THIS IS THE UNEDITED COMPUTER GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Okay. It is recording. Yay. My trip to New York was good. It was, we didn't get to do much. Like I wanted to go to museums and stuff and we didn't get to do any of that kind of thing, but it was really good to be with my mom. See my family, all that kind of thing. Guys have a good holiday.

30s

Nicky

Yes. And we went to a museum too. So I know what you mean. We were able to go to the African-American history museum here, which the lines that are always long and it's hard to get tickets for it. There they're free, but it's hard to get in. But yeah, so we were able to go after how many years, so many years of living here, we had never been,

56s

Dave

What do you mean do these outings? Is it used to be, we could do as much as you possibly could fit in, but now with all the kids, we were happy. If we get about an hour and a half and the museum or a venue before

1m 20s

Nicky

It was a big museum, we only did a half of

1m 23s

JackieMarie

It. Like the Smithsonian or a

1m 26s

Nicky

Different part of the Smithsonian. I think it's their newest one. And they have some in New York, too. Yeah,

1m 35s

JackieMarie

My family and I went to Washington DC, I think back in 2018 and got to go to some Smithsonian. We were like, it wasn't that, you know, it was before the pandemic. So you're going to have to have reservations or anything. But yeah, there is a lot to see

1m 55s

Nicky

Where did you go? Which ones

1m 57s

JackieMarie

We went to the Aaron's space. I remember my mom and I went to, is there like a women's art exhibit museum that I remember was one of my favorites that I was surprised my brother and his girls didn't go to. And then we went to the spy museum, which I'm not sure that's part of the Smithsonian. Yeah. So it was, but that was fun. It was interesting. So the three, I remember

2m 30s

Nicky

That's a lot in one trip. That's pretty good.

2m 34s

JackieMarie

This is our older there, you know, one's about to graduate college and the other one will be a senior in high school next year. So not quite like you guys with all your little kids, which like, I think the last time I was in Washington, DC was one, I was a little kid or my brother saying in the choir and went down and we got to go to like the national cathedral. Like the boys choir like recorded like a record. And I, I can't remember because they recorded the record. They got to go there. Or if that's where they recorded it, or, you know, that's a long time ago. Anyway, you guys are probably super busy.

3m 15s

JackieMarie

Do you want, should we,

3m 17s

Nicky

Yeah. So we don't have, we're not that prepared, Jackie. I was hoping you would book this after our conference, because then we would learn a little bit more from the Virginia biological farming conference that we have every year. But you have us as we have today.

3m 36s

JackieMarie

And I know last night I couldn't, I was so disappointed. Like when I hung up the phone and realized that we hadn't, I hadn't hit record because that was, I swear it was one of the best podcasts I've ever like best interview. You guys shared so much amazing information. So I can't imagine you would have any more to share than you're already going to share today.

3m 57s

Nicky

Okay. So pretend that that didn't happen. That we don't remember what we said. I hope I don't remember what I said.

4m 4s

JackieMarie

Well, I got my notebook out because I was like, I want to make sure I don't miss anything that you did share last time, but why don't you go ahead. I'll just introduce you. And I am going to try to keep my mic muted as much as I can. And actually, can we turn the video off because otherwise zoom one tends to shut me off. And also just the files are so huge. I can't really, I like my computer. Just, I can't, I can barely deal with the podcasting files. So do you guys still have a copy of the questions that I usually ask?

4m 39s

Nicky

No, I don't. I was looking for it really quickly before

4m 43s

JackieMarie

I'll drop that in the chat and then I'll just introduce you and we'll go from there. That's on file. We're sure. From my computer, I'm just going to email them to you. I guess it's only me drop a file in that chat.

5m 11s

Nicky

Oh, really? Let me see if okay. Here. Try. Is it letting you drop it now?

5m 19s

JackieMarie

It's letting me, I'm just going to email is that the chat was letting me choose everything, but my computer, it was like Dropbox, Microsoft, Google drive.

5m 35s

Nicky

All right. I see now. Thank you for that. Yes. Thank you so much.

5m 40s

JackieMarie

Just kind of, so you can kind of follow along. Yes. I probably should open my own copy. I almost know them by heart at this point. Okay. All right, here we go. Ready? And we are recording. Welcome to the green garden. It is Tuesday, January 4th, 2020 to my first interview of 2022. But I am sorry to say we recorded this once we did, we record did this interview back in August, there was one of the best interviews.

6m 21s

JackieMarie

And I know you guys are going to hear tons of golden seeds today because these two guests are just amazing. Their knowledge is incredible. They have an awesome website, grow my own food.com and they have come so far. And that is what enables them to be such great guests is because things are still kind of new and fresh to them. So welcome to the show. Nikki and Dave from permaculture gardens grow my own food.com.

6m 50s

Nicky

Thank you. We're so happy to hear So far. So kind thank you for your introduction. We're like we said, we don't remember what we said in August, but we hope we'll just start from scratch. And it's probably for a good reason that now there are new things happening where, you know, new things that we've learned since then. So

7m 19s

JackieMarie

No, they went out of their day. They spent all this time with me and then I blew it. But it's just because you guys were like, we got so into our pre-chat and then I guess I just anyway, onto a today. So 20, 22, go ahead and tell listeners a little bit about your guys' yourselves and your family and what you guys all have growing at, grow your own, grow my own food.com.

7m 43s

Nicky

Thank you. So I'm Nikki,

7m 47s

Dave

We're a tag team do, well, I guess we're a little bit bigger now, but you can, you can start off with our origin story.

7m 56s

Nicky

Okay. So we're the co-founders of permaculture gardens, which does it match our website URL, which is grow my own food.com. But we, we, we started gardening because our kids, our two eldest kids had severe allergies to a lot of things. So you name it, knots, tree nuts, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat legumes, peas, beans, bean. Yeah. Beef, chicken, eggs, dairy milk. So when they were my eldest, Zoe was 18 months. She had been 18 pounds for so long.

8m 37s

Nicky

And you know, they stopped told me to stop breastfeeding and we were, we didn't know what to feed her because she wasn't growing. She, she was diagnosed with failure to thrive and then it happened. We worked with her allergies. We tried to give her a lot of, we tried, there was no allergy cookbook, 15 years ago, there was one allergy cookbook, 15 years ago. And then we tried to alternate grains and, and then it happened again with our second child, Ethan, two years after. And he was allergic to fish white fish, and then he turned blue. He was a little baby. And he turned blue.

9m 18s

Dave

Yeah. That was probably the most nerve wracking.

9m 22s

Nicky

Yes. Cause we had to call the paramedics and we, you know, the Benadryl wasn't going down fast enough. But after then we started questioning. Yeah. We started questioning the food system itself. Like where, why is this happening now? I come from the Philippians, you know, allergies, aren't common. We have peanuts in all our foods. And we, I had didn't have a peanut allergy and Dave,

9m 52s

Dave

So then we switched it.

9m 54s

Nicky

And at the same time you had, you had GI issues, right? You would get poisoning a lot that once a month he would have to throw up something.

10m 4s

Dave

Well, I would get, I would get issues

10m 7s

Nicky

Regular. Like I don't know what's happening. And he just it's okay. It's like a regular thing that when we, and at that time we were eating a, McDonald's eating in KFC, shopping at Costco, eating out a lot, But not making my own food,

10m 24s

Dave

Bring it into little portions and things like that. And then we we've asked you, those two experiences were so traumatic that we switched to buying organic food, but then there were getting food was expensive. And then you didn't know exactly where it was just a labeling thing. You don't know where it comes from. So we started looking more and more into growing some of our own food. And I think we went on a book date once

10m 55s

Nicky

Yeah. Bookstore date when there were still bookstores. And we stumbled upon the term permaculture in one of the organic gardening books. So we checked it out. We looked online and we discovered how permaculture was used to green, the deserts of China. It was like a mandate from the government where they had an eroded area. And in the span of three years it was lush and there was an economy and everything was growing again. And it was used to green, the deserts of Jordan and that just for us like, wow, that was so life-changing. How can, if they can do it in the desert, then certainly do it in our backyard because we were trying to grow a few tomatoes here and we were failing.

