273. Mermaid’s Garden NYC | Seafood CSA and Fish Market | Mark Usewicz | Brooklyn, NY

Full show notes coming soon! How do we connect with you? eastwardgardens on Instagram We were city kids, he was a professional skateboarder and neither of us had a background in farming. There’s just the two of us but we do it for a living. I think I found you on Floret. How big is your place? I’m going into my 3rd season growing flowers. We’re going on selling vegetables etc on 3 years. I was a nurse with the dream I could leave my job. took us a while try to make it quick We moved from Seattle to louisville so I could go to grad school that’s when Larry started interning on a farm. He’s been farming ever since then. I just joined full time in  June I quit my job. That’s when I bumped up the flower production.  I can do more with it a lot of flowers we grow on 2 acres our farm is 16 1/2 acres We crop rotate we only have, theres about 6 acres of workable we rotate it and do about 2 at a time. We sell Vegetables fruit culinary herbs micro greens We sell a lot of micro greens through the winter, we sell a lot of microgreens through the winter months. Culinary herbs who do you sell those to and do you want to tell listeners the diffeence between culinary and medicinal? we just specific culinary herbs people cook with rosemary thyme sage sorrel parsley basil Who do you sell to? A CSA? 20 week CSA 2 famers markets a week local health food store small scale because there’s just the two of us have health food store we consistently 20 week CSA program 2 farmers market May or June – Oct radishes turnips arugula flower share this year for the first time flower bouquets in with vegetables ranunculus anemones Start April 4-6 weeks once they start more veggies I can...

3 Juni 201957min

Things I talk about today blueberry bushes mason bee disaster buckwheat cover crop Mike’s Minifarm Weeds • Weeds • Weeds – in the garden Summer Solstice Challenge coming possibly June 20, 2019 New Job in a New Restaurant learning about recipes and sharing gourmet recipes Health Club Bliss – massage therapy for gardeners So what’s going on in the garden? Mason Bee Confession Olivia Shangrow from Rent Mason Bees Dr. Andony Melathopoulos ~ PolliNATION Podcast Apple and Pear Trees Blooming Blueberry Plant Update Blueberry Plants from Lowes My arugula past it’s prime is a bit bitter really strong already If you’re not in the Facebook Group I’ve been posting pics about the minifarm and updates etc. <img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-5569" src="https://organicgardenerpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_6645-e1559333094673-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://organicgardenerpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_6645-e1559333094673-225x300.jpg 225w,...

1 Juni 201916min

Modern Homesteading Podcast Tell us a little about yourself. East Central Indiana nice and cold here married to my wife Mary for a little over 26 years 3 daughters couple of grandkids running around Most of my life I was a truck driver Had my own trucking company led to me being gone a lot led to some bad eating habits  Sure! It’s tough when you’re on the road. It lets you listen to a lot of podcasts but it definitely makes being healthy a challenge. Tell me about your first gardening experience? Kind of I grew up on a homestead really, we didn’t call it that but we had animals large garden more property did all those things always grew up working in the garden in garden never thought about it being my garden first time it was about 3rd or 4th grade Really got the bug for growing something on your own! in school believe it or not bean plants styrofoam cup gardens at home I remember that vividly, growing that bean cup grow and replanted it in the yard! gave me a bug Like I said, we worked in the garden all the time always loved That Green Freak in school! loved growing stuff gardening animals teenage years got more into cars and girls stayed away from it in my mind always assume I’d be living that lifestyle I always wanted to be Caroline Ingalls in the mountains, I knew the minute I walked into Mike’s house this is what I have been dreaming about all my life, it’s a little bit bigger. How did you learn how to garden organically? it never seemed important to me then in my ind I thought I guess I thought about sustainable practices But my dad he would dump any chemical fertilizers on the lawns dealing with the animals we would pump em full of antibiotics whatever would...

