onsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Hello, welcome to Fearless Propagation.
I'm Nika Vaughan, owner of Plant Salon.
Plant Salon is a plant boutique in Chicago, Illinois
and we specialize in beautifying people and plants.
We offer indoor plants, plant supplies,
and botanically-oriented self care and home decor.
Today, we're gonna talk about fearless plant propagation.
Taking some of your favorite plants
from your plant collection and making new ones.
What I love about propagating plants
is that plants aren't waiting for us.
They are constantly trying to propagate all the time.
If you've ever owned a succulent,
like a jade plant or a burro's tail,
and you cleaned the shelf around it
and found one little leaf
with little roots growing off of it,
little pink or white hairs, that's a mini plant.
It's a new plant.
What's awesome about plants
is it's a little bit of a numbers game.
The more attempts and tries you do,
the more success you have.
So it's a great reason to do lots of plant propagations,
make them, and to try different techniques.
It's empowering to new plant parents
and it is a badge of honor to plant collectors
that you learn more about the plants in your care
and the different techniques that resonate
with one plant more than another.
So today, we're gonna talk about some different techniques.
We're gonna talk about the different parts of a plant
that you use to propagate, and how easy it is.
And that it's a lot of trial and error,
and plants want to propagate, so they're on your side.
So where do you start with plant propagation?
The easiest place to start is just to think about
the plant you want to propagate
and what part of it do we actually need
in order for it to grow into a new plant?
I feel like some of the easiest plants to start off with,
one of them, the kite, is a trailing plant that has a stem.
Like a vining plant, so a pothos is a great plant.
This is a Brasil philodendron,
and what's awesome about it is there's a lot of space
between the different parts of the plant.
So you really can see, oh, this is the leaf,
this is the aerial root, this is the stem.
So where do we cut?
For a trailing plant like this, we want the node.
The node is the part of the plant
that has the blueprints for making a new plant.
It has the blueprints for growing roots.
It has the blueprints for growing branches.
There are times when you can actually cut just a leaf
and plop it in some dirt or water, and grow roots,
but it won't grow into a full plant
unless it has that growth point.
And on these plants, that's called the node.
So what we wanna look for for a node,
one of my simplest tricks is just...
I call it looking for the Y, right?
You're gonna look for where there's a little natural branch.
So this is a nice, long stem.
Here is a branch that's making a leaf.
So it's a nice Y shape.
Where that Y comes together is a bump, there's a line,
there are some aerial roots.
That is our growth point.
That's what we want.
So if we were gonna cut this,
we would want to take our clean scissors
and we would cut about an inch or two below that node.
And these aerial roots,
right now they're pulling in elements
and nutrients from the air,
they're pulling in humidity from the air
to help support the plant.
But if we put this in water,
these will slowly turn into what they call water roots,
but they're just basically roots.
And so what we're wanting to do is by putting it in water,
we're gonna grow in a body of roots
that's gonna help support the rest of this plant
to keep it growing into a whole new plant.
Now, I am going to, next, snip off this leaf
and the reason why I snip off this leaf
is I want just the node by itself.
You can see that guy there, just the node by himself,
and the reason I want it just by itself
and I don't want to have all of this down
when I go to put this in water,
is that the water might rot this leaf
and then that's gonna introduce a lot of gross bacteria
and stuff into our water.
So by removing that leaf, it also is one less body part
the plant has to try to make food to support.
So we want these leaves to work.
Generally, you're gonna use about two to three leaves
per cutting to help generate some food for your cutting,
and then you want the node,
and now we need a vessel and some water.
Now, this is one of the things I love the most
about propagating and experimenting is the stuff,
the equipment we get to collect as part of propagating.
And one of that is the vessels.
You can just have so much fun with this.
I am such a collector that I collect everything
and I will totally stop and collect little odd bottles.
I prefer glass for my water propagations, generally,
so that I can see the root development as it's happening.
I feel like a big part of plant collecting
is the experimentation and the learning.
And so I wanna kind of learn more about my plants
and see what they're doing.
Learn the difference between how a cane begonia
versus a Rex begonia grows in water.
They look totally different.
So I love to collect glass,
but really, any kind of vessel will work.
Your drinking water glass will work.
Any glass, any kind of container will work.
What you do is you're going to find a bottle.
So this is a nice household, basic bottle, amber bottle.
You can get as creative as you like.
I think this was a nice little vintage piece.
We're going to fill it with water.
I would highly recommend, if you have access to distilled
or rainwater, your plants will be so happy.
They will love you.
You will just get results faster
because there's less stuff that your new plant,
that's trying to form roots, has to overcome.
Such as like the minerals, the chlorine,
all the extra stuff that can be in tap water.
So if you know you have harder water
or that you've just got lots going on in your water,
you might want to think about trying distilled water
or even rainwater and seeing what kind of results you get
with the same kind of plant.
I use a combination, for my more finicky plants
I totally will still use filtered water.
Most other plants, tap is fine.
What I like most about water propagations
is it is an amazing way to decorate your house.
It looks like you have a million plants right here,
but really it's one, two, three, four bottles of stuff going.
Once the roots get really established,
they kind of take on this artwork kind of vibe.
They look sculptural.
I am notorious for letting my water propagations
go in their container for a very, very, very long time.
But it doesn't take long.
When a plant is well-suited for water propagation,
you'll see results in about two weeks, maybe three weeks.
If the lighting's a little off
or the temperature is a little off,
it could take a little longer.
If the leaf was not in the best condition,
like it was already kind of a not-so-happy leaf, a dying leaf,
then because it's the mother leaf,
it doesn't have as much nutrients to grow new roots,
it's just gonna take longer.
Some plants, like this cane begonia,
totally, totally love water propagation.
So you can see in there, it's just a nice...
it's like lace almost.
And what's neat is it will start to grow new little plants
off of the roots.
This is a peperomia and ooh...
You can see there.
I'm a big fan for when there's gonna be a mother leaf.
So let's talk about this.
Some plants, they will propagate from any part.
Their growth point is any part of their leaf.
Other plants, like our pothos
and our trailing Philodendron Brasil, they need the node.
So what's neat is you can start to figure out, oh,
this technique really works well for A, B, C,
and D type plants, but maybe not enough.
So I know that I have really good success
with my watermelon peperomias in water propagations.
Each one will turn into its own new little plant
and I'll let it get roots.
And it will even start to form little tiny leaves
at the base of the stem.
And you will then plop that out, pull it right on out,
and stick that in another pot of dirt,
and voilą, new plant.
Plant division is one of the easiest ways
to get a new plant.
Ideally, you wanna look for a very mature specimen.
Something that's filled out its pot,
it's almost bursting out of a pot.
So it's a matter of are we gonna to re-pot this
into another larger size?
Or is it time to divide this into several smaller plants?
I prefer to divide some of these really, really big plants up
because I think at a certain point, when a plant gets so big,
it becomes more furniture than specimen,
and you're treating it as a mass versus a sculptural
or more intricate object.
So I think it's neat to divide up a larger plant
in order to kind of see more of the things
that you like most about it.
For me, snake plants are great vertical, clean lines.
When there's a lot of them, you start to lose that.
So by breaking them up into smaller batches,
you get to have more places in your home
to have them placed to draw the eye.
Versus just on the floor
or just beside, anchoring another piece of furniture.
Something to keep in mind when you're dividing your plant
is that it's really gonna teach you how your plant grows.
So for more arid-loving, desert-y inclined plants,
they tend to prefer to like to callus
after they have been divided or cut.
Whereas aroids, or more tropical plants,
they don't need so much time to callus.
They prefer to get right back into some moist growing medium.
So I have already broken up another.
This is a 14-inch black coral sansevieria snake plant.
And this was part of a 14-inch sansevieria laurentii
that I divided up.
And I wanna show you how the roots grow
'cause I think that's one of the best parts
of dividing a plant is you're like,
"Oh, this one grows this way, okay, so when I buy a pot,
"I should buy a pot with this in mind,"
and it teaches you just more
of the characteristics of your plant.
So for a snake plant, the roots...
This is the mother plant,
this is the new plant coming off of it.
They grow almost with a...
It's like a branch or a, like a candelabra kind of arm.
What we would do is, is if I wanted to make this
into even two separate plants, I would cut this again,
and then let this callus, but as it was,
this was all pretty much big, connected pieces.
Let's find a really good one.
It's still connected.
So this'll make a great, like a...
Oh, let's say this'll make a good eight-inch pot.
Whereas this first plant,
that's when you get nice kind of airy, roomy,
room-to-grow six-inch pot,
but that means I'm gonna have some longevity
with that new plant.
I can put it on a shelf
and it's not gonna outgrow that pot anytime soon.
I would like...
We're gonna pot up, whoo!
This is...
This is a 10-inch pot.
Part of dividing a plant is you're gonna wanna make sure
to keep as much of the body
of the plant together as you can.
Maybe knock off some of the old dirt.
You don't want to beat the roots up too much.
If it's very root-bound, you might have to be
a little bit more aggressive.
That's why, there we go.
Otherwise, this isn't super root-bound.
This is a very happy plant,
so I'm not gonna rip away too much of this root growth.
Let's get our...
It's right here.
I'm gonna use a cactus mix.
[dirt shifting]
Because I've taken many snake plants, divided them,
and I've seen how they grow,
I know that it will want to send its roots down deep.
So I'm using a deeper pot.
The goal will be for it to be in this pot
until it has filled up this pot all over again
and it's ready to be sized up.
When you first divide your plant,
it is a good idea to be mindful of,
does this plant need to callus before I plant it?
Plants like a snake plant, a sansevieria,
that are from a more arid environment,
they do not want excess moisture introduced into a wound,
like their new cut.
So I'm making sure to use really, really dry soil.
And I divided this about a day or so ago
to make sure there was enough time
for those cuts to callus.
If it was a plant like a monstera deliciosa,
an aroid plant, something more tropical, really,
that is used to more of a damp growing medium
and a more humid environment,
I don't tend to let it callus so long.
It might literally be maybe an hour, if that.
The time it takes me to prepare the soil
and get the pots together, I'm gonna go ahead
and divide that plant up, and put that in dirt.
Let's see...
Now it wants to keep dividing again.
So I know I want about this size,
and that's a nice, long root.
That's why I wanna make sure I'm giving this...
Who are you attached to?
I'm gonna give this plant a lot of space in this pot.
There we go.
And then one more friend, so it's not such an empty pot.
We're gonna center them in the pot and then just fill in.
Propagating with moss is one of the gentler ways
to help produce a new plant.
And by that, it's just like saying here's a very airy,
lofty bed of moss for your little stem to lay upon.
You're not going to overly water this plant.
A lot of the moisture it's gonna get
is from the humidity of the damp moss.
And so that's going to help just to gently coax roots
into forming into a new plant.
This is a very gentle process.
It's a slow process sometimes.
If you have a greenhouse environment, it can be faster.
Wow, I found and bought this amazingly rare plant,
and it's only this big, and I'm terrified of putting it
in a big pot of soil and having it rot and die.
What is a really gentle way to propagate
and to nurture this new little baby plant?
And one of the easiest and gentlest things is just moss.
Sphagnum moss, orchid moss, grade-A is great,
but basically it's just sphagnum moss.
And you're going to get this damp,
you're gonna squeeze out the excess moisture,
and this is your growing medium.
If you wanna get a little fancy, you can definitely...
Some people add perlite, they start to tinker a little bit,
but 90 to 95% of what you're gonna be utilizing
is just gonna be the moss itself.
So I'm gonna take some moss now and start to let it soak up.
It doesn't take too long.
Sometimes there's a little hard chunks in there,
and pull out any sticks or anything that might be in there.
I have a few plants here that I've been growing in moss.
These are definitely in my more rare collection.
At Plant Salon, we have a private collection
and it is here to inspire
and to show what a mature specimen
of different plants looks like.
But in the private collection,
there are definitely a lot of projects.
And some of those projects I will stick with just moss,
because we are babying this plant.
I wanna give it just enough moisture to make it happy.
But at the same time, this especially works well
for tropical plants that like a damp or humid,
leaf litter kind of growing medium.
So the humid airiness of moss really lends itself to this.
This is an anthurium crystallinum, it's crystallinum,
and this is growing in,
I believe this is just by sphagnum moss.
There might be a little bit
of Oregon green moss in there too,
'cause I like the way it looks.
This is older, this pot totally needs to be changed.
As you can tell, I'm a pretty laid-back gardener.
I will just use a metal probe to kind of tease out...
Doo doo doo, let me see if I can find one.
There we go.
I'm gonna...
I've been growing this in a net pot,
so that's why it has these slots.
And the roots, of course, of course,
they found their way, right, to grow through.
And I'm just going to coax that root back in,
kind of like a noodle going through a little slot.
This has been growing in a small greenhouse.
Just a tabletop greenhouse.
And I've had it sitting on a pebble tray
where it's not quite submerged,
it's sitting right at the surface of the pebbles.
But the pebbles have obviously been moist enough
and those roots have found that moisture, they're into it.
So there's a brand new baby leaf coming in now.
I'm probably going to wait for that leaf to unfurl
before I re-pot this one, but she's pretty ready.
She's very happy, right?
So this was more of a rare, harder plant to get ahold of.
You don't find these kinds of plants
at your local big box stores.
And so they are considered more of a collector's plant.
And because of the investment, you might be like,
"I can't have this plant die."
So that's why something like a moss medium to grow in
is very gentle, it's saying there's not too much moisture.
There's not, they're not smothering the roots.
You're trying to avoid what we call root rot.
This, this is root rot.
This is a pink princess philodendron stem.
This is a sad, sad little chunk. [laughs]
She's a sad chunk.
I had, the mother plant is about maybe 18 inches, 24 inches tall.
She's got two lovely stems in there.
She's had many children over the last few years.
This one though, took a turn.
She had some leaves, she took a turn.
She was in a greenhouse cabinet and just wasn't...
Everybody else was perky, she wasn't super perky,
so I moved her to the smaller tabletop greenhouse.
It's kind of like a large terrarium, also,
and she's kind of just stayed at the same level.
So what I'm going to do
is I've already cleaned off my shears.
And this, see how that's spongy?
This is horrible, we don't want this.
You do not want spongy, oh, that's so sad.
But look what she's making.
So this is the node, that line right here, whoops.
And that is a bud, so she wants to grow a stem from here,
and we want to help her do that, we want to help her do that.
So I am going to start to cut off anything soft.
And I wanna cut off anything mushy, squishy,
obviously discolored.
[scissors snipping]
Oh, she's got a lot.
We're gonna be right there, right under that node.
And the reason we want to cut off all of that decay,
if it's possible, I don't know.
There we go, that looks good.
Mostly, right?
Let's see.
That's cutting it close.
It's cutting it very close.
And the reason we don't want to cut too much,
is if we cut the node, we cut out the blueprints
to tell the plant how to grow,
and she'll just get sadder, shriveled, [laughs]
more raisin-like, and we don't want that.
So she's got a couple of good nodes to work with,
but this is the bud that activated
that's trying to grow a new branch.
So that's what we wanna encourage.
So for this, because she had root rot,
which means, basically, it was a bacterial infection.
I'm gonna use Physan 20 just to sterilize,
or to clean her.
You notice we didn't do this with the snake plant.
I don't always do that.
If it is a [coughs], excuse me, I breathed it in.
If it is a species that I know is prone
to any kind of fungal infections
or if we're battling something, obviously,
then what I want is, okay, we're gonna just kind of go in
with the most clean slate we can.
If I am on a tear, dividing 12 different sansevieria pots
into 24, 36 different sansevieria pots,
and they all look great,
and they're pretty run of the mill sansevieria laurentii,
which you kind of find everywhere, then no,
I just go ahead and divide those up.
But for this one, we wanna make sure.
And see how there's a little bit of that discoloration there?
So I wanna give that a chance to air dry, just a little.
Most, I won't say most.
Many people do like to let their stem cuttings callus
before going into a moss mixture.
And the difference between that
and what we do for plant division with tropical plants,
is tropical plant roots are very hardy,
so when you're dividing a plant, you're generally not breaking.
You're not causing a lot of wounds.
You're not breaking large pieces of the plant apart
where there's an open, gaping wound.
Here, we literally cut a good chunk of the stem off,
even though it was rotting and gross.
And so that's a wound.
So we're gonna give this a chance to heal.
An example of somebody who's a little further along
that had a similar experience.
This is a monstera siltepecana.
Siltepecana.
I have a few of 'em.
This one just wasn't...
She just wasn't happy, she wasn't happy.
And that's always the sign, right, that something's off.
And what was odd was I have a few pots of this
all in the same cabinet, so why is this one off?
So I thought, "Okay, I'll try water propagating first."
That was a no-go.
The leaves started to blanch, she started to get more yellow
without any new growth happening.
No new roots were forming.
So I thought, "Ah, this is not working.
"I need an even gentler, even gentler path or method to go."
And so I wanna show you.
There it is, it was, I think,
just a little bit of a root ball.
And a little bit of a root ball and this little bit of a stem.
The leaf, I don't think it lasted even a day or so,
once I moved it into the little greenhouse, the terrarium.
And then you're like, "Okay,
"it's got high humidity, high heat,
"we're just gonna let it do its thing."
And either it will shrivel up and disappear,
or this very gentle method will kind of help give it time
to grow new roots, and that's what's happening.
So we're getting some new growth, and we will take it.
Oh yeah, there's a new little leaf right there.
So I'm going to--
This moss looks pretty good.
It's still pretty moist.
I'm gonna go ahead and gently...
I'm just gonna take smaller bits
and gently make a little donut around that cutting.
There's a bed of moss underneath it, I nestle it in.
And then I'm going to gently pat moss around it.
I'm so glad I got to share
some of my favorite techniques with you,
and I hope you feel inspired to try a few
to make some new plants.
To learn more about Plant Salon and our various projects,
please follow us on social media and at plantsalon.com.
>> HI.
I'M BEN FUTA, POST OF PBS
WISCONSIN'S ONLINE GARDENING
SERIES, LET'S GROVE STUFF.
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
FEARLESS PLANT PROP PROPAGATION AND
NIKA IS JOINING US LIVE.
ASK QUESTIONS THROUGH YOUTUBE,
FACEBOOK LIVE OR THE LIVE
STREESM STREAM
CHAT.
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US TODAY.
>> THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.
>> WE HAVE A LOT OF AWESOME
QUESTIONS TO GET TO.
FIRST, A FEW ON THE WATER
PROPAGATION.
SO DONNA AND MIKE WERE BOTH
ASKING OR WONDERING IS MELTED
SNOW JUST THE SAME OR AS GOOD AS
RAINWATER?
>> ABSOLUTELY.
IT'S LIKE -- IT PROBABLY IS THE
ONE PERK FROM THIS WINTER WE'VE
HAD, IS THE ABUNDANCE OF SNOW
WE'VE HAD.
AND I'M GOING TO SHOW PEOPLE
COLLECTING SNOW IN EVERY POT AND
THINGS THEY CAN KEEP IT IN.
JUST MAKE SURE IT'S FRESH SNOW
AND NOT SNOW THAT HAS SALT IN
IT, THAT'S BEEN PLOWED.
BUT IF IT'S FRESH SNOARKS IT'S --
SNOW, IT'S GREAT.
>> PERFECT.
QUESTION FOR WATER PROPAGATION.
SHOULD PEOPLE THINK ABOUT ADDING
ANY NUTRIENTS TO THE WATER?
>> IF YOU'RE NEW TO WATER
PROPAGATION, JUST STRAIGHT
WATER, BECAUSE IT'S KIND OF LIKE
FIXING A RECIPE, RIGHT, THAT IF
YOU MAKE THIS REST RECIPE AND
SOMETHING IS OFF, YOU'RE GOING
TO HAVE A HARDER TIME FINDING
WHAT PROBLEM IS.
WHAT'S THAT ONE FACTOR THAT I
WANT TO FIX.
WHEN YOU KEEP THE FACTORS
SIMPLER, YOU HAVE AN EASIER TIME
MAKING THE ADJUSTMENTS YOU NEED
TO GET SUCCESS.
AND THEN YOU CAN START BUILDING
FROM THERE AND ADDING MORE
THINGS.
>> PERFECT.
SO KATE IS WONDERING HAVE YOU
NOTICED THAT THE COLOR OF GLASS
YOU'RE PROPAGATING IN MAKES ANY
DIFFERENCE?
SHE READ MAYBE GREEN GLASS MIGHT
MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
HAVE YOU SEEN THAT IN ANYTHING?
>> I HAVE HEARD THAT ALSO.
I HAVE ALSO HEARD THAT AMBER
BOTTLES WORK REALLY WELL.
ROOTS LIKE A DARKER ENVIRONMENT.
THEY ACTUALLY LIKE A DARKER
ENVIRONMENT TO GROW.
SO AMBER BOTTLES WORK WELL.
I HAVE HAD ODD SUCCESS WITH
OLDER LIKE CRYSTAL THAT'S REALLY
OLD, BUT THE CANTED BOTTLES AND
THINGS I'LL HAVE A HARDER TIME.
BUT CLEAR GLASS IS TOTALLY FINE
ALSO.
>> AND THEN ANY TIPS FOR REUSING
THESE GLASS VESSELS?
HOW SHOULD PEOPLE SANITIZE THEM,
KEEP THEM CLEAN?
WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE?
>> IF YOU WANT TO GO THE SUPER
EASY ROUTE, YOU'RE GOING TO BIEF
BOTTLE BRUSHES, LONGER BRUSH
WITH BRISTLES AROUND IT.
THINK OF A BRUSH YOU MIGHT USE
TO CLEAN A MILK OR BABY BOTTLE,
THAT KIND OF THING.
THE OTHER ONE, WHEN YOU GET ODD
OR SMALL-SHAPED BOTTLES AND
YOU'RE LIKE NOTHING FITS INSIDE
THIS BOTTLE TO CLEAN IT, PEOPLE
WILL USE COMBINATIONS OF LIKE
WHITE VINEGAR WITH A FEW GRAINS
OF RICE IN THERE AND THE VINEGAR
WILL HELP TO BREAK DOWN THE
DIFFERENT THINGS CLINGING TO THE
SIDE.
IT'S WHAT MAKES THE PATINA ON
THE INSIDE OF THE GLASS.
IT HELPS TO BREAK THAT DOWN.
THE RICE ACTS AS AN AGITATOR.
IT HELPS EXFOLIATE THE INSIDE OF
THE BOTTLE.
SO YOU SWISH IT AROUND.
YOU GIVE IT A GOOD, HARD SHAKE
AND IT WILL HELP TO GET ALL THAT
STUFF OFF THE BOTTLE.
>> ARRIVES AND VINEGAR.
WHO KNEW?
I LOVE IT.
A FEW QUESTIONS ON PLANT
SELECTION AND ID.
HOW CAN YOU FIND A TRUSTWORTHY
SOURCE FOR PURCHASING COLLECTOR
PLANTS?
SHE IS A LITTLE WORRIED ABOUT
PURCHASING FROM AN ONLINE
RESELLER.
>> SO THERE'S PROBABLY LIKE TWO
GOOD TRAINS OF THOUGHT FOR HOW
TO APPROACH IT.
THE FIRST IS REVIEWS.
IF THERE ARE ANY REVIEWS FOR THE
SELLER YOU'RE CONSIDERING,
THAT'S A GREAT START.
IF IT GOT 1,000 REVIEWS, YOU CAN
PRETTY MUCH TRUST THAT THAT
MIGHT BE A GOOD PLACE TO START
BUYING THINGS.
WHEN YOU DO BUY FROM THEM, WHAT
IS THE EXPERIENCE, LIKE IF YOU
HAVE A PROBLEM, YOU KNOW, WHEN
YOU'VE ORDERED SOMETHING SMALLER
AND SAFER, HOW WELL DID THAT
TRANSACTION GO.
THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD SIGN BEFORE
INVESTING IN A PLANT THAT IS IN
THE HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS RANGE.
I WILL SAY AT A CERTAIN POINT
THERE IS A LEAP OF FAITH THAT
HAS TO HAPPEN.
BECAUSE YOU WILL FIND A WISH
LIST PLANT THAT YOU'RE LIKE I
HAVE TO HAVE THIS PLANT.
AND IT WILL BREAK ALL THE OTHER
RULES OF I DON'T KNOW THIS
PERSON, LIKE THEY HAVE NO
REVIEWS, IT'S A PRIVATE SELLER
AND YOU KIND OF THEN -- IT'S
ALMOST LIKE BUYING THINGS FROM
YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY PAGES.
YOU JUST HAVE TO HAVE A SENSE
OF, OH, I SEE RED FLAGS IN THIS
TRANSACTION AND COMMUNICATION
OR, YOU KNOW, I HAVE A COUPLE
PEOPLE IN THE CITY AND THE
NEIGHBORHOOD HAVE HAD GOOD
INTERACTIONS WITH THEM AND I'M
GOING TO TAKE THE LEAP.
>> AWESOME.
JANELLE IS ASKING IS THERE A
GOOD PLACE TO GO TO FIND OUT HOW
TO IDENTIFY WHAT PLANTS I
ALREADY HAVE?
ARE THERE TOOLS I CAN USE OR
PLACES I CAN GO?
>> IT IS PROBABLY LIKE I WANT TO
SAY A GLOBAL APPROACH.
SO WHAT THAT MEANS IS FIRST
PLANT X.
LOTS OF PEOPLE LOVE THEM
ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE IN A PLANT
SHOP AND YOU DON'T KNOW THE NAME
OF IT.
THEY KNOW A NAME AND YOU'RE NOT
SURE IF IT'S THE RIGHT ONE.
YOU CAN TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR
PLANT AND A LOT OF THESE PLANT
APPS WILL NARROW IT DOWN FOR
YOU.
ONE WE LOVE THAT WE USE OFTEN IS
JUST GOOGLE.
GOOGLE LENS IS FREE.
THERE'S SPARKLES THAT HAPPEN ON
THE SCREEN.
IT GIVES YOU -- IT BASICALLY IS
SEARCHING THE INTERNET TO FIND
OBJECTS THAT HAVE THE SAME
CHARACTERISTICS AS WHAT'S IN
YOUR PHOTO.
THAT'S A GOOD WAY TO YOU.
THEN JUST KIND OF LEARNING THE
DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS OF
DIFFERENT PLANTS, HOW A ONE
PLANT DIFFERS FROM ANOTHER.
ONCE YOU LEARN IT, THEN YOU KNOW
IT.
>> PERFECT.
WE HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS
COMING IN ON PLANT CARE, SO FOR
FOLKS WHO ALREADY HAVE A
COLLECTION.
CHRISTMAS CACTUS, ANY TIPS YOU
HAVE FOR CARING FOR LARGE AND
MATURE PLANTS.
>> LARGE AND MATURE PLANTS, ONE
-- MY MOM WAS A GARDNER, MY
GRANDMA WAS A GARDENER.
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I LEARNED
OVER THE YEARS IS IF YOU HAVE
ONE SOLID SPECIMENS THAT ARE
DECADES OLD, THEY'RE JUST
GETTING OLDER.
THERE MIGHT BE A NATURAL LIFE
SPAN TO THAT PLAN.
TO HAVE A JADE PLANT THAT'S IN
THE 20-INCH POT THAT'S THREE
FEET TALL IS AN AMAZING
SPECIMEN.
AT SOME POINT EITHER BY ACCIDENT
OR NATURAL CAUSES OR JUST TIME
IT MIGHT BE THE END OF THAT
PLANT'S JUST LIFETIME.
AND SO THAT'S WHY PLANT DIVISION
REALLY COMES IN HANDY.
PLANTS LIKE A CHRISTMAS CACTUS,
THEY'RE EMPATHETIC, SO JUST BY A
LEAF CUTTING, YOU CAN SNIP THEM,
GET THEM GOING IN MONTHS OR
WATER.
THEY SPOUT ROOTS JUST IN THE
AIR.
THEY'RE SO EASY TO DIVIDE AND
CLONE IT'S ALMOST LIKE MAKING A
SAFETY FOR YOURSELF THAT YOU
HAVE A NEXT GENERATION AS BACKUP
IN CASE ANYTHING HAPPENS TO YOUR
MAIN SPECIMEN.
>> AWESOME.
JENNY FROM FACEBOOK IS ASKING
HELP.
SHE PURCHASED A PLANT FROM A BIG
BOX STORE AND IT CAME WITH
FUNGUS GNATS.
SHE'S TRIED APPLE APPLE CIDER VINEGAR.
I THINK WE'VE ALL HAD ONE OF
THESE MOMENTS.
WHAT'S THE NEXT STEP?
>> SO BEFORE IT WAS A PLANT
SHOP, BEFORE THE CHANGE, THIS
WAS A BEAUTY SPACE.
THAT WAS MY OTHER COMPANY.
FUNGUS GNATS AND HAIFER HAIFER HAIR SPRAY.
WE ALWAYS HAD PLANTS IN HERE.
FIRST, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO
WATER LESS, BECAUSE YOU ARE
CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS
LIKE A RESORT FOR FUNGUS GNATS.
YOU NEED TO MAKE IT UNWELCOMING.
