Entrepreneur Kevin Espiritu’s Epic Journey in Gardening (And Beyond!)

Mixed Asian Media - September 17, 2024

By Madeline Carpou

2020 was a strange time for most people. For others, it was the beginning of something marvelous. This was the case for Kevin Espiritu, the founder and CEO of Epic Gardening, perhaps the most popular gardening channel out there — and for good reason! 

Espiritu was born in San Diego, California, and raised with heavy influence from the Filipino side of his family. He created Epic Gardening in 2013 with the intention of making gardening more accessible and interesting for people. Enter COVID, with millions of people stuck at home who needed something fulfilling to do with their time (and hands)! Judging from the millions of people who flocked to his channel, you can certainly say his goal was achieved, and then some. 

Our own Madeline Carpou corresponded with Kevin and learned more about his story, and how he’s made Epic Gardening what it is today! 

*THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN LIGHTLY EDITED AND CONDENSED FOR CLARITY.

What inspired your love for gardening? What does gardening mean to you?

I didn’t grow up gardening — in fact, it was only after college that I discovered it. I was addicted to video games, and when my little brother came home from school, my mom asked me to do something with him to get him out of the house. We went to a local nursery and picked up some Marketmore cucumber seeds and basil, which got me hooked. I started a small gardening blog and began designing websites for a living as a result. One of my clients was Mel Bartholomew, the creator of the Square Foot Gardening method. I worked with him on a project for his website that only fueled the gardening flames more.

Gardening is a way to get outdoors, interact with nature, soak up the sun, and develop better eating habits. Nothing tastes better than something you’ve raised from a seed, and the physical and mental benefits of working in the garden are undeniable. It’s a study and a re-integration with the natural world, something that too many of us have lost in today’s era.

What inspired you to start Epic Gardening? Was it related to your previous business Espiritu Microgreens at all?

Espiritu Microgreens only lasted a year, but it gave me a taste of a business with multiple pieces and parts that supplied goods to the local area — and, unlike the website business, I wasn’t stuck sitting at a computer for hours. It took my love of gardening and brought it to a different level because I was supplying microgreens to high-end San Diego restaurants, and it gave me insight into the farm-to-fork process.

Starting Epic Gardening wasn’t directly related to Espiritu Microgreens, but it might have been a natural progression starting from those first packets of seeds. I learned the early hustle that went into building a small business from the ground up. [My previous job at] Book in a Box, now called Scribe Media, gave me even more experience with the startup process and allowed me to see how a business could scale. So when my time was freed up and I was considering what was next, Epic Gardening became my hobby project. I had no expectations for it at the time, save for it making enough to pay my bills. I certainly didn’t expect it to get to where it is today!

Gardening is a natural complement to cooking, so do you enjoy cooking? What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever made with your own produce?

I like to experiment with cooking. I can’t promise that everything I make is world-class gourmet cuisine, but I find ways to incorporate the food from my garden into nearly every meal. I made homemade paprika out of the chili peppers I grew last year, and I eat a lot of egg dishes because my hens provide me with so many. We recently made a garden-fresh frittata as part of a video using fresh eggs and a mix of ingredients straight from the garden. I’ve even grown my own wheat, ground it into flour, and made my own sourdough bread. In some cases, these food experiments don’t go as planned, but there’s always room for experimentation, and isn’t that how the best food is made?

I saw that your most popular video on YouTube is about ginger! As a foodie myself who puts ginger in just about everything, I’d love to hear your thoughts about ginger and why that video specifically drew such a crowd. 

Ah, the ginger video was the perfect storm of timing and topic. In 2020, when everything shut down for the pandemic, everyone started searching for hobbies they could do at home. Many people turned to gardening, as they had ample time and wanted fresh produce, and they couldn’t just go to the market to pick it up. 

