This Is a Gardening Show (2026) s01e03 Episode Script

[mellow music playing]
You almost can't garden alone
because there's too many questions.
And if you get excited about gardening,
you're gonna want to find gardeners
around you to ask, you know,
about fungus that's on your leaves
or your foot.
When I lived in another place,
a rural place,
my neighbors, probably politically,
we would not get along.
However, we bonded over manure.
Because he had this huge pile of manure
that I coveted.
His cows' manure was really, really,
really something that I cherished.
I have a new show called The Manure Logs.
Puppetry for the Penis
will be opening for us.
But please come see Manure Logs
at the Public Theater in New York,
November 17 through 18. [laughs]
[laughing] It's just people talking
about manure stories.
Um, do you know there used to be
a guy in France, in Paris?
He was a professional farter.
Call out the instigators ♪
Because there's something in the air ♪
We've got to get together
Sooner or later ♪
Because the revolution's here ♪
And you know it's right ♪
We have got to get it together now ♪
[song fades out]
[mellow music playing]
[birds chirping]
[rustling]
Jesus.
That looks real, doesn't it?
[music ends abruptly]
Can this devastate my bowels?
I'm not sure.
That's what we're gonna find out today.
We're going foraging.
[stomach gurgling]
[mellow music playing]
-Hi, Juniper.
-[Juniper] Hi.
Can we do a high five?
You're gonna love this. Watch this.
-Ow!
-[crew giggling]
Ow!
Ow! Okay, have a seat.
[Juniper giggles]
I feel like you and I have
the same hairstylist.
-Yeah.
-How are you? Have a seat.
Nice to meet you. I'm Zach.
-I like your hat, by the way.
-Good.
Hey, what's your name?
Lucas.
Hey, Lucas. Come on over.
So it's part of your school
that one day of a week,
you just go out into the woods, correct?
Mm-hmm.
What is foraging?
I don't know.
Hmm. Are you sure
you're on the right show?
Yeah.
-Do you like to forage?
-Yeah.
This is my foraging outfit.
What kind of things do you forage for?
-Blackberries.
-[Zach] Mm-hmm.
We make tea.
What do you make tea out of?
Hawthorn berries and, um, fern tips.
Oh, yes, the fern tips.
And, um…
-[continues indistinctly]
-Jeez. Oh my God, Lucas. That scared me.
But I forget all the other stuff.
Yeah.
You ever find a hot dog in the forest?
No.
I hear that you guys sometimes make tea.
What do you make the tea with?
Mmm. Bark.
-Bark? Okay. Woof!
-You need the bark--
Oh, you mean bark from a tree?
-Yes.
-Right, okay.
What do you wanna talk about
if you don't wanna talk about foraging?
-What's your favorite movie?
-Um…
-Forage Gump?
-I--
-[bee buzzing]
-Whoa!
Um, okay. I forget what…
Oh, now I remember. [inhales sharply]
One day I saw a tree
actually wearing a sweater.
-You saw that in the forest school?
-What is that?
-That way.
-That's a lake.
Do you ever find mushrooms
when you forage?
Yes.
My kids love mushrooms.
Do you have children?
-Mm-hmm.
-You do?
You have children?
Yes.
How many kids do you have?
I don't know. Eleven.
Well, I guess, good for you.
I mean, you look good for your age.
How old are you?
Five and a half.
-How's that…
-I'm almost turning six.
You're almost turning six.
Okay. Then that makes sense.
-Do you know what a fungus is?
-No.
Well, it's what a mushroom is.
Have you ever heard
of turkey tail mushrooms?
-No.
-Portobello mushroom?
-No.
-Chanterelle?
-No.
-The next one, just say yes, okay?
Yes.
Have you ever heard
of lion's mane mushroom?
No.
Thank you. You've been really helpful.
How do you take your mushrooms?
I take my mushrooms, usually,
at Burning Man.
What are the names of your 11 children?
I forget all their names.
Yeah, just like my mom.
By the way, do you know this Lucas guy?
He told me he has 11 children.
You have kids?
You do too? How many do you have?
One.
What other things
in the forest do you find?
I found a bear.
A live bear?
It was a black bear.
And were you by yourself?
Yes. My mom left me in the car.
[laughing]
A bear sneaked up on the roof of the car.
And your mom just left you in the car.
Where was she?
She was heading in
to get hawthorn berries.
So the bear just hung out on the car,
and you were fine with that.
Then your mom's
just in the woods getting berries?
Mm-hmm.
-Lucas, you're 5 and a half.
