lost half of it?

- I've had it once where I picked up the tray and it broke in the middle and I literally just sandwiched the whole tray together and just threw it on the ground so frustrated, but this is so sturdy and they're so reusable.

You can pressure wash these.

They're not delicate.

- Right.

- Which is the best part.

- Maybe we need to share that resource.

- Yes, I'll get you where we got that from.

- And so a plant like this, which I believe is a sweet potato.

In the East coast, we use this as a decorative plant.

Nobody would ever think to put it in their vegetable garden, I believe.

- I wasn't looking for this plant, but when I saw it on the website, I was like, I don't need decoration, but it would still be cool to have something pretty in the garden and to have the sweet potatoes after would be super.

- It's wonderful.

I mean, it really does add a decorative color to the garden, and I see you have a companion plant.

- Yes, that's hibiscus.

I'm not saying that hibiscus and sweet potatoes help each other.

It's just, I can grow them in the same place.

- And you obviously grow this for the flowers.

- [Karl] Yes, dried flowers for hibiscus tea.

- [Madeline] Look how pretty they are.

- [Karl] Yeah, they're really pretty.

- See that?

- You want to eat something?

- You can eat that.

- Yeah, let's eat.

What do we have here?

- This is kale.

- All right, I like kale.

Oh, this is soft kale.

- Yeah, it's a really cool variety.

- Can I try that, too?

A little bit?

- Help yourself.

- [Kale] You know it's kale.

You're not wondering if you're eating kale, but it's so much.

- [Madeline] Tastes great.

- Cancel lunch, I'm good.

- So I have noticed that there are no labels in your garden.

- That's correct.

Initially, I really obsessed over labeling.

I really wanted to know what was growing.

I then realized I was spending so much time labeling that it was taking away from doing other stuff and being more productive.

If you can't identify the plant on your own, you just have a deeper problem as a gardener.

- So could we go see maybe the new orchard and what you've planted there?

- We can go see the orchard.

This is gonna be fun.

- Let's go.

[soft music] - So here we are.

The orchard is all on a slope because well, what else are you gonna put here?

We got multiple groups.

We plant all the stone fruits together.

We plant all the citrus together because the climates work.

Down here it gets colder, so the stone fruits go down here, where at the top of the hill we plant the avocados and subtropicals 'cause it gets less cold.

Everything is thoughtfully installed.

- Grouped.

- Yes.

We try to think everything out so that we could handle the variety.

- So what is the variety of plants here?

- I think we're in the range of 90 to 100 different tree varieties.

- That's pretty impressive.

And are you still looking?

- Always looking.

There's a couple.

- Keep my eyes out.

- We built it so that we could expand.

There's some room in each zone.

- To put more, of course.

And the comfrey, why is that here?

- This green plant is a plant called comfrey.

Some people watching this might be rolling their eyes saying I made a huge mistake.

When most people think comfrey they think no, don't do it.

It's gonna spread and take over.

This is a clumping variety.

The reason it's here is these tree roots actually don't go that deep.

60% of the roots are in the first eight inches of soil.

That's where the comfrey comes in.

It grows with these huge tap roots that shoot down feet, and we use it as a nutrient pump.

So it shoots down feet, can access nutrients that are lower, bring stuff to the surface, and then you chop it and then you lay it at the foot of the plant.

- [Madeline] That's so cool.

- [Karl] Or you compost it.

And then because of the tap roots, they just regrow.

- Just comes back.

- Like a little nutrient system.

- Well thank you for showing us your orchard.

- Of course.

- I'd like to maybe think a few things through with you if you have some time to sit down.

- Let's do it.

- Okay.

[soft music] Karl, I had the best time today.

Your garden is definitely inspiring.

The concept of having a garden that you don't have to necessarily have in a garden, that's what really got me.

You know, you're a writer, you're a gardener, and you maintain your body.

You're always staying ahead of the curve.

And how old are you?

- I'm 30.

- You're 30, so normally in this section of the show, I talk to people about injuries or aches or pains or something like that.

