Episode 2818

- [Lauren] Permaculture is a holistic, living in harmony with nature, world view. We'll follow Matt Kerske as he checks out all the happenings at a Nashville Permaculture Action Day. And, Tammy Algood serves up dilled fennel and cucumber salad. Come along! First, people working with the land as nature intended.

- Well, it's a busy day out here at Two Rivers Park, where Grow Enrichment is hosting their Nashville Permaculture Action Day. It is the 100th Permaculture Action Day across the country and it's a great event. Fantastic turnout with kids and families of all sorts. Workers are going on, non-stopping all the different project areas. Very exciting day. So, Sizwe, here we are. You've been involved in the permaculture movement for many years here in Nashville.

- [Sizwe] Yeah.

- Tell me a little bit about what we have going on. Is the community coming together for the purpose and the philosophy behind permaculture.

- Sure I'll be glad to. 'Cause this is part of what's right with Nashville. This is a solution-based operation here. But permaculture actually was started in the 80's, late 70's with Bill Mollison.

- [Matt] Yep.

- And then David Holmgren came in and he made the principles a little bit more understandable. But it's a science, too. That's what I want people to understand, permaculture is a science. It's not just something to do. It's a way of thinking. So it's a technology in a way.

- [Matt] Uh huh.

- So what you have is, you have three ethics. Which is, care for the Earth, care for the people, and care for the community. You know, in that order. But we also look at it as Earth care, people care, and fair share, right? As a way of thinking about it. So, it is. So when you look at those three ethics, then there's a series of about 10, same say 12, principles that go with those ethics.

- Yeah.

- We can talk about those in a few. But also, people confuse the word permaculture as being permanent agriculture. Well, we know there's no such thing as permanent anything.

- Right. Right.

- And then also, permanent culture. Which is what we are striving for. This is a way of life. It's a behavior system. We're seeing people realize that that apple is not, that apple core is not trash. It doesn't belong in the trashcan.

- [Matt] Right.

- That banana peel does not, no longer will you ever want to put a banana peel in the trashcan again because you're thinking differently. And you know, the Earth needs it, you know.

- [Matt] Right.

- So we're feeding the Earth is what we tell our kids at our organization. So, my history is, I got my Introduction to Permaculture Certification in 1993 at the farm, in Summertown, Tennessee. And I came back three years later, in '96, and got my Design Certificate. So I've been active in the permaculture scene around the country. Even there's a black permaculture network out there. And from what we realize, I have been dubbed the oldest African American certified permaculture teacher in the country. Since I've had mine

- Congratulations.

- for as long as I have. So, it's not ego, it's just it's a way

- It's your passion.

- It's a way of life. Yes, it is.

- That's right it's been your passion for many years.

- So we started Earth Matters. Earth Matters was real active, it still is active in the city with regard to composting and community gardens, where we first met.

- Yep.

- And managed a big four acre site in South Nashville for almost 20 years. So, we have a really nice green storied history here in the city.

- If you could speak a little bit towards what that means to you at this point of seeing kind of permaculture in action in Nashville and how it's really taking effect.

- [Sizwe] If we would look at more spaces that we can garner in the city to do some programming around permaculture. Which includes history. You know, like George Washington Carver. Right? To me he was the grandfather of permaculture. He didn't call it that.

- [Matt] Right.

- But everything that he taught as far as his lifestyles it's the same way as what permaculture is. And I went to Tuskegee and I walked the paths of Dr. Carver and I talked to the same trees he talked to and I'm inspired by him every day.

- Fantastic.

- So, yeah, the people here, man, I mean we just had a circle with a couple, I mean it was a lot of people. Maybe a hundred people or so.

- [Matt] Yep.

- Maybe more than that. And children are here and they broke off into different work groups. So we're looking at, this is the way, we're looking at diversity by coming together. Right?

- [Matt] I love it.

- So that's like a Yin and a Yang, right? And diversity is sorta different things but we're bringing it together.

- Yeah.

- Of a common goal.

- Yep.

- Care of the Earth, care of the people, and care of community.

- Fantastic, thank you so much. ♪ music ♪

- So Ginger, we are standing in this beautiful area of forest woodland area. Right next to the Grow Enrichment project site. Tell us what you have planned here. There's a lot of work and activity going on today. What are some of the plans for in the coming years?

- Sure. Right now, today, we're working with volunteers to clear understory trees out and also trees that were already past the, in their decline.

- [Matt] Uh huh.

