6GLE_Apps_2020121

- Hi, I'm Natasha Kassulke, and I'm here with my father-in-law, Jerry Apps, and we'd like to spend some time with you today to talk about how to set the stage for successful gardening, and how you can get your family involved. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, and we had a hobby farm, and we had a very large garden. I would show our produce in 4-H. And I haven't met a vegetable that I don't love. Between Jerry and I, we have about 135 years of experience in gardening. And maybe you can guess who contributed most of those years. Jerry. 
[Jerry chuckles]

- Yes, I've been at this business of gardening for a very long time. Ever since I was a little kid on the farm. My old farm was just west of Wild Rose in central Wisconsin. And as you might guess from the years that I've been gardening, I was growing up during the Depression and World War II, where we depended heavily on our garden. And by the way, for those who might be interested in knowing more about my experiences, you might want to take a look at my book, Garden Wisdom, which was published by the State Historical Society Press.

- Gardening is a really important family activity, as it was for both of us growing up. But in our family, we start planning the garden quite early. It's actually a year-round activity. And I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about your experience in terms of journaling, using writing, mapping, some of your techniques for planning a garden.

- Well, first off, the idea of selecting the vegetables to be planted the following year, goes back to my mother, sitting by the woodburning kitchen stove on a cold January night, with the snow blowing outside and the temperature dropping, and she's sitting by the stove with a big smile on her face. And I'm wondering, "What in the world is going on? Why is she smiling when the weather is so miserable?" Well, she's smiling because she's looking at all the vegetables. And mind you, the catalog vegetables-- I shouldn't say this, maybe-- but generally look a whole lot better than we were able to grow. 
[Natasha laughs]
 So the planning for the garden starts with looking at the catalogs. And, Natasha, you might wannna talk about how we do this together and make choices.

- Sure, I think it's really a science. And I think it's a great family activity, looking at the catalogs. I've always thought that would be sort of an interesting job, writing the descriptions for seeds, but there are certain things that we pay careful attention to and start talking about; things like growing season length and how long--

- The growing season is so important in Wisconsin, because as you look at southern Wisconsin and far northern Wisconsin, we have extremely different growing seasons.

- Yeah.

- The south much longer and the north much shorter. In central Wisconsin, we pay particular attention to that when we're selecting our seeds.

- I know we talk a lot about what's "blight resistance," and what does that mean?

- Yes, and in fact, we look at most of, I think nearly all of the seed catalogs today, if you look at them carefully, give you an indication for each variety as to the extent to which it is blight resistant and other kinds of disease resistance, as well. So that's a very important consideration to look at.

- And I think another thing we've been very concerned about the last few years are pollinators, right? Seeing a decline of pollinators: bees, butterflies, and looking sometimes even for self-pollinating plants.

- Well, that's right. Especially with the vine crops, such as cucumber, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, all that sort of thing. But especially the squash and pumpkins do need pollinators.

- I'm always amazed, you know, you come to the garden with a journal. How do you use that in planning, and what are you doing? What are you writing? 
[Jerry chuckles]

- Well, you're not the only one that wonders what in the world is this guy doing. But I keep a record of where every vegetable is planted in the garden. I have a map that goes back for years.

- Mm-hmm.

- And there's a reason for doing that. One should not... This is the one of the little rules, I hope they'll slip in here along the way, or at least suggestions for gardening is to not plant the same vegetable in the same spot year after year. If you want to avoid disease, one way to do that is to move things around.

- Okay.

- So, my journal is a map.

- Mm-hmm.

- Where I write down not only what's planted in which row, but when. The planting does not occur all at one time.

- And I know it helps me because until the seeds germinate, until we see plants, it helps us keep track of who's living where, right?

- Well, yeah, that's really important because we try to put up little markers, and sometimes we don't always, but the rows are numbered in my little journal. And so I know exactly where everything is every year.

- Talk a little bit about kids and what their role might be.

- Sure. Well, I go back, of course, to my childhood, when I was living all these things on their garden. And I see nothing more important in helping kids get in touch with nature than the garden. It's a way to introduce kids to nature without them realizing that they're being introduced, which is kind of interesting. 
[Natasha laughs]
 And also, it also helps to underline the importance of helping, in this case, my grandkids, know where their food comes from.

- Right.

- So often, people just don't know. And I have a little short story to tell. One time I was digging carrots in my garden and one of the grandkids was there, and he said to me, "Grandpa, what's that?" I said, "Those are carrots." He said, "They grow in the ground?" 
[Natasha laughs]
 "Yes, they grow in the ground." And then he said, "They're all different sizes?" "Yes, they're all different sizes. They're not all one size."

