403. Growing Figs in Cold Climates | Lee Reich | Hudson Valley, NY

Hey everyone just checking in and saying hey! I recorded this Thursday March 19, 2020! What a crazy week! I truly believe we are going to come out stronger on the other side. I know it's scary and crazy things are happening, I truly believe the good in humanity and that we should all donate blood if that's a possibility. Our schools all closed Monday, our governor said we were closed Sunday right after I bleached my classroom... and my principal said be ready to teach online when spring break is over (our spring break is 3/20-27/20) in case they ask. Listeners I know I go oh! at the end, but it was probably just something in my car. I am jumpy! haha... don't panic no big deal... anyway, I will try to post soon. My storage is almost full out! I did post a good instagram/facebook post of mike's minifarm and his lesson he learned about tarping. Be safe and Let's Get Growing!This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

20 Mars 20203min

Hi Jackie!I am a new listener who has been (vegetable) gardening all my life & in the last few years added fruit trees to my repartee. I live in NW PA, tho my garden is about 30 miles away in Conneaut, Ohio, a few blocks South of Lake Erie. I listened to the show with Melissa K. Norris today & enjoyed it very much. I will definitely be listening more! (& I entered the book give away, too!)Keep up the good work!Cindy OndishTell us a little about yourself.The way this weird situation started is a long storywhere I live in NW PA I had a gardentrees grew upwe live amongst woodsMy garden got worse and worse eveyryeareveryyeartomato plans around my houseseparate from thismy husband bought a placeboat garagelot with weeds taller then mehacked them down with a cyclehe noticed there was an asparagusthere’s where my garden isthe ground is like a gardener’s dreamperson who owned it before was friendsthere’s my gardenI resisted the whole thing a bit of the timenothing grows at my house because there is no lightwe’re there all the time in the summerwe cleared an acre out of the woods some of it I want to turn back to woodsdidn’t want to cut anymore downsuch a gradual thingI willalways had tomato plants around the housepepper plantspots on the deckit was okI guess if I do raised bedsright in the middle of the lawngradual thingworkedhow wonderful this stuff growsexpandedI came from an Italian familyeveryone grew tomatoeswhich is weirdwe canned teammateswe ate a lot of pastathat’s all I really knewhe came over on the boat from Italyknew about other plantsmy first gardenout of collegelive in an apartment and stuffas soon as I had spaceI did I have a lot of house plantsI have kind of a green thumbgood place to grow then at that timeI grew cornwhole range of things, my family never grewso nicefeel like you can take care of yourselfempoweredI am going to the storecan itgrow it and can itas I had my children got biggertrying to feed themknew what I was feeding Tell me about your first gardening experience?How did you learn how to garden organically?4 Tell us about something that grew well this year.4I was head over heels in love with parsnipsalways had good luck growing parsnipsI know now my garden was such clayeven thought I tried to work things in itif they dry outonce they dry out they’re deadold timerteaching me how to grow parsnipsnever eaten a warshipboiling water on themboard over topnever did the topmine would growbecause my ground was so nasty and wetso I have been trying to grow them in my good gardendrainagemulching themcould not get parsnips to growbummed out of itmore that I readwhat do I have to loselet them start sprouting on the sinktedious job of picking up the sproutsbiggest most beautifulstart them first plant themplant thempour boiling water over the rowseeds make them float to the topwaxy coating that has to get through the coatingworked because my ground was so wetdidn’t drainnew garden is drains my husband introduced them to mecravings for themsometimesbounty of parsnipswe started outmy husband cooks everything starting with

28 Feb 20201h 5min

Happy to talk about any Hemp building topics or direction the conversation goes.I call my listeners Green Future Growers. I had a guest on the east side of Montana, and one of the things he talked about the importance of having a market ahead of time. And then my husband and I have always been interested in building a hemp house, or straw bale house but hempcrete would be even better.Yeah it totally would and it's exciting all the different applications of hemp being used across the United States. For that eastern Montana farmer what he said was spot on.You gotta have an idea of where the plants are gonna end up and who is going to buy it and using it for what purpose before you even start farming.Mike said you have to interview these guys and here is Tommy Gibbons to talk to us today from Hempitecture! Part of me feels like I have been waiting for this for so long, I thought this would pass back in the 1990's and I talked to Tara Caton last year at the Rodale Institute and I was like what is going on in our country finally?Tell us a little about yourself.There’s so much to tell about our businesspeople in the 90s who have been fighting this battle, it's been an accumulative effort and truly the future is ahead of us and that’s what we look towardsWe are HempitectureKetchum Idahosun valley ski resort2014built the first commercial hemp concretewe make building with hemp easyconsult on different projectstrain people how to build with materialssell building materialssellcome to your job site and professionally install your hemp insulation productsJust hempcrete and hemp wool now but who knows where it's gonna go!woolreally exciting!Maybe it was 2014. I remember going to this business thing. Our Senator Jon Tester, is actually one of those Eastern Montana farmers. He wanted to pass a hemp bill, but he said the problem was the police not being able to tell the difference between a hemp plant and a cannabis plant and I thought that was lame because for me, I always think that any cannabis farmer is not going to let any hemp seeds near their cannabis so they are going to regulate it themselves in a way. But that is sort of off topic.common interest incultivate growYoure just allowed to transportpeople didn’t feel they could tell the difference between marijuana flower passing through the state and hemp flowers. differencethreshold 05THC send out for testingIdaho police didn’t feel like they should pay, or didn't have the sources in placeultimatelyThere is all this confusion about what is hemp and what is marijuana, but does come down to the THC content.The hemp we use for building that looks nothing like smokable0% THC contentstems or fibersSo we don’t bump too much into that problem, luckily now things are legal, the cultivation and transportation is legalrecentlyin some states the battle persists and it was very important if it was So where do you get your hemp then from local people in Idaho?No we don't. They are still not growing in Idaho.our current supplier s out of quebecWe've had suppliers more local likekentucky in the USuntil this yearmore growersand need to processorsinner core, needs to be chopped up,...

