1KHO 655: The More Colors the Better | Sandra Mao, Vibrant Harvest

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Ginny Yurich

Kids & Family, Parenting

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this colorful and joy-filled episode of the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast, Ginny Yurich sits down with gardener, photographer, and author Sandra Mao (@sandraurbangarden) to talk about how a garden can become a feast for the eyes, and an adventure for the whole family. Sandra shares how she grew up gardening alongside her parents and grandmother, and how her own family’s garden began with simple container planting during quarantine… then blossomed into half a backyard full of vibrant surprises. Together, Ginny and Sandra explore the magic of colorful vegetables and flowers, from rainbow carrots and radishes to striped peppers, purple cauliflower, “dragon’s egg” cucumbers, and even yard-long beans. They also dive into practical, confidence-building tips for beginners: choosing a color palette, finding seed sources, saving seeds, managing pests, and keeping gardening fun (even when things grow wonky!). You’ll also hear about Sandra’s favorite easy-to-grow flowers like zinnias, marigolds, and calendula, plus how she dries herbs and petals, makes infused oils, and preserves harvests through canning and sun-drying. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by gardening or you’re looking for a way to get your kids excited to grow (and actually try vegetables!), this conversation will leave you inspired to plant something vibrant and step outside together. Get your copy of Vibrant Harvest here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Shopify. With Shopify, 2026 is the year you make it happen. It gives you the tools to build your dream store, online and in person. Plus with marketing built in, it'll help you reach exactly who you need to. Join the millions who've already made the leap, like Jim Shark and all birds, and ring in the new year with Shopify.
0:23.4	Sign up for your £1 per month trial at Shopify.com.uk.combe. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.
0:32.4	My name is Ginny Urich, I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I'm so excited today to be talking about gardening
0:38.2	with a woman who is so good at showcasing the variety
0:43.3	and the vibrancy that you can find in the garden.
0:46.1	Sandra Mow, welcome.
0:47.6	Thank you so much, Jenny.
0:48.8	And I'm so honored to be here.
0:51.6	We love to garden.
0:52.8	We're really not that great at it, but gardening has opened up a world for us of joy and discovery. And what I didn't really realize is that there's so many more varieties of different types of crops than I ever imagined. You know, you think there's like a couple kinds of peppers or a couple kinds of tomatoes.
1:15.7	And when we started to plant things, which wasn't all that long ago, flowers, all of it, there's so much variety.
1:25.1	So I would love if you would give some of your background, your backstory, you talk about how you have, were influenced generational, you know, in a generational way going back to garden.
1:28.3	But I love your focus on the colors. Yeah, so I grew up with my parents and my grandmother, and we have a small home, but we
1:38.3	actually have a big yard, and my grandmother's garden, she just like created everything in our backyard and that is my love
1:48.4	of gardening starting then. And since I was a kid, I just loved things colorful. You know,
1:56.2	like I'm like the kind of kids that when you open my book, you will see like different colors
2:00.6	of highlighting.
2:01.6	So that's why when I started to garden, you know, a long time ago, but just like he and there.
2:09.6	Because when my kid was little, we do gardening outside, but not like really posting things online until 2020 during the quarantine that
2:20.9	all my kids are at home and we need to find some activity for them to be outdoor and so I
2:28.5	created a space, a gardening space for them and also sometimes we do camping in the backyard because they just
2:36.0	we just in the indoors stuck indoor that is a and when I started just a I started small
	...

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