- Yes.

- Anyway, it was a wonderful lesson. As this grandchild was wondering, "What is going on here?"

- Mm-hmm. The other thing I really enjoy when we're picking out seeds and deciding what to plant is to talk about things that might be unique.

- One of the things that we-- I, at least tried to do, and you've agreed with it, but we had something unusual every year.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it goes back to my dad; I learned this from him. I remember the year that he planted sunflowers that were 20 feet tall.

- Yeah, it's fun.

- I mean, it was this... People said, "Herman, what are you're doing?" He said, "Well you gotta have something that's a little different every year." Now, the purple beans, little did I know, and I should've read more carefully, that when you cook purple beans, they no longer remain purple.

- Right.

- But they turn as green as any other green bean. And what an amazing thing that is for a youngster, just like, "Whoo! What's going on here?" That's one of the little miracles, one of the little mysteries of gardening that goes along with appreciating nature, which is full of mysteries and mystique.

- Mm-hmm. That might be one way to get the kids to try vegetables.

- Well, that's true, if they help plant it, they might think, "Well, maybe I should try that to see what that is."

- We also, I think we are very interested in the culture, the history. You've written the story of agriculture for the state, but can you talk about Three Sisters? The Three Sisters Garden, what is that?

- Yeah, that's a very interesting part of our history. The Three Sisters Garden is a Native American garden where three plants are grown together, but you don't plant them all at the same time. You start with the corn, give it a chance to grow. And then the idea is the corn provides a structure for the beans as a climbing base to climb up the stalks.

- Right.

- Now the beans also provide some nitrogen, additional nitrogen for the corn, and then the squash grow around the bottom. And their role is to keep the weeds under control.

- Mm-hmm.

- Which is, yeah...

- Hopefully. 
[both laughing]

- You hope that's gonna happen. And the mistake that I made, and I have directions in this book for how to do this. The mistake I made the first year was to assume that the vegetable varieties that you find in the catalogs today, they would work. They do not work. I had three sisters that were fighting with each other. 
[both laughing]
 They were competing for space and for light. My goodness, I never saw such a battle. 
[Natasha laughs]
 So you're going to the more native... the more native species, not the hybrids, for example.

- Sure.

- So, yeah. I think with the Three Sisters, also, it gets me thinking about horizontal versus vertical space.

- Sure.

- And to think about, even if you're in an area, you're in an urban area, you might not have as much space. But if you think about things more vertically, like the sisters growing upwards, you can actually plant quite a bit.

- And that's a good way to think, because if you wanna have a patio with some sunshine, you can grow a little garden.

- Sure.

- You can grow it in...

- I've done it in planters, lettuce, tomatoes, sure.

- Yeah, the flower pot. I also have a little in-town garden where I have a lot of stuff going vertically.

- Yeah. I think another consideration, and this sort of gets back to on science. Can we spend a little time talking about soil? So, soil is important for erosion control, for water. But at the farm, we have very sandy soil, so what do you do to add organic material and make it more suitable?

- Indeed, we have very sandy soil, and it's of... It's highly acidic. It's about 5, 5.5% pH.

- And you can get a pH meter and check your soil.

- And interestingly enough, some vegetables, like potatoes, for example, enjoy a more acidic soil. It helps cut down on some of the diseases. But what we try to do at the farm, we've tried to do over the last 35, 40 years now gardening at the farm is to increase the organic material in a couple, I think, interesting ways. One way is to mulch the vegetable crops, such as tomato, cabbage, and that sort of thing.

And Natasha does a lot of the mulching with grass that we have used already during the winter to keep our septic system from freezing.

- Right, multi-purpose gardening. 
[both laughing]

- So, we're incorporating it into the soil as organic material. Also, in the fall, when we put the garden to bed, we plant winter rye or winter wheat.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it grows not very tall in the fall, a little bit, a little more in the spring. And then we work that into the soil, and we've turned our very sandy, very light brown soil into a nice, dark, humus, organic material kind of soil that works very well for us.

- And in town, you could consider composting, having a compost pile.

- Sure, yes, indeed.

- And making your own. So Jerry, I've always been impressed because I don't do this. I confess: I buy plants and I start my seeds outside. I do not start them in containers inside. So every year, you are so patient in caring for these teeny tiny tomato plants that you start inside. Can you talk about how you would start a seed inside and why?

- It does take patience. And I go back to my mother, who was in charge of our vegetable garden at the farm. And she always started, this is in central Wisconsin though, she always started plants on St. Patrick's Day.