At your age, they haven't set in completely yet, but I would like to know a little bit about what you do physically.

I know you ride.

- I'm trying to do my riding in as relaxed a way as possible, and that also helps my body.

But days at the horse shows are long.

I get up early in the morning, I'm on my first horse sometimes at seven and sometimes I don't leave 'til eight, nine o'clock at night.

I need to be fit enough to be able to stay constant all day.

I don't really do any strength training, but what I do is I run.

- You run trails?

- I avoid asphalt and roads as much as possible.

I run in these sandals as well.

- Really?

- Yep.

I've found that if I have a heel, my knees and my back ache more at the end of the day, because when you have a heel, you'll land on your.

- You're not using your ankle appropriately.

- I feel more confident in these than I do in shoes 'cause I feel like I can feel the ground much better.

- What other exercises do you do?

- Basic sit ups, basic leg lifts as well.

When I first started running, I had issues with my IT band aching outside my knee.

I realized that that was because the inside of my thighs are so strong because of riding.

I never worked the outside, so that muscle was a lot weaker.

So I started incorporating more outside leg lifts to strengthen that outside muscle, which in turn made the IT band pain just go away.

- Yeah, you balance out your joint.

- That's what I was trying to do, and it worked shockingly well.

- So I would like to just take a look, let's go back to those exercises you're doing and just take a look.

- Before I go and I run, I'll go and I'll hold on to something just to help balance, and I just lift my leg like this and I'll do 15 to 20 on each leg, and then I go for a run.

Everything I do is simple.

For me, simple makes it easy, which means I'll do it.

If I overcomplicate it, it might be better, but I might not do it, and then it ends up actually being worse.

- You have hit the nail on the head.

When I ask people to do things sometimes, it's maybe not the best thing they could do, but it's one they will do, which makes it the best exercise they could get.

- And then when I get back from running, I just do basic crunches like this, and then the more important one for me is doing this.

- A little bit of hip flexion.

- Yeah, that works down here, which is a more important muscle for riding.

And then I'll plank for the oblique.

I'll plank this, just to strengthen here.

I don't have an issue riding with my back muscles because I tend to lean forward, and so when you're leaning forward, you're using your back.

- I noticed when you do your abs here, this was fine.

This was great, you're working this.

If these are strong enough, just to be up like I am and talking to you to hold you, then they're strong enough.

They support your lower spine, so when you go to do these things, you have to have this.

That's really the key.

When you had your head back, it actually breaks that bond 'cause your sternocleidomastoids, these strong muscles that come down out of your neck, you need them to stabilize the collarbone.

So if you let that go, it breaks the chain on the way down, so it's good to hold that in tight.

The other thing, when you were doing, you did these standing up.

If you use gravity from here, you could do the same exercise down there and have a little gravity this way as well.

- Yeah, that's smart.

- And then while you're holding on here, you can bring your knee up to your arm so you're working a different angle on that same hip.

And then you can keep this here and bend the leg back.

This hip, it looks like it's doing nothing, but it's actually holding it in place while you're doing this.

And then the last one, if you think of this as a center line, get a circle and then go the other half of the circle and come around.

The point of that would be go ahead and hit all the other radials coming out of that that you can, and now you're really gonna have a balanced hip.

It's just a nice little addition.

You mentioned a lot during the walk around today maintaining things before they happen.

I'm 60 and I'm gonna be 61 next month.

You're sitting down for this.

- I'm sitting down.

- Your body's gonna change.

I don't want to be negative or anything, but it's gonna come.

- It's easier to prevent something than to fix something, but it takes more discipline.

You have to be tackling a problem in many cases you don't yet have.

- That's the hardest thing, because there's no reason yet to do it.

And you know what?

I know better than to tell you to do that.

So what I'd like to suggest as a fix is take the next four weeks before I see you again, and when you have time, I'd like you to project five years.

When I see you again, just tell me what you think would be a good plan for yourself to start looking into a strength training program.

There's a point where just doing things starts to fall back and you have to actually train a little bit.