- This section of this upper forest system is considered to be part of the play area. It's the forest half of the nature playground. So it has a lot of children moving through it on a regular basis. Trees that are dead and dropping limbs present a hazard. But the goal, ultimately, is to restore the forest system and to involve the community and the children in that process. In fact, the trails that run through here, all of these rocks were brought in by hand by children. And Wallace was with them when he was three. So kids have done that. And the goal for the forest system would be for us to open up sunlight so that we can encourage the hardwoods that remain to do better.

- [Matt] Yep.

- [Ginger] While we have a chance to run our goats through the system and add some fertilizer and some nutrients.

- [Matt] Kind of like a rotational grazing almost a little bit.

- [Ginger] Yeah, for sure.

- And so you're utilizing the furry friends here.

- Yeah.

- And utilizing their ability to take care of some of the natives and helping with that?

- Yes, we chose goats specifically because as ruminants, when they consume the seeds of these invasive plants. Like this is bush honeysuckle right behind us. You can see it's already gone to seed.

- Uh huh.

- When those seeds pass through their system they're sterilized. So not only do we have an animal that can help us stress the plant to the point that it can't survive and we can reduce the invasive plants. But also we reduce the amount of viable seed in the soil bank. Which is critical for us in this fight. Plus this particular breed is a heritage breed to Tennessee. It's a Myotonic, Tennessee Myotonic goat, which people call fainting goats, which is a misnomer. But they're very small, as you can see, this animal is seven months old and a larger breed would easily be twice that size by now. Which they're very docile. They're able to get a lot of this ground stuff out.

- And so, Ginger, we are in one of the areas where you have done some reclaiming. Both with the selective pruning and with the goats taking care of some of the non-native invasives. What are some of the plants. I see we're surrounded almost in a sea of pawpaws.

- We are. So this is a wild grove of asimina tribola trees. The parents are a little bit further behind. They're all marked with pink tags back there in the background. This has been a really exciting thing to find here 'cause it is the only host plant for our state butterfly the zebra swallowtail.

- [Matt] Cool.

- And we do a lot of work with native pollinators. And they're actually pollinated by flies and beetles. Which gives us great education stuff for kids and the public. What we find grows under the pawpaw grove, is every spring, sweet Betsy trilliums come up right beside them along with May apples. We seem to find those three things together all the time.

- Gotcha.

- This forest has a lot of hackberry, red oak, there are some hickories here. And it has been our goal, you know, we take the task of stewardship and the idea of restoring the forest system very seriously. And you know, something that was impressed upon me deeply in Master Gardener training, was that idea of the right tree in the right place.

- [Matt] Right.

- [Ginger] And with that, I took that deeper, and thought about, well, not only is it the right place because it can survive here. But what tree was supposed to be here? Which trees were here before the Civil War?

- [Matt] Civil War.

- And since this property was part of the Two Rivers estate, so what was here, was predominantly American chestnut. Which all went out in a blight. Underneath that, it was predominantly poplar. The Two Rivers mansion is framed entirely out of poplar that was harvested off this site. So when the Civil War hit, all the valuable hardwood was removed. The nice, good oaks that we have are here because they were seedlings at the time. They were too small to be worth anything.

- They were missed. Yep.

- But that's good for us. So now our goal is to go, okay, we have these few anchor, big canopy trees.

- Yep.

- Let's open up light since children play in this space frequently. This is their play space. The goal is to open up as much sun as we can to encourage the pawpaw grove to grow. And then work the goats through to add some fertility and restore the soil. And then we're gonna come back next year and reseed this entire area with the native ferns and wildflowers so that we create that soft layer. So that this becomes more of a magical forest, play wonderland.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause we're really trying to inspire that love of nature in children who come here.

- Gotcha.

- But we also want them to identify the native plants that are from this place.

- Gotcha.

- Only what was here originally is getting replanted in this system.

- And that's one of the tenants or practices and principles of permaculture is the multi-layer approach into working in food systems, in working with land management. And so you have the large story trees and then you're working into the understory with pawpaws and then the plantings of the native ferns in the ground covers, is what you're talking about. I think it's a fabulous idea. And I love what you're doing over there in the edible section nearest the children's play area about how you're incorporating some of the edible

- [Ginger] Yes.

- herbaceous perennials. Maybe we can go and talk about that a little bit.

- [Ginger] Sure, that's an exciting part of the project.

