Episode 2821

- [Announcer] There's a renewed interest in backyard farming, and we hope to educate and inspire those of you who want to dig in. We highlight three approaches to growing food for the family. From urban homesteaders working toward closed-loop agriculture, to vertical aeroponics with impressive yields, to year-round raised bed production, you are sure to gain some insight to help you along the way. Stay tuned! When you feed the soil and plant a variety of crops, the result is a healthy, productive garden.

- I'm here with Betsy and Austin, and we're just south of downtown in the Wedgewood Houston area. We're gonna go take a look at their backyard, where they grow a lot of produce. It's kind of this movement called Urban Farming, where you take a small space and grow a lot of produce, and flowers, and herbs, and chickens. So, let's go take a look at it.

- Yeah!

- [Phillipe] So, tell me a little bit about urban homesteading and what that means?

- Urban homesteading starts to talk more about a closed-loop nutrient circle. We have chickens, their chicken poop goes into our compost, then the compost gets fed to our red wigglers. We use those worms' castings to build our soil back up. So, it's a lot more... And then we cook with our produce, a lot about preserving the bounty of the seasons and really trying to get a closed-loop circle on our small plot of land here. As we became more and more aware of a lot of the nasties in mainstream food, you know, genetically engineered ingredients and the loads of pesticides and herbicides, we decided we really needed to start to learn how to grow our own clean affordable food.

- [Phillipe] Yes, so y'all really focus hard on growing organically?

- [Betsy] Absolutely. There are no addition of chemicals, pesticides, herbicide, it's all organic. And we use the natural patterns to work through a lot of those problems.

- Sure. sure I can see that. There's a lot of things mixed up around here. You know, you don't have big blocks of the same Vegetable?

- Absolutely. Focus on polyculture and diversity.

- [Phillipe] So tell me a little bit about what that means?

- [Betsy] Well, a lot of the majority of the food in America's grown industrially in vast seas of monoculture season, season, season of one plant and they have to mitigate a lot of the problems that come from that with lots of sprays and chemicals because the bugs and all of everything, all the natural patterns there. Nature doesn't exist in one monoculture So, polyculture really starts to dig into designing your garden to be more like it would be naturally.

- Is there any element that y'all wanna add into or do you feel like you've really got the circle of life going?

- Oh absolutely, we are always thinking about things to add. We are in the process of designing and building a Micro-aquaponics System. So that's even more sustainable way to grow produce 3 to 5% the amount of water and about 40 to 60% amount of time it takes to grow plants the soil.

- [Phillipe] Cool.

- And so, that's a closed-loop circle between fish and plants.

- Oh cool, yeah.

- Really cool.

- I can't wait to see that.

- Yeah, lots of ideas.

- Yeah. As you can see, they really maximize their space they've got in the backyard. They're about 3 by 10 size beds. And I'm here with Austin, why don't you tell me a little bit about you know, what you grow and how your processes as far as mixing plants together?

- Absolutely, this summer we've really focused on growing a lot of tomatoes and peppers and things like that. On top of that, we're doing cucumbers, and we've focused a lot this year on trying to do companion planting. For example, we have some Vincas here that it is good for drawn in just bugs in general. We also have been focusing on Cosmo's and Basil buttons which are both very good for drawing in beneficial insects that are predatory on the insects that prey on a lot of the plants here.

- Cool, yeah. What's this one back here in these little shelves?

- These are tomatillos actually.

- Tomatillos, okay.

- The green salsa that you see at Mexican restaurants come out of these little husks here once you process it all down. So these have been a lot of fun to grow this year.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, that's interesting. You don't see those very often. I also see a lot of herbs mixed in as well.

- [Austin] Basil and tomatoes not only tastes good together in a dish but they actually work very well together in the garden. Basil being next to a tomato plant or in the vicinity actually helps improve the flavor of your tomatoes. It all started on a much smaller scale and as typically goes with gardeners, we've expanded every year since we started. So every time we turn a bed over basically, we will add compost to it, and then when we plant specifically each plant, we'll get a handful of worm castings which is really high nutrient amendment for the soil. And also we use a compound called Assamite which is basically like a big multivitamin for your soil. So, it's a lot of minerals and things like that end up being depleted by the plants.

- Yeah, and have y'all done any cover crops?

- We have, yeah. Last one we grew a cover crop of wheat and peas to help refix nitrogen to the soil after we grew some corn which feeds pretty heavily on the nitrogen.

- And you also do composting, I assume?