- Hmm.

- Because that's a green day. 
[Natasha laughs]
 That's so cool. So she would start at tomatoes. And then, she would start cabbages. She would start a lot of things.

- I pretty much now only start tomatoes, and you're right, it takes a lot of patience because we have grown... Well, I think last year, we had seven different varieties of tomatoes, and it's a lot less expensive to buy seeds, but the seeds do take some caring. And I plant them in little pots that are...

- Biodegradable.

- You plant them directly into the ground and they become part of the organic material. And then, I also, I cheat, I have a grow light over them and I allow that grow light to 6 or 8, 10 hours a day, something like that. And when they get up to be, oh, I don't know, this three, four inches tall or that tall, I re-pot them into larger pots. The problem I have, as you well know, is keeping track of varieties when you have seven of 'em. And some of 'em take off and grow like everything. And some of 'em sputter along, and some of 'em never make it at all.

- Right.

- Some will look absolutely pathetic when we're ready to set them up.

- I'm always amazed that they make it at all.

- And they take off... I had some pathetic plants.

- Yeah.

- ...when I set up my little garden in town, they grow six feet tall.

- So don't give up on those little ones, they might surprise you.

- And it's so fun. It really is fun to start and to see.

- I know you always have us-- and it drives me crazy. ‘Cuz I wanna pack everything I can. I wanna use up every possible inch in the garden and you're very cautious to skip a row, give them their space. So can you talk a little bit about, how do you decide who to plant where?

- Somebody, I guess, has written about it more extensively than I have. But I've learned most of this just from doing it. For example, if you plant pumpkins, for example, and you plant them right next to cucumbers, the pumpkins will win. They fight.

- Yeah.

- It sounds like they would be friends.

- Right.

- But they're not. 
[both laughing]
 And so, you make sure that you put the cucumbers in a different place in the garden than where you put the pumpkins. And I break every other row. Now we've got a lot of room and we want enough room so that we can run a rototiller between the rows, so they're about 30 inches apart.

- Right.

- But for the squash and the pumpkins and the cucumbers, we skip a row and that gives them more breathing space, growing space.

And if you don't do that, they sort of run into each other.

You would think these vegetables would like each other, they don't. 
[both laughing]
 You gotta keep them separated from each other.

- They are competing for resources.

- Well, they're competing for light, they're competing for moisture, they're competing for nutrients.

- So, you talked a little bit about when do you plant, and you talked about The Three Sisters. You don't plant all at once. And I know one of our first crops, we plant peas. And if you stagger things, you can actually replant looking at how long your growing season is. And sometimes we planted early in the late corner, but can you talk about, how do you know when to plant?

- Again, it depends on where you live in the state as to when you began planting. For us in Central Wisconsin, you have to watch the weather.

- Hmm.

- Usually by mid-April, we're able to plant crops such as potatoes, peas, radishes.

Well, those would be the main.

- Lettuce.

- Oh, lettuce, of course, lettuce. But what you don't plant is beans and cucumbers and squash and pumpkins, all those sorts of things, because they require a soil temperature that's considerably higher than what's there in mid-April. And if you plant everything at once, the other stuff is just not gonna grow. The seeds won't grow.

- You have an interesting relationship with rabbits.

And we have had challenges with critters.

- Oh, have we ever!

- Potato bugs, we've had turkeys, the deer. How do you negotiate? 
[Jerry laughs]
 Or keep them from taking over your garden?

- Okay... Well, we started with the idea that if you put a wire around the fence and that you hang little balls of hair. 
[both laughing]
 My brother's a barber so he gave me a whole bunch of hair. The sounds really [inaudible].

- Yeah, this isn't something most people are gonna want to do.

- They shouldn't even try it, ‘cause it doesn't work, people. It sounds like it might because the whole idea is that deer will come trotting along, 'Oh I smell a human being, I better turn around and go away.' The opposite happens. 'I smell a human being, there must be a garden here.' 
[Natasha laughs]
 I'll go over the fence and eat everything. And then, the second thing I tried was moth balls.

- Uh-huh.

- They do-- They keep the moths out of the closet. They do not keep the deer out of the garden. 
[Natasha laughs]
 It's the same thing. The deer comes trotting along, 'Oh, my gosh, there's a human being here. There must be something good to eat.'

- Mm-hmm.

- And then, it's true. So we finally dawned on the idea of maybe we put a low-intensity electric fence around the garden, two wires. Somebody said, "Well, if you're gonna have to keep the deer off, you've gotta have a fence 10 feet tall, like I have to have a 10 feet tall! Our fence is four feet tall but it's electrified. And there are two wires. The top wire is for the turkeys and the deer and the bottom wire is for the raccoons. And I told him, we got my fingers crossed on the bunnies because that's a whole different problem.