BY HAVING A DRYER GROWING
MEDIUM, THEY'RE LESS LIKELY TO
WANT TO LAY THEIR EGGS BECAUSE
IT'S NOT GOING TO BE SO
WELCOMING.
YOU WANT TO BREAK MY LIFE CYCLE.
ADDING SAND TO THE SURFACE OF
YOUR POTS, I GO WITH -- WHEN I
WAS FIRST LEARNING THIS TRICK, I
WENT WITH BLACK SAND.
YOU CAN GET THEM AT CRAFT SUPPLY
STORES OR A PET SUPPLY STORE YOU
CAN GET LARGER QUANTITIES.
I LIKE BLACK BECAUSE IT'S A
DECORATIVE THING, MORE
CONSISTENT WITH POTTING SOIL.
YOU PUT ABOUT A QUARTER TO
HALF-INCH AT THE TOP OF EACH
POT.
YOU WANT TO COVER EVERY LITTLE
BIT THAT JUST THE STEMS ARE
COMING OUT.
IT IS MORE ABRASIVE FOR THE
FUNGUS GNAT TO HAVE TO DIG
THROUGH.
IT'S MORE HARMFUL FOR ITS BODY.
IT CUTS THE LIFE CYCLE.
IT WILL HELP TO RETAIN MORE
MOISTURE IN YOUR GROWING MEDIUM
BECAUSE YOU MADE THIS NICE DENSE
DENSER LAYER ON THE SURFACE.
BY CUTTING BACK ON WATERING,
YOUR PLANTS ARE GOING TO BE
OKAY.
>> PLANTS ARE PRETTY REEF RESILIENT.
DO YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR
BETTER TYPES OF CONTAINERS OVER
OTHERS, PLASTIC VERSUS CERAMIC,
PROS AND CONS, ANYTHING LIKE
THAT?
>> YOU DEFINITELY WANT TO KEEP
IN MIND THE NATIVE ENVIRONMENT
OF YOUR PLANT.
SO IF YOU HAVE A PLANT THAT IS A
SMALLER SPECIMEN, IT IS A PLANT
THAT NATIVELY GROWS ON A FOR
ONEST FLOOR, THAT MEANS IT
LIKES, YOU KNOW, FLUFFIER,
MOIST, HUMID GROWING MEDIUM.
A CERAMIC GLAZED POT IS GOING TO
KEEP THE GROWING MEDIUM LONGER
VERSUS PUTTING THAT SAME PLANT
IN TER
IN TERRA COTTA.
THAT'S WHY YOU SEE SUCCULENT AND
CACTUS PLANTS THAT ARE IN MORE
OF THOSE TERRA COTTA POTS,
BECAUSE WE'RE TRYING TO KEEP
THEM FROM BEING OVER-WATERED AND
TOO WET.
>> IN OUR FINAL FEW MINUTES,
LET'S JUMP INTO MORE PROPAGATION
QUESTIONS.
ROOTING HORMONES.
DO YOU RECOMMEND THEM?
AND IF SO, WHEN?
>> I LOVE ROOTING HORMONES.
I THINK SIMPLER IS BETTER.
IF YOU ARE STILL KIND OF
CONFUSED AND LIKE NOT SURE WHERE
YOU WANT TO USE THEM, THEN I
WOULD DEFINITELY SAY IT'S NOT
LIKE A REQUIREMENT TO GET YOUR
PROPAGATIONS GOING.
WHEN YOU USE THEM, YOU'RE GOING
TO GENERALLY -- IT'S GOING TO BE
AFTER YOU'VE MADE THE CUT.
A LOT OF THE ROOTING HORMONE
THINGS YOU MIGHT FIND IN A BIG
BOX STORE OR ONLINE, IN YOUR
LOCAL PLANT SHOPS, THEY'RE MORE
THAN JUST ROOTING HORMONES.
IT ALSO WILL HAVE A LITTLE FUFN
FUNGICIDE IN IT.
DIP IT IN THE VESSEL, IN THE
CONTAINER OF THE GROWING MEDIUM,
AND I SOMETIMES WILL EVEN
TRANSFER GROWING MEDIUM.
THEY COME IN PLASTIC BOTTLES.
I'LL TRANSFER THEM TO SMALL
GLASS JARS AND THAT WAY IT'S A
REALLY SHORT JAR FOR ME TO DIP
THE STEM INTO.
YOU WANT TO JUST COAT THE STEM,
SHAKE A LITTLE EXCESS OFF, DIP
IT INTO YOUR GROWING MEDIUM AND
YOU'RE SET.
>> SO MARILYN IS WONDERING ABOUT
AFRICAN-AMERICAN VIE VIOLETS.
>> AFRICAN-AMERICAN VIOLETS, I'M
NOT SUPER FAMILIAR WITH THEM.
WE LOVE PLAIN VIOLETS HERE AND
WHAT WE NOTICED IS THAT AS THEY
GROW OUT, YOU WANT TO BE MINDFUL
OF THE GROWTH PATTERNS JUST AT
THE BASE, WHERE YOU CAN DIVIDE
AND PULL UP ANY NEW PLANTLETS.
>> MATT IS WONDERING IS THERE A
BETTER TIME OF YEAR TO POT OR
REPOT HOUSE PLANTS BASED ON
INDOOR HUMIDITY, OUTDOOR
HUMIDITY?
>> SPRING AND SUMMER IS WHEN THE
PLANT IS IN ITS GROWTH SEASON.
IT KNOWS THAT THE ELEMENTS ARE
IN ITS FAVOR TO GROW BIGGER.
IT HAS MORE RESOURCES.
THAT IS NOT FUN FOR THE HUMANS
THAT TAKE CARE OF THE PLANT.
SO WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO POT OUR
PLANTS ALL THE TIME.
I DO.
I REPOT PLANTS YEARLONG.
I PROBABLY DO IT MORE SO IN THE
SPRING AND SUMMER.
SOMETIMES I WILL START A PROJECT
LIKE AIR LAYERING IS ANOTHER
TYPE OF PROPAGATION THAT USES
MOSS AND AERIAL ROOTS OF THE
PLANT.
I WILL GET THE PROJECT GOING IN
THE LATE WINTER WITH THE GOAL OF
DIVIDING THE PLANT IN EARLY
SPRING.
>> AWESOME.
LET'S SEE HERE.
AND CAN YOU REMIND US WHAT TYPE
OF MOSS DID YOU USE OR RECOMMEND
OR IS THERE A SPECIFIC TYPE OF
MOSS FOR DOING THAT MOSS
PROPAGATION?
>> THE GENERAL NAME IS CALLED
SPAGNUM MOSS.
MOST PEOPLE LOOK FOR A GRADE A
PREMIUM MOSS.
>> PAT IS ASKING WHAT ABOUT
CLEANING THE ROOT ROT?
WHAT DID YOU USE TO STERILIZE
AND CLEAN THAT?
>> SO IT AB CAN BE AS SIMPLE -- IF
GETTING A HUMAN PHI ER HUMIDIFIER IS A BIG
STEP, JUST RINSE IT WITH WATER.
IT'S AS IF YOU HAD A BAD CUT
YOURSELF.
YOU WOULD WANT TO CLEAN IT OFF.
SO RINSING OFF THAT OLD DECAY IS
A WONDERFUL FIRST START.
THE NEXT STEP AFTER THAT, SOME
PEOPLE WILL USE DIE DILUTED HYDROGEN
PEROXIDE.
DILUTED IS KEY.
I USE A FYSAN20.
MIX CORRECTLY SO IT'S NOT TOO
STRONG.
>> WE HAVE A LOT OF AWESOME
QUESTIONS COMING IN FOR FOLKS
AND JUST A FEW MINUTES LEFT.
WHERE CAN PEOPLE GO TO GET MORE
OF THESE QUESTIONS ANSWERED
EITHER ABOUT PROPAGATION, HOUSE
PLANT CARE, ANY OF THESE TYPES
OF THINGS?
>> I REALLY THINK SOCIAL MEDIA
HAS BECOME AN AMAZING RESOURCE
FOR SO MANY NEW PLANT PARENTS
THE LAST FEW YEARS.
FACEBOOK IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES
BECAUSE IT'S VERY
CONVERSATIONAL.
TO JOIN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY
PLANT GROUP.
YOU PUT YOUR CITY'S NAME IN, PUT
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD'S NAME IN AND
PUT IN HOUSE PLANTS AND SEE WHAT
COMES UP.
WHAT YOU FIND IS PEOPLE WHO ARE
DEALING WITH THE SAME
ENVIRONMENTAL ELEMENTS AND
FACTORS THAT YOU ARE AND YOU
MIGHT FIND PEOPLE THAT HAVE
DIFFERENT RANGES OF EXPERIENCE.
SO WHEN YOU ASK A QUESTION,
THEY'RE ABLE TO ANSWER IT.
AND YOU CAN GET TO KNOW THEM
BETTER.
>> AND FINAL QUESTION FOR YOU.
REMIND US WHERE WE CAN CONNECT
WITH YOU.
WHERE CAN FOLKS VISIT YOU?
>> ABSOLUTELY.
SO MY NAME IS NIKA VAUGHAN.
AND PLANTSALON.COM IS OUR MAIN
WEBSITE.
WE ARE ALSO ON INSTAGRAM.
SO IT'S PLANT SALON CHICAGO ON
INSTAGRAM.
IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION,
DEFINITELY SEND ME A NOTE.
I'M ALWAYS ON THERE.
>> SLENT.
WELL, NIKA, THANK YOU FOR
SHARING YOUR EXPERTISE.
WE REALLY APPRECIATE IT.
THANK YOU SO MUCH.
>> THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.
THANKS, GUYS.
>> STICK AROUND, EVERYONE.
WE HAVE MORE PRESENTATIONS
COMING UP JUST AFTER THIS.
onsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Lea speaking Oneida: Shekoli swakwe-ku.
Hutkahuni niyśkyats né-n ukwehuwene-ha, ohkįle
Lea Zeise ni yśkyats né-n o:sluni:ké-ne.
Wakkwįho niwaki?taló-ta onayote:a-ka niwakyuhśntsyo-ta.
Greetings, everyone.
My Oneida name is Hutkahuni
and my English name is Lea Zeise.
I am Wolf Clan and I'm Oneida,
and I'm from the Place Where the Ducks Gather.
- Shekoli swakwe-ku.
Yostayowaluts niyukyats Onayoteaka Ni'i.
Hi, my name is Laura Manthe
and I'm also from the Oneida Nation,
and I'm glad to be here today.
- So today, we wanted to share with you
a little bit about Indigenous agriculture
from our perspective.
And just to let you know that we are definitely beginners,
we're learning a lot of teachings as we go along.
So this is just a little bit
of what we've picked up along the way.
So today's journey in this presentation,
we're gonna talk a little bit about who we are
and then get into the traditional agricultural systems
of the Haudenosaunee people.
And then we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing today
and how that is helping
regenerate agricultural connections
on our reservation and even outside our reservation.
So we are a mom and daughter,
we're Oneida Nation citizens, and we are co-founders
of a small grassroots cooperative called Ohe.laku,
and that means "Among the Cornstalks" in Oneida.
- So what you have here is a beautiful painting
by the late Bruce King, and it is our creation story.
Sky Woman came from the heavens
and she fell through a hole in the sky.
The geese saw her coming and they opened their wings
and caught her on their back.
In her hands, you'll see she has some seeds
and some flowers and some plants.
Those are the same plants, seeds, and flowers
that we grow to this day.
She was the original inhabitant of our world
and she brought all the medicine
and all of the things that we needed to survive with her.
The turtle gave up his back for her to land on.
The muskrat went down deep into the ocean
and got some soil and brought it back up in his little paw
and she danced on it and she created Turtle Island.
So when you look at a map of the United States and Canada,
if you use your imagination, you can see a turtle there.
So in this page, you'll see that she's pregnant
and she had her family when she landed on the Earth.
So what we have a picture of here
are different varieties of Native corn.
Heirloom varieties, open-pollinated,
some of them are orange, some of them are red,
some are blue, some of them are white,
some of them are mixed up.
And each one of these corn has its own purpose.
It has its own reason for being here.
Some of them have their own ceremonies.
It's important for us to plant the foods
that our ancestors brought here for us
because we have a genetic code
and our body recognizes these foods.
These foods are what we are meant to be eating.
We have the different colors of the corn
give us different food types to eat, too.
Some of them are made for flour.
Some of them are made for making bread.
Some of them are made for making soup.
Some of them are made for making mush,
and some of them are just used during ceremonial time.
- So, as my mom said,
all of these seeds come from Sky Woman's body
and they have an important meaning to us, then,
as part of our creation and part of our identity.
And we also have a relationship
with these seeds that is very familial.
So we consider them to be part of our extended family,
living beings that we care for
so that they can continue to care for us.
We give thanks that they carry out their responsibilities
and that they nourish us.
They really sacrifice themselves so that we can continue to live,
and we know that we have a responsibility
to the next generations of seeds and people
so that they can continue that relationship
into the future as well.
- So here we have a conversation
about the traditional methods of planting.
The land was cleared by the men.
They prepared the fields for the women to plant on.
We planted the three sisters together,
the corn, beans, and the squash.
We used mounds to plant them in,
and a fish was buried at the bottom of the mound
to fertilize the plants.
The corn was planted first,
and when it grew a little bit taller,
the beans were planted
and corn stalk was used as a pole for pole beans.
And then the squash was planted around the edge
to keep the critters away, to keep the moisture in the soil,
and to suppress the weeds.
The beans also provided nitrogen to the corn
and they helped the corn stay steady during a windy time.
Our people saved as much food as they could
from season to season
because they didn't know when disaster would strike.
The villages were all made out of Indigenous items
that could easily return back to the earth.
So we would stay in one place for about 20 years
until the soil was used up,
and then a whole village would be moved
to a whole different site.
The houses would be left behind,
the palisade would be left behind,
and a whole new village would be created in another area
and the whole life cycle would start all over again.
It would usually take about three years
for the men to build a village before we moved.
So all of these decisions were made with the understanding
that everyone works together cooperatively
in order for everyone to survive.
So everyone that planted corn had a role and responsibility
from the oldest elder to the youngest child.
The boys would be responsible for keeping the animals away.
They would sit up all night, like teenagers do,
and their job was to scare the deer and the raccoons away.
So everything was cooperative
and to benefit the entire village;
there was really no ownership.
- So each longhouse, then, was headed up by the woman,
the matriarch of the family,
and all of her daughters would be living with her
in that longhouse, and all of her granddaughters.
And when someone got married,
their husband would move into that longhouse with them.
So that matrilineal connection
extended through multiple generations in one house
and sort of supported intergenerational learning,
which is a keystone of cultural values
that underpinned all of those practices.
Another keystone is the ceremonial cycle.
So we follow the ceremonies that were given to us.
And those are to give thanks to all of the beings
that we rely on and that rely on us.
And so we have a lot of ceremonies
that follow the corn cycle, the planting cycle,
and the harvest cycle to remind us that, you know,
these foods, these beings, are here at their own will
and that we do have to give thanks to them.
We have to respect their agency
and respect all of the things that they sacrifice for us.
We also had communal work and distribution.
So just like my mom was saying, how everybody had a job,
everybody also had a place to live,
had food and healthcare and education.
And so it was a very communal way
to take care of one another.
And it was something that involved a lot of foresight
because we're putting food away for the future
in case there is a catastrophe,
and we're planning for the next seven generations.
So when we pick up that village and move it,
we're going around in a circle.
And by the time we come back to that original site,
it's completely reforested, regenerated.
And so in that way,
we never use up the resources of one place
to complete depletion.
So this is a discussion on our agriculture,
but all of these lifeways were really disrupted.
And they were disrupted
by interruption of cultural teachings, through land loss,
religious pressure, and the boarding school era,
which was really the final straw
in breaking that intergenerational learning chain
that had been going on for so many generations.
So we were, oopsies, we moved from upstate New York,
or what is now upstate New York, to Wisconsin.
And that was through a treaty made with Menominee Nation,
so we are on Menominee territory, technically,
and that was a very treacherous journey
to take at that time,
and the boat actually sank after we relocated.
So we really give thanks to those ancestors
that made it to Wisconsin and settled in Menominee territory
and really saved those seeds that first winter
so that we can continue growing them to this day.
We imagine that it would be a very difficult choice
to decide whether or not to eat those seeds
and nourish yourself now,
or wait until spring and plant them
and ensure that those seeds are there
for the next seven generations.
So we give a lot of homage to those people
and to all of the people that followed,
that have carried on those traditions.
And it's something that we think about in our cooperative.
So when we got started, you know,
we had a little handful of teachings
and a handful of seeds that we got started with,
and it's taken a lot of people
teaching us a lot of aspects of cultural pieces,
trading with us, barterings.
We gathered up some wild rice
and traded that for the corn seed that we started with
on our first big field,
so that we could become self-sufficient with our seeds.
And it's really had a tremendous impact on us.
So from the very beginning,
we were thinking about those traditional teachings.
We started out with some scrappy equipment
that we got at an auction.
We got some fish fertilizer
through a grant through the SARE program,
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.
And we used that cultural value
of not letting anything go to waste
by utilizing local fertilizer sources.
So we used organic chicken crumbles and horse manure,
and really anything that we can get our hands on
or barter for to build the soil back up.
We also started out
using the traditional practice of rotating.
So we can't pick up our whole village
and move every 20 years anymore, but we can rotate our fields.
So we allow our fields to rest and plant cover crops
in those times of rest so that we can make sure
that we're treating the soil right along the way.
- So this is a picture of one of the ladies
that's in our group.
She's very proficient at driving a tractor,
and she's mowing down the corn that we picked this fall,
and on the back of it there's a brush cutter
that is returning the corn back to the soil.
So behind her, there's corn on the stalks
that hasn't been picked yet.
And as you can see,
they're all at different levels on the corn stalk,
which makes it impossible for us to use a corn picker
to pick our corn; we have to pick it by hand.
So some of our production practices that we have
are raised beds, low or no-till,
crop rotations, and local soil amendments.
So the raised beds is something new
that we just started with this year, this season,
and we had good results.
We had some not so good results with the same practice.
The low, no-till is a conservation planting
that we're doing in one of our fields.
We're using cover crops with our corn, interseeding,
and we're trying to create a space
where we can grow the corn
without having to use a ton of inputs like fertilizer.
We don't have to run over the soil a lot of times
with the tractor compacting the soil.
We've had some luck with that process,
and this year we didn't have good luck with it.
So we're gonna keep trying
until we can get the right seed mixture
with the corn that we grow.
So corn is a grass, and it needs a lot of attention.
And we have a symbiotic relationship with our corn;
we take care of the corn and the corn takes care of us.
- So the other practice that we're utilizing
to call back to those traditional teachings
is our cooperative structure.
So when we got started,
we were just a few families growing corn in our backyards
and getting just mauled by raccoons
and a lot of other issues
with getting the corn to full maturity
and having a good harvest.
So when we decided to come together,
the cooperative structure really made sense for us
because we could adapt it to our teachings.
And it sort of brought that communal element
that we mentioned earlier into our practices.
So everything that we're doing has a thread
in those original teachings.
- So here is our no-till experiments that we're doing.
In the lower picture, we're mowing down the cover crop
and we're leaving the cover crop on the soil
so that it can be the green manure for the following year.
In the top picture, you can see
we have the interseeding with the cover crop plants
right in with the corn plants.
And it's been really interesting.
It's been a very big learning experience for us.
We have really poor soil quality in the fields
that were given to us by the tribe,
and so we're trying to build up the organic matter.
We're trying to reestablish the bio life that's in the soil
because we understand that if you feed the soil,
the soil will feed you.
And we wanna reduce the amount of labor
that we're using to care for our plants.
Weeding rows and rows of corn
is very labor-intensive, very time-intensive.
And we want to get to a point
where we can plant the corn with a cover crop
that will add nutrients back to the soil,
keep the soil in place, reduce the runoff,
and provide nutrients back to the soil
for the time that we come back to that space.
So we have some really good goals.
We have some really great mentors,
and we feel that if we keep trying this process,
we're gonna find the magic mix.
So this is one of the fields
that we were given by our tribe to use for free.
We broke it up into about three-acre parcels,
and we have cover crop on four of the, or five of the six,
and then we grow just one of those sections at a time,
and we rotate it every year.
So two spaces on the left-hand side of the screen,
we found that those were way too wet,
so we're going to let that be just a hay cover crop,
and we'll be trading that hay for manure
for that field to keep the nutrients going every year.
- Right, so some of those cuttings
will be taken off the field for our friend who has horses,
and then some of those cuttings will be left on the field
to replace that green manure
and return those nutrients back into the soil.
And we are planning on continuing
to perfect this method,
hoping one day to have a perennial cover crop system
that we then can drill the corn into.
So what we're doing right now in our main fields
is going in and planting with a conventional planter
and then going over with a cultivating tractor
to suppress those weeds,
and then hand weeding those rows as well.
So every family adopts a few rows
and takes care of those throughout the year,
but it's very labor-intensive, as you can imagine,
hand weeding three acres of corn.
We definitely have done it in the past
and it's been successful,
but it is not a sustainable long-term solution for our group
because we're all volunteers.
And so we all have our own jobs
and families and other responsibilities,
and we wanna make sure
that we're treating the corn in a good way.
So if we can hit multiple goals at once
and suppress weeds and build soil with these cover crops,
that's a win-win-win for us,
and so that's why we're so attracted to trying this method.
- So here's a demonstration of the bed shaper.
We went into our field
and we did just a few beds, about six beds,
and then we had this torrential rain come through,
about four or five inches of rain,
which is becoming more and more common with climate change.
And our group was so excited to see that the corn stalks
and the corn roots would be out of the water
for the first time in that field.
And if you look at the picture on the lower left-hand side,
you'll see those same mound-type systems
are growing in the Menominee forest.
And that is a growing system
that's been around for thousands of years.
- So with this field, after we came in with a bed shaper,
this field is separate than the field
we're doing the cover crop experiments with,
we came in and hand planted.
So that top left corner is one of our co-op members
and her two little ones who came through
and hand planted some of the corn.
And let me tell you,
those little kids really planted the best,
healthiest-looking corn that came out of there.
So they have a really good energy
that they put into the soil,
and we really appreciated having them out in the field.
The one issue with the bed shaper that we have had
is trying to control weeds
in a system that is a little bit difficult
to get into with any kind of equipment.
So this whole field had to be hand weeded or weed whacked
and it was extremely labor-intensive.
So we're gonna continue to tweak this approach
to see if we can get to a point
where it's a little bit lower on the labor intensivity
and then a little bit higher in the yield.
- So here's an example of the children
hand planting our soil, I mean, our plants.
We're using open-pollinated seeds,
heirloom variety beans and squash
that we can identify for our community,
and it's been a great learning experience.
We have multi-generational families out in the field.
It keeps the connection going with our families,
and it's really building a sense of community.
- So after we get all of those plants in the ground
and we spend all summer weeding them,
it's time to go out and harvest.
And this is really the most labor-intensive time.
So the labor that we do over the summer
is nothing compared to what goes into harvest
because we handpick all of our corn.
So my mom mentioned that the corn grows
in different areas on the stalk.
Well, it's also quite moist when it's ready for harvest,
so it's about 50% moisture.
So if we went in and picked it conventionally,
threw it in a grain bin, it would be lost to mold.
So we follow the traditional practices of harvesting,
getting together out in the field,
this year, socially distanced out in the field,
to pick our white corn and harvest it that way.
And we really enjoy that experience
of being able to be out there, hear the rustling of the leaves,
and feel the sun on our faces as we're picking this corn
and really giving thanks while we're out there.
So we gather up the corn,
and then we pull back the husks, and then we braid it up.
And this braiding is a traditional practice
to dry the corn out.
The corn would usually be hung in the inside of longhouses
with other foods that were drying.
And that was because the smoke from the longhouse fires
would keep all the insects off the food
and would help make sure that it dried
without being attacked by any kind of insects or animals.
So today, we don't have a longhouse to hang our corn in,
we use a barn, but we do barter for our access to this barn.
And when we hang up the corn braids,
we use pie tins over the braids
so that any kind of critters can't jump down onto the corn
and eat all our little seeds up.
So we're trying to remember
those practices are protecting the corn,
giving it time to dry down
before storing it so that we don't lose it to mold.
And it's a really nice time
to share those teachings with the young ones.
So we'll get all the kids together, get them in a circle,
and get them talking about corn and sharing what they know
and it's just amazing what, in a few years,
they can pick up and be ready to tell back to you.
So we really enjoyed having, you know,
three, maybe four generations out there working together
and passing on those traditions to the next generation.
So then we select, as we're going through
and husking all of these corn cobs,
it's like a surprise every time.
What are you gonna get under that husk?
And sometimes you get kind of a knobby-looking corn
like the one on the left, and that's still good.
That's still good to eat.
So we'll braid that up with what we call the soup corn,
'cause that's gonna be soup one day.
And then we have some corn
that looks really nice and straight,
has eight rows, there's no dents,
and those are exactly the traits
that we're looking for for our seed,
so we call that our seed corn.
We braid that up separately
and we put some really beautiful corn husk flowers
on the top of that
so we can tell the difference come spring
when it's all dried down.
And so we then divvy up all of this harvest
based on the number of hours that were put into the co-op.
So you might get your share of soup corn,
but then you also get a share of seeds
that are to protect in your house
until the time that they're needed.
And so we distribute all of that
because it's part of our communal teachings
and it also makes sure that all of our seeds
aren't in one house,
if there was a catastrophe for some reason,
that we wouldn't lose all of our seeds.
And so we make sure that we're sort of following
those teachings of thinking forward,
thinking about each other and supporting each other.
We also try to make those seeds available to the community.
Anybody who wants seeds in Oneida can reach out to us
and we're happy to provide them.
And then we also set aside
a share of the corn that we process,
and then we give that out to the community members
if there's a funeral.
So in their time of mourning,
they don't have to worry about tracking down the corn,
that we'll have it there, ready for them.
- So in this slide, we want to talk with you
about cultural regeneration.
In the picture on the right,
you'll see an albino or a white corn plant.
And that plant showed up in our fields last year
and the year before, and we were really kind of puzzled.
What does this mean?
What's going on with this seed?
And so we reached out to our relatives out east
and asked them about this,
took pictures of it and sent it to them.
They told us that that was a blessing,
that that is the spirit of the corn.
The corn is in the field with us
and she really likes what's happening.
So we were really feeling good
about the work that we were doing,
how we were doing it, and the work that we were completing.
On the left-hand side,
you'll see round loaves, that's our bread.
It's not baked in the oven like wheat bread is;
it's made out of corn flour that's mixed with kidney beans
and then patted together into wheels,
we call that a wheel,
and then it's put into boiling water.
And when we first moved to Oneida in 1993,
the only time that you could get this kanastohale bread
was at holiday time.
There wasn't enough corn in our community
for anybody to have kanastohale whenever they wanted it,
unless they grew their own corn.
So one of the factors for us to grow our own corn
was to take that responsibility on for ourselves
and to reconnect with our corn,
reconnect with all the foods that it can provide for us,
all the different varieties of ways that we can cook it.
And it really provided a cultural regeneration.
We, as a group, Ohe.laku, went down to Ecuador
and met with the tribal people down there,
met with people from the Amazon,
met with people that lived in the mountains,
and we talked about corn
and how important the cultural aspects of growing corn
is for our culture and our community.
And we learned that we process our corn the same way,
with the hardwood ashes.
So we understand the continuum of lessons
and how cultural knowledge is shared between peoples.
In this photograph, this is my cousin Becky's kitchen.
And she started out growing white corn,
and then she got interested
in trading white corn for other seeds.
And she started growing different varieties
of corn, beans, and squash.
She traded for maple syrup, pickles,
tomatoes, jams, and jellies.
She has tobacco there and some dried fruit and vegetables,
so she can put any of these combinations together
and make some really delicious meals for her family.
And what this shows us is that, you know,
the Native foods are all slow foods.
It takes a long time to prepare and cook them,
and they are not widely available.
You can't go to the grocery store and buy white corn.
You can't go to the grocery store
and buy wild rice that's harvested from a lake
from a tribal member.
You can get commercially processed wild rice,
but not the variety that we eat.
And so, you know, because there's a lack
of these foods available to us,
it's really important for us to take up that responsibility
of growing those foods for ourselves
and then teaching others how to grow them
so that we have more food sovereignty,
we have a seed bank,
and we have the cultural awareness of our foods
and the benefits that they bring to our diet.
The picture that I'm holding a basket,
that is a basket that's made out of black ash.
So somebody went out to the woods,
they put their tobacco down, they said a prayer,
they took down an ash tree,
they pounded the logs until they got the strips,
and then they wove a basket.
So we like to recognize the other tribal people
that are doing cultural appropriate activities
and making things that we can trade for or buy from them.
So this basket would be used for harvesting the corn.
Put it on your back,
and as you're walking through the corn stalks,
you just pull a stalk off and throw it over your shoulder.
And we are really learning a lot about traditional tools
and tool making and how they can help us
with projects that we're working on.