19 Maj 201953min

I know you are a going to love this interview I did with RockStar Millennial  Nick Lubecki as much as I did because I listened to it today as I drove to work. So the shownotes are  completely raw from the day we actually spoke. I didn’t have time to fix them but they are great! I have 20 episodes in the bank I can’t wait to share. In an ideal world, I would share them all right away! But in reality it’s all I can usually do to produce one a week. I will try though to get them caught up so they are current! In the meantime I hope you enjoy as much as I do. I’ve been having some sound problems too it seems in Andony’s podcast last week I thought I was too loud, this one I feel like I am can’t always hear everything I say? I’m as frustrated as you are that way, as I just copy and save everything, the settings don’t really change? I feel like ever since January 2018 I’ve been struggling with my sound? But I think you will love the content as much as I enjoyed recording it! Happy Spring Everyone! Tuesday February 5th, 2019 Today we have a rockstar millennial Nick Lubecki from Grow Pittsburgh who is giving a presentation on Learning Circle: Weed Management in Intensive Veggie Production. Tell us a little about yourself. Right now I am the Farm Manager which is a project of Grow Pittsburgh urban nonprofit help people start community gardens around the county we have 2 urban farms Currently I manage the Braddock farm about an acre or so borough of Braddock town just outside  Pittsburgh last remaining steel mill in the next door It reminds me of the Brooklyn Grange on your website with the urban mill and the farm together. Yeah! It’s a great photo shot for sure! Tell me about your first gardening experience? my first memory visiting grandparents in northern PA They had a huge garden fruit trees sunflowers all that sort of thing as a kid I was really excited about that! at our home, my grandmother helped put together our first big garden, Imust have been 5-6 years old.  Do you have brothers and sisters? Yeah, we were all involved at first, eventually became me and my brother and we’re still growing together today! we are about an hour about north of the city! I’ve been gardening for a while! Tell us about that. How does a millennial come to be growing as an adult. <p...

13 Maj 201955min

Do you want to know how to recognize Bees in your garden and neighborhood? Do you want to plant flowers that will invite more bees to your garden? I’m super excited because for Earth Week, it’s April 27,2019. I have the Assistant Professor Pollinator Health Extension from the Department of Horticulture | Oregon State University, Dr. Andony Melathopoulos from the Pollination Podcast! Oh there’s more then one bee?! When I do master gardener training is I help people identify 5 bees that are in North America. When you garden for bees it gets kind of complicated. If you can identify these 5 bees then you can go visit a neighbor’s garden and say oh! I see that bee on this plant. Identify 5 Bees |  10 tips to use in their garden tomorrow cheat sheet Pollinator Habit Tell us a little about yourself. I’m in beautiful Oregon looking out the window in Oregon Horthornes are just starting to come into bloom Ceanothus the California Lilac Tell me about your first natural or gardening experience? How did you fall in love with horticulture? I was an urban kid, I remember I come from a Greek immigrant family. I remember my aunts and uncles having great tomatoes and going to Greece and the produce there that just  tastes wonderful. I remember starting to do it myself in my late 20s in the most northern part of Canada In the Peace River District where we would get a frost August first so we grew a lot of Kale! Where is that? Nova Scotia or the Yukon? It’s mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. It’s the most northern growing area in the US. the one things that lovely when it hits solstice. sun dips down around three and then just pops up again You get this really long exceedingly quick and rapid growing season It’s amazing! The downside is you’re always dodging the frost One year I had the audacity to grow tomatoes and the ones that grew they were the size of a marble I was like  I’m learning!  What could you grow? Could you grow potatoes? potatoes frost pocket I was working at the aG Canada research stations It started because it was so far from anywhere the idea was to make people self sufficient <span...

5 Maj 20191h 39min

I have lots of guests that have been booking and lots of great interviews coming up! A Montana rockstar running the food truck here in Montana!  Tell us a little about yourself. I did grow up on a farm and a ranch A little bit about my past I was raised in a world of agriculture I grew up on a farm and ar ranch that was not always organic, my dad converted to organic in 2007 I was 10 years old it was interesting as a young child to see that process of old ways and shifting to new ways of organic and how much better everything becomes with that process with that conversion we moved to a lot of diversified crops Before we had converted to organic we were just doing the same old thing everyone else does. Switched to doing a lot of wheat and same clover alfalfa growing ancient grains kamut farro lentils chickpeas while we were learning and growing all those I was also at a pretty young age learning to bake native to Montana at that time I think that was where I got a pretty strong base with working with local and available at any given time. That’s the farming side of it. We raised cattle as well. So that was really interesting for me to grow up working the trails and the to grow up working cows trail them calving season everything you go through on the organic side everything 100% organic grass fed everything takes longer I remember watching food inc when it came out I remember seeing the vast difference competed to the feed lots they have pictured! Everything how everything is so crammed compared to our open pasture administering antibiotics and growth hormone we were just allowing our cattle to grow naturally it takes longer but I believe it does allow for a healthful product and a product that tastes better Through all that processI think I gained a really good appreciating for the organic food system extra time and thought that goes into it That’s the same for a lot of people who are gardening I love to have conversations that they are trying some are working and some aren’t <span...