Your sport will become life.

My phone is always open to you.

You can text, you can call, but I would really like to see what you come up with.

It doesn't have to be anything extensive.

You don't even have to do it.

I'm just trying to get your mind into it, and I know once you start reading, it's gonna click a little bit and you'll tell yourself to do it.

I don't have to.

- I mean, I'm already thinking of where to start.

The start's always the start, so it's probably the wrong place to start.

- You're smiling, I'm getting somewhere here.

All right, so come here, I got something for you.

I have to have a handshake and a promise that you're gonna do that, so in four weeks.

- I'm gonna do it.

Don't worry.

- All right.

We got a deal.

- [Karl] Yeah.

- [Madeline] Well Karl, this has been such a great day.

- [Jeff] It really has.

- Thank you so much.

I've so much enjoyed my time spending with you guys in the garden, talking to you Jeff, and I can't wait to have you guys back in a month.

That's gonna be fun.

- That will be.

- And we have four weeks to come up with something.

- I have four weeks.

I'll come up with something, I swear.

It'll be a good five year plan.

- I'm a little concerned he's gonna know more than I do when we come back.

- I think I need way more time than four weeks.

- [Jeff] That would be great.

- Probably.

Thank you so much.

- Of course, thank you.

I'll see you in a month, guys.

- [Jeff] All right.

- See you in a month.

We were so impressed with Karl, and you challenged him to make sure that as his body got older, he would learn how to keep his body growing healthy.

- That's absolutely right.

You know, everybody really needs to understand that as you get older your body changes, and as your body changes, you have to change the way you maintain it.

- And you gave me those tools and techniques Jeff, so I could really strengthen my body and really make it function and grow stronger.

- It was a couple years ago, but when you came to me, I started you off with the four macros.

I just wanted to work on basic strength training.

So I gave you the four macros of the chest, the back, the hips and the glute and your core, your abs.

And if you think of gardening or anything else that people do, they're grabbing, they're pushing, they're pulling, and all that action is attached to that main center of the body.

A really good example would be a tree, like a mighty tree.

When you were a kid, did you have a rope swing?

- I did.

- All right.

So if your rope swing's hanging on that mighty branch, you're trusting that mighty branch, you might throw a few more friends on there, swinging back and forth.

- I did that.

- What if all of a sudden that tree trunk was rubber?

- Wow, that would not be good.

- Right, so the branch is absolutely worthless.

It's not gonna do you any good if it's attached to something that can't hold it up, and that's the idea.

You want to strengthen the center of your body.

- What are some of the exercises that you would suggest you do to keep those parts of your body really strong?

- You really have to kind of do what I asked Karl to do.

Do your own research and decide what's best for you.

For you, we kind of tailor made some workouts around what you needed.

So for your chest.

- Well, we do pushups.

We do chest presses with dumbbells.

We do some pullovers and we do undercuts.

- Exactly, and for your back?

- Pull downs, we do rows and we do back flies.

- Right, abs?

- Abs, we do the five minute abs.

We kind of start with that every day.

- And then for your hips?

- And for my hips, we do squats, we do lunge walks and we do floor exercises like the ones you just showed Karl.

- Yeah, exactly.

So in other words, you just really have to do your own homework, understand what you need.

Don't be swayed by fads.

Fads can really steer you off your course of what you're looking for for yourself.

Be very aware and cautious of extreme workouts.

They're out there everywhere, and there's nothing wrong with him, but you may not need that.

You may not be right for that.

You're certainly probably not ready for that yet and it could give you some problems.

So the best thing to do is just kind of be your own North star.

- Well, that certainly was a challenge for Karl, but he made a deal with you.

I'm sure he's gonna do it.

- Let's go see what he came up with.

- Okay.

[soft music] - [Jeff] Madeline, we're back in beautiful Southern California.

- [Madeline] We are.

- [Jeff] San Diego.

- And we're gonna see Karl.

- You know, I'm really looking forward to see what he came up with.

It's always interesting to me when somebody else comes up with something.