- And these traditional tools also give us a chance
to learn about our relatives beyond the field.
So we started learning about corn,
then we started learning about beans and squash,
and now we're learning about the ash trees
and how to make baskets with the ash trees.
We're learning about how to make corn husk moccasins
and corn husk mats,
and we're really using everything
so that we're not leaving any waste behind
and making sure that we're really respecting the sacrifices
that these relatives are making for us.
So it's definitely been a great experience
learning about all of these different relatives
that we know we have them,
but we don't have a relationship with them yet.
So through the corn and through agriculture,
we're expanding that family,
that plant family, out into the forest as well.
- So this is a photograph
of a bunch of tribes getting together
to talk about corn in a program called Braiding the Sacred.
And so you have Ojibwe people, Oneida people, Ho-Chunk people,
the, sorry, I can't remember their name,
- Winnebago. - Winnebago, sorry.
I only know their traditional name, Ho-Chunk.
And we all got together,
the Ho-Chunk Nation hosted us in Black River Falls,
and we talked about corn and the corn culture
and we taught the ladies how to braid the corn.
And they really enjoyed the lessons
and wanted us to bring more corn to braid next time,
because they process their corn in a different way.
They roast it or boil it,
and then they use a spoon and they take it off of the cob
and then they dry it.
So we're learning so much from each other,
and different ways of processing the corn
and different ways of cooking it.
And it's really opening up opportunities for trade,
learning from each other, and sharing traditional knowledge.
- So we would be remiss if we didn't mention
all of our allies and organizations
that have supported us along the way.
First and foremost, Oneida Nation has given us
several leases on land for free
so that our group can grow traditional foods together.
And this has opened the door for other groups
to form and access landholdings of the Oneida Nation
to further that food sovereignty vision.
We also have partnered with Braiding the Sacred, of course,
on our events, and I talked about the SARE grant that we got
to do the study on fish emulsion,
so Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
we consider a very good ally.
And the Great Lakes Commission as well
has funded some of our projects
to improve water quality through our practices.
And none of that would be possible
without the support of Intertribal Agriculture Council,
which served as a fiscal sponsor,
because we're still just a scrappy little grassroots group,
and we're not a formalized 501c3 nonprofit
or anything like that, so anytime we go after grants,
we have to ask partners to support us in that,
and we're really grateful for that kind of support.
Yaw^ko! - This is the end of our--
Yep, yaw^ko, thank you for joining us.
I hope we were able to share some knowledge with you
so you could better understand us.
And I hope you have a great, an opportunity to share
and try Native foods in the future.
- N^ki'wah, goodbye.
>> HI.
I'M BEN FEW TARKS FUTA, HOST OF "LET'S
GROW STUFF."
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US.
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
INDIGENOUS AGRICULTURE AND WE
ARE BEING JOINED LIVE NOW BY THE
PRESENTERS.
YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS ON YOUTUBE
OR FACEBOOK.
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US THIS
MORNING.
>> HAPPY TO BE HERE.
>> IT'S GREAT TO BE HERE.
>> WE'LL JUST DIVE RIGHT IN.
WE'VE GOT SOME GREAT QUESTIONS
HERE.
SO JULIE IS ASKING, LAURA, ANY
TIPS ON DOING THREE SISTERS IN A
SMALLER SPACE, MAYBE IN A CITY
OR URBAN AREA?
>> SURE.
SO YOU WANT TO HAVE AT LEAST TEN
ROWS BY TEN ROWS, SO YOU'D HAVE
100 MOUNDS, WHICH SEEMS LIKE A
LOT, BUT YOU NEED TO HAVE THAT
MANY MOUNDS SO YOU HAVE A CHANCE
FOR THE OPEN-POLLINATED CORN TO
POLLINATE EACH OTHER ON.
YOU WANT TO PLANT YOUR CORN
FIRST AND LET IT GROW A FEW
INCHES AND THEN YOU CAN GO AHEAD
AND PUT YOUR BEANS IN.
DON'T PUT IN A REALLY AGLES -- AN
AGGRESSIVE BEAN THAT WILL TEAR
YOUR CORNSTALKS DOWN.
LAST YOU PUT IN SQUASH PLANTS
AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE
MOUNDS THAT.
WOULD HELP SHADE OUT THE WEEDS
AND KEEP THE SOIL MOIST.
>> EXCELLENT.
LUCY IS ASKING HOW DID YOU GO
ABOUT BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
WITH EVERY EVERYONE THAT YOU TRADE
WITH?
IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE AN
AWESOME COMMUNITY AND YOU'RE
DOING GREAT WORK.
HOW DID YOU START TO BUILD THOSE
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS?
>> ABSOLUTELY.
SO WE'RE REALLY LUCKY THAT THERE
ARE A LOT OF INDIGENOUS
AGRICULTURE EVENTS WE GO TO.
INTERTRIBAL FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
SUMMITS THAT HAPPEN.
THERE'S GATHERINGS OF NATIVE
FARMERS AND ORGANIC GROWERS ALL
OVER THE PLACE.
SO THE MIDWEST ORGANIC MOSES
CONFERENCE IS COMING UP RIGHT
AROUND THE CORNER.
THAT'S A REALLY GOOD WAY TO
INTERACT WITH OTHER FARMERS AND
SEE WHAT'S AVAILABLE FOR TRADE.
I THINK IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS
TO THOSE KINDS OF EVENTS, EVEN
JUST GOING TO FARMERS MARKET AND
STRIKING UP A RELATIONSHIP WITH
OTHER FARMERS, SEE WHAT THEY'RE
GROWING AND SEE IF THEY'D BE
INTERESTED IN TRADING.
I THINK IT'S BECOMING A LOT MORE
POPULAR AGAIN.
I THINK IT WAS AT ONCE REALLY
POPULAR AND IT'S COMING BACK
AROUND TO THAT AS WELL.
>> EXCELLENT.
LAURA, SHERRY IS ASKING I'M A
TEACHER AND SHE WOULD LOVE HER
ELEMENTARY STUDENTS TO LEARN
MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING.
WHERE MIGHT SHE TURN FOR MORE
RESOURCES TO HELP HER STUDENTS
LEARN ABOUT THIS?
>> THERE'S A LOT OF REALLY GOOD
LEARNING TOOLS ONLINE.
BECAUSE THREE SISTERS GARDENING
HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT AND
TALKED ABOUT MANY DIFFERENT WAYS
FOR DIFFERENT GRADE LEVELS.
SHE SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIND ALL
THE RESOURCES THAT SHE NEEDS
THERE.
>> EXCELLENT.
LEA, WE HAVE A COUPLE QUESTIONS
ON COVER CROPS.
WHAT ARE YOU USING AS THE ACTUAL
COVER CROP SPEE SPECIES AND WHAT IS
THE TIMING FOR THAT, SPRING OR
FALL OR BOTH?
>> IT'S COMPLICATED.
IT DEPENDS.
WE'VE TRIED A LOT OF DIFFERENT
APPROACHES.
WE'VE TRIED INTERSEEDING CLOVER
IN BETWEEN THE ROWS.
THAT WORKED WELL.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK WELL WAS
PLANTING A HARRY VETCH.
THAT WAS HARD TO GET RID OF IN
THE SPRINGTIME.
WE PLANTED IN THE FALL.
IN THE SPRING WE WANTED TO PUT
THE CORN IN AND THE VETCH WAS
HARD TO KILL AWMENT OFF.
YOU WANT TO PLANT SOMETHING
THAT'S GOING TO WORK WELL WITH
YOUR SQUASH.
THIS YEAR WE'LL PUT OUR CORN IN
AND INTERCEDE WITH PLANTAIN,
CLOVER AND A CHICORY.
SO THAT MAKES SURE THAT YOU HAVE
NICE LITTLE ECOSYSTEM OF
DIFFERENT SPECIES AVAILABLE THAT
WILL ADD DIFFERENT THINGS TO THE
SOIL, HELP BUILD DIVERSE SOIL
BACTERIAL COMMUNITY.
AND THEN THIS FALL WE'RE GOING
TO HARVEST OUR CORN EARLY IN THE
GREEN CORN STAGE AND WE'LL PUT
IN A RYE AND WAIT FOR THAT.
IT WILL GROW ALL WINTER LONG.
IN THE SPRINGTIME THAT WILL
MATURE NICE AND EARLY SO WE CAN
COME IN WITH A CRIMPER AND TAMP
THAT DOWN INTO A MAT.
WE'RE USING A CONSERVATION
PLANTER THAT CAN PLANT RIGHT
INTO THAT COVER CROP.
THAT WILL HELP WITH WEED
SUPPRESSION AND ADD GREEN MATURE
BACK INTO THE SOIL.
>> I HAVE A FOLLOW-UP ON THAT.
LEA, SHE'S WONDERING WHY YOU
CHOOSE COVER CROPS OVER MULCHING
AS A WAY TO BUILD SOIL AND KEEP
WEEDS DOWN.
>> SO WE'RE REALLY TRYING TO
BUILD UP OUR SOIL DEEP DOWN
EVEN.
WE HAVE VERY COMPACTED SOILS.
WE HAVE VERY UNHEALTHY SOILS.
AND THE MORE LIVING ROOTS THAT
WE HAVE IN THE SOIL, THE MORE
THAT WILL HELP THAT MICROBIAL
COMMUNITY COME BACK TO LIFE.
MULCHING IS A GOOD OPTION IF YOU
DON'T HAVE A COVER CROP.
IT DOES ADD ORGANIC MATTER BACK
TO THE SOIL.
BUT WE'RE TRYING TO GET THE
LIVING ROOTS IN THE SOIL TO HOLD
IT IN PLACE, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE
WE HAVE HEAVY RAINS.
THAT HELPS US REDUCE EROSION AND
COMPACTION OF THE SOIL.
>> AUDREY IS ASKING, YOU HAD
THAT GREAT IMAGE OF ONE OF YOUR
FELLOWS ON THE TRACTOR GETTING
THE FIELDS READY.
BEFORE THIS MECHANIZED
EQUIPMENT, WHAT DID YOU USE TO
GET THE FIELDS READY AND
PREPARED FOR PLANTING?
>> SURE.
BACK IN THE VIFL LAIJ LIFE, IT -- VILLAGE LIFE, IT
WAS THE MEN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO
PREPARE THE FIELDS.
THEY WOULD USE TOOLS TO KNOCK
THE TREES DOWN AND USE FIRE TO
BURN THE TREES OUT AND THEN
THEY'D HAVE TO GET THE ROOTS
OUT.
THE WOMEN WOULD USE TOOLS MADE
OUT OF ANTLERS AND THE SHOULDER
BONE OF A BUFFALO.
THERE'S ACTUALLY WOODLAND
BUFFALO AND THAT WAS PART OF OUR
DIET.
SO IN KEEPING WITH OUR TRADITION
OF USING EVERYTHING THAT YOU
HAVE, ALL OF THE HAND TOOLS WERE
MADE FROM ANIMAL PARTS AND
SHELLS.
ANYTHING THAT WAS SHARP THAT WE
COULD USE TO DIG INTO THE
GROUND.
>> EXCELLENT.
LEA, ANOTHER QUESTION ON THE
THREE SISTERS, AND WENDY IS
WONDERING IS THERE ANYTHING OR
SPECIFIC VA VARIETIES OF SQUASH
THAT WON'T GROW UP THE CORN.
>> AS LONG AS YOU'RE STICKING
WITH ONE VARIETY OF SQUASH, YOU
SHOULDN'T HAVE TOO MUCH OF AN
ISSUE WITH IT.
SOME SQUASH DO LIKE TO CLIMB UP,
BUT WITH A WINTER SQUASH YOU
SHOULDN'T HAVE AN ISSUE WITH
THEM TRYING TO CLIMB UP.
YOU DON'T WANT TWO KINDS SQUASH
BECAUSE IF A BEE COMES BY AND
POLLINATES ONE FLOWER AND
CROSS-POLLINATES YOUR SQUASH
SEEDS, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE
FUNNY-LOOKING SQUASH THE NEXT
YEAR.
>> YOU MENTIONED PROTECTING YOUR
HARVEST FROM CRITTERS INDOORS
ONCE THEY'RE TRYING.
BUT HOW DO YOU APPROACH THAT
WHEN THEY'RE OUTDOORS, FROM
RACCOONS.
HOW DO YOU APPROACH THAT.
LAWYER REMARKS HOWLAURA, HOW DOES THAT LOOK?
>> IN OUR CULTURE YOU PLANT
SEVEN SEEDS AND YOU GET TO
HARVEST ONE FOR YOURSELF.
ALL THE OTHER SIX SEEDS GO TO
FEED OUR RELATIVES, THE RACCOONS
AND DEER, BUGS THAT COME AND EAT
OUR CORN, BIRDS THAT EAT OUR
CORN SEEDS.
REALLY WE'RE FEEDING ALL OF THE
NATURAL WORLD, NOT JUST
OURSELVES.
WE HAVE SET OUT TRAPS FOR
RACCOONS.
THEY REALLY LIKE TO ATTACK OUR
CORN RIGHT WHEN IT'S JUST ABOUT
READY TO BE PYBD TO BE PICKED AND THEY
ALWAYS GO FOR THE BEST CORN.
THEY'LL EAT OUR CORN BEFORE
THEY'LL EAT A GMO CORN BECAUSE
OUR CORN IS SO GOOD.
YEAH.
WE JUST HAVE TO KEEP IN MIND
THAT WE HAVE TO FEED
EVERYONE,NOT JUST OURSELVES.
AND IT'S REALLY HEARTBREAKING
BECAUSE SOMETIMES THE RACCOONS
WILL WIPE OUT AN ACRE OF CORN OR
HALF ACRE IN ONE DAY.
SOME PEOPLE LOSE THEIR ENTIRE
FIELD.
IT'S HARD TO REMAIN POSITIVE
ABOUT THAT BECAUSE YOU WERE
COUNTING ON THAT CORN FOR
CEREMONIES OR TO FEED YOUR
FAMILY OR WHATEVER.
SO THE RACCOONS ARE TEACHING US
A LESSON THAT WE NEED TO GROW
ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.
WHICH SOUNDS KIND OF
COUNTERINTUITIVE, BUT THAT'S HOW
WE DO IT.
SOME PEOPLE HAVE TO RESORT TO
PUTTING UP AN ELECTRIC FENCE
AROUND THEIR CORNFIELD BECAUSE
THE LOSS IS SO HUGE THEY CAN'T
SUSTAIN IT.
WHEN YOU'RE GROWING BY YOURSELF,
YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT PEST
CONTROL.
>> YEAH.
I THINK THAT'S SOMETHING FOR ALL
GARDENERS TO THINK ABOUT, IS HOW
WE'RE NURTURING EVERYTHING
AROUND US, NOT JUST OURSELVES.
LEEA WELEA, WE HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT
THE HARVEST SEASON.
WHEN DOES IT BEGIN, WHEN DOES IT
END, SORT OF THAT PROCESS.
>> OUR FIRST HARVEST IS FOR THE
GREEN CORN.
THAT'S WHEN THE CORN IS IN ITS
GREEN MILK YI STAGE.
THE CORN IS KIND OF LIKE
SWEETCORN.
WE HAVE A CEREMONY FOR THAT AND
HARVEST THAT LIKE LATE SUMMER.
WE'LL GROW THAT UP AND PUT THAT
IN SOUPS AND ALL DIFFERENT KINDS
OF THINGS.
OUR FULL HARVEST USUALLY HAPPENS
AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER,
SOMETIMES INTO OCTOBER,
DEPENDING ON HOW THE SEASON IS
GOING.
THAT'S WHEN THE CORN HAS FORMED
ITS NICE, HARD SHELL AROUND EACH
KERNEL.
SO WE HARVEST THAT FOR -- IT
TAKES US WEEKS AND WEEKS AND
WEEKS TO HARVEST IT.
WE HAVE SEVERAL HARVEST EVENTS
WHERE THE COMMUNITY IS WELCOME
TO COME AND JOIN US AND HELP US
WITH ALL THAT HARD WORK.
WE FEED EVERYBODY CORN SOUP.
IT'S A NICE COUPLE OF WEEKENDS
THAT WE HAVE.
AND THAT PROCESS INVOLVES
HARVESTING IT, PULLING OFF MOST
OF THE HUSKS AND THEN BRAIDING
THE CORN TOGETHER.
SO YOU END UP WITH THIS LONG
BRAID OF 30 TO 60 COBS THAT YOU
CAN THEN HANG UP.
>> SOUNDS LIKE A FUN TIME BEING
OUT THERE AND BEING IN
COMMUNITY.
LAURA, MOHAMMED HAS A QUESTION
ABOUT THE VILLAGES.
SO WHEN YOU WERE MOVING
VILLAGES, SO HOW FAR DID YOU
MOVE?
SORT OF WHAT WAS THAT PROCESS
LIKE?
>> WELL, THE MOVE WOULD BE --
THE GAME THAT WAS AROUND THE
LONG HOUSE AREA WOULD HAVE BEEN,
SO THE MEN WOULD WALK UNTIL THEY
COULD FIND GAME AGAIN,
FRESHWATER, A PLACE THAT'S
FAIRLY PROTECTED FROM THE WIND
AND ALL THE ELEMENTS AND
EVERYTHING.
SO THEY WOULD GO SCOUTING FOR
AREAS THAT THEY WOULD WANT TO
MOVE TO.
SO I WOULD IMAGINE IT WOULD BE
AT LEAST 10 TO 15, 20 MILES AWAY
FROM WHERE THE ORIGINAL VILLAGE
WAS.
AND, YOU KNOW, OUR DIET
CONSISTED OF OVER 3,000
DIFFERENT ITEMS, ALL THE
DIFFERENT FISH, ALL THE
DIFFERENT WATERFOWL, DIFFERENT
BERRIES, NUTS AND FRUITS, ALL
THE FOOD THAT WE GREW.
SO WE HAD AN AMAZING DIET AND WE
CONTRIBUTE THAT TO THE SUCCESS
OF OUR PEOPLE AND TO THE BIRTH
OF DEMOCRACY.
SO WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT THE
UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, YOU
REALLY HAVE TO REFER BACK TO OUR
GREAT LAW OF PEACE THAT WE HAVE
THAT GOVERNS OUR PEOPLE AND OUR
SHEEP SYSTEM.
SO BECAUSE WE HAD ALL THAT
NUTRIENTS AND HEALTHY FOODS, WE
WERE REALLY ABLE TO DEVELOP OUR
MINDS, OUR CULTURE, OUR ARTS AND
CRAFTS, POLITICS, EVERYTHING.
BECAUSE WE'VE HAD THE ABUNDANCE.
OUR MEN ONLY WORKED TEN HOURS A
WEEK CARING FOR THE PEOPLE.
THE WOMEN ONLY WORKED AN AVERAGE
OF 12 HOURS A WEEK AND THE REST
OF THE TIME WAS USED TO DEVELOP
WHATEVER YOUR ARTS AND INTERESTS
WERE.
SO WE WERE VERY FORTUNATE THAT
WE LIVED THAT WAY.
>> I THINK THAT SOUNDS LIKE
SOMETHING A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD
BE INTERESTED IN THESE DAYS.
AND ON THAT NOTE, SORT OF AS A
FOLLOW-UP, IF SOMEONE IS
INTERESTED IN GETTING INVOLVED
WITH THE WORK THAT YOU'RE DOING,
HOW CAN THEY CONTACT YOU AND
REACH YOU?
SORT OF HOW DO THEY GET
INVOLVED?
>> SO WE HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE.
IT'S A PUBLIC FACEBOOK PAGE
CALLED OHE-LA'KU.
THEY'RE WELCOME TO DROP A
COMMENT IN THERE AND WE WILL
RESPOND.
WE POST OUR EVENTS IN THERE WHEN
WE HAVE A PUBLIC EVENT.
THIS PAST SEASON WE AREN'T ABLE
TO HAVE ANY PUBLIC EVENTS
BECAUSE OF THE COVID.
SO WE ALWAYS CEEM KEEP OUR COMMUNITY
AND GUESTS IN MIND, KEEP
EVERYBODY SAFE.
HOPEFULLY WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET
TOGETHER IN THE FALL AND SHARE
OUR PHONING WITH OTHER PEOPLE.
>> I'VE GOT A COUPLE MORE
QUESTIONS FOR YOU BOTH, BUT I
WANT TO REMIND VIEWERS THAT YOU
CAN VIEW THESE PRESENTATIONS IF
YOU WANT TO GO BACK AND SAY WHAT
WAS THAT THING THEY MENTIONED,
ALL THESE PRESENTATIONS WILL BE
AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WISCONSIN
GARDEN EXPO.ORG/SCHEDULE AND
ALSO POSTED ON YOUTUBE AND
FACEBOOK AS WELL.
YOU CAN ALWAYS COME BACK AND
REFERENCE THESE QUESTIONS.
IN OUR FINAL MOMENTS, LEA, A
QUESTION ABOUT SOURCING SEEDS.
SO IF PEOPLE ARE LOOKING TO
SOURCE NONGMO OR HERITAGE SEEDS,
HOW DO FOLKS KNOW WHAT'S
REPUTABLE?
>> THERE'S A COUPLE OF BIGGER
NAMES THAT ARE REALLY REPUTABLE.
SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE.
THEIR CATALOG IS INSANE.
YOU CAN GET ALMOST ANYTHING OUT
OF THAT.
A LOT OF HERITAGE SEEDS, OLD
SEEDS.
THEN I WOULD JUST REALLY
RECOMMEND TO LOOK AROUND FOR
LOCAL SEED COMPANIES, BECAUSE
YOU'RE GOING TO WANT A SEED THAT
IS ADJUSTED TO OUR CLIMATE AND
ADJUSTED TO GROWING IN OUR AREA.
YOU DON'T WANT SEEDS THAT ARE
GROWN IN CALIFORNIA OR THE
SOUTHWEST.
YOU WANT SOMETHING THAT CAN
HANDLE ALL THE WEATHER THAT WE
GET UP HERE IN THE GREAT LAKES
AREA.
SO NORTH CIRCLE SEEDS IS A GOOD
ONE.
I KNOW THERE'S A LOT OF SMALLER
SEED OUTFITS THAT TAKE A LOT OF
PRIDE IN GROWING SEEDS IN AN
ETHICAL WAY.
SO I WOULD JUST JUMP ONLINE AND
LOOK FOR LOCAL MIDWESTERN SEED
COMPANY.
THE MORE LOCAL, THE BETTER.
>> SO MY FINAL QUESTION FOR BOTH
OF YOU, AND WE'LL START WITH
YOU, LAURA, WHAT HAS SURPRISED
YOU ALONG THIS JOURNEY?
WHAT HAS BEEN INTERESTING OR
MOST EYE-OPENING FOR YOU?
>> I THINK LIKE THE MOST
EYE-OPENING THING FOR ME WAS
THAT -- HOW THIS CORN HAS TAKEN
US PLACES.
SO I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED
THAT THE CORN WOULD TAKE US TO
ECUADOR OR TO MEXICO.
AND THE LEARNING THAT WE'VE COME
TO ENJOY, THE OPENING OF OUR
MINDS AND THE OPENING OF OUR
HEARTS AND MINDS TO OTHER PEOPLE
AND THE WAY THAT THEY GROW
THINGS AND THE WAY THAT THEY
LIVE, THAT'S REALLY INVALUABLE.
SO FOR PEOPLE WHO GET A CHANCE
TO TRAVEL AND THEY GET TO GO TO
DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND NOT IN A
RESORT YI KIND
RESORTY KIND OF WAY, BUT GET OUT
AND MEET WITH THE PEOPLE, YOU
JUST ADD SO MUCH TO YOUR OWN
LIFE.
SO THE CORN, I WANTED TO START
GROWING IT BECAUSE I WAS REALLY
ADAMANT ABOUT IT.
I REALLY NEEDED TO GROW IT FOR
MYSELF AND GROW IT WITH MY
COMMUNITY.
BUT THE BENEFITS THAT HAVE
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH
EATING THE CORN OR THE PHYSICAL
ACT OF GROWING IT, BUT JUST THE
SPIRITUALITY OF IT AND THE
SHARING OF CULTURE, IT'S JUST
AMAZING.
SO I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT.
PEOPLE LOOK AT YOUR OWN CULTURE,
LOOK AT YOUR OWN HERITAGE SEEDS
AND GROW THE FOOD THAT YOUR
PEOPLE ATE.
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE OUR FOOD.
IT CAN BE YOUR FOOD, TOO.
AND REALLY RECONNECT WITH YOUR
OWN WAYS AND YOUR OWN PEOPLE.
>> AND LEA, IN JUST A FEW
SECONDS, MAYBE ANYTHING THAT'S
STUCK OUT TO YOU?
WHAT SURPRISED YOU?
>> I JUST LOVE HOW MUCH
COMMUNITY HAS COME AROUND THE
CORN.
WE THOUGHT WE'LL START GROWING
CORN TOGETHER.
BUT NOW WE HELP EACH OTHER OUT
IN ALL KINDS OF WAYS AND HAVE A
TIGHTER-KNIT COMMUNITY OUT OF
IT.
>> LAURA AND LEA, THANK YOU SO
MUCH FOR BEING WITH US, SHARING
YOUR KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND
EXPERTISE.
THANK YOU.
PLEASE STICK AROUND.
WE'VE GOT MORE PRESENTATIONS
COMING UP AFTER THIS AND ALSO
THE VIRTUAL LIVE STREAMING OF
OUR EXHIBITOR BOOTHS.
SO PLEASE STAY TUNED.
FuFuFhost of PBS Wisconsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Hi, this is Mark Dwyer
from Landscape Prescriptions by MD in Janesville, Wisconsin.
And today, we're gonna talk about sensational seasonals.
We're gonna cover a wide range of plants
that offer color, texture, pollinator value,
and a whole lot of interest for us out in our gardens.
The cover slide here, you can see a great combination
of some pink zinnias with blue flossflower
and some silver senecio in the back.
As we finish up, I do want to say thank you.
Here's a little bit of kale mixed in with some other plants.
Keep in mind as we get through a tough winter,
both in terms of weather and all the other things
going on in the world,
our gardens are a respite of color, of peace.
And I think it's so important to reconnect with the land,
and we have the opportunity to grow
so many wonderful plants in our landscape.
Seasonals being a nice opportunity,
whether it's vegetables or annuals that you've seen today,
but let's bring more color into everyone's lives
and try to create more gardeners.
Thank you for viewing this presentation today,
and have a great 2021.
FuFuFhost of PBS Wisconsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- My name is Laura Poe Mathes, and I'm a registered dietician.
And today, we're gonna have a little demonstration,
a little workshop about fermented vegetables.
We're gonna just kind of go into just the basics
about how to get started with the fermentation,
why we ferment, and a couple different methods,
troubleshooting, that kind of stuff.
So it's perfect for a beginner level.
And after the presentation, there'll be Q&A.
So if you do have questions, either you can ask then
or I will give my contact information at the end
and you can shoot me a message.
So a little about me, like I said, I'm a dietician.
I'm very into fermented foods
because of their health benefits.
They're also delicious.
I've been fermenting for about 10 years,
and I just think it's one of the best,
one of the best things you can do
in your kitchen for yourself.
So you may be wondering what does this have to do
with gardening and those types of things.
In my mind, fermentation is kind of the perfect,
perfect kind of, [sighs]
you know, tangent to go off from gardening
because it is a method of food preservation
that takes very little energy input.
You can put up extra food, bumper crops
from your garden without having to can them,
which canning is great and I'm not against canning,
but it also, because it's processing food
with heat and pressure, it does take away
some of the nutritional benefits.
So fermenting your foods, which, when we ferment them,
we're not going to can them in any way
with heat or pressure canning.
So it maintains a lot of the nutritional value
while adding some more nutrients because what fermentation is
basically is the transformation of food by microbes.
So in this case, when we're talking about vegetables,
it's mostly gonna be lactobacilli,
which are also referred to as lactobacilla,
lactic acid-producing bacteria.
Those are gonna be the primary microbes
that are at work here,
transforming food from kind of one form into another.
In this case, it's gonna be something
like cabbage into sauerkraut, or, you know,
And so you can visit me there for appointments,
other talks, and link to my blog with lots of other recipes,
which is, the blog is "Brine & Broth."
So email laurapoerd, you got my website,
blog's brineandbroth.com.
Follow me on Instagram for more fermentation ideas
@brineandbroth, and happy fermenting, thank you!
onsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Hi, this is Mark Dwyer
from Landscape Prescriptions by MD in Janesville, Wisconsin.
And today, we're gonna talk about sensational seasonals.
We're gonna cover a wide range of plants
that offer color, texture, pollinator value,
and a whole lot of interest for us out in our gardens.
The cover slide here, you can see a great combination
of some pink zinnias with blue flossflower
and some silver senecio in the back.
And the commentary here is simply that
this sort of color is easily achievable in our hot summers,
and the wide spectrum of plants that are available
for the consumer and the gardener are myriad.
There'll be all sorts of wonderful potential
out in our gardens this year.
A great example of a lot of color offered
specifically by seasonals.