- Awesome, great. And so Ginger, one of the tenants of permaculture is using it more as a holistic type system incorporating it into play spaces, backyards, farm producing areas. But where we're standing at here is right on the edge of the children's play space. And what we're finding out in a lot of these areas is spiral herb gardens that are existing as well as future tea gardens. Tell me a little bit about this space if you could.

- Yes, that's a great way for us to integrate our passion for gardening and cultivation and growing things and permaculture with childhood wonder and play by putting it right in their play space. So that it's there and it becomes just part of the fabric of their play space. So yes, we've done some very strategic things. This herb spiral was actually built by students at Grow last year as their end of year project. They learned all about permaculture the entire year and the idea is to create a heat sink so we can grow herbs for them right here

- [Matt] Yep.

- [Ginger] next to the garden.

- [Matt] Yep.

- [Ginger] And play space.

- [Matt] Yep.

- Then above, we were awarded a grant from the Garden Club of America. Which we're dispersing by creating, on this entire shelf, we're going to put in a fully edible perennial garden. And we're working on transitioning all the plants in this space to 100% edible. So every flower.

- Wow.

- Everything would be safe to eat. And then in the anchor of that right here where we've kind of marked out, we plan to construct an arbor and kind of anchor it with a tea garden. It would house all the plants that children could come and they could harvest things to go home and make tea with. Which just is another way to connect kids to where food comes from, where products they see in the store comes from. And it's so easy to integrate it into your back yard. I mean you can see, yes, we can do it on a 14 acre scale but we can also do it in a teeny tiny footprint right here by the sandbox.

- [Matt] Right.

- [Ginger] You know? You can sneak it in wherever you have a corner of green space. And that's what we really wanna see and inspire people to do.

- And that's fantastic because I think you bring up a really great point for a lot of back yard gardeners really thinking of it in terms as, kind of a multi-layer approach because there's a lot of families, young families, that have play spaces in the back yard.

- Mhmm.

- And some of the ideas that they can bring to kinda mainly enhance that area. Enhance that learning.

- Mhmm.

- Enhance that knowledge of where food does come from. Whether it be cooking herbs.

- Yeah.

- Or herbs for tea.

- Yeah. And you know in another case and point like that is particularly for urban people with very small

- Yeah.

- backyard footprints. Our native persimmon tree is a very thin upright tree that makes a lot of food that feeds a very wide variety of wildlife from birds, to mammals, and humans. And that's a tree that could easily be propped into a corner of a residential backyard that not only would allow, you know, families with children to experience food being produced in their yard.

- Yeah.

- Provide a good ornamental tree, feed a lot of wildlife, and it would reduce the stress between wildlife and humans in the urban setting. You know, we have a lot of conflict with wildlife.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- 'Cause they're no space for them

- Right.

- and their food. So just thinking about, you know, what species of plant makes sense to put

- Right.

- In the landscape. And that's really what permaculture is about.

- Right plants.

- Thinking about all those layers.

- Right place.

- Yeah.

- Ones that suit the ecology that are low maintenance kinda thing, fantastic! Thank you so much.

- [Matt] So David, today we are mulching with mushrooms.

- We're gonna be sheet mulching, or doing lasagna gardening. If people know that process. But, the thing is, is what most people don't have is the cheese for the lasagna. And so fungus is the cheese

- Okay.

- For a lasagna layer.

- Okay.

- And so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna add cardboard. And then we're gonna put the cheese in the cardboard. And then we're gonna add the meat or,

- [Matt] Wood chips.

- [David] The wood chips.

- [Matt] Gotcha.

- [David] And then we're gonna have it out here in the orchard. To help sheet mulch that and suppress the weeds. But we're also not only feeding ourselves, we're feeding the soil in the process.

- [Matt] Gotcha. And this is an important tenant of permaculture. Which is building the soil, really paying attention to the soil so that it can be healthy for the plants later on. Is that right?

- [David] That's right. So the idea is that, we're really trying to suppress weeds. In the beginning, and so we're just gonna lay this cardboard down.

- Yep.

- And that's gonna be the primary layer. And then we're gonna take this mushroom spawn, which is essentially just wood fibers and some other agricultural waste products.

- [Matt] Yep.

- [David] So, some people use soybean hulls. Or corn hulls. So it's more of like an up-cycling process, too, at the whole time.

- [Matt] Re-using.

- [David] Yeah.

- [Matt] Yep. Inoculated with wine cap mushrooms?

- [David] That's correct, uh huh. King Stropharia is another common name for that.

- [Matt] Okay.

