It’s Tuesday, January 15, 2019.

You must be doing something right? I can’t seem to get anyone to watch my videos.

The one thing I have noticed lately is, we don’t really watch tv so in the evenings, what we do, we’re about done with our day around 8:30ish. We stream Youtube.

Watching on TV you can’t interact but I get on the iPad and if I like their video or make a comment I get a lot more people who seem to be interested in my channel.

You have like 35, 53  views, etc. I have like no views. 0 views at all. Watching others, I’ll have to try that.

You have to be persistence. We’ve been doing it for a year and we’re only just getting somewhere.

I see it as you’ve only been doing it for a year!

Honestly it’s been the easiest gardening method I have ever learned!

Savvy Organics Farm YouTube Channel
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Tell us a little about yourself.

Sure, well basically I’ve been gardening most of my life since I was s little kid, life happens to you, and you have kids, we have 2 kids. We always have a family garden, nothing but raising a few vegetables for ourselves. The last few year with the kids out on our own. We have 5 acres, so we don’t need it for livestock and when the kids were in ag.

October 2017. We kind of came up with the idea, what are we going to do with our land now?

We’ve always been avid gardeners so we started .

• market gardens
• CSA programs
• reasons they do it
• health benefits

1/2 acre and pasture next to our house

basically ripped

what are we doing

Just watch YouTube at night

Who do you feel like you’ve been watching that give you the most.

The subjects range from homesteading to organic  gardening

Some of our favorites.

MI Gardener

he’s a good one

Justin Rhodes with the abundant permaculture

vlog everyday they do everything

• livestock and gardening

Living Traditions

• homesteading
• raising animals and things

Well that’s  a good list.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

Well, as a kid, growing up in town at my parents house, my dad just let me sort of get a small garden plot in the backyard. Other then some squash, IDK what  remember what I grew then. 

My parents had a lake home and we had a 1/4 acre had a big garden there, always helping in that.

Over all the years, raising our family and stuff, the importance of teaching your kids

• where food comes from
• nutritional value of it

raise our kids

responsibility

Good work ethic, things like that.

So did they do 4H or FFA (Future Farmers of America)?

We were involved with the FFA for all of my kids. We primarily raised Texas Long Horn show cattle. The kids earned scholarship money for college by doing that.

• horses
• play days
• little rodeos

Always had an active lifestyle, hunting and fishing as kids, my dad did that when we were kids.

Are you from Texas, born and raised?

I am, lived here all my life, here in the Dallas area.

How did you learn how to garden organically?

Over the years, but in the last few years more important! The older you get, you think.

I’ve been putting this in my food, I wonder what that actually does?

You read the labels and think, I can’t pronounce that why am I eating that?

Sure! Vani Hari, the food babe just sent out an email this morning with all the weird things in Almond milk.

Yeah, absolutely

so many things in

We agree, other than for a holiday or something where we need it as an ingredient we pretty much only use almond milk.

make it ourselves

almond milk

really easy

The almonds:

• get soaked
• ground up and put in a nut bag
• after ground up squeeze through nut bag

what comes out almond milk

takes 10-15 minutes

really easy

almond butter which I love and a lot of the store bought things have a lot of additives

butter is really easy

roast almonds at about 350º

Use a Vitamix to blend them into butter

if they are a little dry add a little oil really goes a long way

a lot less expensive then what you would buy in the store.

Does it come out the texture of peanut butter?

What we typically make is a little bit thicker

add anything like a tasteless oil, avocado or sunflower oil something that doesnt’ have any flavor. You can thin it a little bit by adding oil to it

consistency of buying anything that is processed food and all the additive things that go into them.

I often wonder, is buying peanut butter and making a sandwich is that processed or does that count as home made? Or is that still processed if all the parts are processed but you put them together.

I was just talking to Olivia who Rent Mason Bees about the bees pollinating the almonds.

 my sons a bee keeper

sent all of his hives for the winter

leases the beehives to them for the almond bees

have not had any luck with mason bees.