If you take a look at this image, not only is it engaging
in terms of color, but your eye wanders
over not only the variability in flower color,
but the flower architectures, ranging from plumes
to rounded flowers to daisies, and a lot of foliage impact.
There's a lot of annuals
where their primary component of interest is foliage.
Many also have the combination
of wonderful flowers and foliage as well.
And again, none of these plants are hardy in our climate,
but you'll get many months of enjoyment and color.
In discussing that foliage, a great example
on the right there with a Rex begonia.
That silver and maroon pattern, wonderful in the shade,
offering illumination, and that's the primary contribution.
And that's what we mean by colorful foliage.
So don't underestimate the impact
of foliage out in your garden.
And that actually holds true with all types of plants,
whether it's annuals, perennials, or woody plants.
And to my earlier comment, the primary feature
might be foliage, or it might supplement
some beautiful flowers as well.
And mixing up our textures is vital
in all aspects of our gardening.
Diving into some fun, new plants, marigolds.
Marvel II Gold.
Marigolds, that was my gateway plant in becoming a gardener.
My mom and I would garden at an early age.
And incidentally, behind me is a quilt from my mom.
I've got to give a shout out for that,
but back to marigolds, they're getting bigger.
They're getting larger flowers, strong stems,
and the flower power of something like this
extends way into late summer and to early fall.
So marigolds are never ubiquitous,
and this Marvel series,
whether it's Marvel II Gold or Marvel II Orange,
offering a lot of extended interest in the landscape.
Can't get enough of zinnias.
Absolutely wonderful for pollinators,
and the Profusion series has been around for many years.
However, they've never approached a true red.
So Profusion Red is relatively new
and offers a very rich coloration.
The nice thing about the Profusion series
is they're very compact at 15 to 18 inches,
and self-cleaning, meaning
you don't have to remove spent blooms.
They'll continue to bloom through the heat of summer.
The Profusion series in its entirety is wonderful.
And this is a brand new one.
This is an award-winning plant coming out next year.
This Profusion red-yellow bicolor is just amazing.
And if you look closely, the younger flowers
and the newest flowers are the gold with the red center,
and the older flowers age to a beautiful pink,
still with that red center.
In my visits to trial gardens this year,
this was the plant that really spoke to me.
I was just amazed by it.
And the Zahara series, not too dissimilar
to the Profusion series you saw earlier,
meaning compact, disease-resistant,
and self-cleaning.
This Double Zahara Yellow Improved
is just a beacon of bright yellow,
not only a beacon for us visually,
but the pollinators will be literally swarming to it.
And developments in zinnias include certainly
disease resistance, a lot of mildew resistance,
and the Zesty series here is fairly compact
at only knee to thigh-high in that 24 to 30-inch range,
and comes in a wide range of colors.
And, you know, again for pollinators
and a great plant for children to start gardening
because you get quick growth, immediate results,
and they just look spectacular in our gardens.
And here's Zesty Purple.
I believe there's seven colors in the series.
I'll never get tired of petunias, heat-resistant,
disease-resistant, lots of breeding
in larger scale trailing-type petunias.
The nice thing about this Headliner series,
if you look closely into this light violet flower,
you see some white specks.
The speckling or star-shaped speckles on petunias
is a relatively new development.
And this Crystal Sky is brand new,
offering a nice pastel range with a little added speckling,
which is also evident in Glacier Sky,
here a dark purple blue with a white edge,
and look at the white spots.
The spotting is variable from flower to flower,
but does add a little more interest.
Petunias, again with their drought tolerance,
do benefit from decent soils, adequate watering,
and they do well in containers and bedding schemes.
And there's literally hundreds out there.
And Bee's Knees, you know, 20 years ago,
there wasn't a good yellow petunia,
and they get better and better.
The older varieties of yellow petunias
tend to fade to a white.
Bee's Knees is absolutely spectacular
with a dark yellow throat,
and I've seen it in mass plantings.
As you see here, look at it used as a ground cover.
Spectacular and very heat-tolerant.
And this Itsy Magenta.
So you're seeing a nice magenta color,
a true magenta with a dark center.
What's hard to see for scale in this image
is that these petunias are mini.
They're only about an inch wide, extremely small,
but there's a whole lot of them.
And this is one of the most popular plants ranked
across trial gardens in the United States.
So do look for it this upcoming spring.
Calibrachoas or million bells, very small flowers,
but lots of 'em.
Calibrachoas really lend themselves
to containers in elevated situations.
They're not great in the ground
because they tend to get a little waterlogged
and despise heavier soils.
So put 'em in your containers, look for trailing
or semi-trailing forms for baskets.
This Cha-Cha Diva Hot Pink is excellent.
And as you look at some of these Calibrachoas,
look at the gradation of color from the outer petals
all the way to the throat, which is a nice transition.
Cha-Cha Tangerine.
Another great one, and orange in the garden
can be a little tricky, but if you're into pastels,
this salmon range,
this tangerine coloration is wonderful.
They are heavy feeders, so additional fertilization
is warranted when you start to see foliage
on calibrachoas go yellow.
And Frosty Lemon, another in this Cha-Cha series.
There's only three plants in this basket, in this container.
So you can see how they fill out
and they love the heat of summer.
Remember my comments though, about fertilizer
and adequate drainage becomes vital in any container
for Calibrachoa.
Annual phlox, Phlox drummondii.
Annual phlox tend to be
a little shorter-lived in the garden.
You rarely will see them blooming this strong
through September, but what you get
from late May all the way through August
is heavy flower coverage, a light scent, which is nice.
So some light fragrance, and the Gisele series
is absolutely spectacular, and the red form
is brand new as of last year.
So do look for these, they're great in the garden,
great for pollinators, and great in containers.
Another Gisele selection, light pink,
and notice the eye, the darker center.
The flowers are only about three quarters of an inch,
but you get full coverage over the plant.
Full sun for sure.
And another full sun annual, verbenas.
Powerhouses for pollinators, heavy blooming.
A little warning about verbena is if you ever
see something like this Firehouse Purple Fizz Improved,
certainly beautiful in terms of coloration,
but any annual verbenas that start to flag
or have trouble later in summer, don't be shy
about cutting 'em back and applying some fertilizer.
They'll fill out nicely and reward you
with blooms all the way 'til frost.
And flowering tobaccos.
Nicotiana, this variety, Hot Chocolate.
Notice the chocolate brown center
to this trumpet-shaped bloom,
which is green on the actual throat.
These have a light scent to 'em, which is nice,
but also pollinator-friendly.
So a little subtle in coloration,
but this is a brand new color range for flowering tobacco,
many of which come in whites and greens and purples.
This Hot Chocolate, I thought, was exceptional
in terms of a little more subtle coloration,
but very interesting to see.
I'm a huge fan of dahlias in our summer gardens,
and particularly shorter forms with dark foliage.
Dahlias run the gamut of heights and flower sizes and colors.
This Dahlegria Orange Bicolor has the benefit
of not only luminous and orange blooms,
but look at that black foliage.
So here's a case where that foliage is wonderful
and adds as a backstop for these bright colors.
And the Dahlegria series has a whole bunch
of different other colors as well.
Dahlias thrive in the heat of our summer
and tend to perk up as we head towards fall for bloom.
And if you've grown dahlias, you know
you can dig 'em and save 'em.
There's ways of perpetuating your dahlias forever.
So do a little more research on that.
This is not my image.
This was borrowed from All-America Selections.
This is a new Rudbeckia.
This is an annual Glorioso Daisy, Amarillo Gold,
and look at the great green center.
That's a prominent cone, is the term for it,
but a deep gold petal arrangement,
great for pollinators
and goes the distance in the heat of summers.
And if you're into fragrance in the garden, heliotrope.
It comes in white, also comes in a wide range of blues.
I will say, a lot of the blues don't have fragrance.
So make sure you're getting a blue form that is fragrant.
Sweet Heaven and its namesake here, extremely fragrant.
So that'll permeate the air with a scent of vanilla
and is great in a container on the deck,
the patio, the window box.
Buy these as plants, as established plants,
and you'll get more size through the heat of our summers.
A huge plant fan of Angelonias, summer snapdragons.
Very upright in their flower arrangement.
So what you see here are spires
that have multiple orchid-like blooms.
The Serenita series, a wide range of colors in this series.
Most Angelonias are in the 15 to 18-inch range,
but en masse like this, they read very well
in the landscape and very low maintenance.
There are now trailing Angelonias incidentally,
that are nice for the basket.
This would be one of my top five annuals,
Angelonia in general, so seek these out.
And a new salvia out on the market.
Annual salvia, White Flame, so covered
with these wands of white through the entire summer.
And in terms of slam dunks for pollinators,
if you want to see a lot of butterflies and bees,
you've seen some zinnias already, that's a great start,
but get into your salvias, whether they're perennials
or annuals like White Flame.
Great in containers or in all sorts of bedding schemes.
Another great salvia that's new on the market
is this variety called Lancelot.
And I have to admit from a distance when I first saw this,
I wondered what it was because the furry, silver foliage
is what really caught my eye, first of all.
And as I got closer, I took a look
and another great non-hardy salvia that loves our heat
of summer and ultimately will be a pollinator magnet
as mentioned earlier with the other salvias.
Here's a closeup of those blooms.
Salvia flower clusters, whether it's a perennial
or an annual, are huge attractants
for hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees.
So they're slam dunks in a pollinator-friendly garden.
Here's Salvia Lancelot we used in combination
with some Blue Angelonia and some dark elephant grasses
in the back, but I think that silver foliage
really blends in well with that composition.
And celosias.
What's interesting, if you recall my earlier comments
about the fact that foliage can be a foil for the flowers,
these brand new celosias, I'll show you two here.
This variety, Sol Lizzard Leaf has the benefit
of this glossy dark foliage.
So it looks great at the time of planting.
As the heat of summer sets in, they start sending up
these wonderful, candelabra-like flower stalks.
So the contribution of the plant
is through the entire summer, and it gets darker
with more sunlight and the flowers are just spectacular.
And those flowers will elongate.
I'm a huge fan of celosias for their heat tolerance,
and the other Sol variety, Gekko Green,
you see here with a greenish maroon tint
to the foliage and a lighter pink flower.
These are called the type of wheat celosia
in that the flowers are reminiscent
of the upright form of a wheat.
And there's another shot of that Gekko Green.
These have huge potential in the landscape,
whether it's using them as individual elements
in containers or embedding schemes en masse.
Another All-America selection winner new for this year,
the Kelos series, there's many, many varieties,
but this Candela Pink is truly amazing
simply because its flower power extends for over four months.
And even will take some light frost
and still maintain some coloration.
So in terms of having flower architecture
that's upright and strict like this,
this flower architecture really speaks in terms
of kind of waving in the wind and offering some verticality
in any combination in which it's placed.
So sweet potato vines, you know many folks
eat sweet potatoes and this is actually a species,
the species isn't edible, although these ornamental ones
are not developed for flavor.
But this is a new development.
Three years ago, these came out.
These are actual climbing sweet potato vines.
Most are ramblers.
They tend to just sort of cascade
along the ground and come in many colors.
But the Solar Tower series here, you see both lime
and black work their way up these vining structures.
So when you think of verticality in the garden,
sometimes our plants are vertical.
In other situations, we're providing vertical obstacles
or built environments in which they can climb.
And these are just wonderful adding coloration.
And another neat sweet potato, the Sweet Caroline Medusa Green,
very fine foliaged, and in terms of coloration,
sweet potatoes, the ornamental forms
run in all different colors of blacks, browns,
near orange, getting close to red,
and all the yellows and greens you can think of.
So look into these as great plants coming over the edge
of a container or the vining forms that you saw earlier
with the Solar Tower series.
And focusing a little bit on foliage here,
are the copper leaf, the Acalyphas.
This Inferno, look at the gradation of colors
with the newest leaf being the bright burgundy,
then aging to a green or an orange.
Also love the heat of summer.
You won't see these bloom in our climate.
It's pretty rare, but their contribution
of foliage in the full sun garden is amazing.
And if you really like silver, the Senecio Donkey Ears.
Very felty to the touch, offering a pure silver.
And this is a great plant to include
in children's gardens or along low walls
or in containers where people can actually enjoy them
in a tactile fashion.
If you know the perennial Lamb's Ears,
very similar in its touch, very felty.
In this case, not hardy, but offering as close
to a white in the landscape as you could have.
And the coleus nowadays, Dragon Heart.
There's thousands of varieties of coleus.
And over the last 20 years, there's been more
and more developments in coleus.
It can take full, blazing sun, and all coleus will have
a little different coloration, the same variety I mean,
in terms of if they're getting more shade or more sun,
you'll get some variability with the color,
but it's all good.
And Dragon Heart here, showing some of this bright rose
to pink venation on a golden leaf is amazing.
This is the same plant in shade,
and this is what I mean by the variability.
Still offering a lot of interest, but you lose
a little bit of the gold that's brought out with full sun.
And that's just something to know,
but so many coleus grow wonderfully in our gardens.
Do know what you're getting into in terms of height.
Some can stay 8 to 10 inches.
Some will get to three to four feet in our summers,
and there's a huge, massive Dragon Heart coleus there.
In the Flame Thrower series, here's Cajun Spice.
If you look closely, the difference with coleus,
initially you notice the coloration.
You saw Dragon Heart previously.
The leaf color is what you grow them for.
And incidentally, if your coleus ever bloom,
they send out little blue flower spikes.
Deadhead those, remove those, pinch them back.
You want to encourage more foliage growth,
but the nuances in foliage form,
whether they're scalloped leaves, ridged leaves,
linear, rounded, are truly amazing.
In this case with the Flame Thrower series,
there tend to be smaller leaves.
Cajun Spice has the benefit
of this golden lime edge to a maroon leaf.
And here's a whole lot of Cajun Spice
used as a bedding scheme in full sun.
Most coleus will take full sun if given proper watering.
At the Ball Seed Trial Gardens in West Chicago, Illinois,
here's a huge swath, a real river of Cajun Spice coleus
working its way through here.
The same plant combined with some begonias.
I thought this was real neat, the dark of the begonia leaf,
that glossiness punctuates this combination
of really only two types of plants, Cajun Spice coleus
and this begonia, which is nice.
And the Flame Thrower series also includes Sriracha,
which is a little darker center.
Also with that lime green edge.
Many coleus you can only purchase as plants,
they're vegetatively propagated.
So they're created from rooted leaf cuttings
or in the tissue culture lab.
So you have to find the plants, but there are still
an amazing amount of varieties that are offered
as seed that you can grow on your own.
And two other new ones I'd like to show, the Royale series.
Here's Cherry Brandy.
In full blazing sun, this dark, dark maroon reads
almost as a near black in full sun,
and this will get beach ball-size.
This is one that's gonna get pretty good size.
So do you know, again, the mature size of these plants,
but they're not relegated to the shade anymore.
That was 30, 40 years ago.
Start bringing 'em out into the sun
and let 'em do their thing.
And Pineapple Brandy, here with a nice gold.
The stems have interesting color
and I didn't allude to it earlier, but a lot of coleus
have different coloration on the backside of the leaf.
This will also be a large coleus.
Developments in vegetables.
You know, they fall under seasonals.
This could be a topic for another time,
but what's amazing to me is the breeding,
not only in disease resistance, but productivity.
This Tidy Treats is a cherry tomato, heavy producing,
early producing, and something that lends itself
to a container application as well.
Do look for varieties of compact vegetables
and those that lend themselves to smaller spaces,
because many folks are doing vegetables
on their patios and their decks.
And they don't have room for a full-sized garden
or a full-size vegetable plant,
but there are breeding developments
in so many of these compact forms.
And this Dazzling Blue kale, I'm a huge fan of kale
not only visually in the garden, but all its uses
in the kitchen as a superfood,
but look at the pure blue coloration
of these dimpled leaves.
And this is something, this kale
you could be cutting back on through the season,
still offering beauty well into the fall,
but it could have been productive
and brought into the kitchen throughout the season.
And I'm showing you a basil, this is a sweet basil
and it looks like any other sweet basil that's out there,
but Rutgers University has developed
some amazing mildew-resistant basils.
There's a lot of fungal disease of basils
out in the landscape.
If you see your basil wilt and die in July or August,
it's usually some sort of disease, but developments
in disease resistance for these is really amazing.
And this is one of many that are out there.
When you think about fresh basil from the garden,
the benefits of having our produce
right outside the back door for convenience.
Food safety issues of course, and the disease resistance
as alluded to here, I think, is worthy of note.
As we get into more shade, we can lean on begonias.
They're not drought-tolerant; in this case,
this trailing begonia in a basket needs ample water
and good drainage, but the breeding in begonias is amazing.
And many of the trailing forms are quite sun-tolerant.
So do keep that in mind as you explore these opportunities.
Spring Fling Buttercup, another great variety.
There's a whole range of reds, oranges,
and do visit your local garden centers and nurseries
come spring, because they should have a wide range
of these wonderful begonias out for sale
and for many applications.
As you get into more shade,
the Rex begonias, you saw one earlier in the presentation.
Look at this Jurassic Junior Purple Spec.
White-speckled, a hint of rose to it.
And notice the venation.
Rex begonias like the moisture, but they need perfect drainage.
And it's rare to see these bloom for us.
Our interest is in these
large, subtropical leaves offering color.
And another new one in this Jurassic Junior series,
Rose Splash.
There are literally thousands of varieties of Rex begonias,
and they're becoming more available for the consumer.
And there are ways of bringing these into the house
as a houseplant and perpetuating for the next year.
So do keep that in mind.
And while not a new begonia, I'm a huge fan
of this golden foliage, Canary Wings.
It doesn't like full sun,
where it gets burned up and turns brown.
And it doesn't like deep shade, where it reads as a green.
So with some degree of dappled light or indirect light,
Canary Wings offers a lot of gold and a lot of flower power.
Here in a little more light, combined
with some of the Rex begonias we just looked at,
that bright yellow foliage, that's Canary Wings begonia,
and look at all the bright reddish orange blooms.
That gold really speaks into the earlier comments
about foliage and flower on the same plant.
If you can get double impact,
that's the way to go with any type of plant.
And for years now, we've been a little wary
of growing standard impatiens.
Impatiens downy mildew has been a huge problem
throughout a good portion of the Eastern
and Midwest United States, where many traditional impatiens
will just catch this mildew and die within days.
Beacon Orange.
The Beacon series is mildew-resistant
and has shown great promise and is becoming
more prevalent out on the market.
There's seven colors now.
Beacon Orange is one of the seven,
and I would recommend trying these.
I've experimented with these in areas
where mildew has been present
and traditional impatiens have died.
And the Beacon series seems to have
very strong resistance and makes it through.
So here's a case where breeding
has brought these back to the forefront.
Here's a whole bunch of Beacon impatiens
on a shady planter at a trial garden,
but you can look at some of the coloration there
with violet and white and orange and pink.
And here's the Beacon series in a mix in a shady situation.
I have to admit, my time at Rotary Botanical Gardens
as director of horticulture,
we stopped planting standard impatiens
for almost seven years because of the mildew.
I'm pretty sure the Beacon series
will offer a lot of interest.
This Imara series is very similar
in that it's also mildew-resistant.
So you see XDR Rose.
There's I believe five colors in this series.
The general comment about standard impatiens
is there they're back, folks.
So do look for the Imara or the Beacon series.
And here's Orange Star in that Imara series.
Close-up of the blooms, but a beautiful plant for the shade.
After my 21 years at Rotary Botanical Gardens,
I left last fall to start my own business.
And here's just a little bit of what I'm doing.
Do feel free to reach out at any point
with questions and contact me.
I've been enjoying exploring some of the opportunities
with helping people with their landscapes.
Interesting fact I just read
was COVID created 25 million new gardeners this year.
And ultimately, the hope is those gardeners
will continue into the future.
Particularly kids, let's get them involved, folks.
As we finish up, I do want to say thank you.
Here's a little bit of kale mixed in with some other plants.
Keep in mind as we get through a tough winter,
both in terms of weather and all the other things
going on in the world,
our gardens are a respite of color, of peace.
And I think it's so important to reconnect with the land,
and we have the opportunity to grow
so many wonderful plants in our landscape.
Seasonals being a nice opportunity,
whether it's vegetables or annuals that you've seen today,
but let's bring more color into everyone's lives
and try to create more gardeners.
Thank you for viewing this presentation today,
and have a great 2021.
>> HI.
IESM BENI'M BEN FUTA.
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
SENSATIONAL SEASONAL PLANTS AND
MARK IS JOINING US LIVE TO
ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS.
YOU CAN GO BACK AND REVIEW THIS
AT ANY TIME AT GARDEN EXPO.
IF YOU NEED TO REFERENCE ANY
NAMES OR FACTS WE GO OVER, YOU
CAN ALWAYS LOOK THERE.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR JOINING US
TODAY.
WE'RE GOING TO JUMP RIGHT IN.
SO WE'RE GOING TO KICK OFF WITH
A QUESTION FROM JULIE.
JULIE IS WONDERING ANY TIPS OR
RESOURCES YOU COULD POINT US
TOWARDS IN TERMS OF HOW TO LOOK
UP PLANTS BY THEIR
CHARACTERISTICS: DEER REEF
RESISTANT, SHADE-WILL YOUING,
THINGS LIKE THAT.
>> TERMS OF ANNUALS, GOOD
OLD-FASHIONED INTERNET SEARCH
WITH THOSE CRITERIA, WHETHER
IT'S FRAY GRAFNS OR ORNAMENTALS,
YOU'LL BE ABLE TO TRACK DOWN
THOSE FEATURES.
OFFHAND I CAN'T MENTION
SOMETHING SPECIFIC THAT'S
APPLICABLE FOR EVERYONE.
THE RESEARCH IS OUT THERE.
I LIKE TO LEAN ON UNIVERSITY
TRIALS AS WELL, UNIVERSITY OF
GEORGIA, COLORADO STATE, OHIO
STATE, SOME WONDERFUL TRIAL
PARTICULARLY OF ANNUAL PLANTS
AND THAT INFORMATION IS
AVAILABLE ONLINE AS WELL.
>> SPEAKING PERSONALLY, I'VE
GARDENED IN A COUPLE OF STATES
NOW.
DEPENDS ON THE CRITTER.
TASTES CHANGE IF YOU'RE LOOKING
FOR DISEASES.
LYNN IS WONDERING DO YOU KNOW
THE FRAGRANT PA PETUNIA YOU MIGHT
RECOMMEND?
>> YES.
A LOT OF THAT SCENT IS EMITTED
IN THE EVENING.
BUT THERE'S QUITE A FEW
OLD-FASHIONED VARIETIES.
RAIN MASTER HAS SOME FRAGRANCE.
THERE'S ONE CALLED EVENING
SCENT-SA AT TION.
YOU CAN BUY SEEDS AND PLANTS
ONLINE.
THEY HAVE A HUGE -- SELECT
SEEDS.
THEY HAVE A HUGE ASSORTMENT OF
FRY GRANT PLANTS, INCLUDING
PETUNIAS AS WELL.
>> JOANNE IS WONDERING HOW CAN
WE PREVENT BUGS FROM EATING OUR
SWEET POTATO VINES?
ANYTHING YOU CAN RECOMMEND TO
KEEP THE CRITTERS AWAY?
>> NOT REALLY.
THERE ARE CHEMICALS THAT WILL
TAKE CARE OF THAT BUT I'M WARY
OF ANY CHEMICAL USE IN THE
GARDEN.
SWEET POE TAIF POTATOES, JAPANESE BEETLES
ARE PRONE TO NIBBLING.
THOSE VINING STRUCTURES WITH THE
SOLAR TOWER SERIES, THEY'RE
2009ING NOW, WHICH IS AWESOME.
THAT'S JUST A LADDER FOR WOOD
CHUCKS BECAUSE WOOD CHUCKS LOVE
SWEET POE POTATO VINES AS WELL.
I'M WARY OF CHEMICALS.
YOU HAVE TO HAND PICK OR KEEP AN
EYE ON IT.
ANY SORT OF DAMAGE IS MITIGATED
BY A QUICK SNIP.
REMOVE ANYTHING THAT LOOKS
UNSIGHTLY AND THEY REGENERATE
IMMEDIATELY AND RESPOND WELL.
>> BENIGN NEGLECT.
SOUNDS LIKE MY KIND OF PLANT.
SWEET POTATO VINES ARE POPULAR.
BILLY IS ASKING THEY FOUND BULBS
FROM LAST YEAR'S POTATO VINES IN
THEIR CONTAINER.
IF THEY PLANTED THEM, WILL THOSE
COME UP IN SPRING LIKE A
TRADITIONAL BULB?
>> THEY WILL.
AND IF YOU'VE EVER DUG,
PROCESSED AND SCORED DAHLIAS OR
CANAS, IT'S A SIMILAR TREATMENT.
IF YOU FIND THAT TUBER, YOU CAN
RINSE IT OFF, STORE IT AT 55 TO
60 DEGREES IN A COOL, DARK SPOT.
YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY REPLANT THAT.
SO YOU CAN PERPETUATE YOUR SWEET
POAF TAI
POTATO VINES.
IT'S A MATTER OF PROPER STORAGE
AND GETTING THEM OUT AND GROWING
AS YOU GET TOWARDS JUNE.
YOU DON'T WANT TO PLANT THOSE
UNTIL SOIL STARTS WARMING.
>> MARY WAS WONDERING THE TRIAL
GARDEN THAT YOU MENTIONED, SHE'S
WONDERING WHERE THAT IS
SPECIFICALLY AND MIGHT THAT BE
OPEN TO VISITORS?
>> GREAT QUESTION.
SO IT GOES BY MANY NAMES, THE
TRIAL GARDEN AT BALL AND BALL
SEED, THEIR HEADQUARTERS IS IN
WEST CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
SO FOR MADISON ONLY MAYBE TWO
HOURS FROM MADISON.
SO COVID HAS AFFECTED OBVIOUSLY
THE ABILITY TO VISIT, BUT EVERY
YEAR THEY HAVE INDUSTRY DAYS,
WHICH IS WHEN I USUALLY ATTEND.
BUT YOU CAN CALL AND TRY TO MAKE
ARRANGEMENTS TO VISIT THE
GARDENS.
AND MY UNDERSTANDING, THIS
QUESTION 15 YEARS AGO, WOULD
HAVE BEEN A DIFFERENT ANSWER AND
THE PUBLIC WAS NORMALLY NOT
ALLOWED TO VISIT, BUT THEY'VE
BECOME MORE OPEN TO HAVING
VISITATION.
BUT I WOULD SIMPLY MAKE A PHONE
CALL, UNDERSTANDING THAT THIS
YEAR COVID MAY IMPACT THE
ABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VISIT.
IT'S AMAZING.
EVERYTHING IS AMAZING.
I SPENT ABOUT FOUR HOURS WITH MY
CAMERA AND NOT GETTING THROUGH
IT.
>> LORI NOTED YOU ALLUDED
EARLIER THAT YOU HAVE ONE POINT
WAS ONE OF YOUR TOP FIVE
ANNUALS.
WOULD YOU CARE TO SHARE ALL
FIVE?
>> OH, BOY.
THAT'S KIND OF PUFTING ME ON THE
SPOT.
I THINK I MENTIONED SUMMER SNAP
DRAGON.
I'VE COME FULL CIRCLE TO ZINNIIAS
IN GENERAL.
NEW DOESN'T ALWAYS MEAN GOOD AND
GOOD ISN'T ALWAYS GOOD.
SO I'M KIND OF LEANING BACK INTO
SOME OF THE OLD-FASHIONED
COTTAGE GARDEN AN ANNUALS, THAT
NASTURTIUMS, ANGELONIA IS STILL
IN THERE.
IT'S KIND OF A TRIAL ON THE RUN.
BUT PEOPLE SHOULD PLANT, GROW
AND EXPLORE AND SEE WHAT THEY
LIKE.
IT'S A SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT.
>> ANNA IS WONDERING IF YOU HAVE
ANY THOUGHTS FOR HOW TO KEEP
CRITTERS OUT OF CONTAINERS.
I'VE TRIED SPRAIFS SPRAYS TO UPSIDE DOWN
FOR
FORKS.
ANY IDEAS?
>> SOMETHING THAT WORKS
MILORGANITE FROM MILWAUKEE SUE
SEWAGE DISTRICT, AS A LIGHT
FERTILIZER, THE SCENT KEEPS
PRIMARILY SQUIRRELS AND RODENTS
FROM DOING IMMEDIATELY DIGGING.
THEY CAN SMELL IT FOR WEEKS.
I MENTION IT FOR BULB PLANTING
BECAUSE WE PUT IT IN THE BOTTOM
OF EVERY ON HOLE FOR EVERY BULB.
ONCE THE SOIL WAS COVERED OVER
THOSE HOLES, WE SPRINKLED IT
OVER THE TOP FOR THE SAME
REASONS.
THAT SCENT KEPT SQUIRRELS FROM
DIGGING.
CONSIDER CRUSHED RED HOT POP
PEPPERS.