22 Apr 20191h

Tara CatonRodale InstituteSenior Lab TechnicianIndustrial Hemp Project LeadWant to read the unedited computer generated transcript provided by Podscribe, just click here.It all started when this listener said, every time I hear you say millennial I think of this video of this guy bashing millennials sitting around in their yoga pants and so I made my own video of the amazing millennials I interview who are so not ever lazy. I was going through some old Organic Gardening Magazines. A lot of my listeners are asking me how to get rid of pests organically and there were all these letters to the editors saying I’m not ever reading to you again because you are too political and they answered back and said we believe they are integrated and you can’t have one without the other. I have always wanted to sell ad space for Rodale’s so I would see Organic Gardening Magazine in every store i went to as I traveled around. It is Tuesday March 26, 2019. I am so stoked because not only is my guest a rock star millennial but she is the Senior Lab Technician at the Rodale Institute on the Industrial Hemp Project . So welcome Tara Caton!Over the course of a four-year trial, we are exploring hemp’s powerful potential to heal soil and support farmers.Hemp, marijuana’s non-psychotropic cousin, was grown in Pennsylvania for more than 260 years as a valuable cash crop. Tell us a little about yourself.Shownotes coming ASAP! to read what’s done already click here. The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.comIf you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.Let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors and affiliate linksPlease support us on Patreon so we can keep the show up on the internet. It cost close to $100 a month just to keep it up on the internet for the website etc so if you could help by supporting it with an $8/month contribution or $10/month to join the Green Future Growers Book Club where we can delve deep into some of the best gardening books that have been recommended on the show! GoDaddy even is bugging me for dollars just to have the domain name…https://www.patreon.com/OrganicGardenerPodcastThe Organic Gardner Podcast is sponsored by <a...

15 Apr 20191h 3min

I’m super excited because my guest is as passionate about social justice as I am and she’s used her life and skills to really connect social justice and food justice together. I think you will love this interview with Leah Penniman from Soul Fire Farm in New York! Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. 20 years of experience as a soil steward and food sovereignty activist.Tell us a little about yourself.Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the LandDefinitely, I’d be happy to!I’ve been farming 22 years and I am the founding co-director of Soul Fire FarmsIT’s a little community farm run by Black-Indigenous Latin and located up in the mountains of Grafton NYin love with farming my whole life, NY and really see it as a foundation for social justice and environmental stewardship. Here at Soul Fire FarmsWe are committed to ending racism in the food system.Part of that is what we grow in our food.We grow on 5 acres and all of that gets boxed up to those who need it most in the communityrefugeesimmigrantspeople who have an incarcerated loved onelatin indigenous folks who want to farmWe have cultivated 500 new farmers over the years through our program.How are you supporting your farm if you are donating all of this food? Where are you getting your money from do you sell some food too? Do you get donations? Where do you get your income from?That’s a really valid question, we started out as a family farm and we started out to be a viable business. it would be a little strange to be training the next generation of farmers if it was a farm that relies on donations or a slush fund. So we use a sliding scale modelpeople who earn more money and have more wealth pay morelessbalanceThe farmer get’s market value for the producenon-profit branch to our work we get some funds for that that helps with our education youth programs we dopublic educationWe travel all around the regions sharing information about food justice.I love all this, this weekend was the indigenous march in Washington DC and the kids at a large interaction with the and the government shut down over immigration and here you are helping train immigrants and doing all this wonderful work. I feel like it’s such a timely topic.Tell me about your first gardening experience?So, I did not grow up gardeningI did grow up in a rural area and was friends with the trees for sure. Our family was often one of the only brown skin families in...

8 Apr 201936min