-Mm-hmm.
-And you have 11 children.
-Mm-hmm.
And you have a mother
that's very comfortable
with you around bears.
What a life! What a life!
Yeah.
[upbeat, funky music playing]
Today we are straying away
from the garden,
and we're gonna go foraging.
And I found
some real French people to help us.
-[laughing]
-[Zach] So you know it's legit.
These guys are French.
And they got us into Vietnam.
They did.
[chuckles] They did.
[mellow music playing]
-Nice to meet you. I'm Ben. Yeah.
-Ben?
-Hi.
-Celia.
Celia, nice to meet you.
Uh, so you guys
are foraging experts, right?
Uh, kind of, yeah.
The foraging people that I know
that know how to do really good foraging,
they're French.
A lot of it is like a cultural approach.
French cuisine has been developed
for a long time.
We don't even call it "foraging."
For us, it's just like one activity
you do on the weekend
with your parents or grandparents.
The main question we have
at farmers' market is like,
"Is this mushroom is gonna kill me?"
Here in Canada.
Where in France, it's like,
"How good is this mushroom
compared to this one?"
Are you telling me
that you'll fill all of these?
-Yeah.
-Oh yeah.
Me and Celia, two of us
will pick 250 pounds a day.
-Did you say 250?
-250 pounds. So I will do three trips.
You will pick my weight in mushrooms.
Oh my God. I'm so excited.
-Your backpack.
-Let's go foraging. This is mine? Jesus.
And then this one.
You might have to adjust that to fat.
[laughs]
[Zach] So this is a gardening show,
but I find foraging
and gardening very related.
This is how humans used to get their food.
[Ben] Yeah. But people just slowly,
with farming, forgot about it.
I go to the farmers' market,
selling wild blueberries.
And people are like,
"They almost look like blueberries."
I say, "They're the ancestor
of the blueberry."
And then people farmed them,
and they got like bigger berries.
We always want to get
something better, bigger, faster.
Sometimes bigger doesn't mean better.
I tell that to my wife.
[laughing]
[funky, upbeat music playing]
[Zach] They should've put you guys
in charge of finding Bin Laden.
[Ben] One big difference
between farming and foraging
is the nutritious value
of some of the plants.
For example, a wild blueberry
would have probably three or four times
more antioxidants than the farmed ones.
Here we are looking
at some wild blueberries.
-There.
-No, I know how to use these things.
-[Celia laughs]
-Sorry.
[Ben] You just look
at where the berries are,
and you go slowly with your rake there.
Foraging can be frustrating,
but once you find something,
it's so rewarding.
The problem is,
I want to eat 'em right away.
[male crew member] Wait, are these clean?
Like, do bears pee on this?
-It could.
-It's just pee.
It doesn't taste bad.
I mean, you can't tell.
[Ben] A blueberry is
from a family called Vaccinium.
Those ones are Vaccinium alaskaense,
which is Alaskan wild blueberry.
And those ones
are the mountain huckleberry.
What is the Latin name? Do we know?
[Ben] Vaccinium membranaceum.
I'm glad you said it.
I was gonna say it, but I didn't want to.
[Ben] We should go try and see
if we can find mushrooms.
Yeah. I need to forage me a bathroom.
Look at this. God.
It's nice to be between the ferns again.
So we're in a spot now.
And if we were lucky,
what mushrooms would you be looking for
right now in a place like this?
Yeah, I would be definitely looking
for chanterelles
and lobster mushroom, probably.
It's always so much better
to start foraging
with somebody that already knows.
If you don't have that chance, once again,
start with a few basic species.
Don't try to go too hard too quick.
Because that's how there is
accidents and poisoning and stuff.
And get a couple of books,
but never rely on any special tip
to say if something is edible or not.
You need to learn it properly.
[Zach] Oh God.
-[Celia] What?
-I lost my contacts.
[mellow music playing]
So this one is a chanterelle.
Mushrooms can't do any photosynthesis.
So they need to get their food
from somewhere.
They're gonna be relying
on trees or plants to get the food.
Because plants are doing
the photosynthesis.
The mushrooms,
they're going to attach themselves
to the roots of a tree with what is called
the mycelium of the mushroom.
The mycelium is actually
the main organism of the mushroom.
So here is a good example, actually,
of some mycelium that has been developing
into that rotten log.
Most of the mushroom life is mycelium.
Imagine that
underneath the soil here in the forest,
there is a tree with branches
and that tree
would be actually the mycelium.