11m 39s

Nicky

We didn't know what we were doing. It was just like putting spaghetti on the wall or just growing randomly. And there was nobody to help us, even when we did find permaculture, if you call up one of the provosts or guys and you say, oh my backyard, I don't know what's wrong with it. You know, it's not, it's not common for at least it wasn't then for permaculture folks to really focus on the backyard because that's so easy for them. It's really their, their business and their job. They were really more keen on, I want to green a big landscape. I want to make the most impact of a larger landscape. So we really felt like every night was research.

12m 20s

Nicky

Every night was learning more and every day was growing more and more.

12m 26s

Dave

So we have, we had a backyard that we set up a few little raised beds, but we kind of went into this wholeheartedly and we converted the entire backyard into a food forests. So even though it's north facing and we only get six months of sun a year, we wanted to maximize our production by integrating as many perennial systems as possible. So there was a lot of, a lot of learning over the years, but we figured out a bunch of combinations that worked and

12m 60s

Nicky

The team was how much more can we grow this year? How much more can we grow? And in this tiny space that we had, which is, I often say one 40th of an acre, but in square feet, what is that? Dave?

13m 13s

Dave

It's about maybe 500 square feet. Totally. I have a community garden in my work, but that's total. That's about the total for what we have. That's the actual growing space, not the access, not the,

13m 30s

JackieMarie

How many kids you have in your family that you're feeding now. Cause you talked about your oldest two, but you have you've had Morrison.

13m 38s

Nicky

Yeah. So the following as we grew more and more, well, one was R w it did make a debt on our grocery bills because then you weren't buying organic, which was pricier. And then we grew more and more as well as a family. So we had four children after we had a total of six and the four children after we started growing more or growing organic, growing, doing more permaculture, have no allergies thus far. So

14m 11s

Dave

It's not a large enough samples that to be able to definitively say, that's what made the difference. But in our minds it did

14m 19s

Nicky

Dave's and Dave's bouts of food poisoning. Yeah. He doesn't have them anymore. So

14m 28s

Dave

Gotten more and more into this. And then we wanted to share our experiences. So Nikki found out at our local elementary school that there was a interior courtyard that wasn't being used for anything. They just, it was like an architectural leftover from the seventies.

14m 47s

Nicky

Typical of schools here. I don't know if your listeners, if any of guys have schools and you find, oh, there's an empty space in the middle of the school. I think the intention was to make it a reading garden, some sort of a garden educational center, but people just don't have the time to, to invest in setting that kind of space up. And so I was able, I saw the space and I thought, oh my goodness, this would be a great opportunity to teach the kids where their food comes from. I had not yet even taken my PDC. Yes, yes. I hadn't even studied permaculture formally and, and yet, and I'm sure there are other people who haven't and yet they're doing it already.

15m 32s

Nicky

And so, because we were so excited, we, we tried to get the buy-in from the administration. They were open to it. And we had jointly written a grant to whole foods. So they supplied the money to start that garden with, you know, putting up raised beds and things like that. Then the community pitched in there were, there were parents who have teachers who helped and local boy scout troops, and that garden is still there, but where our kids are no longer, they were homeschooling three of them. So they're not in the elementary, but we have another school garden in the middle school right now that we started again, the administration is key to helping, you know, start your school gardens.

16m 13s

Nicky

So

16m 14s

Dave

Yeah, but it's a, broadener reach a little bit after that experience. And that's how we started doing online education. So I started doing online webinars and

16m 28s

Nicky

Every month we have a free at least one or two free webinars that anybody can learn how to garden in. And from right now, we have a monthly garden planning webinar to help anybody who's wants to plan the month ahead and topical webinars such as on composting or soil or integrated pest management. Oh one was by, by Nancy Lawson, for instance, the humane Gardner menu. I think some of your guests, Jackie might have been on our, on our webinars too, but there are real wealth of, of our knowledge comes from the people who we meet through these webinars and who, who, who teach our us and teach are our gardeners or gardening clients as well.

17m 21s

JackieMarie

So let's just back up a bit because I always like to start my show up asking about like your very first gardening experience, like who were you with? What did you grow like Dave, you grew up in Pittsburgh. Is that what I remember? Right. Did your family grow things like, did you start out learning as a kid or

17m 46s

Dave

So my, my mom was a member of the, the area garden club. So they had a junior garden club, which was basically us tagging along and helping work in the, they would have in some of the parks, they'd have community beds and things like that. So I, I got my first taste of that back then. And I think everybody has this. It might be suppressed, but they, you kind of innately have this yearning once you start engaging with nature. Then I think that that left an impression on me.

18m 26s

Dave

So even though I, after college, I, I didn't really grow anything during college and for a number of years afterwards, cause I was living in an apartment, but I still had that memory kind of sensory memory. So when we moved into our townhouse, that was one of the things that I wanted to try doing again. And you'd be lucky your experience

18m 49s

Nicky

I'm totally coming from the black thumb camp and anybody there who's who's ever not felt like they can't grow a single thing. That was me growing up, even though my grandmother who's 101 years old in California was a long lifetime gardener of flowers. Mostly she had one mango tree in the Philippines. So I'm from the Philippines and Dave's parents are from South Africa and he grew up partly in England actually before moving to Pittsburgh. But in the Philippines, which has a richness of natural resources, I grew up mostly in the city because cities where you can get ahead in life and so on and so forth.

19m 31s

Nicky

And I didn't, I never really had that experience of growing until I came here to the states. And I still, I, I grew up with a garden in our, in our, in our house with lots, very, very shady garden, with lots of old trees, cousins of the pawpaw, the star apple, those are the trees that were there. And then here was my first garden experience here was growing Bazell after we've tried our best in the backyard to grow organic tomatoes, to Davis doing the tomatoes. And I was trying to do Bazell and then they died and I couldn't understand why they died.

20m 13s

Nicky

So it just, everything was new to me. And I always felt that I could hold as I was going through the experience myself of trying and failing. I could hold other people's hands. I can remember myself being in the first-time gardeners so much more clearly because it's so it's closer. I guess I didn't start out gardening from the get go that I have an empathy for folks who, who have a hard time gardening and I'm always trying to improve. And I've I've since then definitely grown more plants and harvested more plants than I have killed them. So I think that's, that's what it's all about is learning and growing as you garden.

20m 55s

JackieMarie

I think that's so true. And I grew more last year than I ever have in my life. Like 10 times, probably as much as I ever have in my life. And I also killed more plants last year. I totally struggled with Bazell like I bought all these Bazell seeds because I had interviewed someone who talks about growing. Beasel like literally patches of Bazell for the, to put in bouquets. She said that she was like a, you know, a flower farmer. Yeah. That sold bouquets to weddings and things that people just loved. The, like, it was like a red beasel the flowers mixed in on the table.

21m 35s

JackieMarie

Cause it made everything smell so good. And I just, I bombed, I mean, I just couldn't get them a Germany. I tried over and over. My husband got some to grow over, like in our mini farm. Like my goal was to plant like miracle, a patch of miracles, a patch of zinnias a patch of snapdragons and a patch of Bazell like a foot of each or two feet of each and like all around the border making like a perennial border. And it was, but on the flip side, you know, I grew a lot. So I think, I think that's awesome that you're helping people that way. Cause there is always people do. I I've talked to several people who have said, you know, oh, I can't grow anything and I've tried and this doesn't work and that doesn't work.

22m 16s

JackieMarie

And I think it's awesome that you guys are out there helping people and using your experience and doing, doing things the way that you've been doing it. So do you want to tell us about something that grew well this year?

22m 35s

Nicky

So we have a harvest competition among our children. They each, they each take a family of plants. So Cuker bits are,

22m 45s

Dave

So the ones that are more prolific break it up. So, but I think the, we also do maybe six or seven experiments each year when we try something that sounds like it would be very interesting. We don't know what'll happen. And quite often those things fail, but it's always an adventure for, for those sites.

23m 21s

Nicky

The question it was the trombones, you know, the Conti zucchini squash. So it's an heirloom.

23m 33s

Dave

Can you get someone to CUNY that you, you start hiding it in parked cars and

23m 41s

JackieMarie

I figure, I wrote an article about that.

23m 47s

Nicky

Well, yes we were. Those definitely those people, all our neighbors got this zucchini, heirloom zucchini that looked like a Swan grew so big on in their front porch.