But it was more than that. People were looking for an easy gateway into something useful to spend their lockdown time on. It was easy to order some containers and potting mix from Amazon, store-bought ginger from the market, and to start a plant. It didn’t matter where you were located, whether you had an established garden or were a first-time grower. I broke it down in a way that made sense to people, no matter where they were in their gardening journey. That’s why that video’s gained almost 11 million views in the last four years; it’s good reference material and a great entry point for someone who might not even have a yard but has an apartment balcony.

It could’ve been tomatoes, onions, or anything else that produces food at home, but ginger caught the audience’s attention, my viewership climbed exponentially, and it made a major impact on my reach. It was unique, different from the norm, interesting, and extremely easy to do — and many people didn’t even realize they could grow ginger at home.

I had a large crowd of followers before the pandemic, but it became a massive following during and since. It made a world of difference.

What was it like, gaining so much traction during COVID and the pandemic?

It was a lot! There were so many different changes that occurred just before the pandemic that helped us to get to where we now are. Every day I would wake up to another 15,000 subscribers on YouTube. I remember texting my video editor and telling him, “OK, we’re real YouTubers now… let’s start publishing three times a week!”

While that was happening, people in our audience kept asking about an Australian garden bed I was using. I drove the company that built them nuts with requests to sell them in America, and in late 2019, they sent me a cargo container of them. We sold out of that cargo container before it ever made it onto U.S. soil. 

My then-garden manager (now a creator in his own right), my assistant (who is now head of our CX team), and I were fulfilling orders ourselves. Meanwhile, I was trying to produce as many high-quality videos as possible for the one video editor we had at the time, and my lead writer (now our staff horticulturist) was editing and publishing all the content on the blog, spinning up marketing materials, or hiring freelance garden writers to help speed up the writing process and keep the content flowing. 

It was exhilarating, exciting, fun, and exhausting. While everyone else was in a sedate lockdown, we were constantly on the move, trying to do better and more with limited resources. We’ve never slowed down since and are always looking for ways to do better, provide guidance, develop better products, and help gardeners.

Recently, we changed our company motto to “We exist to help you grow.” During the pandemic era, it was “Teach the world to grow.” That’s what we were doing then — but we’ve reached the point now where our entire company goal is to help gardeners get the most out of their own gardening experience. And I think that’s a direct result of the pandemic.

I noticed from your website bio that you’ve had a very eclectic, thrilling career, from gambling to startups, after initially starting on a path toward accounting. What drew you away from a more “traditional” path like accounting?

I wanted to do something that actually helped people and had a deeper, more personal meaning. Accounting is important, too; no business can survive without good accounting, so it is important. But does it change lives? Is it rewarding? Was it what I wanted to do as a career or only a part of what I could do? These were all questions that rolled through my mind in 2010.

While I was getting that accounting degree, I was simultaneously playing mid-stakes online poker, and doing quite well. I was earning more than double my estimated starting salary as an accountant… so needless to say, it didn’t look as appealing as a career path.

You also mentioned in your bio that there was a period where you were able to dedicate almost 100% of your time on your hobbies and travel, and that it ultimately didn’t bring you as much enjoyment as one might think. In your opinion, what makes the pursuit of pleasure actually pleasurable?

I’m still deeply wondering what actually makes life worth living. Maybe there’s no answer, certainly not a universal one. Even after chasing hobbies, travel, and experiencing quite a bit of so-called “success” in business, there are still many down days, many struggles.

The Jim Carrey quote, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it's not the answer,” is exceptionally true in my experience. The pleasures of life aren’t “found” anywhere — they’re in the present moment that most of us will do anything to avoid.

You can find Epic Gardening on YouTube, where Kevin and his team are consistently uploading a plethora of wonderful, informative videos to make your gardening experience easier! You can also check out their website for more gardening tips, as well as a full shop with seeds and garden beds.

Madeline (she/her) is a half-Chinese, half-Greek, fully mixed writer from up and down the West Coast. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, she studied History with a focus on East Asia, both to understand her own heritage better and to better understand racial histories as a whole. Her creative background is extensive, from producing folk songs to writing essays about video games. Through her work, she hopes to provide a sense of understanding and belonging to others, while also ironing out some catharsis of her own.