- [David] A real meaty mushroom. It's got a really nice burgundy cap. Very similar to a porta bello in its flavor profile.

- [Matt] Okay.

- We're gonna rub this spawn on the cardboard here. We're just gonna try to break it up, and just kinda spread that cheese

- [Matt] Yep.

- [David] As far as we can.

- [Matt] I'm inoculating, or cheesing it, maybe for wood fiber or a cardboard fiber as a maybe a food source, keep it moist kinda thing?

- That's right, yeah. So, again, everything's made out of wood here. Everything from the cardboard to the spawn, to the wood chips. So that mycelium's just gonna be breaking that down into water, carbon dioxide, and macro and micronutrients for the plant. So it's good to use this when it's wet. You really kinda wanna wet the chips down. And luckily we've had a lot of rain over the last couple of weeks. So just do a layer of wood chips here. And now you can lay another layer of cardboard on top if you want.

- Okay.

- If you don't have it, it's not, you know, that important.

- Okay.

- But the cardboard adds that layer to where that fungus can just really run on there and have a nice bottom layer to work with.

- [Matt] Right on.

- So then we'll just add a little more cheese on there. And we'll wet this down.

- [Matt] Okay.

- [David] And, you know, if we don't get a rain or so in the next week we'll wet it again. But again, that mycelium's really breaking that stuff down into its own water. So, it's just essentially watering itself. And it's also watering this tree that we have here. Over the course of four years, this'll break down into really enriched soil.

- Fantastic. Well as we've learned here today, permaculture is a very multi-faceted science, that has so much language and so much information to give to not only the people, but also to Mother Earth. So, in your own time, please consider following some of the various links that we've provided to learn a little bit more about how you can incorporate permaculture into your every day life.

- [Jeff] I'm real interested in how other farmers grow crops. David, good to see you again.

- Good to see you, Jeff.

- This is quite a operation you have here. A big green house and I see you've got a lot of tomato plants. When did you plant 'em?

- We started these from seed around February the 15th.

- [Jeff] And what do you use for a potting mix to start 'em?

- We make our own potting mix with our compost. A mixture of peat moss, perlite, and a base fertilizer that we put together with some ground rock, phosphorous, bone meal and green sand. And mix that together in a potting mix and fill these flats.

- [Jeff] Okay, well they have holes in 'em. How could soil not fall right through it?

- Well if it's a little moist, the soil will stay in it. And if you don't bang it around too much. And the holes are so that the roots don't grow in circles. And that allows us to have a stronger transplant. We grow about 15 different varieties. Some hybrids and some heirlooms.

- [Jeff] And what are some of your favorites?

- [David] Well here's a couple, celebrity is a hybrid tomato that's a real good producer.

- Yeah! We grow a celebrity, it's what they call a determinant. It grows up, makes a lot of tomatoes, and then it sort of peters out. It's not like an in-determinant that just goes on and on all season.

- Right, right.

- So this is a good, if a home owner wanted to can some tomatoes celebrity's a good variety that puts a lot of tomatoes on at once.

- And this is a rose heirloom variety.

- [Jeff] Well I hadn't heard of this one. Is it a red tomato?

- [David] Pinkish.

- [Jeff] Oh okay.

- Yeah, it's real good flavor. And this is an indigo rose.

- Okay, so I'm trying these this year. I noticed on mine, too, how purple the stems are.

- [David] Mhmm.

- This is a very dark purple. Looked like a cherry tomato according to the catalog about, oh, about that big.

- Yeah. Yeah. And I found that the dark purple, or black tomatoes, are just an amazing flavor.

- Right, we grow one called Japanese black trifele.

- Okay.

- That we like a lot. It's a sort of pear shaped.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- And here's another one called black prince.

- [Jeff] Black prince. I hadn't heard of that one.

- [David] Well it's new to us this year, too. We'll see what happens.

- Yeah one thing about gardening it's always fun to experiment with new varieties. David, what time of year do you plant your tomatoes out in the field and how do you do it?

- Well, we like to put the transplants out towards the end of April after we're sure that there's gonna be no more frost. And we have this experimental system going today this year that we've prepared the ground and then put down black plastic.

- Okay.

- So we'll have a weed free environment. And then we've grown a mulch right beside the tomato plants.

- And what plants are in the mulch?

- It's winter wheat and then clover. And so, we've gone through and mowed it down and that creates the mulch and we'll put that over the black plastic. And the reason for that is to protect the plastic from the sun's rays which will break it down and make it not last long. So with this plastic it'll be able to stay here for five to seven years.