24m 6s

JackieMarie

Dave, I'm kind of losing you. You're cutting out sentences. It sounds like you're really far away. Did you plug your Nikki loud and clear? Do you have separate microphone?

24m 32s

Nicky

He fought. Microphone is changed.

24m 33s

Dave

I think now is that better now?

24m 36s

JackieMarie

Oh my gosh. That's so much better. I'm so glad I said something.

24m 40s

Dave

Yeah, we had an external mic, but it wasn't,

24m 43s

Nicky

It wasn't plugged in. Right. Or maybe my plug is loose already. I'm so sorry, Jackie. I hope that that's

24m 50s

JackieMarie

Okay. I don't want to lose anything else.

24m 52s

Dave

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I was, I was talking about the interesting thing about these zucchinis is it's a variety called trauma. And so, you know, it's like an Italian summer climbing's zucchini. So instead of it growing fat, they kind of grow very long and they're, I think they're in the butternut squash. So it's kind of like a long summer butternut squash, zucchini and it's

25m 19s

Nicky

Green.

25m 21s

Dave

And then the cool thing is they climb. It's both a curse and a blessing is that they, they literally climb everywhere, which is nice. Cause then you can grow them vertically and minimized the amount of space they take up, but then they grow everywhere. So you have to, if you don't, if you go on vacation for a week or two, you can find them everywhere. So that, that right. Oh yeah. So that, that grew well

25m 52s

JackieMarie

Awesome. That was one thing I definitely wanted to talk about with the mushrooms.

25m 56s

Dave

Yeah, I, so I, I kind of gleaned from these mushroom websites when they try I'm really into low tech mushroom cultivation. So I don't want to have some, I don't want to have a lab or something to grow things in Petri dishes. I just want to eat lots of mushrooms economically. And this year I tried a lion's mane, low techs. So I'd done oyster mushrooms before where you do a low-tech pasteurization where you, you take straw straw bale, and then you, you soak it and hydrated lime for a day or two.

26m 38s

Dave

And that kills enough of the microbes off that you can then just inoculate it with oyster spawn and make your own little tabletop kits to grow oyster mushrooms. But I'd never done it with lion's mane where you saw dust and you basically just put sawdust and a little bit of grain in a plastic bag and pour boiling water on it. And then you would let that cool down. And then you put the lion's mane spawn in there and it actually worked pretty well. Now I have seven or eight different, little, little plastic bags that are sprouting.

27m 20s

Dave

Oh, so yeah, each mushroom. So there's, there's maybe like eight or 10 mushrooms that are, are commonly cultivated. Our knowledge of mushrooms is kind of expanding every year, but a lion's mane. That's the thing that's really noted for is improving your brain function. But

27m 39s

Nicky

Marie, you give them before you give the kids lions being before they take tests and, and all mushrooms are, are anticancer from what we've learned.

27m 51s

Dave

Yeah. If it's somehow they stimulate your immune system. So they have these long polysaccharide chains. Don't ask me to explain what, what exactly the chemical structure of polysaccharide, but somehow it stimulates and tunes your immune system so that it's functioning better. And that helps to reduce some of the cancerous growth than your, your immune system is a little more sensitive to the cancerous growth that are happening in your body. The lion's mane is interesting because we've had, I'm I'm really big on oyster mushrooms because they're so easy to grow. But some people don't like the texture because it tends to be a little bit rubbery.

28m 34s

Dave

So lion's mane. They look, they generally love though, because when you sear it, it tastes very much like

28m 43s

Nicky

Neat. It's a really good meat substitute

28m 50s

JackieMarie

Kinda like portobellos

28m 53s

Dave

It's even meatier than that.

28m 55s

Nicky

You can say it's a chicken because it's not rubbery. Yeah. When you sear it, it's it's like you can, you, you a slice it, the mushroom, it looks like a big puff ball with what they call teeth. Shaggy mane. Lion's mane is isn't it

29m 12s

Dave

It's a beautiful mustard too. It's it's starts off white and this kind of big ball thing. And then it gets this, these little outgrowths that hang down that looked like a

29m 23s

Nicky

Shaggy mane, white shaggy mane. And then as you slice through the mushroom, each of those slices are like patties that you can see, or just with olive oil or whatever oil and seasoning. And then that's like addition itself is just putting that in your sandwiches or in your, for breakfast. Sometimes we have it. So yeah, that's lions mean

29m 49s

JackieMarie

Just like what size are the PO I mean like courtside plastic, like sandwich bags, gallon size bags, like I'm having a hard time picturing the plastic bags would actually pour boiling water in a plastic bag. You doesn't, it melt the bag.

30m 6s

Dave

So these are they're special bags called filter patch that they have a small little filter patch they're rated for temperature so that it doesn't melt. You can even put them in a pressure cooker and then they'll be fine. At some point I'd like to move to something a little more sustainable, like some kind of wooden crates that are sealed to a certain extent, but I'm not yet at that level where I feel confident enough to not use the plastic bags, but that you can buy them. If you look for a mushroom growing bag or mushroom filter bag, they're, they're pretty common.

30m 47s

Dave

And it's just essentially trying to think about the size basket, a grocery bag.

30m 55s

Nicky

Yeah. Grocery bag size. And then when you fill it up, it looks

30m 59s

Dave

It's clear plastic. And then it has a little white filter patch because you don't want all the other common, fun guy spores getting into your grow bag because it's the perfect climate for growing mushrooms, a fun guy, and you only want to grow inoculated. So what happens is you put in all the materials in the mushroom spawn to inoculate it and then you seal it all up and you let the mushroom takeover, it'll kind of colonized, you'll see little white growth as it kind of eats and digests this whole it's food, essentially like whether it's straw or whether it's.

31m 44s

Nicky

Yeah. And the, in the Philippines may my uncle does this to grow mushrooms and he uses soy bean and soybeans, the husks of the soybeans that are inoculated with mushrooms. And, and essentially what Dave is doing when he pours the hot water before doing anything else is just like what you would do when you sterilize your, your Mason jars is to sterilize or pasteurize the straw from any other competing fungi. Right. That's what you're doing.

32m 12s

Dave

Yeah. It's that your, so there's two different things you can either pasteurize, which gets rid of most of the things, but you keep, you keep a few of the other beneficial microorganisms around and some mushrooms actually prefer that the ones that grow in compost, for example, like portabella, it actually prefers that you don't completely sterilize something before you you're not related, but then there's other ones like Shataki mushrooms that it's a pretty slow grower. So you really want to completely wipe out everything so that it's not really competing with any other type of fungus.

32m 53s

JackieMarie

That was one of my questions was how long does it take to like from when you put them in the bag to when you can harvest them, eat them.

33m 0s

Dave

So it varies. The craziest one is oyster mushrooms. So if you take and they'll grow on almost anything, what are the, the, the nice little workshops I do is I'll get somebody one of these bags and they put in a toilet paper roll, and then they, they pour the boiling water and kind of pasteurize. And then they put the, the oyster mushroom grain. And, and from the time that we inoculate the oyster mushroom to the, the point that it starting produce oyster mushrooms is literally two or three weeks. The lion's mane, which I was talking about before took about two months Shataki mushrooms.

33m 43s

Dave

I would take about, I'd say six, six months. And when you do it in a bag, it's generally faster. Other people will do it, where they, they take the logs that are freshly cut and they'll inoculate. They put these little pegs into the logs. And I tried that out a couple of years back, but if you're in a small area, it's difficult to store the logs in a way where you're, you're keeping them moist. So they tend to dry out. And then they only produce once a year. So they might produce for five years, but they're only going to produce a flush like once or twice a year. So I found this, this way of using plastic bags.

34m 26s

Dave

It was way more productive. If you, you know, you can get one to two pounds of oyster mushrooms from each bag and how many

34m 36s

Nicky

Times,

34m 38s

Dave

Well, once it, once you'll get it in these things called flushes where it grows a bunch of oyster mushrooms, and then you cut them back and then it, it goes dormant for a week or two. And then it starts again, you can typically get about two to three flushes per bag. And then the cool thing is once it's done, it's great fertilizer for your soil. So you just,

34m 58s

Nicky

So the inoculant material that they've spent and they've already eaten and digested, and they're no longer growing from it, you just spread that as mushroom compost in your garden. And then it really, really boosts the fertility of the soil

35m 13s

Dave

Mulch. And you might even get more flushes once it's in there from the ground.