- I'm also excited to see him on his horse.

You know, I used to ride when I was young.

- You told me that, yeah.

That looks like Karl.

- [Madeline] That is Karl.

- [Jeff] Yeah?

- Yeah, he told us to meet him at the arena.

I think he's warming up his horse.

Jeff, look at this.

- Pretty flowers.

- Smell this.

- What is that?

- Rosemary.

- You know, why am I not surprised that Karl has an edible hedge at his arena?

- Of course.

- [Jeff] Hey, I think he sees us.

- [Madeline] Oh, good.

Hi, Karl.

- Hey, Karl.

- Good morning, guys.

- [Madeline] Good morning.

- [Jeff] Good morning.

- [Madeline] So nice to see you.

- It's so nice to see you, too.

- Hey, buddy.

Hey, so who is this?

- This is Miss Ella.

- [Madeline] Miss Ella.

- [Jeff] Hey, Miss Ella.

- So sweet.

- All right, so I've been waiting four weeks to find out what you came up with, man.

What you got?

- I thought about it for a while, and you know, I'm not super stiff in a hip or a knee.

People think about improving themselves physically, getting fitter or they think about eating healthier.

Well, I don't know what to change there, but I was thinking more about approach.

I want it to be more spontaneous, educated spontaneity.

So my five year plan, as we spoke, is to just don't think of things by trying to control them.

Think about how you can express them.

I think the better I grasp gardening, the better the spontaneity should come out instead of control and expression of not being confined.

It can a discovery.

That's so much more cool and interesting.

I'd rather just be a constant discovery.

- That makes total sense.

You took the responsibility of making this about you, and that's really what I was hoping for.

That's what I want people to do, is understand you don't rely on somebody else.

You figure out what you need.

I think you just embodied our show.

You took Karl the gardener and took what you do and how you're so successful with this.

It's a Garden Fit moment.

- It is, it is.

- [Jeff] Thank you.

- Of course.

- [Jeff] That was excellent.

- It's very cool.

- [Karl] So should we go cook?

- Let's go cook.

- [Karl] Let's go cook.

- This just smells good.

- It does.

- So let's put the herbs there.

- [Madeline] Is this all from the main vegetable garden?

- [Karl] Yes, this is all from the main vegetable garden.

- [Jeff] That's a really, really hot grill you've got going there.

- [Karl] Yes, sir.

Cooking with fire.

- [Madeline] Cooking with fire.

Those are sweet potatoes, and then you just let the squashes just sit by the flame down there?

- [Karl] Yep, but we care about what's on the inside.

- [Madeline] I'm getting obsessed with cleaning these beans, just like the weeding.

- I can see that.

There's just not enough to do, is there?

- Never enough to do.

That's cooking nicely.

The color just gets more intense, but it really doesn't change.

[vegetables sizzling] One sweet potato could almost feed a family.

- All of Karl's stuff could feed a family.

- Well it's like a treasure inside.

- [Jeff] Oh, that's pretty.

- Done, try that.

- Done.

Delicious.

- [Jeff] Karl's presentation is everything.

- Oh my goodness.

[blender whirring] Oh my goodness.

- Here's next, carrot, bean, onion stir fry.

- Oh my goodness, look at that.

May I?

- [Karl] Of course.

- Let me get a fork.

- One more carrot.

Okay, Jeff.

- Here we go.

Hey.

- Isn't that good?

I would like a little more, please.

- That's good.

- There'll be some left for you, I'm sure.

I have to try the soup.

The consistency's perfect.

Oh, that's delicious.

We don't know how to thank you.

- Oh, thank you.

- Well first, it's such a joy to be with you, but to really have the harvest cooked so beautifully for us.

- This is been a nice little circle of everything.

- The goal is to eat it.

- Yeah, the goal is to eat it, and it is divine.

- Thank you very much.

Thanks for everything.

- Thanks again.

- Thank you.

- I'm gonna have a little more soup.

- [Madeline] Yeah, let's keep eating.

- [Jeff] That's so good.

[exciting music]