THERE'S NOTHING ENTIRELY CRITTER
PROOF AND MOTHER NATURE WILL COM
PROCEED
COMPROMISE SOME OF THOSE
PREVENTIONS.
>> NATASHA IS WONDERING OF THE
PLANTS YOU'VE MENTIONED, ARE
THESE THINGS PEOPLE CAN EXPECT
TO SEE IN THEIR LOCAL
GREENHOUSES THIS YEAR?
YOU MENTIONED AN ONLINE RETAILER
AS WELL.
OR ARE THEY STILL A YEAR OR TWO
OUT FROM THE WIDER REEF TAIL
AREAS?
>> GREAT QUESTION.
THAT'S DEPENDENT ON THE PLANTS
THEMSELVES.
WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE DEFINITION
OF NEW, NEW MIGHT BE SOMETHING
THAT CAME OUT A COUPLE YEARS AGO
AND IS FINALLY REACHING THE
MIDWEST.
SO IT'S TOUGH TO SPECULATE ON
SUPPLY.
AND SO IN EVIDENT BAILIFF SOME
OF THE THINGS WE'RE SEEING TODAY
WILL BE HARD TO FIND.
THERE'S USUALLY A MAIL ORDER
SOURCE BUT YOU'RE PAYING AN ARM
AND A LEG FOR SHIPPING.
I WOULD ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO DO
AN INTERNET SEARCH AND TYPE IN
THE LATIN NAME OF THE PLANT AND
SOURCE AND YOU TYPICALLY CAN
FIND WHO'S CARRYING IT.
BUT ALSO PATRONIZE YOUR LOCAL
GARDEN CENTERS AND NURSERIES AND
GIVE A CALL IN MARCH AND
APRIL TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE
CARRYING.
COVID CREATED A BUSY YEAR OF
GARDENING LAST YEAR AND IT WILL
BE BUSY THIS YEAR, SO THERE WILL
BE COMPETITION TO FIND THESE
PLANTS.
BUT THE SHORT ANSWER IS SOME OF
THESE THINGS WON'T COME DOWN THE
PIPELINE FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS.
>> THAT'S ALWAYS MY
RECOMMENDATION AS WELL.
CALL AND ASK.
GARDEN CENTERS WILL DO THEIR
BEST, WHICH IS WONDERFUL.
TERESA IS WONDERING, HOW, IF
SHE'S HAD AN ISSUE WITH
IMPATIENS IN THE PAST, HOW LONG
SHOULD SHE WAIT BEFORE SHE
PLANTS ANY AGAIN?
>> THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION.
NOW, IF THERE WEREN'T THE
MILDEW-RESISTANT IMPATIENS, I
WOULD SAY DON'T PLANT STANDARD
IMPATIENS IN THAT SPOT FOR
YEARS, FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS.
THE WORRY IS PERPETUATION OF
FUNGAL SPORES.
BUT IN ESSENCE AT ROTARY GARDENS
WHEN WE LOST IMPATIENS, WE
DIDN'T PLANT THOSE SPOTS WITH
IMPATIENS FOR YEARS AND YEARS.
SO YOUR BEST BET, EVEN IF YOU'RE
GETTING THE BEACON SERIES, IS TO
PICK A NEW SPOT AND PUT THEM IN
CONTAINERS IF YOUR PROBLEMS WERE
RECENT.
IF IT WAS MANY YEARS AGO, WHY
TRY IT.
THEY'VE BEEN INOCULATING THESE
PLANTS AND FOUND THEY'RE
EXTREMELY RESISTANT.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN DISEASE-PROOF,
BUT THEY HAVE SAILED THROUGH
SOME OF THE MILDEW ISSUES.
IF YOU HAVE SPACE ELSEWHERE, TRY
IT IN A DIFFERENT SPACE FOR A
YEAR OR TWO.
>> ON THAT SIMILAR THEME, JODY
IS WONDERING IF WE'RE GROWING
PHLOX, ANY TIPS OR SUGGESTIONS
FOR HOW TO KEEP MILDEW AWAY?
ANYTHING WE CAN DO IN ADVANCE?
>> MILDEW ISSUES ARE PREVIOUS
VENT FOR MOST OF OUR STATE.
WE'VE HAD ABNORMALLY COOL AND
WET SUMMERS, WHICH HAS LED TO A
PREVALENCE OF MILDEW.
YOU THINK OF GARDEN PHLOX AND
THE ANNUAL PHLOX AND SOME OF THE
OTHERS THAT WOULD GET MILDEW.
THAT WAS REALLY INEVITABLE
DESPITE THEM HAVING SOME DISEASE
RESISTANCE.
YOU HOPE FOR A HOTTER, DRYER
YEAR.
YOU WANT GOOD AIR CIRCULATION
BETWEEN YOUR PLANTS.
THERE ARE CERTAINLY MANY
FUNGICIDES THAT WILL KNOCK THAT
MILDEW.
IT SHOULDN'T AFFECT THE BLOOMS.
SO YOU'LL STILL GET A LOT OF
THAT FLOWER POWER.
I'D JUST AS SOON SEE SOME DRY
DAYS IN THE 90s AND NOT SO
MUCH DARN RAIN.
THOSE ANNUAL PHLOX TEND TO BE
MILDEW RESISTANT AS WELL.
BUT AIR CIRCULATION IS VITAL FOR
EVERYTHING I MENTIONED.
>> SO PAM IS WONDERING, SHE'S
LOOKING FOR A TRUE YELLOW FLOWER
FOR A PARTIAL SHADE CONDITION.
ANY SORT OF BRIGHT YELLOW COLOR
FOR THOSE PARTIAL SHADE AREAS?
>> WELL, GOOD QUESTION.
AND I PLAY DEVIL'S ADVOCATE WHEN
I HEAR THAT.
WHAT DOES PARTIAL SHADE MEAN,
DAPPLED SUN IN THE AFTERNOON OR
HIGH INDIRECT LIGHT.
IT'S CHALLENGING.
SOME PERENNIALS WILL DO IT.
JUNGLE GOLD IMPATIENS WILL TAKE
QUITE A BIT OF SHADE AND STILL
BLOOM.
YELLOW IN THE SHADE THAT WE USED
TO DO, WE WOULD ORDER HUNDREDS
OF ORCH ORNAMENTAL SHAMROCK AND
MOLTEN LAVA.
IT'S QUITE BEAUTIFUL.
SO I WOULD ENCOURAGE HER TO UN
-- PART SHADE BECOMES
CHALLENGING FOR ALL THE YELLOW
FLOWERS.
RELY ON FOLIAGE, BRIGHT GOLD
FOLIAGE PLANTS.
>> WE HAVE A COUPLE QUESTIONS
COMING IN RELATED TO SORT OF
SEASONAL TOOIVE TUBE TUBERS, CANAS AND
DAHLIAS.
SHOULD THEY START THOSE INDOORS?
AND WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO DO
THAT?
>> SURE.
YOU CAN DO EITHER INDOORS OR
OUTSIDE.
KEEP IN MIND, SOIL TEMPERATURES
REALLY NEED TO BE ABOVE 70
DEGREES FOR THINGS TO TAKE OFF.
SO THE DANGER IS GETTING LULLED
INTO A SENSE OF SECURITY WITH A
WARM COUPLE DAYS IN MAY WHERE
YOU'RE LIKE I'M GOING TO PUT
THOSE CANAS OUT.
IT'S TOO COOL TO DO THAT.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO DIRECT PLANT,
I WOULDN'T DO IT UNTIL JUNE.
IN APRIL WE WOULD POT THEM UP IN
ADVANCE.
THEY DON'T NEED ANY LIGHT UNTIL
THEY SPROUT, PUT THEM ON HEAT
MATS, KEEP THEM AT 70 DEGREES
PLUS.
SO BY THE TIME WE PUT THEM OUT,
THEY HAD DECENT GROWTH ON THEM.
JUST MAKE SURE THEY'RE GOOD TO
GO AND YOU CAN SEPARATE THEM,
GET THEM READY TO ROCK 'N ROLL.
THE BENEFIT TO STARTING THEM
EARLY SU IS YOU CAN GAIN WEEKS AND
HAVE THEM BLOOMING SOONER THAN
THE DIRECT PLANTING.
THE DANGER IS IF YOU DIRECT
PLANT AND WE HAVE A SUPER, COOL,
DAMP SUMMER AGAIN, YOU'RE NOT
GOING TO SEE A LOT OF ACTION
UNTIL AUGUST OR SEPTEMBER.
SO GET AN EARLY JUMP AND YOU CAN
START THAT.
I WOULD DO EARLY APRIL, LATE
MARCH.
BE READY TO ROCK 'N ROLL.
>> PERFECT.
VICTOR IS WONDERING OF THE
PLANTS YOU RECOMMEND OR SORT OF
LOOKING AT RIGHT NOW, ANYTHING
YOU COULD RECOMMEND AS A GROUND
COVER IN A SHADY SPOT UNDER SOME
TREES?
>> ARE WE ON THE TOPIC ANNUALS?
>> I BELIEVE SO, YEAH.
>> OKAY.
YEAH.
SO THAT BECOMES A LITTLE
CHALLENGING.
THE SHAMROCKS DO WELL.
MOLTEN LAVA, MAROON ONES.
THEY'LL ALSO DO WELL IN FULL
SUN.
SO I CAN'T THINK OF WHAT WOULD
BE TERMED A TRADITIONAL RUNNING
ANNUAL GROUND COVER, MEANING A
MAT FORMER.
I WOULD GET A WHOLE LOT OF
SOMETHING AND PACK IT IN THERE
AND PUT A WHOLE BUNCH OF THEM
TOGETHER SO THEY FORM A
COLLECTIVE GROUND COVER.
THERE'S A SHADE-TOLERANT ANNUAL
CALLED BRAZILIAN FIREWORKS.
IT HAS AN INTERESTING LEAF AND
FLOWER, TAKES A WHOLE LOT OF
SHADE.
IS NOT EXTREMELY TALL.
BUT, AGAIN, THAT BECOMES A
LITTLE CHALLENGING.
SO FIND A COLLECTIVE APPROACH.
THERE'S A WHOLE SLEW OF
SHADE-TOLERANT PERENNIAL GROUND
COVERS.
THE ISSUE IS YOU HAVE TO DICTATE
THEIR SPREAD BECAUSE THEY WIFL
KEEP GOING.
>> HELEN IS WONDERING ABOUT
GETTING STARTED WITH GROWING.
THIS TIME OF YEAR, MID FEBRUARY,
DO WE STILL HAVE TIME TO START
THINGS INDOORS FROM SEEDS OR IS
IT BETTER TO WAIT UNTIL WE CAN
GET TRANSPLANTS AT THIS POINT?
>> WELL, WE'RE ALL STARVED FOR
SPRING.
WE WANT TO JUMP INTO T. IT'S A
LITTLE EARLY TO START SEEDS.
EVEN IF YOU HAVE A TABLE YOU CAN
ADJUST, THEY'RE GOING TO GET
STRETCHY AND LEG GI, SO YOU WANT
TO WAIT SIX WEEKS FROM THE LAST
FROWS
FROST DATE, EARLY APRIL.
IT'S A LITTLE EARLY AT THIS
POINT.
GREENHOUSES ARE DOING IT.
THEY HAVE DIFFERENT WAYS OF
GETTING PLANTS READY TO GO.
BUT DO A LITTLE MORE RESEARCH ON
SEED STARTING TIMES, WHICH IS
ALL ON THE INTERNET FOR ALL
SORTS OF PLANTS BASED ON YOUR
REGION.
IT'S NOT TOO EASY TO ORDER
SEEDS.
GET ON IT.
SEED ORDERING IS GOING BONKERS,
WHICH IS GOOD, BUT SUPPLY WILL
BE COMPROMISED.
CERTAINLY BUYING PLANTS FROM
YOUR LOCAL GARDEN CENTER IS A
WAY TO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL
ECONOMY.
CALL YOUR LOCAL VENDOR AND SAVE
WHAT DO YOU HAVE?
IT'S NOT UNREALISTIC TO KNOW
THAT ANSWER NOW.
>> ANOTHER QUESTION FROM JODY,
WILL BEGONIAS GROW IN CRAY SOIL?
>> THE CHALLENGE IS NOT HAVING
THE DRAINAGE.
THEY ARE NOT DROUGHT-TOLERANT.
THEY NEED ADEQUATE MOISTURE.
CLAY IS THE KISS OF DEATH FOR
THOSE.
THOSE NEED GOOD, WELL-DRAINED
SOIL.
IF YOU WERE GOING TO GROW THEM
IN A CLAY SOIL, I WOULD LEAN ON
SOME OF THESE SUPER TOUGH
SERIES.
I'M GOING TO RATTLE OFF FOUR
NAMES.
THEY'RE HYBRIDS.
THEY GET 18, 24 INCHES.
THE BIG SERIES, WHOP ER SERIES,
MEGAWATT AND VIKING.
THEY ALL HAVE DIFFERENT COLORS
OF FOLIAGE AND FLOWER RANGE OF
PINKS, WHITES, ROSES AND RED.
IF IT ENDS UP BEING STANDING
WATER OR A LOW SPOT WITH CLAY,
THEY WILL ROT OUT BY MID-SUMMER.
CHANGE THE SOIL OR CHANGE THE
LOCATION.
THOSE FOUR SERIES ARE THE
TOUGHEST.
>> CHRIS IS WONDERING, YOU
MENTIONED THE BULBS NEEDING 70
DEGREE SOIL TO GO OUTDOORS AND
DO WELL.
IS THAT THE SAME FOR WAN FOR ANNUALS?
>> I WOULD SAY YES, BECAUSE
WE'VE ALL DONE THIS.
THE DANGER IS IT'S MOTHER'S DAY,
RIGHT, AND WE GO GET MOM SOME
GER
FLOWERS AND WE RUN THE RISK ONCE
WE PUT THOSE PLANTS OUT IN
MAY IS SOIL TEMPERATURE IS STILL
QUITE COOL.
THEY'RE STILL GETTING EVENING
TEMPERATURE NOTICE
TEMPERATURES IN IN THE 40s.
SOTSO THE DANGER IS ROTTING OUT OR
SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
WE BARELY PUT ANNUALS INTO THE
GROUND UNTIL JUNE.
WE GAVE TIME FOR BULBS TO START
GOING DORMANT.
DON'T TRY TO KEEP UP WITH THE
JONESES BY THE EARLIEST PLANTING
OF YOUR ANNUALS.
IF YOU HAVE THEM AND PURCHASED
THEM, KEEP THEM SAFE.
ROTATE THEM IN AND OUT OF THE
GARAGE IF THERE ARE FROST
WARNINGS.
DON'T BE A HUGE HURRY UNLESS YOU
KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A NICE
STRETCH OF WARM WEATHER AND THAT
SOIL IS NOT OVERLY COOL.
>> A QUICK COMMENT FROM RITA.
SHE LOVES YOUR MOM'S QUILT
BEHIND YOU AND QUILTING AND
GARDENING GO TOGETHER THE BEST.
ROSEMARY ASKS ANYTHING NEW IN
COS TOES TO LOOK
COSMOS RANGE TO LOOK OUT FOR?
>> CHOCOLATE COSMOS STORES A
BULB YOU CAN STORE, WHICH IS
COOL.
JUST BEAUTIFUL.
I WOULD LOOK INTO THE CUPCAKES
SERIES.
WHEN YOU THINK OF COSMOS, THE
DIFFERENT PETALS, WHITES, PINKS,
REDS, YELLOWS, ORANGES, BUT THE
CUPCAKE SERIES ARE PINK, BLUSH
AND WHITE.
THE PETALS ARE FUSED.
LOOKS LIKE THE PAPER CUPCAKE
HOLDER.
IT'S LIKE A SAUCER.
THEY'RE JUST UNBELIEVABLE.
LOOK INTO THOSE.
AND THAT SELECT SEEDS HAS A HUGE
RANGE OF COSMOS INCLUDING DOUBLE
FORMS AND PINK AND NEAR REID, RED,
WHICH IS COOL.
>> WE ARE IN OUR FINAL STRETCH
HERE.
IF PEOPLE HAVE QUESTIONS FOR
YOU, WHERE CAN THEY REACH OUT
AND FIND YOU?
>> SURE.
THE BEST BET IS TO EMAIL ME
DIRECTLY.
I'D BE GLAD TO ANSWER YOUR
QUESTIONS.
THAT'S AT NCDWIEF ER@ZOHO.COM.
>> EXCELLENT.
COUPLE QUESTIONS AS AGAIN WE
WRAP UP HERE.
WHERE DO THESE NEW PLANTS COME
FROM?
SO ALL OF THESE NEW
INTRODUCTIONS, WHAT DOES THAT
PROCESS LOOK LIKE?
EITHER PLANT BREEDERS, ARE THESE
THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING
NATURALLY OR INTENTIONALLY
BREEDING.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE BEHIND
THE SCENES?
>> THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION.
IT'S SO ELABORATE I DON'T THINK
I COULD EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE
IT OR UNDERSTAND T. BUT WHAT'S
INTERESTING IS BREEDING IS
BECOMING STRONG FOR COMPACT
FORMS IN RELATION TO WOODY PLANS
AND PER PERENNIALS.
EUROPE, ASIA, ISRAEL, SOUTH
AMERICA, THERE'S AN UNBELIEVABLE
AMOUNT OF THINGS GOING ON.
SO MUCH IS COMING ON THE MARKET.
WHAT'S INTERESTING IS I STARTED
A LIST OF NEW PLANTS RELATIVELY
NEW PLANTS THAT I WAS UNFAMILIAR
WITH AND I'M ON 20 PAGES.
I'VE PUT 600 THINGS DOWN.
IT'S HARD TO SIFT THROUGH ALL
THAT.
THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES IS SO
ELABORATE.
THE END GAME IS A QUALITY
PRODUCT THAT THRIVES IN OUR
GARDENS.
NEW ISN'T ALWAYS GOOD.
MAKE SURE YOUR NEW PLANTS ARE
GOOD AND HAVE SOME TRIAL AND
BACKING TO THEM.
>> I THINK OUR FINAL QUESTION
TODAY THAT WE HAVE TIME FOR,
AGAIN, WE TALKED A LOT ABOUT
SOURCING, SUPPORTING LOCAL
GARDEN CENTERS.
ANY OTHER MAIL ORDER RETAILERS
THAT PEOPLE COULD LOOK OUT FOR
OR PLACES YOU'VE ENJOYED?
>> SURE.
SURE.
WHEN YOU THINK OF MAIL ORDER,
THERE'S CERTAINLY A WIDE RANGE
OF SEED COMPANIES FOR AN WALLS.
WHEN YOU GET INTO STOKES,
JOHNNIES, PINE TREE.
IT GOES ON AND ON.
THERE'S WONDERFUL VEGETABLE
SOURCES AS WELL.
SEED SAVERS.
ANNIE'S ANNUALS OUT IN
CALIFORNIA GROWS SOME CRAZY
STUFF.
AND ANNIE'S ANNUALS, GET ON
THEIR LITTLE LINK FOR THEIR
NEWSLETTERS.
YOU'LL SEE SOME INSANE STUFF.
MANY OF THE VENDORS ALSO SELL
PLANTS OF THESE DIFFERENT TYPES
OF ANNUALS.
JUNGS HAS A WONDERFUL CATALOG AS
WELL.
THERE'S NO SHORTAGE OF SOURCES.
START SNIFFING AROUND, FOLKS.
>> TAKE HOME MESSAGE, DO NOT
DELAY.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING US
TODAY.
WE APPRECIATE IT.
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- My name is Laura Poe Mathes, and I'm a registered dietician.
And today, we're gonna have a little demonstration,
a little workshop about fermented vegetables.
We're gonna just kind of go into just the basics
about how to get started with the fermentation,
why we ferment, and a couple different methods,
troubleshooting, that kind of stuff.
So it's perfect for a beginner level.
And after the presentation, there'll be Q&A.
So if you do have questions, either you can ask then
or I will give my contact information at the end
and you can shoot me a message.
So a little about me, like I said, I'm a dietician.
I'm very into fermented foods
because of their health benefits.
They're also delicious.
I've been fermenting for about 10 years,
and I just think it's one of the best,
one of the best things you can do
in your kitchen for yourself.
So you may be wondering what does this have to do
with gardening and those types of things.
In my mind, fermentation is kind of the perfect,
perfect kind of, [sighs]
you know, tangent to go off from gardening
because it is a method of food preservation
that takes very little energy input.
You can put up extra food, bumper crops
from your garden without having to can them,
which canning is great and I'm not against canning,
but it also, because it's processing food
with heat and pressure, it does take away
some of the nutritional benefits.
So fermenting your foods, which, when we ferment them,
we're not going to can them in any way
with heat or pressure canning.
So it maintains a lot of the nutritional value
while adding some more nutrients because what fermentation is
basically is the transformation of food by microbes.
So in this case, when we're talking about vegetables,
it's mostly gonna be lactobacilli,
which are also referred to as lactobacilla,
lactic acid-producing bacteria.
Those are gonna be the primary microbes
that are at work here,
transforming food from kind of one form into another.
In this case, it's gonna be something
like cabbage into sauerkraut, or, you know,
regular carrots into kind of a pickled carrot,
so something like that.
It increases the digestibility of some foods,
making them easier to digest.
Things like cabbage, that for some people
can be a little tough to digest.
It makes them more digestible, adds those probiotics.
So those microbes that are doing the transformation
are probiotics, so when we eat them in foods,
you know, it's a great way to improve our health,
improve the health of the microbiome,
which is that kind of ecosystem in our body
of beneficial microbes that help all sorts of things
from digestive health to even mental health,
immune function, all these things
can be supported by a good microbiome.
So we want fermented foods for the health benefits,
but also because it's a great way to preserve the harvest.
So it's kind of a double whammy.
So like I said, we're gonna do some fermented vegetables.
But there's tons of fermented foods
that you probably already eat or are familiar with.
So, you know, sourdough bread is fermented,
beer and wine are fermented.
So all those are more like yeast fermentation,
but it's still fermentation.
So cheese, yogurt, kefir, kombucha, kimchi,
all these kinds of things,
in addition to things like sauerkraut, are fermented.
They're just kind of using different microbes,
different methods.
So something you're familiar with,
and we're just gonna start with these kind of basic methods.
As far as special equipment you need,
I love this type of fermentation because you don't need much.
Any basic kitchen utensils you have
are gonna be kind of perfect: cutting board, knife,
measuring cups, measuring spoons, measuring cups,
mixing bowls, those kind of things.
Mason jars are the vessel we're gonna use, a glass jar.
I like to use glass jars for,
especially for beginner fermentation,
because you can kind of make 'em in smaller batches
and you can see what's going on because they're clear,
and, you know, you can see
what's going on through the whole time.
Those larger ceramic crocks that are, you know,
1 to 20 gallons or whatever
are totally usable, they're great.
I don't like 'em as much for beginners,
because again, you have to make a huge batch.
So if you do kind of miss the mark,
there's a lot more waste.
And you also can't see what's going on.
It's a little more mysterious.
So you may not know, you know, if there's mold or something
and you have to check it a lot.
And so I like to start with a glass jar.
So those are things you already have.
Wooden mixing spoons.
I like the plastic lids for those jars
because they're non-reactive.
So the things we're gonna be making are quite acidic
and they're salty, and those kind of react with metal.
So I like those plastic lids.
And because they're not really touching the product,
I'm not too concerned with the plastic use.
Although I do try to minimize plastic.
The only kind of special things I think that I will...
I think you should be using for this are a kitchen scale.
You know, one of these is $20 or so.
It's a great investment because a lot of the things
you're gonna be doing are by weight.
And so it's really nice for accuracy in the kitchen.
You can use it, I mean, we use it for making coffee
and baking and everything, it's a great investment.
And especially if you're getting into fermentation,
it's a great thing to have on hand,
and you'll see why here in a minute.
And the other thing are fermentation weights.
These are glass weights, they're specially made.
This brand is called Masontops,
but they're specially made to fit in Mason jars
and you'll see why we need them in a little bit,
but they're a great thing to have on hand.
So why don't we get started with the methods.
So there's gonna be two methods we'll talk about.
One is the dry salting,
which is also called like the sauerkraut method.
And then the other one will be brining,
where we'll make our own brine.
So I'm gonna go through these.
Again, this is a short presentation,
so I'll be going fast.
So if you do have questions, we can make sure
that we get those answered for you.
The thing to think about for both of these methods,
or both of these different techniques,
is that they are a method
and there are some ratios you need to know.
But other than that, the hard and, you know,
there's not a hard and fast rule for a recipe,
which is nice because you can adapt it
to whatever you have on hand.
And as I start making this,
you'll see what I'm talking about.
So we're gonna start with the dry salting method.
And there's the two most important things
you need to know
for the dry salting method or the sauerkraut method
is the ratio of salt to vegetables,
which is one pound of vegetables
is gonna need one teaspoon of salt.
So again, that's where the kitchen scale's
gonna come in handy.
If you don't have a scale and you want to make kraut,
just know that a medium head of cabbage
is about three pounds.
So you can adjust the salt ratio up to three teaspoons,
which is a tablespoon as needed, or you can, you know,
if you buy it at the grocery store or farmer's market,
you can use a scale there.
But getting a kitchen scale is a great idea.
So you have the ratio, a teaspoon to a pound.
And that, you know, that's for cabbage.
We're gonna use green or red cabbage today.
But you can also add other vegetables in there as you like,
garlic, onions, different spices.
And I like to keep the amount of cabbage in there
as about 70% to 80% of the weight as cabbage
because it is kind of the perfect vessel for fermentation.
I mentioned it's the lactobacilli are the...
are the microbes we're primarily gonna be using for fermentation.
They are already present in and on the cabbage,
we are just setting up an environment
where they grow and thrive.
So we're not adding any starter culture
or anything like that.
So cabbage is really perfect for fermentation
because it has so much surface area,
all those different layers.
So it has a lot of potential for those lactobacilli.
Also, it's very fibrous.
So as we kind of work the sauerkraut and soften it down,
it's still gonna maintain some crunch,
but it has a high water content.
So it's gonna help make its own brine.
So it's kind of the perfect vegetable for that.
So if you do add other things, you can add
just about anything other than, you know, broccoli,
tomatoes don't work well for this method.
But almost any other herb, spice, vegetable is gonna work.
You just want to keep the vast majority
of that weight percentage as cabbage
and you can add anything else.
But you always keep that ratio of one teaspoon of salt
to one pound of vegetables.
So that's one thing you need to know.
The other thing is the basic process,
and again, it's going to make it so you can use,
turn anything into sauerkraut.
So the basic process is chop, salt, massage, and then pack.
And that's kind of the things you do up to fermentation.
So I'll go through that, making a batch right now,
but chop, salt, massage, pack.
So let's go through.
First, you're gonna chop.
I'm gonna take off any kind of floppy outer leaves.
Sometimes cabbage has some leaves that aren't so great.
You can set those aside.
And this one was already pretty clean,
so I'm gonna take off any other outer layers,
wash anything off.
I'm gonna cut off the stem [knife chopping]
because we don't need that, and I'm gonna set that aside.
So then you're just gonna start to
[knife chopping] cut the cabbage and shred it
as if you were making something like a coleslaw or something.
You can do this by hand, or you could use a kraut shredder,
or you could use a food processor or whatever you like,
depending on kind of your knife skills
and hand strength and all those kinds of things.
So I'm just gonna shred it finely like I would a coleslaw.
I would not use pre-shredded cabbage
because it's gonna have almost no moisture content left.
And we want moisture because the stored water in here
is what's gonna help create its own brine.
So don't get pre-shredded, shred your own,
whatever method you need to.
Again, you can use red or green cabbage, it doesn't matter.
So I'm going to put a mixing bowl on my kitchen scale,
you can kind of see here.
Maybe I'll make it so you can see a little better.
And I'm just gonna tare that weight,
so, you know, it removes the weight of the bowl.
And we're going in pounds,
so make sure you have the right [chuckles] measurement here.
So I'm just gonna start adding this to my bowl.
So we're in the chop here.
If you like a little bit bigger pieces, that's fine,
but, so I, but I like to do a little bit finer shred.
That's just my preference.
So I did cut out the core, that kind of middle part.
I'm gonna go ahead and chop that up.
It doesn't shred like the rest of the cabbage,
so I do kind of take that out
and cut it separately, just into small pieces.
It's super fibrous, but it does ferment pretty well
in breakdown, so just gonna do that.
So I'll get us to, I'll get us to a pound
so I can at least put a teaspoon of salt
and you can kind of see.
I won't show you me chopping the whole head.
So it doesn't matter how big of a batch you make.
You could start, if you're really new to fermentation,
you could start with just a small batch
of like one head of cabbage or something.
But the same method and the same ratio
go for no matter how big your batch is
or no matter what you add, so.
[knife chopping]
I do find that red cabbage is a little bit more fibrous,
a little bit tougher to work with.
It's a little bit drier, but it works great.
It's very, very delicious.
So we're about at a pound here,
maybe a tiny bit over, but in general, we want it to be
that ratio of a teaspoon to a pound.