35m 24s

JackieMarie

Cool. My listeners have asked me for years to find someone to talk about mushrooms and just nobody I've never really had anybody come on before and about it. I had no idea that they were so good for your immune system either. And the funny thing is my grandson picked, he found lion's mane in the woods this summer and he dried him and he gave us a bunch of, for Christmas. So I'm pretty excited to cook those.

35m 59s

Nicky

Oh, wow. Yeah. There's specific mushrooms that are more immuno, you know, for the immune system more than others. So lions lions means superpower is more like brain function, but the reishi and what other, what other ones she talky and ratio they're known for to boost the immune system. A lot Turkey tail is at the cancer. Well, we say super because it's the most studied right now for as, as an adjunct treatment to those who have cancer in specifically breast cancer. But I think that that's so study right now in the NIH, that's that they're doing collaboratively with the mycologist Paul Stamets, who's really known Michael world.

36m 49s

Nicky

So that's, yeah, that Turkey tail is pretty known for that.

36m 54s

Dave

The way that we, we actually drink you can, ratio's a really bitter mush.

37m 3s

Nicky

We have grown that too. You don't grow and reishi two in a bag.

37m 7s

Dave

Yeah. We don't really, you don't eat it in a culinary sense cause it's pretty hard and tough, but you can grind it up into a powder that you then drink a tea from and it's verbally, what's, it's a

37m 25s

Nicky

Adaptive.

37m 26s

Dave

So you can you drink it in your tea rag periodically and it, it, it kind of helps to keep your immune system functioning. Well,

37m 37s

Nicky

Yeah, it's like has a compounding effect. So the more, if you drink it once, you know, may, may not see really any results, but if you drink it pretty regularly, every there are lots of herbs like that too. That if you drink pretty regularly, they really have a compounding beneficial effect on your, on your body and in different ways. And for reishi mushrooms, we drink them in a tea dried with Roy boss and it tastes really good that way, because if we cooked it, we have tried it in cook, having it even just yeah, for cooking it by itself, it's really bitter. It's a bitter, But yeah, those are so many.

38m 20s

Nicky

And then there's there's cordyceps, which is a mushroom. That's really a different one. Cordyceps is a mushroom that, what does it do? Parasitize is

38m 29s

Dave

What does it do?

38m 32s

Nicky

Okay. So it's a weird, weird,

38m 34s

Dave

Weird mush when China hosted the summer Olympics. And then a lot of their athletes were doing really well. And they were trying to figure out whether they're taking steroids. It turned out that they were all drinking cordyceps before, because somehow it improves your, your muscle function or something that good.

38m 53s

Nicky

It does. I really felt this. When I drank cordyceps tea, we've never grown cordyceps ups because Curtis apps in order to grow has to eat a worm. Like the mushroom parasitized is a worm.

39m 7s

Dave

Zombifies the insects and it kind of control some of their higher functions that they do crazy stuff. So they will spread more.

39m 21s

Nicky

That's what we talked about the last time is there are mushrooms that are used as, oh, Michael pesticides. I intimate pathogen. Now. I can't remember, but they're micro pesticides. That's another one. And that's where mushrooms. No, no, very it's very good point. Jackie it's micro remediation is because mushrooms tend to

39m 46s

Dave

'cause. They, they have these enzymes that they meant that digests, they don't have a stomach. They digest things externally before they kind of suck them up. So they have these powerful enzymes to break down things into their organic matter, into its constitute elements. So in micro remediation, there are these areas that have been polluted with heavy metals. So what's amazing about mushrooms. They will take it. If you take a couple of molecules or, or Adams of the heavy metal and you add it to the end of a long hydrocarbon chain, then it's no longer dangerous.

40m 30s

Dave

So these mushrooms literally can grow on these highly infected lens and highly polluted lines and suck up all the heavy metals and, and sequester that heavy metals and safely in these long Magenic molecules. And then

40m 49s

Nicky

Of course you wouldn't eat the mushrooms growing there, but they're used in order to clean up oil spills and toxic polluted lands, where, you know, there's been, you know, bad chemicals in a specific land. If you do have land that you think has been tainted by like pesticides or chemicals, if you grow mushrooms, there things specifically oyster again,

41m 13s

Dave

Oyster and Safaria, which is also called a wine cap,

41m 18s

Nicky

Y in cap mushrooms, then they help remediate the land then. But the other thing that mushrooms are now being used for, and this is from trad Kotter, who I tended his talk about Miko pesticides is how, because there are mushrooms that tend to parasitize specific ants, ants, or insects, rather that you can target create your own Miko pesticides by. So the, the quote unquote word is training. Having them req training the mushroom to recognize the, the specific insect that you're trying to kill.

41m 60s

Nicky

So for instance, in our Gardner client's case, they had a big infestation of spotted lantern fly, which was big on the east coast two years ago, and it decimated their grapes. So we gave, we show them the, the video of this talk by trad Cotter, and they started making their own pesticides from the mushroom, which is this mushroom is called Boveria. And it's a broad spectrum. You can buy this. Even farmers buy this as like a possible pest management solution, and it can be used broad spectrum, but because it's broad spectrum, it's not targeted to the spotted lantern fly.

42m 40s

Nicky

So what you would do is you would put it in a peat in a, in a Mason jar with a spotted lantern fly carcass, the carcass of a spotted lantern fly and sort of have them parasitize it over again, or grow over that spotted land in flight, right? So now they recognize that the spotted lantern fly is, is yummy. And then you would slurry this, these Canadia, is that what they're called the baby spores? The baby mushroom, the spores of the mushroom are growing on this and there's all white. And then once it's all white and you can, you don't see the spotted lantern flies all fuzzy fuzzy. Then you mix it up in, in water with water and you slurry it up and you can put it in your, in your sprayer with the foliars like a foliar spray.

43m 30s

Nicky

And when you spray it on the grapes or wherever the spotted lantern fly attack, then if they come back again, next year, there are fungi that are ready to recognize, oh, that was that spotted lantern fly. It's yummy, let's go. And Paris ties it. And so they grow over that spotted lantern, and then you eliminate the population. It's amazing. But I find it personally a little bit creepy because you don't want to do that with bees, right? You don't want ever to get the bee and actually make it attack the bees. So, so that's a little bit, it's like on the, on the fringes of, of what you can do for, with using, without using chemicals, but it's trying to be developed because then trad Cotter was saying, think of all the chemical pesticides we could take off the markets.

44m 22s

Nicky

If we could just, you know, have this target specific Miko pesticide. Instead,

44m 30s

JackieMarie

I just got this email this morning from something called sod solutions. And they're like, step two was get glycosate and, and kill the dead areas of your lawn before you start fresh. And I just was like, are you kidding me? I was like, who are these people? Where did they get my name? Yeah. And also like, you know, I'm sure listeners are going to be so interested in this because besides growing mushrooms for food and brain health and, and you know, the cancer and immune systems, we all need to boost our immune systems. But look at all these cool things they can do for, if you, if you do have a problem in your garden, like I was thinking, I wonder if it would work for fire ants because that's something in the south that I am, you know, I've had several people talks about I've, I've read questions from people in Facebook groups and things like, what do we do with these fire ants?

45m 26s

JackieMarie

People that have like, come, you know, you pick a, or, or a classroom garden type of people that are working with kids. And they're like, I can't have fire ants in here. And what do I do? I don't want to spray pesticides. So that's so fascinating.

45m 43s

Nicky

Yes. That was the exact example that he, his personal example was that he has a big tribe. Kotter has a big farm. And every year they invite, they had an event where they invited hundreds of people to come see it. And so he had fire ants, like three holes of fire ants in the ground. So he put those keep, he might go pesticide them with that with Bavaria. And it worked, he said there was no fire at, there were no fire ants. So, yup. If any, I don't know whether he's, it's, it's basically a DIY solution. So I have the link. If you would like to put it in your, in, if you'd need it.

46m 23s

Nicky

I have the link to really fuzzy recordings of me in the front seat, recording trad Kotter, give his talk about micro pesticides. Anybody wanted it, but

46m 33s

JackieMarie

Awesome. Well, cool. Well, yeah, we'll definitely try to include the links in the show notes. So once something like that, you guys are excited to try next year that you haven't tried before.