She said their main goal is to spread them, they’re super pollinators and they’ll pollinate so much more then a honeybee, but they do require a bit of maintenance in the winter, they actually give them a bath, if you don’t clean out their homes, the pollen mites grow and grow and wipe out the bees.

I’ve heard that they are such great pollinators

• not as aggressive
• don’t sting

IDK why we don’t have more of them. They say they’re everywhere

maybe Idk know what I’m looking for

I would love to know about them and get them on our place.

I know she said that they ship different ones at different times of year. Maybe it was the wrong time of year or something. Maybe you’ll want to give that episode a listen to.

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

It’s pretty much winter right now

a few things in the ground

first greenhouse able to put up this past season

• carrots
• spinach
• broccoli
• cauliflower

growing and doing pretty well.

Over the season last year, the biggest things we had the most success

• lettuces
• kale
• daikon radishes

I didn’t know about them until I started gardening. They are 

• amazing
• grow huge
• flavor is good in soups and salads

Really diverse.

I didn’t know that you could saute radishes and in the beginning of the year before the beets etc were ready, and they were so good. Mike grew a lot of different colored giant radishes. I grew kale for the first time last year!´

first vegetable!

• dinosaur kale
• blue dwarf kale
• garlic did well for us

I call it a green house, but it’s basically more like a hoop house

not polycarbonate

green colored plastic mesh that filters out some of the UV rays

really inexpensive

starting on a shoestring budget.

challenging

found this company

here in Richardson, just north of us, fresco

Delta Canopy Company

greenhouses of all kind

I found this greenhouse, that was like $400

I put it together one day, literally took maybe a day to get it all set up

We really had one big failure, before I had tried to make a high tunnel or greenhouse out of pvc of grannies plastic. The day that I finished we had a really big windstorm, it was kind of funny we were out there. 

trying to tag this thing down

We kind of worried when we bought this one

Our wind  can be horrible sometimes

40-50mph for a couple of days sometimes

held up well

lightweight aluminum frame

Greenhouse

• door at both ends
• windows down both sides for ventilation
• plastic comes down on the sides
• wider then the greenhouse frame

So we put a lot of mulch on outside edges of it. On the inside I took the screw end ground anchors. We wired an anchor from the frame to the greenhouse, it might move an inch or two here or that but it still strong so far.

We’ve had a lot of wind and snow problems here.

Every once in a while we’ll get a snow.

I know it snows in Texas because when I drove through Texas I was going from New Mexico to New York the day after Halloween and I got stuck in a big blizzard in Texas!

Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new?

Well, last year the produce that we grew,

• friends at church
• people we would meet and talk to
• come to our house
• take things to church to buy

Which worked pretty well with what we were growing but this year with our new garden plan and layout we should have a lot more produce this year!

So what’s exciting for me is we are going to try to set up a little farmstead, under a couple of tables and so people can come to us on Saturday mornings and buy what they want.

Some gardens and market farmers will do a pick your own, but I’m a little skeptical of that right now.

What I am hearing is that sometimes you get people who don’t know how to harvest lettuce and they’ll not know to cut your lettuce and pull it up!

Leaf lettuce will continue to produce

pull the plant up it’s done

exciting thing to try to grow enough

I talked with Pam Grewe here in Whitefish and they had a farm and they would have a big volunteer day once a week. She said she really had to focus on helping the volunteers and managing and moving around interacting, helping them and then on the other days, she would work quietly and be very specific about not having people on the farm on off days.

That’s might be something you want to look into is having a volunteer day, where you focus on teaching them so they are getting an education too.

build our clients up by having them

That’s a good idea, I have thought about it, but haven’t really done anything to get it going.

She said so many people told her how much they loved the farm and remember visiting as children. Management whether your managing preschools or volunteers or a farmer’s market that takes a lot of give and take, and understanding and listening. I always like to expand on what’s successful and go from there.

Tell me about something that didn’t work so well this season.