So I'm not gonna do the whole batch at once
'cause I'm gonna just show you how to massage it,
and 'cause, so we did the chop and now we're salting.
So I'm gonna use, I like to use an unrefined sea salt.
You can kinda see maybe a little bit of pink color.
The brand I like is Redmond Real Salt,
but any kind of salt that doesn't have any anti-caking,
anti-yellowing agents, no iodine.
You don't want any additives, just straight up sea salt.
I like a fine grind so that you can incorporate it well.
So we are at a pound.
So I'm gonna add a teaspoon of salt,
I'll use my teaspoon here.
And this is where you want the measuring,
or the kitchen scale here.
So chop, salt, you have to use salt
because salt is gonna facilitate the fermentation.
It's gonna inhibit mold.
If you have too much salt, then it's, you know,
it can be very anti-microbial,
but we just want this ratio of salt that helps
to keep out any unwanted microbes
and let the lactobacilli thrive.
So then we're going to massage, so essentially what I'm doing
is you can kind of see I'm crushing,
I'm taking the cabbage [cabbage crunching]
and I'm just squeezing it and crushing it with my hand.
So what that is doing is breaking down the cabbage.
It's softening it, it's crushing it,
but it releases its juices so we can make this brine.
And like I said, it'll soften it and make it
so we can compact it into the jar.
So the reason we need this brine,
why we're squeezing it and releasing its water
is so that the cabbage, while it turns into sauerkraut,
can be in an anaerobic environment.
So the lactobacilli are anaerobic,
so they don't want oxygen.
And so by creating this brine, [cabbage crunching]
by releasing all the cabbage's stored water
and mixing it with the salt that we added,
we are creating an environment where we can,
my hands are all purple now,
we can push the cabbage down and let the brine
kind of rise above that,
and that creates a nice barrier between the sauerkraut
and the outside world that's rich in oxygen!
It doesn't have to be like zero oxygen, you know,
we don't have to put an airlock or anything like that.
People do like an airlock, especially if you're gonna
have to leave the kraut on the counter and not check on it,
but you don't have to do that.
Putting a weight on top of this to keep it submerged
in the brine will be good enough,
and then putting a lid on top.
So I'm just massaging this until it's nice and soft.
It kind of should reduce by about half in volume,
and water should be able to be squeezed
out of it after massaging it.
So if you have like arthritis or something like that
and have trouble with this step,
you can always mix the salt and just leave it on the counter
for several hours and come back to it,
because the salt will, you know,
eventually pull some of that water out.
And that's, you know, that brings me to a good point,
which is when we do pack this into the jar,
we do want to leave a little head space,
and I'll show you that, so that any extra water
that wasn't pulled out through massaging
and that is pulled out by just the osmosis
of sitting in this salty brine,
we want to leave a little extra room so that water
does have a chance to kind of have a little room
to expand without overflowing the jar
or breaking the jar or something like that.
So I think we're at a good point here.
It's nice and soft, when I squeeze it, water comes out.
Again, that is a little bit easier with green cabbage.
So of course I just had to pick something
that was a little more complicated.
So I'm just gonna pack it into a Mason jar.
I like a wide mouth jar for this because it is [chuckles]
easier to pack things in.
I usually use a canning funnel,
but I honestly couldn't find it today, which is pretty fun.
So I'm just gonna pack it in.
So we did chop, salt, massage, and now we're gonna pack.
So all I'm gonna do is just
put the kraut into this jar.
[hand tapping]
So I'm just packing all of this in here.
And if I just left the cabbage like this,
kind of loose and full of air, it would just mold,
because again, we're trying to create
an anaerobic environment.
So if we've gone through the chop, salt, massage,
and now we're gonna pack it in.
So I like to use the end of like a wooden spoon
or something with a wooden end, and just start to
kind of pack. [spoon clinking]
You're basically tamping this down.
You want to compact as much cabbage down,
kind of pressed together as you can.
One, to again, get rid of any air pockets,
but it's also gonna start to push up that brine.
So it's kind of doing double duty here.
[spoon clinking]
So this could also take a few minutes,
depending on how much you massage it.
The more you massage it, the less of this tamping
you'll have to do. [spoon clinking]
But again, this is nice to have a glass jar
for this so you can see how much air is out of it.
At some point, you can also kind of just
get your clean hand down in there
and push, push, and push, and just compact it down.
Cabbage, purple cabbage is fun
'cause it turns your hands purple.
So you're just gonna press it down in there
until you start to see some brine rising up
and the air pockets kind of compressed down.
And then you just repeat that,
that chopping and massaging and salting and all that.
And you keep packing it in
until you get to about the shoulders of the jar.
Again, you don't want to overfill it.
You can kind of see, this is a batch I did one week ago,
and I filled it to a little under the shoulders.
It was a smaller head of cabbage.
A good, like a medium three-pound head of cabbage
should fill about a half-gallon jar or so.
Every one's a little different,
but you don't want to fill it above maybe the shoulders.
And so then once you've got it all in there,
you're going to put your weight on top and press down.
So because this isn't filled all the way,
it's kind of hard to tell, but you're gonna press down.
And what that weight's gonna do
is again, it's gonna keep everything
kind of under that level of brine so that mold doesn't form,
or hopefully no yeast or mold forms,
and that so you have this nice fermentation.
Because those bacteria, their by-product is CO2,
you may get some lift, like a little bit of bubbles,
which is why ferments are kind of effervescent in,
vegetable ferments, at least.
So, you know, once or twice over the course
of the fermentation, you may have to get in there
and kind of press it back down to keep everything submerged.
But one of the fermentation books I like
that's a good resource is by Kirsten Shockey
called Fermented Vegetables ,
and they have a little phrase in there that is,
"Keep submerged in brine and all will be fine."
So you want to keep an eye on it to make sure
that it's always below the brine,
because that's where the best fermentation's gonna happen
and the less risk of any kind of unwanted microbes.
And again, you may have to go in there
once or twice and press that down.
So with something like this jar,
because it's been a week, it's already started
to kind of come up.
So I'm just gonna get in there and press it down
until some brine rises above it.
And again, you could add any mix-ins you want.
Some of our favorites are, that one's really garlicky,
so I can smell that, carrots, onions,
things like, well, if you're making kimchi,
you could use a napa cabbage and throw some daikon
and ginger and peppers and those kinds of things.
You can kind of add whatever mix-in you like,
but it's just the same ratio of salt
to vegetables and the same method.
So once you have it all packed in here,
we went through those four steps, now we wait.
So you let it sit on the counter, room temperature.
You don't move it to the fridge yet
because you need kind of room temperature,
in the 60s or so, ambient temperature,
for the best fermentation.
The kind of sweet spot is two weeks
if you're kind of running
with the normal room temperature.
If it's colder, it may take longer,
and you could add a few days to it, you know, up to 21 days.
If it's warmer, like in the summer,
it may take more like 10 days.
You wouldn't want to do too much less than that
because you won't get as much microbial growth.
If you like it a little more tangy,
you can leave it a little longer.
I wouldn't do more than 21, 28 days.
14 days is kind of my sweet spot.
And again, checking for mold.
If you see mold, toss the batch, start over.
It's not that big of an investment,
which is why I like to start small as you practice.
Or if you see like a white film or something,
that's usually a yeast.
I would throw that out,
and just check for those unwanted kind of signs
and that it's submerged at all times.
And just trust your senses.
If you're new to fermentation and you're not sure,
just, you know, smell it.
It should smell kind of like sauerkraut.
It's gonna have an odor, but it shouldn't be, you know,
totally offensive smelling or tasting.
And if it is, you know, trust your senses and toss it.
Once you've fermented it at the room temperature
for two weeks, you know, take out the weight,
toss it in the fridge.
I usually, I like to have a label on it when I ferment it
so I know what's in there and when I made it.
And it will keep in the fridge for about a year.
You'll probably eat it before that,
but that's kind of the general rule
for how long those things stay food safe.
So that's the process.
It sounds pretty easy, and once you do it a few times,
you're gonna be like, "I can't believe how easy this is."
So now we'll move on to the brining method.
Again, it's just a method and a ratio.
And once you know how to do that, you're good to go.
So I'm gonna make some brined carrots.
It doesn't matter what vegetable you use.
You're gonna use the same method.
The only thing, like I said, you're not gonna want
to use for this would be maybe something like broccoli.
It doesn't ferment, but this works great for carrots,
garlic, onions, cauliflower.
This is a method I use for just like cucumber pickles.
Although I do bump up the salt,
and I'll mention that here in a second.
Jalapeńos, this is the method I use to make hot sauce.
I just pickle jalapeńos and garlic and then whiz it all up.
So I'm just gonna do garlic carrots today, but you'll,
again, as long as you know the method, you can do it.
So the method here is cut the vegetables, make the brine,
submerge in the brine, and that's it.
So it's gonna be really fast.
So I'm just going to slice my carrots into coins.
You could use sticks, and that's fine.
So this is the brining method,
which works well for things that you want to keep
in bigger pieces and you don't want to,
like kind of shred and massage.
So we have kind of these nice carrot pieces.
These are great for things like to make like snacks out of.
So it doesn't matter how big or small your pieces.
You just kind of want them to be in a form.
I guess you don't want it to be too big,
because you do want it to be,
it's gonna be penetrated by the water.
So you're just gonna fill this.
Again, you don't want to overfill any jar.
You can't see me chopping, I just realized, but,
I'll show you when I'm done
so I don't have to adjust the camera.
And it's just carrot coins, so these are nice for a snack.
You can toss them onto a salad, a sandwich,
something like that.
Same with the sauerkraut.
You can kind of do anything with it.
It doesn't have to just be on a brat,
although that's delicious.
We like pickled veggies on eggs, especially, like kimchi on eggs.
I don't know why, but it's so good.
[knife slicing] So I'm just gonna fill this jar,
again, not to the very top.
I'm gonna leave a little bit of room.
I'm gonna throw a clove or two of garlic in there.
And you're probably, if you're like,
really into exacts and recipes, you might not like this
'cause it's kinda like you can just wing it
and use whatever you'vw got on hand,
as long as you use the method.
So the method is chop the vegetables,
or more slice them, I guess.
So then I just threw some yummy little garlic slices
in this, this is nice and garlicky.
Then you're gonna make your brine.
The ratio is 1/2 cup of salt to 1 gallon of water.
So as you change the amount of water,
you just keep that ratio, if that makes sense.
So no matter how big or small of a batch you're making,
as long as you keep that ratio,
again, you know, you're gonna be fine.
So again, I like to use that fine grain, no additives,
unrefined sea salt, and then filtered water,
because if you're using chlorinated water,
it can inhibit microbial growth.
So we're gonna add our salt to the water here and stir it,
using that same ratio of 1/2 cup to...
to a gallon.
Some people will use a-- I'm just stirring
in the salt to dissolve it.
Some people will use a starter culture here,
like whey drained from yogurt or a little bit
of even brine from previous batches of sauerkraut.
That's totally fine, and I love to do that
because it speeds up fermentation,
which helps keep things crunchy,
but also lowers the risk of like kind of mold growing.
So if you do use a starter like that,
which will be in the handout, the ratio of how much to use
and different things you can use,
that will cut your fermentation time basically in half, so.
So I've dissolved the salt in the water.
It doesn't have to be all the way dissolved,
'cause it's gonna sit here.
And then I'm just gonna pour it over the vegetables.
And again, you're gonna want to leave a little room
because I like to put a weight in here as well,
and I might overflow it, I might've filled it too full!
I did, let me pour it out.
[water sloshing]
So you're just gonna add your weight,
and you're gonna press down.
Again, you want to keep this submerged in brine
and all will be fine.
You're gonna add your lid. [lid clinking]
And anytime you add the lid to your ferments,
you do not want to screw it on too tightly.
Again, the CO2 can expand, it can cause breakage.
So we don't want that.
Let it sit on the counter for 10 to 14 days.
You may go a little bit less on these,
but it's around that ratio.
And if you do add a starter,
it's more in the five to seven-day range.
Check for mold, check for yeast.
Toss it, discard it if there's any kind of unwanted growth.
And you'll know when the sauerkraut and these are ready
when they have that kind of mildly acidic,
kind of fermented taste,
and they're still kind of crunchy to your liking.
You don't want them to get soggy,
but that's how you know they're ready.
There is no exact readiness test, it's more to your liking.
And when there is enough microbial growth
for them to have some probiotic benefit.
So anywhere past that like seven,
10 days you should be good.
But if, again, if you're adding the starter,
it speeds it up 'cause you're adding those cultures.
So keep this on the counter and then transfer it
to the fridge once it's fermented,
where it will stay good for more like six months.
There's so much water in here that it doesn't,
they don't stay as like crunchy for as long,
and so that's what you're gonna do.
If you do pickles, if you're doing like cucumber pickles
with this, I'd bump up the ratio to 3/4 cup of salt
to a gallon of water because those cucumbers
do have so much more water and they have seeds,
and so you need a saltier solution for that.
And I'll often throw in a grape leaf or oak leaf
or something to help them keep crunchy,
something with a lot of tannins.
So that's that, that's the brining method.
We've got the fermentation method.
And with those two methods, you should be able
to ferment just about anything from your garden.
So I mentioned the book, Fermented Vegetables .
I also love the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz
and the book Nourishing Traditions
by Sally Fallon Morell.
And then there's, you know, thousands of blogs
and Facebook groups and all those kinds of things
for more inspiration and ideas.
And if you do have questions, my contact information
will pop up, it should pop up.
But my email is laurapoerd@gmail.com.
So you can shoot me a question.
I also do have a private practice.
I teach other classes and do some writing, food writing,
and things like that on food nutrition.
So my website is laurapoerd.com.
And so you can visit me there for appointments,
other talks, and link to my blog with lots of other recipes,
which is, the blog is "Brine & Broth."
So email laurapoerd, you got my website,
blog's brineandbroth.com.
Follow me on Instagram for more fermentation ideas
@brineandbroth, and happy fermenting, thank you!
>> HI.
I'M BEFN FEW TARKS HOST OF PBS
WISCONSIN'S VIRTUAL GARDENING
SERIES "LET'S GROW STUFF."
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US.
WE JUST LEARNED ABOUT PRESERVING
HARVEST THROUGH FERMENTATION.
YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS THROUGH
FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, LIVE STREAM
OR ANYWHERE ELSE.
DON'T FORGET THAT THIS
PRESENTATION WILL BE ARCHIVED SO
YOU CAN GO BACK AND REVISIT IT
TO REFRERVE YOUR MEMORY OR GET
ANSWERS TO ANY QUESTIONS.
LAWYER REMARKS THANKLAURA, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR
BEING HERE.
>> HI.
THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
>> I LOVE THE NAME OF YOUR BLOG,
BRINE AND BROTH.
GREAT ALIT RATION.
WE HAD A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT
SALT USAGE.
DOES THE TYPE OR BRAND OF SALT
MATTER?
I THINK A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT
SALT.
SO IF YOU WANT TO START THERE.
>> SURE.
THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE
BECAUSE SALT IS KIND OF AT THE
COFER OF VEGETABLE FERMENTATION.
WE NEED IT TO KEEP US NICE AND
SAFE.
AS FAR AS A CERTAIN BRAND, I
DON'T THINK ONE BRAND A
NECESSARILY THE ONLY ONE TO USE.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT
THERE ARE NO ADDITIVES.
EVEN SOME BRANDS OF KOSHER SALT
WILL HAVE ANTICAKING ELEMENTS IN
THEM AND THOSE WE TO WANT AVOID.
THERE IS A BRAND OF KOSHER SALT
CALLED DIAMOND CRYSTAL THAT
DOESN'T HAVE THOSE.
JUST READ THE LABEL.
I LIKE THE SEA SALTS THAT ARE
UNREFINED AND HAVE A LITTLE BIT
OF COLOR TO THEM BECAUSE THEIR
SALINITY ISN'T ANY DIFFERENT,
BUT WHAT THEY CONTRIBUTE IN
TRACE MINERALS IS GOING TO BE
HIGHER.
SO THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS
TO HAVE NO ADDITIVES AND HAVE IT
BE NONI'VE NONEYE NONIODIZED.
>> PURE SALT.
>> YES.
>> DO YOU HAVE ANY
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WHERE PEOPLE
CAN FIND SOME OF THE TOOLS YOU
WERE USING?
YOU MENTIONED THE SCALE AND THE
WEIGHTS.
ANY SORT OF SOURCES FOR THAT
THAT YOU REALLY ENJOY OR THINGS
THEY SHOULD LOOK FOR IF THEY ARE
SOURCING?
>> YEAH.
FOR THE SCALE I USE THE BRAND
ESCALI.
THAT'S COMMONLY USED IN CULINARY
PURPOSES.
I DON'T HAVE ALLEGIANCE TO ANY
BRAND NECESSARILY.
IT'S NICE TO GET A DIGITAL ONE
BECAUSE YOU CAN GET THAT
ACCURACY WITH HOWEVER MANY
DECIMAL POINTS PAST THE -- YOU
KNOW, JUST STRAIGHT UP POUNDS.
IF YOU HAVE JUST A MANUAL SCALE,
YOU COULD USE IT.
IT JUST WON'T BE QUITE AS
ACCURATE.
ESPECIALLY IF IT'S HARD TO READ
OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
I WOULD GET A DIGITAL SCALE.
WHERE YOU GET IT, I DON'T KNOW.
HARD TO RECOMMEND AMAZON, BUT
THAT'S PROBABLY WHERE YOU COULD
GET IT.
THE GLASS WEIGHTS YOU CAN GET AT
CO-OPS, HARDWARE STORE.
USE THE BRAND PICKLE PEBBLES BY
MASON TOPS.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO LOOK ONLINE
FOR THEM, JUST MADE SURE THEY'RE
MADE WITH LEAD-FREE GLASS MADE
SPECIFICALLY FOR FERMENTATION.
>> EXCELLENT.
MIKE IS WONDERING CAN YOU USE A
PLASTIC JAR FOR DOING THIS TYPE
OF THING?
>> I WOULDN'T.
IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WOULDN'T
WORK NECESSARILY, BUT, AGAIN,
WE'RE CREATING A HIGH-SALT AND
HIGH-ACID ENVIRONMENT.
ESPECIALLY THE ACIDITY COULD
LEAD TO UNWANTED CHEMICALS I
GUESS YOU'D SAY IN THE PLASTIC
LEECH INTOOG YOUR
LEACHING INTO YOUR FOOD.
AVOIDING PLASTIC IS IMPORTANT
BECAUSE OF THE BPA.
ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE PUTTING
SOMETHING SO ACIDIC IN THERE
IT'S NICE TO USE GLASS.
IF YOU DON'T HAVE GLASS JARS OR
THERE IS KIND OF A GLASS JAR
SHORTAGE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE
EVERYONE IS PUTTING THEIR OWN
FOOD UP, YOU CAN USE CERAMIC
FERMENTATION CROCKS YOU CAN FIND
AT HARDWARE STORES, ONLINE.
LEHMANS HAS A SUPPLY.
YOU CAN USE CERAMIC IF YOU FIND
GLASS OR YOU WANTED TO DO A
REELTLY BIG BATCH.
THEN YOU'D GO UP TO THE CROCKS.
THE BIGGEST BATCH YOU CAN DO IN
A GLASS IS A GALLON.
BUT I WOULD NOT USE PLASTIC.
>> GWEN IS WONDERING WHEN YOU'RE
DOING YOUR PREPREPARATION OF THE
VEGGIES, BEFORE YOU START
CHOPPING AND ASSEMBLING, BEYOND
WASHING WITH WATER ARE THERE
THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T USE TO WASH
LIKE SOAPS OR OTHER THINGS
PEOPLE SHOULD DO ON THE
PREPREPARATION SIDE OF THINGS.
>> GOOD QUESTION.
I WOULD NOT WASH WITH ANY SOAPS,
ANY VEGETABLE WASHES, ANYTHING
BEYOND JUST WATER.
IF IT'S STRAIGHT OUT OF THE
GARDEN, YOU COULD USE A
VEGETABLE SCRUBBER.
BUT ANY KIND OF CHEMICAL RINSING
THAT YOU WOULD BE DOING WOULD BE
TAKING AWAY THE LASK TOE BACILLI
BACILLI.
WE'RE KIND OF CREATING THIS
ENVIRONMENT FOR THE LACTOBACILLI
TO GROW, BUT THEY ARE ALREADY
PRESENT IN AND ON THE VEGETABLE.
BY WASHING THEM WITH SOAP OR A
VEGETABLE WASH WE'RE REMOVING
KIND OF THOSE
NATURALLY-OCCURRING BACTERIA AND
WE'RE NOT GOING TO GET AS GOOD
OF A RESULT WITH FERMENTATION.
ALSO, THOSE ARE JUST NOT
NECESSARY.
YOU DON'T NEED TO PEEL THEM OR
ANYTHING LIKE THAT.
NOW, IF YOU'RE USING VEGETABLES
THAT WEREN'T ORGANIC OR YOU
WEREN'T SURE HOW THEY WERE
GROWN, MAYBE YOU DIDN'T GROW
THEM, JUST GOT THEM AT THE
STORE, SOMETHING LIKE A CARROT
OR SOMETHING MAYBE I WOULD PEEL
IF IT WASN'T ORGANIC.
OTHERWISE I CAN'T THINK OF ANY
SPECIAL PREP.
I WOULDN'T PUT ANY BITS OF
ANYTHING THAT'S LIKE BROWN OR
THINGS YOU WOULD CUT OFF IF YOU
WERE JUST GOING TO EAT IT, LIKE
THE TOPS OF A CARROT OR I THINK
I MENTIONED THIS ABOUT THE
CABBAGE.
LIKE WITH THE STEM, WHERE IT HAS
CONNECTED, I WOULD CUT THAT OFF
BECAUSE A LOT OF TIMES THAT WILL
HAVE BLACK ON IT OR SOME MOLD.
SO JUST AS YOU WOULD PREPARE ANY
VEGETABLE TO USE, JUST NO SOAPS
OR WASHES AND ANY WILTED OR SOFT
PARTS I WOULD TAKE OUT.
>> SO NANCY IS WONDERING HOW DO
WE KNOW IF SOMETHING IS EITHER
UNSAFE TO EAT OR SORT OF IS
READY TO EAT.
BUT IF THERE'S SOMETHING FOLKS
SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR KNOWING IF
SOMETHING HAS GONE OFF OR
SOMETHING DIDN'T GO QUITE RIGHT.
HOW DO WE KNOW?
>> GREAT QUESTION.
WELL, FIRST OF ALL, I WOULD GO
BY SIGHT AND SMELL.
THOSE ARE KIND OF THE FIRST.
IF YOU SEE ANY SIGNS OF MOLD, I
WOULD TOSS IT.
SO THAT'S GOING TO LOOK LIKE
SPOTS AND IT'S GOING TO LOOK
FUZZY.
THERE'S DIFFERENT TYPES OF
MOLDS, SO ONES YOU MAY SEE MAY
BE PINK, ORANGE.
THOSE ARE THE ONES YOU
DEFINITELY WANT TO WATCH OUT
FOR.
THERE'S WHITE MOLD, GREEN MOLD,
BLACK, BLUE.
IT COULD LOOK LIKE A LOT OF
DIFFERENT COLORS, BUT IT'S GOING
TO BE SPOTTY AND FUZZY.
I WOULD TOSS THAT OUT.
YOU MAY GET SOME YEAST FORMATION
LIKE A FILM, MILKY OR CLOUDY.
THOSE I WOULD THROW AS WELL.
YEAH.
SO THOSE I WOULD TOSS.
AS I MENTIONED, IT'S GOING TO
SMELL LIKE SAUERKRAUT.
IT'S GOING TO SMELL PICKLEY AND
A LITTLE BIT STRONG LIKE WHEN I
OPEN MY FRIDGE.
BUT IF IT IS VERY OFF-PUTTING, I
WOULD TOSS THAT.
SO ANY VISIBLE SIGNS OF MOLD OR
SMELL THAT'S OFF-PUTTING.
IF YOU TAKE IT AND YOU'RE NOT
THIS AIN'T RIGHT, I WOULD
OBVIOUSLY SPIT IT OUT.
TWO WEEKS FOR FERMENTED
VEGETABLES IS KIND OF A JEFNL
RULE FOR SAFETY BECAUSE YOU HIT
THAT KIND OF PEAK MICROBIAL
GROWTH.
THE BENEFICIAL MICROBES ARE OUT.
SO BEYOND KIND OF TRUSTING YOUR
OWN SENSES AND USING THAT
GENERAL RULE OF TWO WEEKS AND
MAKING SURE THAT EVERYTHING YOU
USE IS REALLY CLEAN, YOU'RE
USING ENOUGH SALT AND THOSE
TYPES OF THINGS.
YOU CAN GET PH TEST STRIPS AND
SOME PEOPLE DO THIS FOR
FERMENTED VEGETABLES OR KOMBUCHA
WHERE THE TEST STRIPS WOULD BE
ABLE TO TELL YOU IF IT'S GOT A
HIGH ENOUGH ASIDTY OR LOW ENOUGH
PF TO INHIBIT MICROBIAL GROWTH.
YOU COULD RESEARCH WHAT THAT
NUMBER S. IN OTHER WORDS, I
WOULD SAY GETTING INTO SOME OF
THOSE BOOKS I MENTIONED LIKE
FERMENTED CONVENIENTLIABLES,
THERE'S VIRVE WALLS OF WHAT IT
WILL LOOK LIKE WHEN IT'S NOT
RIGHT SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO
TOTALLY GUESS.
>> SO WENDY IS WONDERING, DOES
THE QUALITY OF THE WATER THAT
WE'RE USING OR THE SOURCE OF
WATER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
WELL WATER, SOMETHING THAT'S
GONE THROUGH A WATER SOFTEN ER,
CITY WATER.
>> TO ME THE MOST IMPORTANT
THING IS TO USE WATER THAT HAS
HAD ITS CHLORINE REMOVED.
I WOULD NOT USE DISTILLED WATER
BECAUSE IT'S BASICALLY STERILE.
WE DON'T WANT TO CREATE A
STERILE ENVIRONMENT.
WE WANT TO CREATE A PRO BIOTIC
ENVIRONMENT.
SIMILARLY WITH CHLORINATED
WATER, WHICH WOULD BE CITY
WATER.
THAT'S ANTI MICROBIAL.
THAT'S WHY THEY USE IT.
WHATEVER FILTRATION SYSTEM YOU
USE THAT WOULD USE.
WE USE WATER FILTER THROUGH A
BERKE.
IF IT'S SAFE TO DRINK, WELL
WATER WOULD BE SAFE TO USE IN
FER MEN TAISMGHTS
>> SO JANET IS WONDERING ARE
THERE SORT OF COMMON THINGS WE
MIGHT HAVE AROUND THE HOUSE WE
COULD REUSE IF WE CAN'T GET OLD
MASON JARS, PICKLE JARS OR
THINGS LIKE THAT.
>> YEAH.
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THE MASON
BRAND JAR.
ANYTHING GLASS IS PRETTY MUCH
GOING TO WORK.
AS LONG AS IT'S ROUND.
SO A JAR THAT IS SQUARED OFF,
LIKE THE EDGES ARE SQUARE AND
IT'S NOT A ROUND JAR SHAPE WILL
WORK.
THAT'S SIMPLY BECAUSE AS I
MENTIONED IN THE PRESENTATION,
THE MICROBES WILL BASICALLY EMIT
CO2 AND THAT WILL CREATE SOME
EXPANSION AND THAT CAN CAUSE
BREAKAGE IN A JAR THAT IS NOT
ROUND, BECAUSE THERE ARE WEAK
SPOTS IN IT.
AND SO AN OLD PICKLE JAR IS
GREAT.
I LOVE TO REUSE JARS.
SO IT DOESN'T HAVE TO MAGICALLY
BE A MASON JAR.
THAT'S JUST KIND OF THE ONE THAT
IS COMMONLY REFERRED TO.
BUT A PICKLE JAR OR ANYTHING
ROUND AND THAT IS EVENLY SIZED.
SO IT JUST CAN'T HAVE ANY EDGES
ON IT.
>> PERFECT.
SO ROBERT ON FACEBOOK IS
WONDERING, HE SAID HE NOTED THAT
THE FINISHED PRODUCT GOES IN THE
FRIDGE.
SO HE ASSUMED YOU MAKE ONLY AS
MUCH AS WOULD FIT INTO A
REFRIGERATOR.
BUT ARE THERE OTHER STORAGE
METHODS, IN THE BASEMENT OR
SOMETHING LIKE THAT?
>> YES.
YOU WOULD ONLY MAKE AS MUCH AS
YOU CAN STORE IN THE FRIDGE.
YOU DON'T WANT TO CAN IT BECAUSE
THAT WOULD KILL THE MICROBES.
YOU COULD STORE IT IN A ROOT
CELLAR.
IT MIGHT NOT LAST QUITE THAT
YEAR SPAN OF TIME.
THE SHELF LIFE IS ABOUT A YEEFER
IN THE FRIDGE.
IT WOULD LAST SEVERAL MONTHS IN
A TRUE ROOT CELLAR BECAUSE IT IS
CLIMATE CONTROLLED.