46m 48s

Nicky

Let's see. Well, like we were saying, like, there are lots of things that are new that are happening. And one of the things that's new is that we're going to move. So yeah,

46m 58s

JackieMarie

Like just like across town or like a whole nother climate,

47m 3s

Dave

We grow so much already in our little yard and we, where we have eight people in our townhouse and it's getting, as they get bigger, it's a little bit cramped and we want to experiment more with what we're doing in the garden. So the primary reason where we're looking for a new place is just to get more land so that we can really go crazy. But secondary yeah. All kinds of things. Yeah. We, we love to, to grow more perennial type.

47m 37s

JackieMarie

They ask about that too. Cause you kind of like started out talking about how you went from raised beds to a food forest and like, like what does that look like now? Like, do you still have the raised beds are what describes you like your food forest type of

47m 54s

Dave

W we have the structure of the raised beds. It's kind of like a keyhole. So if you imagine our backyard is just a big square with a fence, boxing it, then we've, we've put raised beds along the, outside the inside of the fence. But then in, right in the center, we made a kind of C shaped keyhole bed. And when we first discovered about permaculture, the first thing we did is we went out to a nursery and bought a bunch of dwarf fruit trees and put them everywhere. And then it took us a couple of years to realize that some fruit trees require more light than others.

48m 38s

Dave

And some things grew well and other things grew well. So what we have now is it's kind of like a mixed usage space where we have things that have done really well. It's generally we have a lot of Berry bushes.

48m 53s

Nicky

So here's a, here's an example of a Guild is we have to, since it's shady, we have two pawpaw trees. Flanking. If you walk out our backyard, you'll have a lane that goes straight into the gate from the middle to the middle, from our backyard basement to, to the gate, and then flanking that pathway, our raised beds and an arch. So you have to walk under an arch because the arch is the thing that holds you up out of a cattle fence panel that we've bent

49m 25s

Dave

Over into a hoop

49m 27s

Nicky

And flanking. The arch is the trombone CNO ramp account in the summer. And Gumi berries on both sides in the brain right next to the Papa trees that are also thanking that, that, that the, the walkway and the pawpaws do really well. We have to pause to gloomy Berry bushes beside them oregano underneath that as you that's by the gate. And then beside it, we have Tulsi growing sometimes okra,

50m 1s

Dave

The seasonal world grow, grow all the seasonal annuals in the spaces between the perennials are underneath the perennials. So I'll put, this is kind of where you think about the levels of, of, of a food forest is you're not growing all at the same level, so that as long as things can get a certain amount of sunlight, they're fine. Or if they can climb up and find their sunlight. So we grow the zucchinis or the beans, like pull beans on the trellis and they kind of find their own sunlight. So we know they don't take up much space, a horizontal space in the race, but they're right next to all these perennials that Paul Paul and things that were, that were growing.

50m 46s

Dave

The other thing is that we grow our fruit trees. We try to prune them. So we train them along the fence. So

50m 54s

Nicky

Using <em></em> technique, and that's basically a fancy word to just say, put some, put some, a hook eyes on the drill, some hook guys into the fence and string a metal wire, and then put some ribbon into the arm, you know, fan out or, or train your pear tree to have its arms roll along the fence by tying their, their young buds or Chang their, their young branches to that wire every year. So the maintenance is maybe twice a year that I go out there and prune, or, you know, reinforce or tie new sprouts that have come up so that it looks like it's grown, you know, secret garden, it's going against the fence.

51m 46s

Nicky

So yes, last year was the first year we got pears for, from our tree of five years. That was great.

51m 53s

Dave

Yeah. That's definitely one of those fruit trees that prefers full sun, but then we have some upright blackberries that we've, trellised the same way you can grow them, where you, where you S Bioclear them a log in a fence. And there, even with the partial shade, they're amazingly productive the whole summer last year, we w the kids would just go out and have be picking blackberries.

52m 23s

Nicky

So free varies. And then, so we, we, we grow things in terms of, by having the different levels, like Dave said, you're looking at even an underground root crop level to a verbatious level, a shrub level, a lower canopy and upper canopy levels. And there can be more than just in permaculture. We talk about seven layers of the food forest, but there can be more sub layers in between those. And I was just listening to a talk on soil nutrition and the Dan Kittredge, that was the speaker was saying how his cover crops, he considers his cover crops, a layer in a polyculture or in a permaculture Guild.

53m 7s

Nicky

Not like even that is a player that has a place to play amongst his vegetables. So,

53m 19s

JackieMarie

So I bought something that didn't go the way you thought it was going to. Is there something that wasn't like, as prolific as you thought it would be, or just come out the way you thought it was going to last summer, summer season, fall, whatever near.

53m 32s

Dave

So I would say I do ochre every year, and generally we start almost everything from, from seed inside or in a NFC tray before we transplant it outside. And whenever I grew okra, it would easily germinate in the seed tray. And then whenever I, I don't have enough room in our backyard plot and it had required once a lot of sun. So I, I have a few raised beds at my work garden. They have a community garden, so I, I would go there and transplant it.

54m 14s

Dave

And when I was I'm working remotely, so I would only go there once every two weeks or once every week. And I would transplant these okra. And then the next time I go, they'd all be dead. So I, I found, I S I started towards the middle of summer around July. I just had all these extra okra seeds and I just broadcast them. And those ones did way better than anything that I transplanted. So I think Aqua probably prefers to be direct sown once the, the soil temperature rises above us.

54m 58s

Dave

I think they like warm soil, but I guess it's something to do with the root system, or maybe there was a creature that was coming along and loved okra.

55m 7s

Nicky

We did a few trials, too. We did pepper trials of four different kinds of heirloom varieties of pepper and cucumber trials of four different kinds of cucumbers. And we, we offered these trials to our, grow it yourself members for them to try out cause they are all over the states too, to see which ones grew well, where, and I think the Chicago pickling cucumber grew really well for many of them, but there was this one cucumber that everybody didn't like, and it's a curious cucumber called

55m 41s

Dave

Mexican,

55m 42s

Nicky

The Mexican sour Gherkin. So it's actually a very tiny little ball of a cucumber, like almost okay.

55m 50s

Dave

It's about the size of a small grape. Okay.

55m 53s

Nicky

All live. They got like an olive a size, and first of all, it would grow and grow and grow so long, but have no fruits in the beginning. Right. And that everybody was wondering, well, what's wrong with this thing. And then finally at the very end of the season, it would produce several different of these small cucumber things that you could pick all I guess, but when you, but it was advertised as it was already tasting, like it was pickled, but that was not true. So that, one's just the, it's just a curious thing to grow when I give you like fascinating different plants that grow differently. I think I have it growing still in, inside the house among my indoor plants, because it grows a vine that's super long and the leaves are pretty, and it has yellow flowers.

56m 42s

Nicky

Of course they're not being pollinated. So there's no, there's no, that goes into our Neal cucumbers inside the house, but it's, it's a nice, yeah. Vine,

56m 50s

JackieMarie

I love the way you guys do all these experiments and you have people from all around the country doing it. So you're getting all this feedback and a huge database of information and just allowing people to connect and try like the same seeds in all these different gardens. That just must be so fun. Yeah. And I love it when you queue up on GI, why instead of DIY, why that's great.

57m 17s

Nicky

Yes. Because we didn't want to grow it for it. That was the whole problem is people would, and they still ask us to grow their gardens for them, but because we're busy with the six kids and homeschooling and working that we can't be in everybody's gardens, but we want to give a person, you know, that power to fish or to grow their own food. And so we have a course and they can, you know, and we consult with them, which is great because then you get to live vicariously through their seasons and see how things grow in Utah or California when we're here in the wet in the east coast where there's lots of water.

57m 55s

Dave

Yeah. Where there's climate differences. I think one of our big missions of this business is to, to find all that information that used to be common knowledge and has been lost as a society has become more kind of industrialized, but to bring that back and actually store it in a form that can be easily accessed for future generations.

58m 27s

JackieMarie

For sure. And just, I think that's funny. Like I tried to start this organic lawn care. I called the local organic lawn care last summer. And like, that's what people, that's what I ended up doing is planting gardens for people instead, like I just wanted to mow their lawns and they're like, can you come play my garden for me? Can you do my beds? Can you like, you know, show me what to grow. And just, I was surprised at how the twist that it took

58m 54s

Nicky

And that's, so what a blessing to have you as their guide and their jacket?