What didn’t go so well last year? I’ve been gardening last year was simple green beans! 

I was reading that blog post.

it’s like what is going on here

planted

different points

different times

different conditions

They just wouldn’t take off

• they’d grow up
• would look great flower
• wither away

no idea what was going on?!

last round planted some

simple blue lake bush bean

literally so prolific, I thought pretty much the same thing, they flowered and we were having beans like crazy!

So I had to recheck the package

• climbed everything
• went crazy
• vining climbing all the trellises
• everything they could touch they were climbing.

bush beans

really climbed like crazy!

Trying to grow them the normal times and stuff that you would normally grow beans, just nothing was working.

well, you know the pasture we started gardening in it was the first year we grew anything but pasture grass. I chalked it up to that.

I put some amendments and things but that didn’t work. 

I thought maybe because it’s the first time the soil in the field has had anything grown in it so I moved it to the kitchen garden where we had grown 20 years same thing.

• beans
• grew
• flowered and died

beehives

you got a bunch of beans!?!

Yeah late season we got them, 5th or 6th time

good in the spring in the fall typically

Our spring was not typically

Periods of

• torrential rains
• extremely hot and dry
• several late freeze

They’re kind of picky about a freeze, I know Mike doesn’t like to grow them because they freeze right before harvest.

they really won’t tolerate a freeze

through we were well past the last frost date in April!

HAHA! I think our last frost day is like the beginning in June. I find no matter when I put them in they all bloom in August no matter when I put them in the ground. Last year, the ones I planted first never went to seed. IDK, I put these mammoth flowers in too small a space and they never really went to seed?

I know I’m pretty sure sunflowers, like corn are really heavy feeders really need a nitrogen rich soil. Maybe they didn’t have enough nitrogen to feed on. 

I think the year before were potatoes and the year before that was green beans.

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The Good Seed Company

Now Let’s Get to the Root of Things!

Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the garden?

No, I can’t think of anything I don’t like to do out there. 

I always feel like when people say that maybe that’s inspiring for people who don’t garden so much!

What is your favorite activity to do in the garden?

My favorite thing is probably planting

I enjoy the time when were actually planting stuff

Whether its the seed starts that we raised or direct seeding

It’s a feeling of, here we go!

Spring is here!

We can see how we can do this year!

I like when you put the starts in the ground and it’s like instant garden.

I will go back to my least favorite question, I had to give it a thought for a second, I’m sitting at the computer and I can see a corner of a spreadsheet I have for the garden!

hardest and enjoy the least

I want to go out and just do it but since we are expanding and getting a little bit larger I had to come up with a plan.

farming nearly an acre this year

over the winter months been working on a plan

I’m like the person who goes to the nursery around the fourth of July and I’m like what’s new what’s gonna be good in the garden. This year I’ve been working on this garden course and if we are going to try to make the jump to go things for sale, there were a lot of things we did really well, I mean ever since he put the minifarm in we keep growing more and more. I’m very much more into planning this year.

I was looking through the journals, Mike’s yelling at me because I haven’t ordered the seeds. I’m gonna order them this year. I ran out of arugula, and I wish I would have put a fall crop of arugula in.

Totally I understand, which is really strange, because I am also a home inspector so every year I do a business plan every year but I never put those marketing strategies into it. I am always like what’s to plan? We put things in the ground and sell it. But my wife finally convinced me to plan this out. 

She helped me put together a spread sheet

• mapped out
• color-coded it

where everything is going to grow

30 inch beds

mapped out on each of those what’s gonna go in it

I have a box I keep all of our seeds in, thought I probably got everything but I started going through it but based on the what we had on the spreadsheet, I realized what I didn’t!

This one woman I interviewed Mandy Gerth from Lower Valley, she said it’s like the best tetrus game figuring out what’s gonna go everywhere. They must maximize what they grow in their space because they feed a lot of people. I’m sure you’ll see exponential success there.