- Right.

- A deer walking along, people think the deer, go gaboom, gaboom, gaboom, they don't move like that. They walk.

- Sure.

- And they'll put their nose on this fence once. They're not stupid.

- Mm-hm.

- And they'll say,'Fred don't go by the house so near. You gonna have a busted nose.' It doesn't hurt them that much. It just dissuades them. Anyway, with the bunnies, I did something a few years ago. That I thought solved the problem. And this may sound a little weird to you, but people have told me that some of my other stuff is weird, my writing. I sat down with the head rabbit.

- Hmm.

- And I said, 'Joe,' I gave him the name, Joe. I don't know that he knew his name was Joe. 
[Natasha laughs]
 And I said, 'Joe, we've got to figure out something here because some of your relatives are chewing on my vegetables.'

- Right.

- And I said, 'Joe, you have access,' I have 120 acres, 'You can have access to 115 of those acres just stay out of my garden.' He said, 'Deal.'

- I know we're both concerned about climate and changes in climate and how that's affecting agriculture. Can you talk a little bit about that? And have you seen any changes through your seasons?

- Yes. And I've been gardening at the farm since about 1967, just a lot of years.

- Mm-hmm.

- And over those years I have seen several climate, I think. Well, I'll say, the winters have become milder.

- Hmm.

- And with a more mild winter, pests that are likely to attack your garden, will make it through the winter, more likely. I have seen fluctuations in rainfall.

- Yes.

- That are near unbelievable.

- Because of strong events in the spring.

- Some years it's so dry that nothing wants to grow.

- Right.

- And as the last couple of years, we've had way more rain than we needed. And as a result of that, we see things like blight and mold and all that sort of thing.

- Mm-hmm.

- More prevalent than we ordinarily would see. We have two ponds at our farm. They are higher than any old timer ever remembers. And I'm guessing from the trees that are inundated, that it's more than a hundred years, that we've had this much, had the water table has reached a level that it is now.

- Something else that comes out a lot in your writing, and I know it's one of the reasons I most love gardening is the time to reflect, to be outside, to listen to nature. And I have to say, I know a lot of people hate weeding. Sometimes, I get tired of it, too, but I'd love to get down and weed onions. I love the smell and you get close to the soil, and you just see things from a different perspective when you are hoeing. So can you talk a little bit about maybe weeding and hoeing aren't really the worst things to be doing?

- Well, they're not. And once you get onto it, I mean the rhythm, I'm talking about hoeing though, the rhythm of point, there's a rhythm to it.

- Mm-hmm. And it is true of most farm tasks, people don't realize that they're-- once you catch onto the rhythm, then you don't have to think about it. You just do it. And that allows you guys like me, who have a more curiosity than I oughta have, I'm thinking about all kinds of things that are not hoeing.

- The next book idea. 
[laughs]

- That's probably true. And then, at the same time, I'm watching a bluebird.

I have a Bluebird house right next to the garden. I'm watching a bluebird work, develop a nest. I make see a pair of sand hill cranes flyover.

- Mm-hmm.

- And I so much enjoy the warm summer sun on a quiet day.

- Another way maybe to get kids interested, get them away from all this screen time, right? It's just overwhelming all of us. Get them their own tools that fit them right. Give them gloves that fit them. Give them gardening clothes. For me, it's bib overalls, whatever it takes.

- That really does make a difference. And even the grandkids, they... 'This is mine.' 'Well, that's fine. That's gonna be yours.'

- Your trowel, your gloves. So you mentioned grandkids. Several of your grandchildren have gotten into careers that were probably influenced in some way.

- Well, I wanna talk about two in particular. Ben Harmon, one of my grandsons. I remember him as a little kid, helping put up the fence around the garden. And he was just four years old. He's so meticulous.

- Yeah.

- I said, 'You know, insulators don't have to be exactly this.' 'Oh yes, they do.' 
[Natasha laughs]
 And he's measuring and going on. He is an engineer today.

- Right.

- Today, he's a biomedical engineer working for a firm in San Diego. I could see engineer in this kid when he was four years old. 'Cuz everything had to be just precise. His brother, Josh. We did lots of things together. Lots of hiking around, taking care of the garden, doing all kinds of things.

Josh is today an environmental attorney.

- Mm-hmm.

- I can't believe, I didn't say, 'You need to pay attention to this because the environment...' I didn't any of that stuff. I just said, 'Come with me, let's take a walk.'