THERE WAS FERMENTATION WAY
BEFORE REFRIGERATION.
I TALKED TO LOTS OF PEOPLE WHOSE
GRANDMAS WOULD TAKE THEM DOWN TO
THE ROOT CELLAR AND HAVE THEM
GET A HANDFUL OUT OF THE BARREL.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO STORE IT ALL
IN THE FRIDGE.
BUT YOU WOULDN'T KEEP IT AT ROOM
TEMPERATURE.
I WOULDN'T CAN IT OR ANYTHING
LIKE THAT FOR LONGER-TERM USE.
I HAVE HEARD OF PEOPLE FREEZING
IT.
NOT IN THE GLASS JAR, BUT MAYBE
A FOOD SAVER BAG.
IT WILL GET SUPER MUSHY.
IT WILL CAUSE THE CELL WALLS TO
RUPTURE AND GET REAL MUSHY.
SO REFRIGERATION OR ROOT
CELLARING IS FINE.
>> ANN IS ALSO WONDERING, SHE'S
HEARD OF -- I'M SORRY.
JESSICA HAS HEARD OF OTHER
METHODS TO CREATE WEIGHTS USING
BIG CABBAGE LEAVES OR PLASTIC
BAGGIES FILLED WITH WATER, OTHER
THINGS TO PUT THAT WEIGHT ON
TOP.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH ANY OF
THOSE OR HAVE ANY THOUGHTS?
>> YEAH.
I'VE HEARD OF USING THE PLASTIC
BAG WITH WATER.
AGAIN, IT DEFINITELY WORKS
GREAT, BUT IT'S JUST PLASTIC
INTERACTING WITH THIS REALLY
ACIDIC SUBSTANCE, SO THAT WOULD
BE KIND OF UP TO YOUR OWN
COMFORT LEVEL WITH THAT.
IT DOES WORK.
I HAVE USED IT.
THE TRICK IS TO MAKE SURE THAT
IT'S REALLY WATERTIGHT ZIP LOSK
BAG BAWFS WE'VE ALL HAD THOSE
LEAK AND YOU'LL CHANGE YOUR
RATIO OF WATER TO SALT IF IT
LEAKS WATER.
CABBAGE LEAVES ACT MORE AS A
BARRIER BETWEEN THE WEIGHT AND
THE CABBAGE ITSELF FOR ANY
LITTLE FLOATTY LEAVES OR CHUNKS.
IT'S NOT SUPER HEAVY.
I WILL USE THOSE AS KIND OF A
BARRIER.
THERE ARE CERAMIC WEIGHTS THAT
ARE KIND OF IN THOSE HALF CIRCLE
SHAPES THAT WOULD FIT INTO A
CERAMIC CROCK, MUCH BIGGER, AND
THEY'RE USED FOR THOSE LARGER
VESSELS.
BUT I'M SURE YOU COULD FIND THEM
IN SMALLER SIZES FOR THE MASON
JAR.
>> SO DI IS ASKING WHAT ABOUT
FRUIT?
CAN WE FERMENT FRUIT?
>> YOU CAN USE A LITTLE BIT OF
FRUIT IN SOME OF THESE
FERMENTATION METHODS.
FRUIT IS TRICKY BECAUSE IT HAS
SO MUCH SUGAR THAT IT WILL START
TO MAKE YOU TEND TOWARD YEAST
FER
FERMENTATION.
BECAUSE THE BACTERIA DON'T WANT
THAT MUCH SUING AMPLET SO YOU
CAN GET THINGS LIKE MORE YEAST
FORMATION ON TOP, KIND OF THAT
FILM THAT'S UNDESIRABLE.
IT CAN ALSO GET A LITTLE BIT
BOOZEY.
YOU WOULDN'T GO FOR TWO WHOLE
WEEKS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.
THEY ALSO CAN GET A LITTLE MUSHY
BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE AS MUCH
FIBER.
SO YOU WOULD HAVE TO -- IT IS
DOABLE.
I RECENTLY MADE OVER THE WINTER
I GUESS MADE A SOUR KRAUT THAT I
PUT BIT OF APPLE ALONG WITH
CARROT AND GIN GINGER.
IT'S NOT A HUGE PERCENTAGE OF
THE WEIGHT BECAUSE I DON'T WANT
TO CHANGE THAT.
WE WANT IT TO BE BACTERIAL
FERMENTATION.
IF YOU'RE SUPER INTO, THAT YOU
COULD DEFINITELY LOOK UP SOME
RECIPES.
I JUST WON'T ONLY DO FRUIT IN
THESE.
IF YOU WERE GOING TO DO FRUIT, I
WOULD ALSO USE A STARTER.
SO I'VE MADE LIKE A CRANBERRY
SAUCE BEFORE I USED A LITTLE BIT
OF LIQUID WHEY OR SOME SORT OF
CULTURE FROM OTHER FERMENTED
FOODS THAT I MADE AND FERMENTED
IT FOR A DAY OR TWO TO MAKE IT
PRO BY ON THE PARTICULAR AND
TANGY WITHOUT IT GETTING YEASTY
OR BOOZEY.
>> WE'RE COMING INTO OUR FINAL
COUPLE OF MINUTES HERE.
SO A COUPLE FINAL QUESTIONS FOR
YOU.
HOW OFTEN OR HOW MUCH SHOULD
SOMEBODY EAT FERMENTED FOODS?
>> THAT'S, YOU KNOW, KIND OF A
PERSONAL -- IT TOTALLY DEPENDS
ON THE PERSON.
YOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE JUST
STARTING OUT WITH FERMENTED
FOODS AND YOU HAVEN'T REALLY
EATEN THEM BEFORE, I WOULD SMART
WITH VERY SMALL AMOUNTS BECAUSE
THEY ARE VERY RICH IN THESE
MICROBES.
IF YOUR DIGESTIVE SYSTEM IS NOT
USED TO THEM, YOU MAY GET SOME
SIDE EFFECTS LIKE GAS OR
BLOATING OR SOME DISCOMFORT OR
THINGS MOVE A LITTLE BIT FASTER
THAN YOU MIGHT WANT THEM TO.
OR IF YOU HAVE THINGS LIKE IBS
OR CH ROBIN VOS ONS'S, YOU MIGHT
WANT TO WAIT UNTIL YOUR GUT IS
HEALED.
IN A GENERALLY HEALTHY PERSON,
MY GENERAL RULE OR WHAT I DO IS
HAVE SOMETHING FERMENTED WITH
EVERY MEAL EVEN IF IT'S JUST
LIKE A TABLESPOON.
IT COULD BE VEGETABLES OR YOGURT
OR KOMBUCHA, A LITTLE BIT OF
SOMETHING FERMENTED TO HELP
INCREASE MICROBIAL DIVERSITY.
IT TOTALLY DEPENDS ON THE
PERSON.
PLAY WITH IT AND SEE WHAT WORKS
WITH YOUR BODY.
IF YOU HAVE AN ACTUAL HEALTH
CONDITION, YOU MIGHT WORK WITH
SOMEBODY TO SEE IF YOU'RE READY
FOR THOSE.
>> SO IN OUR FINAL MINUTE, OUR
FINAL QUESTION.
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH
FERMENTED FOODS BESIDES PUTTING
THEM ON A BRAT?
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE WAY TO
EAT FERMENTED FOODS?
>> WITH FERMENTED VEGETABLES,
I'LL STICK WITH VEGETABLES, I
THINK MY FAVORITE WAY TO EAT
FERMENTED FOOD IS ON EGGS.
IT SOUNDS WEIRD.
AND I MENTIONED IT IN THE
PRESENTATION.
BUT SOMETHING ABOUT KIMCHI ON
EGGS IS JUST -- FOR BREAKFAST.
SO THAT'S MY FAVORITE WAY.
IT GETS YOU FERMENTS THE FIRST
THING IN THE DAY AND YOU FEEL
REALLY PROUD OF YOURSELF, GET
YOUR DIE DIGESTION GOING.
>> THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR
EXPERTISE WITH ALL OF US.
WE REALLY APPRECIATE IT.
>> THANK YOU SO MUCH.
IT WAS A BLAST.
>> AS A REMINDER, THIS
PRESENTATION AND EVERY ONE ELSE
THAT YOU'RE SEEING TODAY IS
ARCHIVED AT
gardenexpo.org/schedule.
PBS WISCONSIN FACEBOOK FAIJ AND
YOUTUBE.
CHECK THESE OUT ANYTIME.
UP NEXT, WE HAVE A VIRTUAL Q & A
BOOTH AND RECAP EPISODES OF
"PLEASE GROW STUFF," SO PLEASE
STAY TIEWFNED TUNED AND WE'LL SEE YOU
SOON.
- Hello, everyone.
My name is Yi Wang.
I am an assistant professor and state extension specialist
working on irrigation, nitrogen,
and storage management of potatoes and vegetable crops
at the Department of Horticulture, UW-Madison.
Today, it's my pleasure to share this presentation with you,
and we will talk about how to grow yummy potatoes
in your home gardens.
Firstly, let's talk about the value of potatoes.
Potatoes are the most important non-cereal crop
in the world, and they are the most consumed vegetables
which is listed here, or you can buy a hard copy o o o o
and it's also available.
Thank you, my audience for participating today.
If you have any questions or comments about my talk,
I look forward to the discussions with you soon.
Thank you.
- Kristin Gilpatrick: Hi, welcome to Garden Expo.
I'm very excited to be a host
of today's discussion about prairie restoration
from someone who's actually done it
and written about how she's done it.
I am Kristin Gilpatrick
from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
We are publishers of Alice D'Alessio's new memoir
about her prairie restoration project
called Tending the Valley: A Prairie Restoration Odyssey .
We're here today to hear from Alice, some of her story,
see some photos of the valley as well.
And so it's with great pleasure
that I'd like to welcome our presenter for today,
Alice D'Alessio.
Alice, welcome.
- Thank you, Kristin.
It's a pleasure to be here, I'm very excited.
I was excited to have my book published
by the State Historical Society this fall.
And I'm getting lots of nice words about it.
The focus was, started out of journals and so forth
about restoring a piece of prairie that we have.
I guess most of you are familiar
with the Driftless area of Wisconsin,
where the last glaciers that covered the southern corner
of the state melted and scraped the earth
into rugged cliffs and narrow valleys.
Maybe I'll just start and.a. write another one now. [laughs]
- That's a great idea. [laughs]
Are you gonna restore another prairie or just...
- I don't think so, I don't think so. [laughs]
- Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Have a great day.
- Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Maybe I'll just start and kwrite another one now. [laughs]
- That's a great idea. [laughs]
Are you gonna restore another prairie or just...
- I don't think so, I don't think so. [laughs]
- Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Have a great day.
- Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
onsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Hello, everyone.
My name is Yi Wang.
I am an assistant professor and state extension specialist
working on irrigation, nitrogen,
and storage management of potatoes and vegetable crops
at the Department of Horticulture, UW-Madison.
Today, it's my pleasure to share this presentation with you,
and we will talk about how to grow yummy potatoes
in your home gardens.
Firstly, let's talk about the value of potatoes.
Potatoes are the most important non-cereal crop
in the world, and they are the most consumed vegetables
in the United States.
They produce substantially more calories per acre
than corn, wheat, rice, or soybean,
those cereal crops,
and they offer the consumers a great range
of complex carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins,
and phytonutrients.
A five-ounce potato will supply nearly half
of an average adult's daily requirement for vitamin C,
which is a powerful antioxidant.
And we believe that potatoes will play an important role
in providing the food security for the world
in upcoming decades.
This diagram shows you the structure
of a potato plant that's for a commercial production.
We have to remember that potatoes grow
from mother tubers, not from true seeds.
I divided the structure of a potato plant
between aboveground and underground.
Below the ground, the mother tuber will develop into sprouts
that will then grow into the stems
with leaves, flowers, and fruits.
The fruits will contain the true seeds
that are very tiny in size.
A potato fruit can contain thousands of true seeds.
However, these true seeds are only for breeding purposes,
or in other words, they're only used for research purpose.
They're not used for commercial production.
A mother tuber looks like this.
They have different eyes.
Each eye will develop into a sprout,
which then grows into a stem.
Below the ground, the mother tuber will develop
the rooting system that uptake nutrients and water
from the soil, and also the mother tuber
will grow some stolon,
which is a specialized underground stem,
the tip of which will bulk into potato tubers,
and the tubers are what we eat.
In the United States,
Idaho always ranks in number first
with regards to its potato production.
In the 2019 crop year,
Idaho produced 6.5 million tons of potatoes.
Second place is the state of Washington.
They produced 5.2 million tons of tubers.
Wisconsin, surprisingly, is number three
in the country for its production of potatoes,
with 1.4 million tons.
Oregon and Michigan are number four and number five.
So we're very proud to be the number three
with regards to potato production in our country.
Wisconsin is famous for producing the premium quality
of many different types of potatoes,
including russets, round whites, reds, yellows,
purples, and other specialty varieties.
If we divide the Wisconsin potatoes
by the way we consume them, we have French fry potatoes,
chipping potatoes, and fresh table-stock potatoes
including boiling, mashed, and salad.
So we have a diversity of potato type
for our potato production in Wisconsin.
Today's presentation,
I will talk about how to grow potatoes
in the backyard from five different perspectives:
soil pH and fertility testing,
selecting the seed tubers, planting practices,
how to keep the potato plants healthy
during the growing season, and harvesting and storage.
Firstly, we need to consider the soil pH
and fertility testing before planting the potatoes.
As you prepare, plant, and tend your garden,
please treat your potato area differently
because the potato plants require more intense management
of fertilizer compared to the other vegetable crops.
Usually, potatoes will grow best
in well-drained, coarse-textured, sandy soil.
A poorly drained clay soil is more likely to produce
diseased or misshaped potato tubers.
The ideal soil pH level for potatoes is mildly acidic,
between 6 and 6.5.
However, potatoes can tolerate soil pH as low as five.
If you have a soil pH lower than five,
please add some lime to neutralize the soil.
Alkaline soils will likely to produce potatoes
with scab issues, as shown in this picture,
and you should get your soil tested before planting.
This slide lists the website address
and some information of the UW Soil and Forage Laboratory.
I also listed the contact and location information
in this slide.
You can go to this website and look for the submission form
on how to ship your soil samples
to the the Soil and Forage Lab to test your soil samples.
About four weeks after planting,
when you hill up the soil around the plants,
you can apply a balanced fertilizer
at a rate of about 1 pound per 10 feet of row.
Repeat the hilling and fertilization one week later,
so you totally have two times of hillings.
However, always remember to not over-apply nitrogen
and fertilizer, because it could be toxic
to the young plants of the potatoes.
Do not use any fertilizer containing a weed killer,
a.k.a Weed and Feed
because it may kill your vegetable plants.
Typically, manure is not recommended on potatoes
in home gardens because it tends to encourage scab issues.
Save the the manure for other garden crops.
Calcium, magnesium, sulfate,
and micronutrients can only be added
when indicated by soil testing.
And this means that having your soil tested
is really important for growing healthy potatoes.
After you receive the soil testing results,
what you should do is to select the seed tubers.
Buying disease-free seed tubers from a certified grower
or seed distributor is always critical.
Most of the home gardens will carry the seed tubers
in the spring, or you can purchase them online.
And I show an example of an online purchase in this picture.
And this purchase is to buy some specialty varieties
for the seed tubers.
Commercial seed tubers will grow into stronger,
more vigorous, and longer-lived plants
with high yield potential and good tuber quality at harvest.
Do not plant potatoes that you purchase
from the grocery store
because those tubers have been applied
with the sprouting inhibitor CIPC
to keep them dormant,
in which case the CIPC will slow down the emerging
of the new plants, and most likely,
the seed tubers will decay in the soil.
Also, do not use the potatoes you saved from your home garden
because they may carry some disease spores
from the previous season, and if you replant them,
you will reintroduce the fungal and bacterial diseases
back to the soil in the garden,
and that will cause some crop failure.
So takeaway message here is that
both grocery store potatoes and your own saved tubers
from the garden is only for eating;
they're not for seed potatoes.
Here, I list of some common potato varieties
that the home gardeners can choose from.
We have some common russet varieties,
such as the Russet Burbank or Russet Norkotah.
We have the Yukon Gold here,
which is the yellow variety with very early maturity
and moderate yield.
They are good for boiling, baking, and frying.
We have the Dark Red Norland,
a red variety with early maturity and a moderate yield.
They are primary use for salads and for boiling.
We also have purple and blue varieties.
They are late mature with medium yield potential.
They're naturally resistant to many different diseases.
They have blue skin and deep blue flesh
that have very high content in antioxidants,
making them extra nutritious.
We also have the fingerlings and marbles
that have flesh ranging from pale yellow to deep purple,
flavors from nutty to buttery, and texture from waxy to smooth.
So our home gardeners, depending on your preference,
you have a lot of different options.
Here, I list the website
of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association.
This web page lists some common varieties
that I just talk about.
So after we get our soil testing back,
we know what varieties we want to choose.
Then we need to get ready for planting.
The first step of planting is to cut the seed tubers.
If the seed tubers are small, intact,
and having a diameter between 1 and 1.25 inches,
they're good for planting immediately.
If we get larger tubers that are larger than this size,
1 to 1.25 inches in diameter, we need to cut them into pieces.
Each piece should be less than 1 1/4 inch.
Every piece must at least have one eye,
and I touched on that before.
An eye is an indentation that will produce a sprout.
Two or three eyes per seed piece is better.
Use a clean knife on a clean cutting board
when you cut the seeds into pieces.
Sanitize the knife between different varieties
and discard the problematic pieces right away.
After cutting, place the pieces on the tray
at room temperature between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit
for at least five days
until the cut surface has dried out
and formed protective, tough layer.
Don't worry about rubbing off the sprouts
while planting because the sprouts can easily regrow.
The picture on the left side shows a good example
of a well-protected seed piece.
They have this firmly tough surface
after we put them in room temperature
for five days or longer.
And these are some bad examples of seed pieces
with disease issues.
This is dry rot, white mold, pink rot, and Pythium leak.
When you're cutting the seed pieces
and you see those problems,
remove those potato pieces right away.
After the soil temperature warms above 45 degrees Fahrenheit,
the planting can be done.
Typically, in Wisconsin,
mid-April is the start of the planting for potatoes.
Gardeners in southern Wisconsin may plant earlier
than mid-April, as early as April 1st,
and the locations up north may have to wait longer.
Make a furrow four to six inches deep
when you're ready for planting, and plant the seed in the furrow
and cover with two inches of soil on the top.
You have to plant seed pieces 8 to 12 inches apart
to make sure there is enough space between each plant,
and the row spacing can be between 30 inches and 36 inches.
Once the green shoots emerge,
you're ready to hill up the soil along the plants.
And the purpose of hilling
is to help the stolon to grow longer.
And I have mentioned before
that a stolon is an underground, specialized stem
that will bulk into tubers.
The practice of hilling will make sure
there is enough soil covering the tubers
after the heavy rainfall.
And hilling can also make sure
that any shallow tubers can be protected
from exposure to sunlight and turning green.
This picture shows some green-colored tubers.
The green color is accumulation of chlorophyll
and some other toxic compounds that can cause food poisoning.
Start hilling the plants when stems
are about six inches tall and one more time after a week.
So in total, you will have hilled
six to eight inches of soil.
During the growing season,
watering is a very important practice
for making sure the health of the plant is good.
During the bulking of the tubers,
water stress can cause some misshaped tubers,
which is shown in this picture,
or some hollow heart issues, shown here.
Also, the water stress can prevent the plants
from producing good yield.
If you have light-textured soil or sandy soil,
this soil type is good for growing some large-size
and smooth appearance of tubers.
However, this type of soil is very susceptible
to drought stress, and they can affect the tuber growth.
A rule of thumb is that you need to always keep
the top 10 inches of the soil wet.
If you have sandy soil,
one inch of water will wet the top 10 inches.
And if you have heavy clay soil,
one inch of water will only wet the top six inches.
If your soil is sandy,
make sure you water the plants every other day
during the hot and dry season.
You should adjust the irrigation accordingly
based on the rainfall forecasting.
Make sure you're not over-watering the soil
because that will cause some disease issues.
Use a trowel to see how far down the soil is wet.
If only the top two inches is wet,
you should water more.
Another good practice for growing good potatoes
is to control the weeds.
A frequent, shallow cultivation with a hoe
or other tools will be enough to kill the weeds
before they become a big challenge.
Do not cultivate too deeply,
just deep enough to cut off the weeds
from the surface of the soil.
After cultivation, hill up the soil around the plants.
If you have more questions,
reach out to our knowledgeable Extension weed specialist,
Dr. Jed Colquhoun for more information.
Also, controlling the insects is good practice
for the health of potato plant.
Colorado potato beetle is a common potato pest.
The beetles can easily overwinter in the soil
and appear again in the next spring.
So you should regularly check on the plants
for orange eggs of the beetles.
They will be on the undersides of the leaves.
If you'll find some adults or orange larvae,
handpicking will be enough.
You should drop the adults and larvae
in a pail filled with soapy water.
More questions,
please refer to our Extension insect specialist,
Dr. Russ Groves.
Controlling the disease is also a critical practice
for growing potatoes in your home gardens.
Use good cultural control practices
can help you to reduce the disease pressure to a good level
and that will allow for a successful harvest.
However, some soil-borne diseases
can cause crop failure,
and once the disease spores are in the garden,
it's gonna be difficult to get rid of them.
So another kind reminder,
always use certified, disease-free seed potatoes.
The potato scab is a bacterial disease that can cause dark,
rough, corky spots on the skin of the potato tubers.
That can affect the appearance,
but they will be still good for eating.
Early blight and late blight are some fungal disease
common to the Wisconsin potatoes,
and they sometimes can be serious problems.
Particularly if you find late blight in your home garden,
you have to remove them right away
because they can cause some further spread,
and that will be very serious.
Late blight or early blight can cause leaf spots
and lesions on potato tubers.
Another common fungal disease is called verticillium wilt.
The symptom of verticillium wilt is yellowing
and wilting in the potato plants,
usually in the leaves.
Practice crop rotation is gonna be a good practice.
You have to choose a good location in your garden
where you have not grown potatoes, tomatoes, peppers,
eggplants for the past three or four years
because those plants all belong to the Solanaceae family
and they share the same problem of diseases.
You have to wait at least three years
before you go back to the same spot.
More questions, please reach out
to our Extension potato pathology specialist,
Dr. Amanda Gevens.
So assuming that we have controlled the weeds,
the insects, the diseases,
we have watered the potato plants really well,
everything is under control,
we should be expecting a good harvest.
The young potatoes can be dug
even when their skin is still tender.
However, if you dig those young potatoes,
they may have some skinning problems,
which are shown in this picture.
On the tubers, many of the areas have no skin.
So these tubers are more susceptible to disease entry
and they're good for immediate consumption;
they're not good for storage.
You can dig new potatoes
about seven to eight weeks after planting.
When planting-- or when harvesting,
dig down about a foot to pick the tubers.
Some home gardeners will dig beside the plants
and just take a few potatoes out,
but they will leave the plants still in the place
to produce more tubers.
Harvest mature tubers after the plants have dried out
before frosting.
If drying out the plants are not achievable,
cut off the vines above the ground
at least seven days before harvest,
usually 14 to 21 days is good.
Choose a dry and cool day to dig the tubers.
The day should have daily high temperature
no higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can use a spading fork, but be careful.
Try not to puncture the tubers with the fork tips.
If you do end up cutting into potatoes as you harvest them,
sort out those damaged tubers,
and you should eat those damaged tubers first.
Store the good tubers for storage.
If you want to store some potatoes for longer consumption,
you should choose the varieties that are good for storage.
So make sure to check all the information
before you plant them.
Gently brush any dirt off of the tubers,
but do not wash them
because washing will cause some disease problems
during storage.
The potato skins should be difficult to rub off
with your thumb.
If you can achieve that,
that means that the potato tubers are mature enough
for good, long-term storage.
If this is not achievable, place the harvested tubers
in a cool, dark, and well-ventilated area
to allow the wounds to heal,
which will take about a week or two weeks.
After this period, you can check on the potatoes,
remove any potatoes that are soft, decaying, or rotting.
The ideal storage conditions for potatoes
is 38 degrees Fahrenheit
with at least 95% humidity in the dark.
If this condition is not available,
a cool, damp basement will be good enough.
Before eating the tubers, remove any sprouts
because the sprouts can contain some compounds that are toxic.
Usually, the longer you store the potatoes
in your home storage,
the more likely they will develop the sprouts.
Also, before cooking the potatoes,
remove any green areas
because those green areas will contain some toxic compounds
that can cause some food poisoning issues.
So I just talk about some tips
for growing healthy potatoes in your home gardens
and to wrap up,
I list some key tips here in this slide.
Number one, as you prepare your garden,
treat your potato area differently
because potatoes usually require more fertilization
than other vegetable crops.
Buy the disease-free seed tubers from a certified grower
or seed distributor
because that will ensure you have a healthy growing season.
Plant the seed pieces as soon as the soil warms up
above 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once the green shoots emerge up to six inches tall,
plan to hill up the soil along the plants as they grow.
Keep the top 10 inches of the soil always wet.
And you can dig fresh potatoes
about seven to eight weeks after planting.
However, you may have some skinning problems,
so those potatoes or those young potatoes are only good
for immediate consumption.
If you want to store long-term for the tubers,
you need to harvest the mature ones.
So you have to wait until the plant have completely dried out.
Only store healthy tubers,
and the environment should be cool, damp, and dark.
Don't eat potato sprouts or green flesh
because they have some toxic compounds
that can cause food poisoning problems.
Lastly, I'm gonna show you some good resources.
I have a YouTube channel called Proud to be a spudbadger!
In this website, I have some short videos
showing you some practices
of potato production, such as planting.
You can see the management and processing some potato chips.
So if you're interested, feel free to take a look.
And also I have this Commercial Vegetable Production
in Wisconsin Extension bulletin.
And you can free download the file
as a PDF format from the website,
which is listed here, or you can buy a hard copy
and it's also available.
Thank you, my audience for participating today.
If you have any questions or comments about my talk,
I look forward to the discussions with you soon.
Thank you.
>> HI.
IESM BEN FIEWT TARKS HOST OF
"LET'S GROW STUFF."
WE JUST LEARNED ABOUT GROWING
POTATOES IN YOUR HOME GARDEN.
UNFORTHUNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE HAD
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES AND
HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO CONNECT
WITH HER YET, BUT REST ASSURED
WE WANT TO GET ANSWERS TO YOUR
QUESTIONS.
WE'RE GOING TO KEEP TRYING TO
CONNECT WITH HER, BUT WE'RE
GOING TO MAKE SURE WE GET SOME
ANSWERS FOR ALL OF YOU.
WE'RE COLLECTING ALL OF YOUR
QUESTIONS.
IF YOU STILL HAVE THOSE, PLEASE
FEEL FREE TO LEAVE THEM IN THE
LIVE STREESM STREAM CHAT AND WE'LL POST
THEM IN THE FUTURE BLOG POST AT
pbswisconsin.org.
IN THE MEANTIME, THIS IS A GREAT
OPPORTUNITY TO GET UP, STRETCH
YOUR LEGS, CHECK OUT YOUR
WINTER-COVERED GARDEN.
PLEASE STAY TUNED AND WE'LL BE
BACK SHORTLY.
onsin's
online gardening series Let's Grow Stuff!
Welcome to this year's virtual
Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo.
I hope you'll enjoy this special educational presentation.
And remember, you can leave your questions for our presenter
at any time by typing them into the chat
and we'll ask them in a live Q & A
at the end of the session.
Also, don't forget to stick around and check out
everything this virtual event has to offer.
From inspiring garden tours
to an interactive exhibitor mall,
there's something for everyone.
And, thanks for joining us.
Now, please enjoy the show.
- Kristin Gilpatrick: Hi, welcome to Garden Expo.
I'm very excited to be a host
of today's discussion about prairie restoration
from someone who's actually done it
and written about how she's done it.
I am Kristin Gilpatrick
from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
We are publishers of Alice D'Alessio's new memoir
about her prairie restoration project
called Tending the Valley: A Prairie Restoration Odyssey .
We're here today to hear from Alice, some of her story,
see some photos of the valley as well.
And so it's with great pleasure
that I'd like to welcome our presenter for today,
Alice D'Alessio.
Alice, welcome.
- Thank you, Kristin.
It's a pleasure to be here, I'm very excited.
I was excited to have my book published
by the State Historical Society this fall.
And I'm getting lots of nice words about it.
The focus was, started out of journals and so forth
about restoring a piece of prairie that we have.
I guess most of you are familiar
with the Driftless area of Wisconsin,
where the last glaciers that covered the southern corner
of the state melted and scraped the earth
into rugged cliffs and narrow valleys.
It's forested in places, ribboned in streams
and stacked with high, sandstone cliffs.
Here, my husband's parents bought 115 acres
of wilderness land near Ridgeway for a getaway,
a place for picnics with friends.