24 Feb 202041min

https://www.advancingecoag.com/aboutSo excited because my guest today has this amazing green future grower story I KNOW listeners are going to absolutely love! So if you’re driving don’t worry I’ll make awesome SHOWNOTES because I know we are going to have a million golden seeds dropped with this amazing interview. CEO of Advancing Ego Agriculture, John Kempf is on a mission to “produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and consistently higher yields!”What I love about his story is how he started out and I can’t wait for you to hear it too! His passion for growing healthy soil and healthy plants for profit is contagious! Tell us a little about yourself.I love what I do I have fun!I grew up in a family vegetable farm in snow-belt south of Lake ErieSmall scale market ~ fruits and veggies for wholesale marketsearly 2000s we had 3 consecutive yearsintense diseasewe lost majority of crops to a variety of disease and insectsIn the 3rd year in 2004, we observed thatplants which were grown on healthy soilbetter biologywere very disease and insect resistantcantaloupe resistant to powdery mildew that was side by sidesoil with he previous pesticide exposure for the prior decade of growing vegetables we lost the majority of the crop to powdery mildew, 80% of leavesThe new soil didn’t have pesticide exposure didn't have any powdery mildew. Not 5-10% you couldn't find any! ZERO! There was a knifelike effect right down the field.really a major turning pointwhat was the difference between those two plants resistant to powdery mildew when the next plant 2 feet away was susceptible. asking that question and the things I learnedplant science and agronomy from asking that question were what led to foundingAdvancing Eco Agriculture (AEA)in 2006AEAWas the idea that we can grow plants that are completely resistant to diseases and insects based on how we manage nutrition.where we identified plants that are healthynot only are theyresistant to diseases and insects but they regenerate soil health at the same timeprocess of this journey I was fortunate to be guided byUSDA expertsland grant universitiesall over the worldrealized this exceptional info that very wise people had was scattered all over the placedifficult to findnot recorded at allsome experiences were not being transferredLed me to starting the Regenerative Ag Podcastwith the intention and goal of interviewingleading farmersleading scientistssharing their information with other professional agronomists and growers who wanted to produce in a regenerative agriculture context!Tell me about your first gardening experience?I grew up even from before I remember, we always grew our own food.appreciate it as an adultThere were many years my parents purchased salt and pepper and spices and that was just about itmaple syruphoneysteviasweetenersgrew many of our own herbs2 farmed ponds where we raised fishraised poultrygrass fed beeffamily dairy cowgrew a large gardensmall orchardLived an incredibly rich life from a food quality...

23 Feb 202057min

Tell us a little about yourself.I'm from Minnesota originallyfamily typical upbringing in the suburbscareer as being a chefmy extensive hobby as being a gardenermarket gardeninggrowing up in the 80s food was sort of an afterreddishso I got a degree in psychologyneeded to do something a little more inspiringlived in Europe for a semester in collegetraveled around Europe and really saw food in a different lightexperienced it really differently from what I hadThen I decided to go to culinary school, I ended up in Vancouver BCrelatives out there as well so I came back to the twin citiesItalian kitchensownerskind of moved around bit as chefs do is quite normalI also started gardening at a fairly young ageearly twentiesI ended up dating a woman from the Ukraine, she had a strong gardening interestI had always been interested in nature as a young kidgardening with my parentsbut very simple, chard and green beans and that kind of thingI started working at a natural foods coop right next to a really old and thriving community gardenin St Paul and that’s where I met some really great gardeners who I would call mentorsOne particular gardener there was a soil scientist at the university of MN, she took me under her wing learned some incredible techniquesraised bedno till gardencover cropsrotationOne thing that really inspired me from a young age to kind of continue this and do a lot more was just witnessing the differences in her garden and other community gardensShe made her community garden plot not tilled in the back row and the rest of the 90 plots were tilled once a year. In the other plots, the soil was still quite good but it was obvious she had thebest looking vegetablesearliestlargest vegetables in that gardenIt was no mystery she was doing something different and right. It was from her I learned about Mycorrhizal fungi and the relationship to the plants and how important that wasusing those techniquesI was able to follow in her footsteps in a way when she got done, working at an urban agriculture non profit in st paul, centered at gardens all over st Paulchildrenform a market garden essentiallyI was able to take over that job when she was finished, working on her phdI got to be a market gardener for 3 years, all the while I was cooking at night, I couldn't do that these days, way too intense, way too muchSo wait, are you a rockstar millennial?I'm 42 so I'm more of an xeryeah for meFor many years, I've been involved in both the culinary world and the growing worldI see that they are so intermittently intertwined, and kind of dependent on each other, the communities overlap so much. I find that really inspiring, such that I was able to go to the MOSESMIDWEST Organic Conference for Organic Farming and meet a lot of great farmers and gardenersmove to the country and start a land based businessAlas I stayed in the city and am still working as a chefAfter working at some great restaurants and for some people who are superstars for natural foodslocal alice watersworked for this woman for 7 years, after that endedI started my own business as a personal chef, working in people’s homescooking Monday - Friday, everyday meals, it's different from catering Gives me a lot more time on weekends and eveningsbeing a chef is pretty awesome but the restaurant life can...