The mushroom gets food from the tree,
and the tree partially gets food and water
from the mushroom.
And what we see as a mushroom
is the reproduction part of the mushroom,
the fruit body.
And that fruit body
is gonna release spores.
[Zach] Look at this.
Oh, don't step there.
That's quick mud.
[mellow music playing]
So here we have actually
two different species of chanterelle.
So this one is a yellow chanterelle.
This one is a white chanterelle.
You won't find them
in supermarkets or anywhere.
You will always find the yellow
because the white
tend to bruise orange really quickly.
So the shelf life is not as good.
But the white chanterelle
is really, like, firmer and meatier.
And last year we actually tried
to do a vegan pulled pork.
So you basically shred them,
and the texture is really fibrous,
the same as chicken.
So try this one. You will see.
-That's edible.
-Yeah.
But it's kind of peppery.
-Like, yeah.
-I like it though.
Some mushrooms are fine raw.
Some of them are not.
Like, you can't eat a morel raw.
If you eat too many, it's likely
you're gonna have trouble to digest them.
-I'm not gonna get diarrhea, am I?
-Not with one.
-Dang it.
-[laughs]
[mellow music playing]
[Zach] I find this about people
that garden or work in nature.
It's good for your heart.
You guys smile a lot,
and it's good for your brain.
I think it's because there's a purpose.
You know, it's a very direct link.
You know, you find a real mushroom,
which is a real food
that is gonna really feed someone.
-So…
-Yeah, it feels tangible.
Thank you guys very much.
I really appreciate it.
There's a lot of knowledge.
-Thank you, Zach. Nice to meet you.
-There's a lot of fun to be had.
Thanks for coming out
to the woods with us, guys.
-The three of us are gonna go to Hooters.
-[laughing]
[Zach] It'd be a good place for a Hooters.
[mellow music playing]
[Zach] Many prized edible mushrooms
have risky lookalikes, like chanterelles.
And then there's false chanterelles.
King bolete.
-And then there's lilac-brown bolete.
-[chuckling]
[Zach] Hen of the woods.
-And of course, Berkeley's polypore.
-[groaning]
[Zach] It's important
to never consume anything foraged
unless you're absolutely certain
of its identity and edibility.
[crunching]
[Zach] Wait a minute. This isn't a Dorito.
-[mellow music playing]
-[birds chirping]
Let's go find some stuff to make some tea.
-Go, go, go. Go find it.
-[children chattering]
[Zach] Even an old Lipton bag will work.
[mellow music playing]
What is this?
What is this we're putting in?
-Blackberry leaf.
-Blackberry leaf?
Arbutus.
Arbutus bark?
-Whoa!
-These are rose hips.
Rose hips.
Oh, they're prickly. Be careful.
-What are these?
-Pine needles.
-Should we have some tea?
-Yeah.
Okay. Did anybody find any honey?
And then maybe any cream? Any sugar?
-[children] No.
-[Zach] Hmm.
Pine needles. A little bit of that.
Blackberry leaf going in.
-[child] Mulberry.
-[Zach] Got it.
Native crab apple.
And then I found this.
Should we put this corn dog in there?
-Yeah.
-Yes.
-[Zach] Ready?
-[plop]
[child laughing]
-That…
-Too much corn dog.
It's hot, so be careful.
Delicious. Okay.
-Try that. Does it taste good?
-It's gonna be hot.
[unintelligible]
Ooh, that is hot.
I touched the metal thing to my leg.
It really… I almost cursed.
I almost said a really, really…
a lot of bad words in front of you.
All right. Chin, chin.
-Here.
-Oh, that's good.
-Drink it.
-Thank you.
This feels like a COVID circle.
No, no. Please don't pour that on me.
It is scalding hot. Okay, okay. Please.
-[children laughing]
-[screams] No!
Okay. We're good.
That's a good ending right there. No! No!
[echoing] Cut! Please!
[mellow music playing]
[Zach] Hey, guys?
-I think I found a grizzly.
-[low growl]
[Zach] Oh no. It's just a black bear.
Well, the future is--
Oh my God, he's coming this way!
-[snarling]
-[rustling]
-[Zach screaming]
-[snarling continues]
[Zach] I've seen this in The Revenant!
[rustling and snarling continue]
[Zach screams]
Oh, he just took a chunk out of me!
Oh, my thigh!
-[Zach screams]
-[snarling]
-Oh, my thigh!
-[snarling]
[Zach] Don't you touch this--
[screams]
[low growl]
-[Zach] Oh God, what can you do?
-[growl]