58m 60s

JackieMarie

Yeah. Well, I learned a lot and then like one lady, like she hadn't actually ever, she still hasn't moved into her house because of like, with the construction, boom, like first they were like, oh, it'll be done in March. And then it was going to be done in June. And then he swore to me, it would be done in July, July 1st. She'd be moved in. So I like went to the farmer's market and got her all these starts. And then I ended up having to grow them in my garden. Cause she's still not in there. The house still isn't finished because there's been such a backlog with the pandemic with one Montana's just booming and people are moving here. There's tons, more construction going on. And then there's just not enough nails or boards or screws or just any, any, you know, appliances and just everything that you would need. So anyway, this is the part of the show we called getting to the root of things.

59m 43s

JackieMarie

So do you guys each have a least favorite activity that you got to kind of force your self to go do in the garden?

59m 52s

Dave

I think there are times of the year where we just get overwhelmed with all the other life, like the kids going back to school after being remote for a year. So were you just totally super busy, but you know that you should be doing all this activity in the garden cleaning up and you, you get backlogged. So then yeah, I find that when you have to do these maintenance activities and you get backlogged on the maintenance, like the, the growing, I don't mind, but the, you know, like the pruning and the Stump thing.

1h 0m 35s

Dave

Is there anything that you, that you find onerous?

1h 0m 40s

Nicky

I think it definitely everything. I think what happens is I think in the summer, the, the influx of produce, then I don't have a dehydrator. So I've been using my oven and not everything got dehydrated the right way. So some of them got into the, some of my herbs and then the more burned when all the influx of produce comes in, that's where I get a little scared. And I'm trying to find, I should be thinking now of ways to, to extend the harvest, you know, make sure that I have my Mason jars and no, my, my recipes. So

1h 1m 19s

JackieMarie

Maybe I wanted to come by last year, I think, because there's been such a growth in gardening like Mason and mostly in our town, it was the lids like Everett. Like all of a sudden I was glad that I had bought some early in the year, just an anticipation. And, and when Mike started pickling and things, there was definitely a shortage of lids. Like you had to buy the whole jar lid kit, if you wanted the meat lids. Cause there were like no lids and rings to be found anywhere. Wow. So on the flip side, what's your favorite activity to do in the garden?

1h 1m 58s

Nicky

I like starting the seeds. I like harvesting and I like making things pretty, even though I, I always try, even though it doesn't end up pretty at the end of the seat and come October, all your, but in the spring time, I like, I'm trying to make sure that things are pruned and prettified and that's my marketing. Cause then when people who don't understand like the HOA that always cites us every year for unruly unsightly unsightly garden, this is the marketing. Like if, how can I show that you can have an edible garden space be pretty, I know it's been done in other places, so I'm constantly learning.

1h 2m 44s

Nicky

And that for me, even though I'm not good at it yet, I really like the challenge. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make things pretty inside the house and in the, in the yards as well.

1h 2m 56s

Dave

I just, I like, I like whenever I've tried an experiment, I'm kind of a gourmet, I like eating different flavors and things like that. So when you grow something fresh in it and it tastes as you, you kind of expect that it would taste and that's, that can be really fulfilling. For example, I grew this, I tried different broccolis and there was, this one is kind of a Chinese broccoli called <em></em> and it would have been marketed as that it produced a stock that was kind of the spare guests, like, and it actually turned out very well.

1h 3m 40s

Dave

The leaves weren't, the leaves were okay, but the, the stock was actually, I found even better than asparagus. And that was, you know, you just gobble that stuff up. So I, I love that experience with harvesting stuff and eating it a really fresh,

1h 3m 59s

Nicky

I like seeing the patterns in the plants and the colors that have different heirloom plants. I like seeing that and observing. So I think everybody should, the garden helps you slow down a bit from the busy ness of life. And it's good to, for those of us who have a hard time doing the things in the garden, that the garden becomes an opportunity to slow down and really appreciate that. And then the more you do that sort of meditation, the more as you go back to it, it becomes easier and easier until it's not a chore until you can't leave the garden anymore. You can go back into the house because it's too much fun.

1h 4m 43s

JackieMarie

Well, I love two things about that. I've read, just go all the service book. I can't remember the name of it, but it was all about like all the beneficial bugs and insects. And after I read that I had like a completely different appreciation for all the bugs and I couldn't believe how many more bugs I was noticing and just all the different, I just like, like I used to hate your wigs. And then they became like, now I'm kind of glad when I see an ear wig in the garden, cause I know it's doing its job and it's helping my soil thrive and my plants thrive. And the other thing I was listening to somebody talking about meditation and how people are always picturing meditation to be like somebody sitting cross legged in a, in a broom, in a closed room with their hands going home.

1h 5m 29s

JackieMarie

But really that doesn't have to be meditation. I just think your description of being in your garden is, you know, a way that people maybe feel like, oh, I should be meditating and oh, I should be doing this. And you can be meditating while you're in your garden. And, and it's true. Like a lot of those things that seem so difficult in the beginning almost become like, breathing, like, like I've learned to prune over the year. Like since I've had my podcast, you know, like I never knew how to prune things. And now I just, like, I always sitting in the garden and like, I can't even sit there without like going in, like, you know, clipping that dead branch or that dead leaf or that, you know, deadheading that flower. And, and it just makes you, you, like you were saying, like where you just want to be in there all the time.

1h 6m 12s

JackieMarie

So those are great answers. How about what's the best gardening advice you guys have ever received?

1h 6m 19s

Dave

I think the soil is one of the big things. That's where we started is that before I knew all this stuff that I know now, as I tried all kinds of seeds and, and the things would still die. So I think before you worry about hats and what are you going to do with the things once you've harvested it, the place to initially start is to look at increasing the organic content of your soil, because it's not really the soil that grows.

1h 7m 2s

Dave

It's the, it's the microbial life. It's the ecology of the soil. So if you have a thriving community of organisms that are living in your soil, they're doing all of that sequestering of the minerals and the, the elements that the plants need. And then they have the relationships with the plants where they, they kind of do this bartering and say, here, I'll give you some nutrition and you give us some ch some starches and sugars. And that for me was one of the initially the most fats, I think it was something about micro.

1h 7m 40s

Nicky

So it's Jeff Lawton is a permaculture. This, then he says, oh, the book is called that that's totally a good look into how important the life and the soil is. Jeff likes to say, we don't feed the soil. We feed the life in the soil. And I think with that in mind, when you have that perspective, that we're feeding the life in these creatures that I need to take care of because they're taking care of the rest of the stuff that I can't even see or understand the, the, my Miko rise or fungi, for instance, which is the beneficial fungi for plants is also often called the internet of the soil.

1h 8m 24s

Nicky

And it, it sends messages far across, you know, your garden to the next one side of the garden, to the other, and saying, this plant needs such and such minerals. You send it over here. And when we, when we till too much, you know, and re cut off these, we don't understand that the soil has already a good balance, or if it's imbalanced, you know how to cultivate, bring back that balance. Just like your gut is like the soil it's bringing back that microbiome of, of good beneficial bacteria to bring, bring back the life. I think that's, that's the best advice I've we've been given.

1h 9m 4s

Nicky

And that's why we try to, we love learning more and more about soil science as the years go by

1h 9m 18s

JackieMarie

For sure. No, we did Jeff one, right? Timmy with microbes flown fells, right?

1h 9m 30s

Nicky

Sorry.

1h 9m 31s

Dave

He was just trying to segway from, she went into,

1h 9m 35s

Nicky

Because I was thinking, I was thinking like, what is the best advice? I guess that's the best advice, a and advice, but the book teaming with microbes by Jeff loans, films

1h 9m 44s

Dave

For an inspirational for me. Cause I didn't up until now. I mean, up until that point, I thought soil science must've been the, one of the dullest things you could possibly study. And I was, Yeah. I was like, why would anybody want to study that? That sounds like masochism. And then after reading that book and you, you read how intricate some of these relationships are, that for me was really eye-opening,

1h 10m 13s

JackieMarie

You know, it was booked. You guys might like is Nicole masters wrote a book called, is it for the love of soil? I think it is. I'll put, I'll put the link in the show notes, but like she had, she wrote this book and it's like, you would never think that you would be interested in soil. And yet people read her book over and over. And I even got, my brother gave me like an audible gift certificate and I bought the audible version and I've listened to it multiple times. Like she just rates us. She uses this fascinating way of describing soil science that makes you like, I am so not a science soil.