- We do, yeah. We compost all of our food scraps whether that's by means of the chickens. A lot of the table scraps that we don't finish, leftover salad, things like that get fed to the chickens. And their chicken poop ends up in our compost pile which really helps enrich our compost before it ends up in the soil. So beyond the chickens and the compost bin, we also have read wiggler worms and those get fed food scraps from time to time. And like I said, they're worm castings basically, the worm poop is extremely nutrient dense, it makes a really good fertilizer for both to go in directly into the ground as well as making into a compost tea to spray on the plants from time to time.

- [Phillipe] Great. So you spray the compost tea on the plants it's like a Foliar feed?

- Yeah. Is a Foliar feed and we will typically if we have enough of it from a batch we made we'll actually water the plants with it as well.

- And then, you feed the chickens, the wriggler worms?

- Actually, we also have a colony of meal worms. Meal worms are incredibly rich in many nutrients. And so, we manage that colony of meal worms by feeding them food scraps and those end up as treats for the chickens just gonna help supplement their feed.

- Yes, cool, that again that whole full circle thing, circle of life?

- Absolutely, yeah. If we can keep an aquarium full of meal worms going and the chickens always have an extra treat that's very dense and rich in nutrients for them and that allows us to keep a healthy flock of chickens and the circle continues. One of our main goals is to be as dense as possible to make the best use of this land that we can. And that has definitely been a trial and error type of thing. Just trying to cram as much in here as possible without being so dense that we either can't work with it or it leads to more problems and things like that.

- [Phillipe] And I think that's really always the key with gardening and organic gardening specifically, is just trial and error and just don't give up?

- [Austin] Absolutely, yeah. It's something that we're always learning. Every day we're out here, we learn something new so.

- [Phillipe] Well, thank you so much for showing us y'all's backyard. I've seen your chickens. How do we have here?

- [Austin] This is chicken patty.

- [Phillipe] This is the chicken patty?

- When we think of farming we think of tilling the soil. Laboriously, weeding and watering. But a Tennessee urban farm, they grow all their herbs and vegetables aeroponically So, Mona as we walk into your greenhouses right here, we're pretty much hit right in the face of the power of an aeroponics system. This is gorgeous, plants are completely lush. Tell me a little bit about what we see here and even some of the advantage of the aeroponics system?

- It's the red mustard, dark red mustard and actually, this is the second harvest. It's a heart come back in one week, I've already harvested last week and cut, just strip her naked really and trimmed her out and came back, and you can see, how fast she grows.

- So quick

- So quick and so nutritious, it's unbelievable how nutritious it is. Go ahead and take just a little bit?

- Sure.

- And I'm gonna give you a fair warning, it is hot and spicy.

- I love mustard.

- All right. It is good, it's hot and spicy?

- Oh yeah.

- It's got that kick to it. Aeroponics, how that works. This holds 20 gallons of water, earth grade nutrients, I tell everybody it needs four things, actually five. I'll go and include five. It needs water, Food, sun or light, and it needs a lot of love.

- That's right.

- And I'm really good about the love in part on this. And then, of course, oxygen. So oxygen. So what's happening here in the greenhouse here, these are... There's a pump in there, that pump is pushing the water and the nutrients to the top where these roots are dangling in the air every three minutes that water and nutrients go to the top, the rain force down hit the root system, it goes off for 12 minutes, the oxygen hits those roots and wallah! Think about it, oxygen growing! So the roots are literally dangling in the air.

- Continually cycling?

- Continually cycling?

- [Matt] The oxygen and then the water and the nutrients?

- Three minutes on and 12 minutes off on this unit here. So the University of Mississippi did a study on this and they found that it actually rose 30% more yield and it grows three times faster. Look at this? I am growing 440 plants in this little space right here, six by eight space.

- [Matt] That's what I was gonna ask, in about a six by eight space--

- Six by eight space, 440 plants.

- 440 plants?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Matt] Wow, 'cause you've grown up, we're very mach maximizing square foot, easy on the back?

- Maximizing. Oh yes, after two back surgeries, it is easy on my back. As you can see, I do my flip flop and pearls. I come back here and talk and love on them and eat and graze of off it.

- Fantastic. So, Mona, we're standing at these beautiful rows of seedlings that you have where all the magic begins for this aeroponics system? Tell me about what we see here and how it all goes down?

- All right, well, this is rock wool, and I'm sure you've heard of Rock wool, It's volcanic rock spun together, so it holds that moisture. You can see how moist it is right there?

- [Matt] Yeah, wet.