19 Feb 20201h 19min

Author ofUgly FarmTell us a little about yourself.I am IDK if I am a rockstar but I am tryingNE CT, the poor part of CT, we’re not in HartfordThere’s a lot of farms in general in this part of CTit’s not where I started farmingmy husband and I bought a little piece of propertyit’s sort of an Urban farmwe have neighbors we can see1.2 acresOh, it’s um.My husband and I were Goth kids in schoolI’m really into growing black vegetableslove the black carrotsalways buy those seedswith the black tomatoesIf you forget to trim your tomato bush for a couple of weeks the busy parts are hiding inside are going to have big green splotches on themeither assumethe tomatoes are only going to be blackturn your tomatoes toward the sunby the time that happensbugsslice themthey are blackfrom the toptaste greatmake salsa out ofnot as impressive if the wholeBaker Creek Black Beauty Tomatoesalmost every tomato I have ever hadstill tastes in one shape or formsweeter or nicertomato tastes like at tomatoblack like your soulblack jalapenosI thought they would be super spicypicking them and eating them off the bushthe black nebula carrotsblack all The wayblanch them for a two minutespurple dyeYou are just dropping golden seedsTell me about your first gardening experience?my grandmother on my mother’s sidekind of a homesteadunder an acrebeing a little kidblueberriesfruit treesthey were getting older19101915-16something like...

3 Feb 20201h 25min

Check out the video version of the 2020 GREEN Organic Gardener Podcast Challenge here:https://youtu.be/1Ki-9NNSBTIWant to learn more join us for the Organic Oasis Master ClassThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

1 Feb 202018min

Do you want to save time in your garden?Do you want to grow a garden full of healthy vegetables but feel you don’t have time? Do you struggle to get all the weeds pulled and watering done in the heat of summer when your friends are all headed to the lake? Are you tired of paying the high cost of organic vegetables in the store but struggle to grow your own?Well, our 2020 Garden Goals Challenge will help you find success in your garden journey!SYLLABUSDay One - Brainstorm - No Dream is Too BigDay Two - Make A PlanDay Three - Create a SMART GoalDay Four - Research TimeDay Five - Get OrganizedDay Six - Photo Time - the Before shotDay Seven - ReflectDay Eight - VisualizeImagine anything is possible!Now I want you to visualize yourself enjoying your garden this summer. You’ve done the hard work, you’ve mastered the challenges, your ready to harvest the fruits of your labor. Close your eyes and imagine all of your garden dreams have come true. At least the goals we set out in the last few days. What does that look like? What does it feel like? Can you smell it? Can you taste it? Can you hear it? What do you feel when you pick a fresh flower?Are you drinking coffee or tea and enjoying the flowers? Are you taking pictures of a beautiful butterfly or flower? Are you eating a fresh garden salad or apple from your fruit tree? Are your grand children skipping through your earth-friendly environment? Are people raving over your fresh veggies at the farmer’s market stand?What does achieving your 2020 garden goals really mean to you?This is a great place to promote our blank garden journal!My Garden JournalIt’s always good to have a before and after photo to record your progress. When I look back at our place in the early 90s I can’t believe how far we have come. Take a picture now of your before and get ready for the after!If you need more help with your 2020 GREEN Organic Gardener Podcast Challenge let us know. You are more then welcome to email me at OrganicGardenerPodcast@gmail.com and I will answer as soon as possible. Or you can post in the Organic Gardener Facebook Group or message me or Mike on Facebook.The Organic Oasis Master Class Starts Friday, January 24th and ends Friday, February 21st! Get in first and you'll have your workbook and journals before the first class! This $97 course can be had for $75.00 if you order before the 24th! Join today!This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

1 Feb 20207min