I was just bound and determined to pant an herb because IDK why I don’t have any herbs growing which is so unusual for me. I also went through our seeds to see do i really not have any arugula. Doing that inventory is crucial.

What is the best gardening advice you have ever received?

understanding the soil

that’s still a challenge

you need to understand the soil!

microbe

A couple of year ago, I was like it’s dirt

I put stuff

barb nolan

best advice

You really need to understand and the organisms in the soil

Sure, that could be the underlying  theme on my show. I was just in this healthy soil summit with Steve Szudera who is doing this on a grand farm scale. 

health soil

It’s pretty amazing so many of the people

eliot coleman

Who have been doing this for all these years. People are listening to these gardeners and think oh he’s just growing a garden. People say, I remember.

It’s taken me forever to wrap my head around it.

Soil Health

• Getting soil test
• adding compost
• Rotating crops
• cover crops

All sorts of tips and tricks to be more effective since gardening is a lot of work so anything you can do to be more effective.

A favorite tool that you like to use? If you had to move and could only take one tool with you what could you not live without ?

BCS tractor walk behind

if I had a favorite tool

I understand no dig

but our soil is like concrete!

Thick gumbo black clay tough to plant in unless you do something with it.

That’s pretty interesting I think that’s what Mandy Gerth said too!

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

Last year we grew something I had no idea about called broccolini

Absolutely fell in love with it

tastes like broccoli but a lot milder kind of a cross between a green and broccoli saute with onions and garlic

easy to grow

easy to cook

Cool broccoli is like one of my favorite foods, it would be cross up between broccoli and pizza if I was stuck on a desert island.

A favorite internet resource?

Favorite internet resource?

probably baker seeds

rare seeds

baker creek seed company

We order a few things. They’re really about seeds that are

• heirlooms
• hard to find
• other parts of the world

interesting plants

I don’t know how to grow or garden we test things out in our kitchen garden

test things out before we

How big is your kitchen garden?

21 x 90 feet

it’s pretty large, but if you really want to grow enough and a variety of fruits and vegetables for your family, that’s a pretty adequate size. Those are raised beds, but the family garden is primarily raised beds. 

One is dedicated year round to blueberries, that they say we can’t grow here but we get a great harvest. And a dedicated asparagus bed. 

I want a blueberry bed! I tasted some at my rinds over the hill.

blackberries

fresh asparagus is so prolific once they are established! 

On those blueberries is to get that soil right!

• really want acidic soil
• ph in the 5.5 range

A favorite reading material-book, mag, blog/website etc you can recommend?

I can do favorite book. Right now, is Joel Salatin’s

Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World 

• he’s such a funny writer
• he has youtube
• people have done all kinds of interviews with them
• does tours at home and garden shows
• homesteading places

Joel Salatin and 

JM Fortier

Market Gardener

New Organic Grower

Eliot Coleman

I haven’t read Joel Salatin’s book yet either. 

it’s been out for a long time

published in the mid 2000s

really enjoy it

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

I think initially we’re gonna try it here on our farm, just have people come here and pick things up. We still may end up on going to a farmer’s market

second year

trying to gage it

how productive we can be

Still trying to figure out how much produce we can grow and have

chickens

almost 80 birds

Between the eggs and produce and the number of people at our church. Last year it was good for us to take it to them. 

This year want to get a little bit broader, and have more of the community learn what we’re doing! 

We tripled the number of chickens, 

last year couldn’t produce fast enough

try to get the people coming coming here.

So we have gone through this interview and I forgot the most important questions.

You have that video about sprouting chicken food, it that for the food your’e gonna harvest or the actual food you feed them?

We sprout them in 5 gallon buckets

The organic chicken food here is really expensive $36-42/bag

They also waste a lot of it, they are also not getting the nutritional value out of the sold grain. We’ve seen a lot of videos about 

• soaking grain
• fermenting grain

We learned if we buy the

• barley
• wheat oats
• corn

peas don’t like too much

each day we feed a bucket. Even in the winter we have a small greenhouse, in the winter we keep them with our patio plants, keep them warm by the 5th day really high percentage of those grains have sprouted.