- [Mona] And we plant the seeds and I will tell you this, Matt, every seed that is planted is prayed over. It is prayed over with just--

- Grown with intention?

- Grown with intention--

- I love it.

- And is prayed over. So this was just seeded Monday evening. I was telling my husband, "Okay, we gotta get more seed we gotta get more seed." So we've got some gourmet lettuces, we're gonna do some collard here and some dinosaur Kale. This is what we've got started again.

- [Matt] Already sprouting after just a couple of days, it's fast sowing there?

- [Mona] Monday evening, yes.

- [Matt] Wow, growing up quickly. And then moving on down to some of the other crops that you have.

- [Mona] So this is really cool, we have Thyme, and, of course, Rosemary, we've got lots of lavender, different herbs and things that we're growing. Tomatoes, of course, you saw over here

- Taking off?

- Taking off, yeah. Oregano, and, of course, even had a baby oregano. Taste this Oregano? You just can't resist--

- [Matt] It's spicy, it got a little bit of Time in there.

- It's got a little bit of that.

- Huh!

- Is that good or what?

- Sense in the mouth.

- It's awesome.

- I love it.

- So have you ever had Quinoa? We've got some chemo growing and everybody says Quinoa!

- Really?

- Yeah. You actually can eat those leaves, you put it in your salad and eat it and it tastes exactly like Quinoa.

- [Matt] Who knew?

- [Mona] And then, of course, Red Beans sorrel and green sorrel. You were the first person that I knew that knew about green sorrel, I love that. Variety of different lettuces here. We've got a beep lettuce, romaine lettuce--

- All through the summertime?

- All through the summertime.

- Well, I can't say enough on how just lush and healthy even the seedling they just... Look here just by standing out and just such the variety that you have. You can see and after they've spent how many weeks in this seedling form before you transplant?

- [Mona] Well, actually, two to three weeks. So, this is two weeks old right here and we're gonna take this and we're gonna transplant it over here. And in 21 days, you're eating harvesting off of this.

- [Matt] So from two weeks, we're looking at this and then we're transplanting this and in over the course of the next two to four weeks, this is all harvestable?

- That's right.

- Every week you're harvesting?

- Every week we're harvesting.

- Wow! And then after that crop is finished, you'll be pulling that out, cleaning the tower and replanting again?

- Mm-hmm.

- Wow, always and endless--

- Always and endless.

- [Matt] From lettuces to more greens and the basil, Arugula performs outstanding in this?

- Outstanding.

- Just complete, just buckets of greens as you keep continuing to harvest week after week?

- Week after week.

- So healthy. I can't stop myself.

- Oh, please do. Please, do and I really do want you to smell my roots.

- And so, the roots are literally just growing into the tower.

- They're growing into the tower.

- They get 12 minutes of oxygen and then flushed again with three minutes?

- Three minutes of water and nutrients and 12 minutes oxygen.

- Smells like a light Broccoli, almost like a clean smells.

- It's a very clean smell.

- No dirt, always just clearing roots like this?

- Always clean roots

- Wow! Of course, we always get out here and clean it up. And yes, she's just beautiful, isn't she?

- [Matt] Wow!

- [Mona] This is the tail gardening, isn't she beautiful?

- Yeah.

- Look at the top there.

- [Matt] Bursting.

- [Mona] Bursting. This is a Kalettes, at the top it's very very big and nutritious up there, it's beautiful. Kalettes is a cross between a Brussels sprout and a Kale, and it just absolutely delicious, it's a little grown. This is a Dinosaur Kale here, there's beautiful. I've got three different Kales here that are growing. And then, this is a blue curly Kale, we call it a blue curly Kale. She too has been trimmed a week ago, and look at how beautiful she comes back?

- [Matt] So put to flush.

- [Mona] And one thing I found about this, the Kale, oh my gosh! It will grow... I can cut and cut and cut and cut and it will come back up to nine months growth that I get off of here.

- Wow!

- [Mona] So, I mean, that is a harvest of abundance right there. So here's the baby Kale and believe or not, this baby Kale was not even... it was planted just over the weekend. So you see again, how fast it grows. Pest control. That's a really really good point to bring up and as you can see on some of the bigger ones, I had a little pest in here. It's a garden, it's gonna get pest. You know, that's the way it is. But, our pest control is so cool and it's so clean because you see the white tub that's there?

- Yeah.

- [Mona] It's all white. And if I come out here and I see a little drippings, I know that I've got something on here. It's either the Kale worms or I've got maybe even grasshoppers, they love getting in here. And sometimes you may get some aphids in here, you know there's different things.