- [Jeff] Oh my gosh! So you don't have to pull the plastic up every year like a lot of folks do.

- Right, right. So it's a little bit more ecologically proper, we think.

- And in here, the clover and the grasses are actually building soil fertility.

- That's right. And we'll just keep that under control with a mower. And then the clippings will go on to here to protect the plastic and to cool the tomato plants and to keep a mulch.

- Okay.

- Then we just punch a hole in the plastic and dig out a hole and put our tomato real deep.

- [Jeff] Yeah a tomato plant can be planted deeper than it was grown originally. Unlike most plants that we have to plant right at where they were before.

- Yeah the stems will actually grow new roots. And it's healthy for it. And then we'll come back and water this after we get a row done.

- Okay. Do you have any problems with diseases in your tomato patch?

- We always have a blight that blows in in Tennessee.

- Yeah.

- And you know, to grow the healthiest tomato you can, but, it just won't make it all the way through the summer with the blights that we have.

- [Jeff] Any other diseases besides blight?

- [David] Well, yeah, occasionally we get a black spot on the end of the tomato where the blossom is.

- [Jeff] Well that's called blossom end rot. And it's caused by a lack of calcium. So a little more lime on your tomato patch will help solve that problem.

- [David] That Franklin lime, right.

- I like the high calcium lime. In order to have tomatoes late in the year, we'll plant seeds at the same time that we're planting plants in the field. Those seedlings then will go into the garden in late June and make a tomato crop that'll come in in September.

- Quick thing to know about fennel when you're harvesting it. You wait for those seeds to get nice and hard. And then a lot of people try to hand pick the seeds off. The easiest way to do it, is to cut the stem long, rubber band a nice clump together. Take a brown paper bag. Rubber band that paper bag over the top of the heads and hang it upside down to dry. As the stems dry, the plant material dries, the seed heads will drop right into the bottom of the bag. You can pull the stems out, your fennel seeds are ready to go.

- We're gonna make a nice, crisp, cool salad today. Using ordinary cucumbers and fennel from your garden. So if you're just starting to grow a garden, cucumbers are one of the easiest things that you can grow. They grow great in Tennessee. When you harvest them though, you need to know what to look for. So make sure when you harvest cucumbers, that you pick those that are nice and completely green and firm. When they start to age, they're going to start to wrinkle like this one has done. And they're gonna start to get soft. So this one is past its prime even though it looks great. But this one is perfect. Use these either peeled or unpeeled. You can use them either way you want to. If you want to prep this ahead, you can just simply go ahead and peel and slice your cucumbers. Put them in a zip top bag and stick them in your refrigerator and they're ready to use the next day. Okay, now, onto our fennel. So this is a fennel bulb. When it's cut from the plant, it's gonna start to oxidize here on the end. So what we're going to do is just take a knife and get rid of that portion and just discard that. Then we're going to utilize the slices of fennel in our recipe. So what we're gonna do is get rid of that kind of hard, woody core that's on there. And we're going to utilize simply the slices. So you can slice this as thin as you want to. But you're gonna utilize, you're gonna separate these, just like you would an onion. And put these in your mixing bowl. This is two bulbs of fennel. Okay, so we're going to add our cucumber slices to this. And again you can use as little or as much as you want to depending on what you like. This bag is holding two large cucumbers. So I'm gonna add about that many to that. And then we're going to utilize some white onion for this. And we're gonna do the same thing we did with the fennel. We're just gonna separate these into rings and add these for a little flavor punch to the salad. And just kinda give this a good toss to get this good and mixed up. Okay, so now we're gonna dress the salad. And we're going to start with our fresh dill. Now, if you don't have any fresh dill in your kitchen, guess what? You can utilize the tops of your fennel, instead, for that. So you can utilize those feathery tops or you can utilize fresh dill. So we're gonna sprinkle this with fresh dill and a pretty good bit of this. And then I'm gonna toss this again. And add a little bit more. There we go. See that gives it kind of a little punch of color too. And then do all of that before you add the dressing. And the dressing is very simple. We're going to add some olive oil to this. And just give it a little drizzle. A little bit of lemon juice to this. And then just a smidgen of salt. About, that's gonna be about, oh, a 1/4 of a teaspoon. And then about an 1/8 of a teaspoon of pepper. Then we're gonna cover this and let it sit in the refrigerator about 15 minutes before you have a nice, great spring crisp salad.

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