1h 10m 57s

JackieMarie

Like I would never think I would read that and I've worked her, but anyway, I'm sure you guys are like, is Jackie ever going to let us off the show phone? So I'm gonna try to like last couple of questions. How about a favorite tool? What if you had to move in? Can only take one. Like, are you guys, if you guys are thinking of moving, like what tool could you not live without

1h 11m 23s

Nicky

The long Pirnie shares? It's the long pruning she was for you. So a friends of ours from Portland, our Ruutsoo design, they sent a, a little mini site, like a hand site and they have a mini one and a longer version. And not in, not at all as large as the ones that you would commonly see, like, you know, as half your body size, like grim Reaper, that kind of site. And there's so, and at first I was like, this is really dangerous because the kids, if they get this cause it's curved and it's the reading, but it is so effective and so much faster as I've been using it.

1h 12m 7s

Nicky

It's really done a really good job of chopping and dropping in the garden, using that tool. So I keep it in my tool chest, for sure. That would be, that would be one of those things that I wouldn't add my seed seeds, but that's not a tool that if we were to move, yeah, we'd bring all those seeds.

1h 12m 32s

JackieMarie

You know, I am surprised you are the first person that has said that because that's really true. And like, there's like some, I don't know if it's a book, but like I'm just picturing, I think it's in farming while black, where she talks about the women, like literally like putting the seeds in their hair when they were, you know, traveling so people couldn't take their seeds away. So they would always have their food in their, in their beans and things. There's a book that you guys might like, and your kids might be interested. It was a little too like scientific for me, but it's called <em></em> welcome to the museum.

1h 13m 16s

JackieMarie

And it's spelled F U N G a R I U M. This is huge. Have you seen it?

1h 13m 22s

Nicky

I saw the Botanic. I, and I couldn't stop reading it. Like I was in the Barnes and noble and I just read the botanicals from England, right. The museum, like the pen. And then they said that they had another series called from Gary and welcome to the museum. So I know I haven't read that specific one, but I'll be on the lookout for that one for sure.

1h 13m 43s

JackieMarie

Cool. All right. I'll be on the lookout for the boat. Botanica is that what you said?

1h 13m 48s

Nicky

Yeah. Something like Botanic. I have to find out. I'll send it to you Jackie. After

1h 13m 54s

JackieMarie

I see it, I ha I have it. I see it up on Amazon,

1h 13m 59s

Nicky

Jackie, to your point. I want it to go on. Yes, the seeds. So when we talk about, when we give this webinar on seed saving, one of the anecdotes that seed saver exchanges director of, I forget what his position was, but I want the tech attended a talk by them. And they were talking about all these seeds stories that accompanied these seeds that they'd collected in their heirloom collection, where they get seeds that wouldn't have been stewarded or grown out because the family that, that grew them died and they wanted to make sure that it kept on growing. So they would send it to seed savers exchange. And one of the stories that Toryonn sin is the name of the person who gave this talk shared was it was not uncommon in the 19th century for an American mom to give as a gift on the, on the night of the wedding, the Eve of the wedding of her daughter to give in, in naked Chester, a little box, a gift of seeds to her daughter.

1h 15m 5s

Nicky

And with that, she would say, I know that wherever you go, you can feed yourself. You can feed your family and you have a little piece of me with you.

1h 15m 16s

JackieMarie

Oh, I love that. What a sweet tradition.

1h 15m 20s

Nicky

Yeah. So it's definitely in our heritage somewhere that we've always been keeping our seeds with us, traveling with them.

1h 15m 30s

JackieMarie

I love that though. Cause it's like empowering the woman in the family to be able to take care of themselves and their family. How about a favorite recipe you like to cook or eat from the garden or your kids love?

1h 15m 46s

Nicky

Oh, we love to eat and we love to cook.

1h 15m 53s

Dave

I would say the one that we make the most though would be we get, we, we grow this shard. That's almost perennial in our front yard and we can, at any point in time, we can just go get handfuls of shards. So we make quiche with the shard. We just use it like a spinach to make a kind of a shard quiche where we stir fry with a onion and maybe about half a pound of shard. And then you mix that with the Eggs and make a great, a great quiche.

1h 16m 34s

Nicky

Yeah, for me, I liked the okra recipe of Chris Smith given by Michael Twitty, who is a historian on, on, he's actually a historian on African foods and the recipes for oh, oh, CRA Bindi masala. So it's actually an Indian as if, oh crap indie masala. So that, one's what I like.

1h 17m 4s

JackieMarie

Cool. That sounds good. And I love it. It comes from like a historian type of person and chart is definitely one of my favorite foods by

1h 17m 16s

Nicky

How about you, Jackie? What do you like to cook in the garden the most?

1h 17m 21s

JackieMarie

Well, you know what I cooked a lot this year was I took zucchini and used it for noodles in like everything I, tons of zucchini and fresh tomatoes. And just with like some cheese, like either permanent or mozzarella or cheddar, any kind of cheese that I had and a little bit of breadcrumb and just like made these layered dishes, like all summer long. But I made like a lasagna out as Eugenie noodles. Last year that came out, it was so good. Like I never had one come out. So just like perfect texture and like, it wasn't falling apart. It wasn't too watery. And just, that's probably some of my favorite recipes. And I always put chard in with the, like the ricotta cheese or the cottage cheese, depending on what I'm using.

1h 18m 8s

JackieMarie

Like I use chart pretty much like spinach. So I freeze it and, and then use it. Cause Spanish does not grow well here. It tends to, it does come up early. If you can get it like planted in the fall. So you get a spring batch or if you get it right away in the spring, but more often than not, by the time it grows, it just bolts super quick. It just doesn't have that in our climate. But Swiss chard will grow all summer long and I can just harvest it a ton of it once. It, it usually comes up after the beet greens. So usually have like maybe a little bit of spinach. Then the first thing I get a beet greens and then, and then lots of Swiss chard.

1h 18m 50s

JackieMarie

I just made those Anya for new years, the other day using the Swiss chard. Anyway, how about I figured internet resource, where do you guys find yourself surfing on the web? You are two of the most like educated, like research priests, people I've talked to. So it's probably hard to, down to one.

1h 19m 15s

Nicky

I think a lot of the things that we're indebted to so many other people who've taught us, the VA BF, the Virginia biological farming association is one of them. Their conferences is really top notch and gets a lot of speakers from everywhere around the U S online. Where do you go for, we're trying to be the resource and trying to, trying to gather all the information and put it in. Tell us

1h 19m 40s

JackieMarie

About your website. So

1h 19m 43s

Nicky

Our website grow my own food.com. Dave is trying to, we're going to do us kicks. We were trying to do it last year, but we couldn't. So we're going to do it next year, 2023, a Kickstarter called Sage. And it's a garden app where

1h 20m 1s

Dave

We do a lot of, we get a ton of questions from people saying, I just don't know when to start these seeds. So out of that, we had done a bunch of webinars about the planting calendar and how you can figure out based off your climate and your zone, when you should be planting certain seeds, we're starting them indoors. And that would, that helped. But then people would get overwhelmed because they want to grow more than a few things they want to grow. I don't know, 10, 20 things, and then planning all of those things out because it started to become overwhelming. So what I've been working on for awhile is just an application online to manage holistically, that whole process of figuring out these are the things that I want to grow.

1h 20m 51s

Dave

So there's the kind of, what then the, where, where do you want to plant those things? Or how many of those things those plants do? I need to grow to get the yields that I want, and then tying that in so that it could automatically generate the planting calendar for you, send you alerts and things like that. And then you can track that and, and feed that as it's a cycle where you see how you did and then get recommendations about how you should grow the following year, based off what you did previously, just kind of organizing, acting as a, kind of a behind the scenes, personal assistant for your garden.