- Sure, common garden past.

- But I come out here and I see it, the first thing I do, is I come out and I hose it down really really good.

- Spring off?

- So, I always keep it cleaned up, that's a key thing. I'm always wiping it down, like I could you can see my floor's clean in here so that I can see those. If something happens and it gets out of control, this is a beautiful part about it. Let's say we had a disease on these here,

- Uh-huh.

- I can take these four out and not have to worry about this because of the way it's built here.

- [Matt] So Mona, in addition to growing in kind of a partially, well protected area in this greenhouse here, you also have, I noticed as we're walking in, some smaller gardens outside growing right out in the elements. Tell me a little bit about those?

- [Mona] Well, I have five of them out there growing. What I have out there is a hodgepodge, I guess you could say.

- Oh, mix of?

- [Mona] A whole mix of stuff. I have organic lemon, bulk cucumbers as I shared with you before the cucumber I have a salsa bar and which Jalapeno peppers and all the tomatoes and varieties of the tomatoes. I have an herb garden out there and I have a mixture of a lettuce garden. I actually have a sugar snap pea garden out there which is really cool. Again, that grand baby come out, pick those off there I'm gonna let her eat all she wants.

- Good.

- And at the bottom, I have cantaloupe and watermelons.

- [Matt] You're trailing heavy items you're trailing at the bottom?

- And the tomatoes at the top, so easy, so clean.

- Fantastic. Well thank you so very much for just welcoming us into your Tennessee urban farm and showing the all around and showing us how you maximize the square footage with aeroponics.

- Thank you very much.

- All right.

- I love visiting gardens. There's always different things that I can learn. And I also love to share some of the mistakes that I've made over the 40 years that I've been gardening with other people, maybe help to shorten their learning curve. Today we're visiting Louise and see some of her beautiful raised bed gardens here in Nashville. Louise look at these peas, they look great.

- I know, don't they? Yeah, they've been coming on strong for the past, oh maybe a week.

- [Jeff] When did you plan them?

- [Louise] It's been about eight weeks ago, started them from seed, yeah.

- [Jeff] Great, and these are the sugar snap peas where you can eat the pod and all?

- That's right. And you can eat them right off the plant, if you'd like to try one?

- Yeah, well, we'll be eating on those for lunch. I notice you have some flowers in here, is that party of some companion planting?

- [Louise] Yes.

- [Jeff] Marigolds are good about keeping root nematodes out. And so this is your soil, what did you fill your beds up with?

- [Louise] Well, you know, I've been a little bit worried that I've gone really heavily on the compost.

- [Jeff] Well, you know, I'm a big fan of compost.

- [Louise] More is better, right?

- [Jeff] Well, not necessarily, Louise. You know, I would almost think you could use some soil to add to this. Have you dug around your garden? Let's look around the garden and look at some of the soil.

- [Louise] Okay.

- [Jeff] Well, you have pretty good soil here. Look I see worms.

- [Louise] Mm-hmm, those earthworms are a good sign, aren't they?

- [Jeff] Oh, yeah, that's a good sign, and the soils cause a nice color. I would be tempted to add some soil to your garden beds. So, it will go along with the compost because the soil will have minerals in it that may not be in the compost.

- Okay, are there other problems that go along with not having enough soil, having too much compost?

- Well, you can have too much nitrogen and it won't be as well balanced as if it's a mixture of soil and compost and maybe even a little sand to keep it real loose.

- Is there a little formula a recipe for how much of each to have

- How much of each, yeah.

- In there?

- I like to use about a third sand, a third soil, and a third compost. And this is what we fill our coal frames up with and that's how I would fill a raised bed if I was doing it. What's in the compost in your garden bed?

- [Louise] Well, it's a combination of some purchase worm castings bought by the truckload and then some homemade compost and my compost tumbler. That's some kitchen, we scraps and leaves mixed together.

- Great, well, I'm a little concerned, sometimes people buy these bagged fertilizers and they'll have some things in it that an organic gardener might not use like the cotton seed meal might be sprayed or poultry litter, it's kind of toxic. And there's oftentimes woodchips that aren't fully decomposed. But this looks like pretty good stuff here.

- Yeah, I was told that it was organic too for that matter, that's the reason I bought it so.

- Great. Yeah, and I can see your leaves in here. These aren't quite broke down, I'd like to see them a little more broken down before I use them. They will tend to rub nitrogen if they're not totally decomposed.