Sally was interested in native plants
and John was hoping he could find fish in the stream.
I never knew his parents.
I never knew Laird's parents.
They had died before we met, and before they got to see
the restoration they had hoped for.
The cabin and land had been pretty much neglected
for many years by the time Laird invited me to see it.
We had recently met and I was intrigued by his descriptions.
It was a drizzly day when we turned
into the narrow, two-track, bumpy driveway,
and it sloped behind, between high, wooded ridges
and rock outcroppings for what seemed like a mile.
Eventually, we came upon a clearing
and found a shabby, gray shack.
We climbed three sagging steps
and turned to look out over the open fields
and the wooded ridges that surrounded them.
Even though it had been neglected,
I was enchanted by the land.
We explored the overgrown field, surrounded by the oak wood
on one side and the amazing pine woods on the south.
We named it "The Valley" and we began spending more
and more time, nights and weekends,
learning about the land and making the cabin habitable.
I grew up in the East,
and so Maryland and Delaware and Long Island and New Jersey.
I didn't, I was not familiar with the plants
that grew in the Valley.
And so visitors from the university and the DNR told us
that the wild field was probably once a prairie.
We gathered books and began to know the names
of the plants and the trees that surrounded us
and the ones that should be here.
We were visited by representatives
of the DNR who were concerned
that we were gonna divide up the land and build houses.
We assured them that we were not gonna do that.
And over the years, we made friends
and gained a lot of information and assistance from the DNR.
We also learned of other organizations
that were dedicated to prairies and woods,
the Driftless Area Land Conservancy
and the Prairie Enthusiasts.
We attended meetings and field trips, learning more
which plants had to be removed,
like the reed canary grass along the stream
and the other invasives.
Burning the fields was the best tool we had.
And we were excited to see how the prairie plants reappeared
after the fires, while many invasives died.
Gradually, the fields took on a prairie look.
Native plants spread, bluestem and Indian grasses,
coneflowers, columbine, and Turk's cap lillies.
And we'd saved the seeds and replanted
and shared them with other people,
and started to plan a restoration in the woods too.
We burned there, which was exciting.
We also did some logging of unwanted or overgrown trees.
It was clear that nature intended
the north hillsides to be oak,
while the growth of pines on the high bluffs
on the other side was known as a pine relict,
the leftover remnant of an ancient white pine forest
that thrived on sandstone bluffs in earlier, cooler centuries.
We frequently had calls from students
and foresters who asked to visit the pine relict,
which was and is a very special place.
After 20 years of labor, as we began to feel our age,
we hired helpers to do the heavy work
of removing the invasives and burning the fields,
while we enjoyed time exploring and writing in the journal.
Once again, we were visited by representatives
from the DNR who had an attractive proposal.
They were interested in buying the Valley and including it
in the new Ridgeway Pines State Natural Area
that they were planning, open for public hiking
and exploration.
Though we hated to let the land go,
we knew it would be in good hands, and we're pleased
that other nature lovers would have a chance to enjoy it.
For as long as we live,
we have ownership rights to the cabin and five acres.
When we die, this too becomes the responsibility of the DNR.
We hope they love it and care for this special place
the way we have done.
This year, the State Historical Society
published my book.
If you want to read more,
the book is available from them or from me for $16.
- Thank you for giving us kind of
the overview of your story.
I'd like to talk a little bit more as we can here.
Just kind of going over some of the highlights of your story.
You talk a lot about burning invasive species.
- Mm-hmm.
- Can you talk about how maybe a controlled burn might work?
Like how, how did you manage that?
That sounds like, almost a little scary to me.
- It's very exciting.
We love doing burns.
We had a lot of friends
that were interested in doing burns too.
You'd be surprised how many people want to do burns.
You burn, you pick out an area
and burn down one side and down the other side,
burn on three sides so that there's a protected area.
And then you light a fire across that fourth side.
And then you have people stationed all the way
along the other sides to keep sparks from flying around.
And it just burns depending on the wind.
You have to decide where the wind is.
It just burns right down
and pretty soon, you have a big square of burned grass.
- And why do you burn?
- Why do you burn?
For some reason, that gets rid of the invasives
like sumac and things that we don't want.
And the plant, the seeds that are in there
from the old prairie apparently come popping up in a fire.
That's the way prairie fires have always worked,
and it does work.
- Oh, okay.
And you know, another question I had is,
how did you decide what plants to plant?
How do you know what the prairie was?
How do you go about finding that out?
- Well, you should see my 27 copies of books here
that I have on how to restore a prairie.
That's how we learn.
We talked to people, we went to the meetings, as I told you.
And then I read, you know, John Curtis
and lots of people's books about how to restore a prairie.
And eventually, we did learn.
And there's a lot of people, you'd be surprised
how many people there are out there doing this.
And I'm sure there may be some
in the audience that could do a better job
of talking about it than I can.
- Now, you had a pretty big prairie to work with.
I'm going to share our screen again and try to show the map.
- It is 115 acres, so...
- Well, that's pretty good size.
- Yeah.
- And maybe you can orientate people here using the map.
This is where that cabin
that you talked about, this area up here.
And so looking out from that cabin,
you're looking at this first section,
which you called Marshall Fields for a particular reason,
I think, right?
[laughs] - Well, my husband has a sense of humor, is all.
He thought Marshall Fields has a nice sound to it.
- And his last name is Marshall.
- Yes, his last name is Marshall.
[both laugh]
- And then that leads into the Daisy Meadows.
- Yeah, it turns a corner there and back...
- Where this, there's a little stream here on the side.
It sounds like the pine relict
is an especially important part of this land.
It's not a prairie, so to speak.
It's a different part that needed
to be protected and cared for.
What makes it so special?
- Well, it's called a relict.
And in fact, it is a relict of centuries ago
when there were pine trees.
When the climate was a lot colder
and there were mostly pine around here.
And so, the few patches of that that are left,
most of them are gone now.
Over the years, they've been cut, died and so forth,
but the few that are left, and they're all out
in that area of the Driftless area, are called relicts.
And we are trying to hold on to them and take care of them.
- And you were saying the DNR was particularly interested
in the pine relict portion of the land.
You've since donated this property
except for the cabin to the DNR, correct?
- Yes, yes, and people...
People in the forestry department,
foresters and other people like that
come out to see the pine relict mostly.
That's the exciting part of it.
- The prairie is stunning.
I've been out there, again, if you look at this view.
This is obviously, we're standing where the cabin is.
So if you come out here in this first section,
that is Marshall Fields.
What originally did you guys plant there?
- When did we?
When and what?
What did you plant in the Marshall Fields area?
- Oh, we started, oh gosh, started burning right,
soon after we got there, we were encouraged to burn.
As I said, we had help from the DNR
and we met a lot of people that had done prairie burning,
and we assisted them on their burns.
And so then they came and assisted us.
And the purpose was to turn,
to get those native plants in there,
which, it's an easy way to do it.
You burn and they come up.
I don't... It's, they're in the soil.
And you get rid of the honeysuckle and the...
Oh, honeysuckle is a terrible problem.
You get asters like this, purple asters and coneflowers
and Turk's cap lily and beautiful, beautiful plants.
- This is a coneflower right here,
we're seeing in the foreground of this picture, right?
- Now, that is a coneflower, the white one.
- Mm-hmm, and what about, I know that there's some grasses
as well that are native to the prairie
that you guys tried to encourage.
- Mm-hmm.
Maybe talk about a few of those there.
I had no idea, till I read your book,
there were so many kinds of grass.
[both laughing]
Wow.
- There's big bluestem.
That's big bluestem right there in the foreground.
And they're called turkey foot
because of the way the seeds spread out
like a turkey's foot.
And when the settlers were traveling across the prairie
settling our country, that's what they saw, were just fields
and fields and fields of big bluestem that would come up
past their horses' backs.
Just, just huge.
And you read about that in all the books,
history books that you read about.
Then there's a shorter one,
but a nice one called Indian grass.
I like it 'cause the seeds come off very easily.
Just slip 'em right off.
And that's pretty too.
- So you talked, you just mentioned this right now
about the seeds coming up. - Yeah.
- And I have a question about that.
Did you guys have to go through
and hand-pick all the seeds off and then replant them?
Or how did you do, did they do it all by themselves?
You don't have to do a thing.
- Of course they do a lot of it by themselves,
but we also in the fall,
that was one of the things we did was take a bag
and go out and pick seeds.
It's fun to do.
- So for people who are coming at this whole idea
of restoring a prairie from the perspective
of someone who has a garden in the backyard,
these are not the same things.
- No, they're not. [laughs]
And I grew up, as I said, in the East
and we always had gardens.
I helped my father with his garden all the time.
So I was used to digging and planting,
but this was, the prairie was all a very new thing to me.
And I guess I just got hooked on it.
And it was just fun to see how it changed.
- Well, it's definitely a passion.
You would not take on something that big
unless you're very passionate about it.
- Or crazy. [laughs]
- And just a couple of other questions.
And I apologize if you hear my dog in the background.
[laughs]
He occasionally will step into these meetings...
- He wants to be included.
- ...just when you least expect him.
But anyway, I was gonna ask you actually
about the actual wildlife, not the domesticated life.
What do you see there in the prairie?
- Oh, gosh, there's a lot about that in the book.
Somebody came and counted 40 different bird species, I think.
Some bird you could listen to them and hear
and tell what they were.
We also had coyotes across the stream.
There was a little valley where at nighttime,
you'd hear the coyotes howling.
So there were a lot of coyotes.
I don't remember that we had any wolves.
It was mainly the coyotes and the birds.
And of course, wild turkeys.
Things that bite you. [laughs]
Wild turkeys and...
And, course a lot of birds, I guess, mainly
'cause we had eagles fly over
and lots of just wonderful birds.
But I don't think...
I can't think of any other animals besides the coyotes,
turtles, and frogs in the stream, and beaver.
Oh, yes, I have a whole chapter on beaver.
Forgot about that.
And they were wonderful.
And did you have a wildlife management
alongside of prairie management,
or it's just kind of whoever came in,
came in and... - Yeah.
- Was it determined by the plants that you planted,
say what kind of birds might've been in the area,
that sort of thing?
- Definitely for the birds, but not for the other animals.
They were just there because that's where they wanted to be.
But the birds were attracted
to the different plants, definitely.
And we did have a wonderful beaver dam
and lake in the stream for a few years.
- Wonderful, did you...
Can you talk a little bit about some of the friends groups
and the different ways that people can get more information
and help if they want to try
and take on some project like this?
- Well, I have a three-foot bookshelf up here. [laughs]
I'm probably gonna be getting rid of some of them.
No, there's just so many.
What did I like particularly?
There's a whole series,
A Field Guide to Trees and Plants .
A field guide to, everything.
There's one for everything, mainly a book
on what we should be planting in a place like that,
which plants a prairie should have.
It's three or four different books on those.
I'm particularly fond of trees.
So I have about five or six tree books.
But, you know, if you...
I would suggest you could go to the Arboretum,
an arboretum somewhere and look at their sections
on growing plants or nature plants.
- I guess one other question I had too was,
the two of you working together doing this,
was it something that took every weekend?
Is it something that you'd come in
and do for a group, a period of time and then...
- Depending on the season, yes.
We'd say, Oh gosh, we, you know, we'd get out there and see
that there was a whole lot of something there
that we didn't want. [clears throat]
And so that would be what we'd do that weekend,
or we knew what was gonna be there.
And so we were ready for it.
And then up the back hill behind the cabin
was a scraggly woods, some dead trees and so forth.
And we decided that we wanted to plant some oaks up there,
more oaks because that's where they would be.
And so, one weekend we killed ourselves
planting oak trees up there.
And it depended on the season and what caught our fancy.
Maybe we had visited somebody else's land
and we wanted some of what they had. [laughs]
So it gets to be a whole-- takes over your life, really.
- Well, what a tremendous legacy that this prairie is there
and that it's so beautiful.
And the pine relict is still standing in there.
And the legacy continues
because people can read how you did it, why you did it,
and you write about it so beautifully,
as beautiful as the prairie is.
I think your writing is even more beautiful
when you talk about it.
You can see the passion in that writing.
And I encourage people to read more about it
in Tending the Valley .
It's available at libraries, it's available
pretty much anywhere, any book, retailer, et cetera
like you said, from you, from us, wisconsinhistory.org.
So I encourage people to do that.
And I thank you so much
for joining us at Garden Expo, Alice.
- Well, thank you for having me, Kristin.
It's been a pleasure to work with everybody
at the State Historical Society.
They've been so cooperative. [laughs]
So I've enjoyed the whole experience a lot.
Maybe I'll just start and write another one now. [laughs]
- That's a great idea. [laughs]
Are you gonna restore another prairie or just...
- I don't think so, I don't think so. [laughs]
- Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Have a great day.
- Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
>> HI.
I'M BEN FUTA, HOST OF "LET'S
GROW STUFF."
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
A PRAIRIE REFS RESTORATION ODYSSEY.
THIS WAS ALL RECORDED SO YOU'LL
BE ABLE TO GO BACK AND WATCH
THIS AGAIN IF YOU'D LIKE OR PICK
UP ON ANY TIDBITS YOU MIGHT HAVE
MISSED.
ALSO YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS
THROUGH THE LIVE STREAM ON
FACEBOOK OR YOUTUBE.
ALICE, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR
JOINING US TODAY.
WE APPRECIATE IT.
>> CERTAINLY WELCOME.
>> SO OUR FIRST QUESTION IS
COMING IN FROM JESS, AND SHE'S
ASKING HOW DOES ONE BEGIN THIS?
IF SOMEONE HAS A SPACE THEY'D
LIKE TO TRY, WHAT IS THE FIRST
THING THEY NEED TO THINK ABOUT
IF THEY'D LIKE TO RESTORE A
PRAIRIE?
>> WELL, DON'T TRY AND DO TOO
MUCH ALL AT ONCE.
WE HAD A PATCH OF SANDY, ROUGH
SOIL IN FRONT OF THE NEW CABIN
THAT HAD GOTTEN ALL DIGGED UP
WHEN WE WERE BUILDING IT AND WE
DECIDED WE'D HAVE A PRAIRIE
HERE.
IT WAS DAMP AND SANDY.
AND SO WE HAD TO TRY TWO
DIFFERENT THINGS BEFORE WE
CAUGHT ONE THAT LIKED THAT KIND
OF PLACE TO BE, YOU KNOW.
IT'S NOT -- DOESN'T WORK
EVERYWHERE.
>> IT'S NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE IN
THAT WAY.
NATURE HAS ITS OWN IDEAS, FOR
SURE.
>> IT'S A PRAIRIE BY NOW.
>> ANOTHER QUESTION.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR THE
PRAIRIE TO SORT OF TAKE OFF?
DID ANYTHING LIKE THOSE
HONEYSUCKLE YOU DEALT WITH COME
BACK OR ONCE THE PRAIRIE GOT UP
AND ROLLING, WERE THEY SORT OF
KEPT AT BAY?
>> THEY KEEP COMING BACK.
BUT WE KEEP -- WE KEPT FIGHTING
THEM.
AND EVENTUALLY I WOULD HAVE TO
SAY WE DID DO MOST OF IT, BUT,
YOU KNOW, IT WASN'T RIGHT AWAY.
IT WASN'T THE FIRST YEAR.
YOU DIDN'T JUST PULL IT OUT AND
IT WAS GONE, BY ANY MEANS.
WE HAD A LOT OF HELP, TOO.
AND, YOU KNOW, IT JUST TAKES
TIME AND A LOFT PATIENCE.
>> PATIENCE AND VIGILANCE.
WE HAVE A FAMILY WOODLANDS AS
WELL.
YOU GOT TO STAY ON TOP OF IT.
IT'S NEVER-ENDING.
SO THIS NEXT QUESTION IS COMING
FROM ANGIE.
YOU KNOW, I KNOW THIS QUESTION
WELL.
I KNOW IT AS A GARDENER.
IT'S REALLY HARD FOR ME TO
ANSWER, BUT IT'S ONE OF MY
FAVORITES.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE PLANT OR
GROUP OF PLANTS THAT YOU REALLY
ENJOY IN THE PRAIRIE?
>> OH, YES.
WELL, CONEFLOWERS, GENTIANS.
THEY ARE WONDERFUL.
THEY HAVE A VERY SUNFLOWER,
TALL, WILD SUNFLOWER.
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK OF IN A
BIG SUNFLOWER.
IT GROWS ALONG THE STREAM EVERY
YEAR.
IT'S JUST GORGEOUS.
SORT OF ONE PLANT THERE.
AND CONEFLOWERS OF ALL KINDS.
AND I LOVE THE GRASSES.
SO IT'S HARD.
IT'S REALLY HARD TO PIN THEM
DOWN AND SAY THIS IS THE BEST.
ALSO DEPENDS ON WHAT'S MOVING
WHEN, YOU KNOW.
>> YES.
SEASONALITY, ABSOLUTELY.
SO ANOTHER QUESTION COMING IN
FROM JULIE, SHE'S WONDERING, IS
THE VALLEY OPEN FOR VISITORS AT
ANY POINT?
ARE YOU WELCOMING FOLKS TO COME
AND LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE BEEN
WORKING ON?
>> WELL, HERE'S THE INTERESTING
THING THAT HAPPENED AT THE END
OF -- THIS IS ALL IN THE BOOK.
THE DNR HAD HAD THEIR EYE ON
THAT LAND FOR A LONG TIME AND
THEY REALLY WANTED IT.
AND SO WHEN WE GOT TO THE POINT
WHERE WE NO LONGER COULD KEEP UP
WITH IT, WHICH DID HAPPEN, WE
TALKED WITH SOME OF THE DNR
MEMBERS AND THEY MADE US AN
OFFER THAT THEY WOULD GIVE US
FIVE YEARS AND THE CABIN.
AND IF WE WOULD TRADE THEM THE
REST OF THE LAND.
AND SO NOW THE DNR IS TAKING
CARE OF T. AND WE IT.
AND WE GO OUT WITH THEM
SOMETIMES.
AND SOME OF IT'S BEING TAKEN
CARE OF WELL AND SOME OF IT NOT
SO WELL.
BUT WE FEEL PRETTY WELL ABOUT
THE WAY IT TURNED OUT.
OH.
HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED.
THE LAND THAT THE DNR GOT WAS
ADDED ON TO A PRAIRIE THAT HAD
ALREADY BEEN -- THE PRAIRIE AND
THE PINE RELIC HAD ALREADY BEEN
TAKEN IN ON THE -- TO THE --
WHAT'S IT CALLED?
RIDGEWAY PINE RELIC.
IT'S CALLED THE RIDGEWAY PINE
RELIC.
BUT THEN THEY ADDED THE OTHER
LAND INTO THAT AND IT ALL BECAME
PART.
SO CAN PEOPLE GO THERE AND SEE
IT WAS THE QUESTION.
YES, I BELIEVE SO.
IF YOU HIKE IN THE RIDGEWAY PINE
RELIC, YOU CAN FIND IT.
AND, YOU KNOW, YOU CAN WALK ON
THE TRAILS THAT ARE LEFT.
NOW, THE LAST TIME I WAS OUT
WALKING ON THE TRAILS, I NOTICED
THAT THEY'D BECOME QUITE
OVERGROWN.
IT'S NOT NECESSARILY AS EASY AS
IT USED TO BE.
AND THERE'S BRAM BELL DBLE AND SO
FORTH.
BUT I'M PLANNING TO GO OUT IN
THE SPRING AND SEE WHAT IT'S
LIKE.
>> CAN YOU REMIND THE VIEWERS,
WHAT NAME SHOULD THEY GO LOOK
FOR?
>> THE RIDGEWAY PINE RELIC.
IT'S DNR.
>> PERFECT.
LISA IS WONDERING IS THERE
ANYTHING ABOUT THIS ECOSYSTEM
YOU'RE WORKING, BEING IN A
VALLEY, THAT IS UNIQUE IN
PRAIRIES?
IS THIS A PRAIRIE YOU WOULD FIND
IN OTHER PLACES IN WISCONSIN?
OR IS THIS SOMETHING REALLY
SPECIAL TO THIS SITE?
>> OH, IT'S ALL OVER WISCONSIN
HERE AND THERE IN PLACES.
AS I SAID IN THE BOOK, WE JOINED
A COUPLE OF DIFFERENT
ORGANIZATIONS.
WHAT ARE THEY ALL NAMED?
THE VARIOUS LAND, DRIFTLESS AREA
LAND CONSERVANCY.
THAT'S A GOOD ONE.
AND THEY'RE BASED IN -- WHERE
ARE THEY?
THEY'RE OUT IN -- WHERE?
>> DODGEVILLE?
>> DODGEVILLE.
I'M SORRY.
DODGEVILLE.
DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY.
LOOK THEM UP AND GET IN TOUCH
WITH THEM.
YOU CAN JOIN, GO ON WALKS
EVERYWHERE AND FIND OUT A LOT.
THERE'S ANOTHER ONE CALLED THE
PRAIRIE ENTHUSIASTS.
THERE WERE A LOT OF PRAIRIE
ENTHUSIASTS.
THEY WERE VERY HELPFUL, TOO.
>> EXCELLENT.
YOU MENTIONED IN YOUR TALK THAT
YOU HAD SEVERAL MANY BOOKS THAT
YOU TURNED TO AS YOUR GUIDE AS
YOU WERE GOING THROUGH THIS
WORK.
ARE THERE ONE OR TWO THAT YOU
FOUND MOST HELPFUL THAT ARE SORT
OF YOUR GO-TOES THAT YOU MIGHT
RECOMMEND TO SOMEBODY WHO'S ALSO
INTERESTED IN THIS?
>> THIS IS ONE I REALLY LIKE.
IT'S FROM THE ASH ARBORETUM.
IT'S JUST PRAIRIE PLANTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND
MADISON ARBORETUM.
THEY SAY IT'S IN THE ARBORETUM.
THEY'RE ALL OVER.
THIS IS ALSO A VERY GOOD BOOK
ABOUT TREES AND SHRUBS.
AND THEN PROBABLY THE ONE I USE
THE MOST IS THIS BOOK.
CAN YOU READ THAT ONE THERE?
>> LOOKS LIKE THE TALLGRASS
RESTORATION HANDBOOK.
>> TALLGRASS RESTORATION
HANDBOOK.
AND, BOW, BOY, WAS IT USEFUL.
IT'S GOTTEN ALL WORN OUT.
>> THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'S A
LOVED BOOK.
>> YES.
IT'S REALLY A TREASURE.
IT TELLS YOU HOW TO PLANT, MAKE
LITTLE SECTIONS AND FENCE IT
AWVMENT IT JUST
OFF.
I WOULD RECOMMEND THAT TOO.
I HAVE A WHOLE SHELF FULL THERE.
>> ANY GARDENERS HAVE A GREAT
COLLECTION OF BOOKS.
IT'S A COMMON THREAD I THINK,
FOR SURE.
THOMAS IS --
>> YES.
>> GO AHEAD.
SORRY.
>> NO.
I SAID, BOOKS ARE NECESSARY.
>> ABSOLUTELY.
ABSOLUTELY.
THOMAS WAS ASKING, HE IS CURIOUS
WHY YOU REMOVED THE POND.
>> WHY WE WHAT?
REMOVED THE BOND?
>> MM-HMM.
YES.
>> WE ACTUALLY DIDN'T REMOVE THE
POND.
>> OKAY.
>> IT -- THERE WAS A DAM ACROSS
IT.
THEY BOUGHT A DAM ACROSS IT AND
WAS HOPING TO GO FISHING IN THE
POND.
WITH THE FIRST SPRING OR WINTER
STORM, IT WASHED AWAY.
AND SO THERE WAS NO POND
ANYMORE.
WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO DIG AND
FENCE.
THAT WAS MORE WORK THAN WE
REALLY WANTED TO DO.
WE WERE NOT FISHER PEOPLE.
AND WE KEPT SORT OF HOPING THAT
THEY'D SHOW UP IN THE STREAM.
THE STREAM RAN FROM THE POND ALL
THE WAY ALONG ONE SIDE OF THE
PRAIRIE.
NOT A BIG STREAM.
IT WAS COUPLE FEET TALL, COUPLE
FEET MAYBE DEEP.
BUT NO FISH EVER SHOWED UP ALONG
THERE, UNFORTUNATELY.
AND WE DIDN'T DIG THE POND.
I'M SORRY, THOMAS.
>> SOMETIMES NATURE HAS, AGAIN,
OTHER PLANS FOR OUR SPACES AND
OUR SITES.
SO THAT'S I THINK WORKING WITH
THE SIGNALS YOU WERE GETTING.
IT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE.
SO WE HAVE JUST A COUPLE MORE
QUESTIONS, I THINK HERE COMING
INTO THE FINAL FEW MINUTES.
ONE, HOW DID YOU GAIN A
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE
SITE BEFORE YOU STARTED?
WAS THERE ANY SORT OF BACKGROUND
RESEARCH OR NATURAL HISTORY YOU
LOOKED INTO BEFORE REALLY
GETTING STARTED?
>> WE -- I HAVE READ A NUMBER OF
BOOKS ABOUT THE AREA OUT THERE.
AND IT WASN'T BEFORE.
IT WAS PROBABLY AFTER WE HAD THE
LAND.
I GOT VERY INTERESTED IN THIS.
AND WE -- AS I SAY IN THE BOOK,
WE BOUGHT IT FROM A ELDERLY
WOMAN WHOSE FAMILY HAD HELD ON
TO THAT LAND FOR A COUPLE
GENERATIONS, I THINK.
AND I KNEW WHAT IT WAS LIKE OUT
THERE.
THEY WERE FARMERS AND THEY
RAISED CATTLE AND IT WAS -- YOU
KNOW, IT WAS TYPICAL SOUTHERN
WISCONSIN LAND.
AND SO THAT'S HOW I KNEW SORT OF
WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE
OR WHAT IT HAD BEEN LIKE.
BUT WAY BACK BEFORE THE FARMERS
CAME, IT WAS PRAIRIE.
YOU KNOW, THERE'S NO QUESTION
ABOUT THAT FROM WHAT I READ.
>> SO IN THIS JOURNEY, IS THERE
SOMETHING THAT REALLY STANDS OUT
TO YOU THAT WAS A SURPRISE,
SOMETHING THAT MAYBE YOU LOOK
BACK ON AND THINK DIDN'T EXPECT
THAT OR JUST ONE OF THOSE
PLEASANT MOMENTS THAT REALLY
STAND OUT TO YOU TODAY?
>> WELL, I WROTE ABOUT SOME OF
THEM IN THE BOOK, THE REAL
TREATS THAT WE HAD, THE TIMES WE
HAD THAT WERE SO SPECIAL THAT WE
DISCOVERED AREAS.
CLIMBING UP THE RELIC WAS ALWAYS
-- I DON'T THINK I COULD DO IT
ANYMORE.
CLIMBING UP THERE WAS ALWAYS
FUN.
WE ALWAYS FOUND SOMETHING
DIFFERENT.
BUT I WAS WORRIED, TOO, THAT
SOMEBODY WAS GOING TO GO OFF THE
EDGE OF THE CLIFF, WHICH WAS
ABOUT 40-FOOT DROP.
SO I DIDN'T REALLY WANT TO
INVITE SMALL CHILDREN, OR EVEN
LARGER CHILDREN.
WHAT ELSE WAS FUN?
JUST PLANTING VARIOUS THINGS AND
SEEING THEM HAPPEN I GUESS GAVE
ME THE BIGGEST THRILL.
>> AND HOW DID YOU COME ABOUT
CHOOSING A NAME FOR THE BOOK?
WHERE DID THAT INSPIRATION COME
FROM?
>> WELL, IT'S WHAT WE DID ALL
THOSE YEARS.
WE TENDED THE VALLEY.
SO IT JUST CAME OUT
AUTOMATICALLY.
>> THOSE ARE THE BEST, THE
ORGANIC MOMENTS.
>> YEP.
>> WELL, OUR FINAL -- WE JUST
HAD ONE LAST COMMENT COME IN
FROM NORA.
SHE SAYS THANK YOU.
THIS HAS BEEN EXTREMELY
INFORMATIVE AND REALLY
ENJOYABLE.
SO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING
TIME TO SHARE YOUR STORY AND
EXPERTISE WITH ALL OF US.
>> WELL, I HOPE ALL OF YOU GET A
CHANCE TO GO OUT AND WALK IN THE
RIDGEWAY NATURAL AREA.
BECAUSE THAT IS POSSIBLE TO DO.
YOU MAY NOT GET ALL THE WAY
THROUGH OUR VALLEY, BUT YOU
COULD BE IN THAT AREA.
SO THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.
>> THANK YOU SO MUCH.
WELL, EVERYONE, THERE IS MORE
EXPO COMING UP AFTER THIS.
WE HAVE MORE EXHIBITOR BOOTH
LIVE STREAMING, REAIRING OF THE
WISCONSIN GARDENER AND A
PRESENTATION ABOUT GROWING
GARLIC IN WISCONSIN.
SO THERE'S A LOT MORE COMING UP
JUST AFTER THIS AND WE'LL SEE
YOU SOON.