- Aha.

- And we walked through the woods or we'd walk around the garden. And I would say things like, 'What do you see?' 
[inaudible]
I said, 'What kind of tree is that?' 'I don't know.' 'Well, that's a birch.' 'Oh, yeah.' Well, little did I know that that pseudo-teaching was something that stayed with him to this day.

- I live in an area where we have a very active community garden. And I would suggest that, even if you don't have a lot of space, maybe you live in an apartment and you consider looking at a garden plot. And one of the things I love per our community garden, Troy Gardens, they do a lot for kids. And they even have a children's garden where they plant all the toppings for a pizza, a vegetable pizza.

- That's great.

- They have a stone oven event. So they gather the kids, do the work throughout the summer, and then they pick the produce, and then they celebrate by making a pizza. So my favorite part of the garden, of course, is eating what we harvest. And because of the way we stagger plantings, we're doing that all gardening season. But I feel kind of bad, Jerry, I think a lot of the real work here falls on your wife, Ruth. And so....

- She does a lot of the preparation.

- When we do the picking, then it goes into a whole other process.

- And going back to the days on the farm, we didn't have electricity and did everything with a wood stove. And my mother, during the Depression, and we depended heavily on the garden and so, she canned everything. She canned the beans and strawberries and beets. Canned everything.

- Right.

- And we stored the onions and we stored the pumpkins. And we stored the squash. She made dill pickles. We lived off the garden.

- We did, too.

- Literally, lived off the garden. We have this...

- Tomato soup she makes.

- Tomato soup and zucchini bread.

- Yes.

- Two things where the whole family just can't wait. And the grandkids, especially, she will make 20, 30 loaves of zucchini bread. And it's fantastic. I like it as well.

- So I think cooking is another opportunity of you have a family member who's not interested in getting their hands dirty, maybe in the garden, that there's a role for them to play cooking.

- And we have some lotta recipes in this book.

- And you also wrote a book with your daughter, Susie, that has some great recipes.

- Yes, Old Farm Country Cookbook. It's a book of recipes and stories.

- So, at some point, Jerry, fall inevitably comes every year and it's time to put the garden to bed. And I know that's always sort of bittersweet for me, but that also is a really important part of success and planning for the next year. So what steps do you take in the fall?

- Well, you don't just leave it, as some people may do. By leaving it, I mean the potato vines are there. The frozen squash vines are there, the tomato vines are there.

One of the things that you really must do is to remove all of the material that is loaded with the potential for disease. People I think mistakenly believe that by leaving that stuff, that adds organic matter.

- Right.

- Well, it does, but it just fills your soil with disease organisms that you can avoid by moving it away. So once all that is taken away, then we take the fence down.

- Yup.

- And tuck it away for the winter. That's one of the advantages of having a lightweight kind of fence with little steel poles to easily remove and work up the soil one last time, as I mentioned earlier. And plant the winter wheat or winter rye, and then, it's to bed. Now, here's another wrinkle to it. Now, the deer, if they wish to come to the garden, and I have pictures of four or five deer at a time in my garden eating the winter rye or wheat, that's fine. They're welcome. And if the bunny wants to violate the rule that we have established, no bunnies in the garden, now he or she may come by and chew on some of that really succulent new growth of winter rye or wheat.

- And then, I think about you could move your planters inside. You could plant an herb garden.

- Sure.

- You can continue this, even with our winters, inside, or if you have the luxury of a greenhouse or something like that. I know some people use the hoops, the little...

- There are all kinds of things that you can do.

- To keep gardening over the winters, that you can continue with. So, I think, Jerry, gardening has certainly brought me closer to you. We spent a lot of time in the garden.

- We do.

- Gardening is a family activity. It's a year-round activity and you've given some really great advice today. So, I'm looking forward to getting our seed catalogs.

- Yeah, it's almost time.

- Have any final words about...

- No, other than, I cannot say enough about how gardening can introduce kids to nature. And I think that's so important, particularly, as you mentioned earlier with so much screen time these days, and just getting outside where the air is fresh and the birds are flying and the sun is shining, and digging, getting your hands dirty. There's nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty for Heaven sakes! When you're working in the garden, you're going to get your hands dirty. All that is a way of becoming acquainted with nature in a way that's so beyond looking at a movie about nature, nothing wrong with that. Or reading a book about nature. Going out there and doing it makes all the difference.

- Right, good, well, I look forward to gardening with you again this summer.

- And I hope I'm right up to it. 
[Natasha chuckles]