The chickens love it and it has reduced the need for as much of the organic layer feed!

sprouting method

use the chickens on our pasture

tilling fertilizer in winter months

throw the bucket

scratching

picking

fertilizing our garden

adding nutrients

partly cost saving

reduce the feed bill for chickens

higher quality eggs

Wow, I’m so glad I asked this. So a five gallon bucket feeds 80 chickens?! 

We put the grain in the bucket

• probably about 1/3 mix of grains I mentioned
• cover with 2 inches of water
• soaking bucket that soaks overnight

then the other buckets are stacked on top of each other and I drill holes in the bottom of them. The next day, I take the grains that I soak over night, pour it into the top bucket and all of the water drains through and gets all other seeds moist and wet. The bottom bucket is the one that we feed them the next morning.

If it’s not clear what were doing

• feel free to ask and comment
• has cut our feed bill significantly

I love this because we don’t feed our chickens organic food because we can’t afford it and this sounds great!

Microgreens

I just started my second round this week. The first round was a test round to kind of figure out what we are doing. I learned a lot that first go round

4 foot shelf in our garage, of course it’s winter so on the bottom I put a heat lamp down there. On each 5 shelves

• hanging led light
• offset
• full spectrum grow lights that shine all the way through

I started by getting the 10×20 trays, typical garden tray

• filling it with soil
• spreading the seeds I chose over the top
• keeping them moist
• typically sprout in 2-3 days

They provide the microgreens that are edible. 

The peas are the fastest growing, we’re on our second round. I just clipped them today, and every couple of days there’s a new crop.

The kale and broccoli I think because of the cold not enough heat so they are doing really slow

In the right weather conditions and temperature should be able to turn around a tray in 7-10 days.

Here each one of those trays are worth about $25

literally 60-70¢

I’m just excited to have fresh greens for me. That’s the way we should be thinking.

That’s one of the things I’ve had to get over, one of the things I’ve had to learn

You mentioned thinning, that’s something I don’t like to do. 

I don’t like

want it to grow

thin

vegetable gardener for my family’s use for many years is different for doing it as a business as a market garden.

That one little plant that I want to save

• in the family garden that’s fine
• in a business that’s not gonna fly
• that plant is in the way to something I can produce on a bigger scale.

Good way to put it. Do you have any lessons you have learned from doing the micro-greens? Did you get the seeds from Baker?

I had really high recommendations to do to true leaf to buy the micro green growers

Actually produced for micro-green growers

The price was good for whatever you want to grow

They have everything you need

The thing I learned the quickest is it’s a lot of work to go out and spray every couple of hours to spray our micro-greens. That got old in a couple of days

• there’s 2 different kinds of 10/20 trays that have slots in the bottom
• slotted tray on top of an un-slotted tray and I just put 4 cups of water in the bottom trayI don’t have to water them
• it just wicks them up underneath
• seed starts
• weather then trying

Final question-

if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

I’m gonna say, I’m a simple guy keep it simple.

That would be to convince people to buy local buy from local farmers as much as you can.

Not always trust the mass producers

globally the monocultures the fields and fields of corn and soybeans, I just don’t think they are  good for our

• planet or environment
• pocketbooks

Smaller growers can produce as much at a much better better quality that is not as processed!

Do u have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden?

go back to one I keep in mind

one of my favorite you-tubers

Abundant Permaculture Justin Rhodes

farm tour all over america

this idea

thought

what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

for me that was taking those things I’m passionate about and not just turning them into a business but turning them into something with more value that

• benefits my family
• environment
• community

What would I do if I wasn’t afraid it would be

• start the garden
• start growing my own food
• whatever I’m passionate about

What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?

How do we connect with you?

we have a website

I’m not really good at keeping it update because I am too busy out in the garden.

savyoragnicsfarm.com

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