1h 21m 30s

JackieMarie

That is so awesome. You know, I've seen different calendars and things, but nobody has ever talked about, I've never seen one that actually collects your own data and spits it out for you for the next year, because I've had lots of guests talk about, you know, their, their like physical journal that they keep as a, is a great record for them. And like, I know we use ours here, but nobody like has talked about like a computer generated one where you can enter your information. And then the next year it's going to give you, you know, reminders and say like, I'll never forget Denny crane talking about he's down in Florida. If he doesn't get his tomatoes started by Valentine's day.

1h 22m 11s

JackieMarie

And yet he's still like, you know, he knows he should do that. And he's got notes that tell him to do that, but like finding his notebook and like other things. So I think that's an awesome way to have an app on your phone. That's like, not just, you know, a general, but like it's specific to your own garden and it's going to build on the data that you're inputting into it. Genius. Steve, I love that. How about a fever book? Do you guys have a book or a magazine and you want to recommend,

1h 22m 43s

Dave

You liked Dave Jackie's book?

1h 22m 45s

Nicky

I do like Dave Jackie's book. What am I currently reading now in terms of book? Oh my goodness. I have so many books. So I'm also reading Matt powers, soil book, but I always go back to Dave Jacquees and Eric twins. What is it called? Forest gardening for temperate climates. There are tomes their volume one and two, but they have really good date. All the list. If you, if you had a plan, a plant in mind for a good, for a sustainable regenerative permaculture garden, then they have it in their index and then they have all the information about it, the diameter.

1h 23m 31s

Nicky

And, and how does it grow and what medicinal functions does it have and where would it be and what climate? So now I have to make sure I know the title. So pause editor. I'm going to look for it,

1h 23m 46s

JackieMarie

Jackie. Cool. Cause I, I have not heard of Tim, although the book sounds familiar and you guys remind me of Matt powers because you both have like this like enthusiasm and you're interested in teaching children and spreading, you know, going into the schools and just, you know, and then broadening your, your scope of teaching people and just, yeah, Matt powers is awesome. Isn't he,

1h 24m 12s

Nicky

He has so much energy. He

1h 24m 15s

JackieMarie

Does. Right. But you guys have a lot of that energy and you're like on opposite coast. So you guys between the two of you are really hitting a good, a good part of the population.

1h 24m 25s

Nicky

Yeah. W so it's called edible forest gardening by David, Jackie and Eric tones, my EV edible forest gardens. I David Jackie and Eric tones Meyer, and there's a volume one volume two. And then the other online resource that I just remembered was seed linked. And there are a resource for when you don't know what seeds will produce, what kind of taste or vigor or grows in your climate.

1h 24m 55s

Dave

They just started in the last couple of years.

1h 24m 57s

Nicky

So their database is just starting, but they're partnered with seed savers exchange. And so they created, if you ever wanted to know, for instance, I know coloreds, their database of carloads is in America is pretty much all set. Like they have all the different Collin varieties that you can grow. And if you wanted a beautiful color, if you wanted one that was more productive or

1h 25m 20s

Dave

Specific for

1h 25m 21s

Nicky

Your specific growing zone.

1h 25m 24s

Dave

So they do these not

1h 25m 26s

JackieMarie

So important.

1h 25m 28s

Dave

They've been collaborating with seed savers to collect all that seed trial data for the different regions, because the, the founders of that, they used to work for the large seed companies, but for obvious reasons, they, it wasn't very fulfilling. And they, they w w we're trying to bring that rigor to the, the kind of private growing area for, for doing large scale private seed.

1h 25m 58s

Nicky

Yeah. The rigor of, of knowing what grows well and how does it grow and what climate, so those kinds of data that we like specific heirloom varieties, but, you know, the, usually that data of how does it taste or did it grow well for you is not captured. So he's trying to find a good way to make Nico Anjell bear is trying to find a good way to capture it through seedlings that work,

1h 26m 24s

JackieMarie

That seedling, that organism isn't coming up for me.

1h 26m 27s

Nicky

Maybe I didn't have it right.

1h 26m 29s

JackieMarie

Is it just Lincoln? Not linked.

1h 26m 31s

Nicky

Oh, wait, happened link there. See, linked.com.

1h 26m 38s

JackieMarie

Oh

1h 26m 40s

Nicky

Yes. See link.com. Sorry about that.

1h 26m 43s

JackieMarie

That's all right. I just want to make sure we get the right thing in the show notes and that people can find it. Awesome. Okay. My final question, and then I'm gonna let you guys get back to your kids and your busy day, if there's one change you would like to see to create a greener world, what would it be? For example, is there a charity organization, your passionate about, or project you'd like to see put into action? Like, what do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment, either locally, nationally, or on a global scale?

1h 27m 19s

Dave

Oh, wow. That's a, that's a tough one. I think we're, we're very passionate about these kinds of problems are probably not going to be solved politically. They're going to be solved at the grassroots by everybody kind of coming together and, and changing the system through their personal lifestyle choices to make things more sustainable, to reduce waste. But I'm not, not sure if there's a individual organization that encompasses all of that. It's more like all these different people are doing all these kinds of different things.

1h 28m 1s

Dave

Is there, is there anybody that you can specifically identify?

1h 28m 7s

Nicky

I think the thing that would make the most impact is if every family knew how to sustain themselves with food, if we get to that level, then naturally growing would be incorporated in the school system. And you wouldn't growing with being the most. One of the most important things in, you know, when you do is you create government laws. I keep thinking about where I'm watching a documentary with the kids on Singapore and 93% of their food is imported. It's such a high-tech country and the way they're trying to grow food, but the way that they do grow, it is very unnatural, like in, in a, in a building with different levels of you're very controlled, grown tomatoes without the environment or the soil without the soil nature.

1h 29m 12s

Nicky

They're not bringing nature into the system where you have these collaborators, millions, billions cajillions of collaborators in the soil, in the air, through the pollinators in, you know, that the earth is so ready to assist us in, in making this world livable and repairing this world. And we think that we can all solve it in like a, a box of man-made sort of solution without enlisting the help of the rest of the environment to do that. So it's going to be at a holistic, I think the solutions for the next generation are not going to be found well, so where we're mixed, right? We have, we can see how tech can help, but they're, they're still going to be found by nature based in with all the players of the environment, especially the humans, doing their part.

1h 30m 1s

Nicky

I have the image, always of Wally that image, when, if you've familiar with a movie Wall-E where Wiley zooms out of earth and he gets through the atmosphere and you can look back through the space junk of all the satellites that are pushes through that. And then you look back and the earth is all brown, and it isn't that beautiful blue ball that we're so used to seeing from the astronauts pictures in the sixties. And that is, we don't want that, that image is so embedded in my mind that I don't want that. I want it to be. And it's so easy to reverse that if we all did our part, but we all have to know that.

1h 30m 43s

Nicky

And so I think the solutions are in the family level, that the parents, that the kids do,

1h 30m 48s

Dave

The local to the actual family, that they, they integrate themselves more with how they're living on earth, you know, like locally by growing their own food,

1h 31m 2s

JackieMarie

Even just composting there, you know, scraps and not throwing that in the trash and hoping like other gardens grow and growing flowers so that, you know, the bees are coming to your place for the, you know, that just, I totally grew like you guys are saying, have you seen that movie Finch with Tom Hanks and the robot? Like that's like after we've destroyed the planet like that, it's pretty good. Anyway, you guys thank you so much for coming back and sharing with us today and dropping all these golden seeds and tell everybody how they connected you, how they get to go to GI. Why take the GI, why course and how they can see some of your webinars and just where did they find you?

1h 31m 47s

Nicky

Thanks. Our webinars are always on grow my own food.com. You'll see our latest webinar on the front page of the website, as well as other blogs and resources. We have a resource of garden tools there that you can, you can look through 'em and we do a lot of blogs, and we're so grateful to you, Jackie, for having us on this show. And if there's anything else that, you know, we've masked, we are happy to come back as we learn and grow more and talk more about organic gardening. So thank you so much for having us

1h 32m 27s

JackieMarie

Well, thank you guys so much for sharing everything today and just, I really appreciate all you do and everything you guys that are sharing with everybody else about what you've learned, because you have learned a ton and you're putting it into action and just have a great day. Thank you.

1h 32m 43s

Nicky

Oh, you're so welcome.

1h 32m 47s

JackieMarie

Okay. I'm shutting the recorder off.