- [Louise] Oh, okay. I thought I was supposed to put them on chopped, but they really need to be decomposed.

- [Jeff] Decompose a little bit better. Louise have you added any lime to your beds?

- [Louise] Well, you know, I have based upon a class that I attended of yours and where you recommended that we lime and use green sands so I've limed and green sands but that--

- Yeah, well, that's one of the mistakes that I made early on was not putting lime on and through the use of the organic materials, I was lowering my soil pH and I didn't really know what my problem was and then when I limed it, everything sort of kicked in and started working a lot better. Your plants do look like they have plenty of lime, they look good.

- [Louise] Yeah.

- [Jeff] Well, do you like the way your zucchinis are growing?

- Well, I do. You know, they've just started really to flower and come on.

- [Jeff] There's a nice one.

- [Louise] I have picked a couple already though that were very small and soft as if they were mostly liquid.

- [Jeff] Yeah, we lose a lot every year to rots. Sometimes these blossoms, they'll fall off and--

- [Louise] Prematurely or something?

- [Jeff] Well, I know that if they land on the plant they'll kind of tend to rot it. Okay, it looks like you like tomatoes?

- Yes, indeedy. There are several different varieties in here and a couple that I started from seed.

- Oh really.

- I'm proud of myself.

- That's great.

- So there's a Cherokee Purple and a Bradley and--

- So you like the old timey ones then?

- I do, I love Bradley especially.

- Yeah.

- And they seem to be pretty happy. Do you have any thoughts about it, ideas?

- No, they're looking good, they're starting to bloom. Now, sometimes if we get too much nitrogen they'll just grow and not make blooms. But I'd say you're gonna have tomatoes here for too long. And then you have some onions around it?

- [Louise] Right, some onions and it looks like, I don't know, those about ready?

- Yeah, so the way we harvest our onions is when they get, start forming the bulb, we actually push them down kind of like this and then that'll help them to form a bulb 'cause I don't wanna smash your flowers. Yeah, so onions are oftentimes the soil's pulled a little bit away from them whereas, on a tomato plant, we oftentimes pull the soil towards it and hill it up.

- [Louise] Okay. And aren't there several different ways to plant onions? I have some that were brought in sets and then there's another type two--

- [Jeff] That are like bunch, you buying a bunch?

- In a bunch, in a bunch.

- Right, yeah, the ones-- And there are some of both of those in there.

- One that mine a bunch, will actually tend to make better bulbs, and the ones that are planted from sets, we usually use as green onions--

- Scallions?

- Yeah, they'll sometimes they'll make a seed stock that's not a very edible, but yeah, these look good. Your raised beds are much taller than a lot of them and I've seen, do you like them that high?

- You know, I do. It's easier for me to work in them without having to bend over too far. And when I moved in the house, my daughter was 2 years old and so, I thought she could help me and it keeps my dogs out a little bit more too. But I do like the height, then I thought the depth might be good, but I don't know, what do you think?

- Well I think having deep soils are good. Do they tend to dry out a lot? Do you have to water?

- [Louise] I do, I do I have to water every three days when it's hot with no rain.

- [Jeff] That's one of the disadvantages to having a bed that's much above soil level. When you get down to soil level, then you have all the moisture from your lawn and stuff that helps keep your beds moist. So these garlic here are starting to put their seed heads up? These are called garlic scapes. And we oftentimes pull these off and use them as a green scallion. Just chop them up with our stir fry.

- [Louise] Okay.

- [Jeff] I also like to pull these off of the plants so that the garlic bulb tends to have, get bigger because the plant isn't making a seed so it puts its reproductive energy into the bulb.

- [Louise] Well, you know, I have this great greenhouse that I'll use this winter but I'm realizing I just have these four beds. Can you offer any suggestions about how to maximize the space under the greenhouse?

- Yeah, see what you mean. In order to use up some of this dead space maybe we could come over here and take these two walls out, use the boards to put it in here and make one big bed in here that then just have a few little paths right on it that you could walk on without stepping on the ground. And that would give you an opportunity too to mix some soil in with your leaf mold and your compost.

- [Louise] Oh, I see, that's a great idea.

- [Jeff] No, I love the way that you have things growing here and there's well spaced but you're still getting a lot of food out of here.

- [Louise] Yes, more than we can eat. I get to share with friends quite a bit.

- [Jeff] That's good. Well that's one of the beautiful things about gardening, is there's always plenty to share.

- [Louise] All right.

- [Jeff] Oh thank you for sharing your time with me.

- [Louise] Thank you.

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