2. Gardening and Seed Saving

Transform your meals with delicious wild harvested flowers, mushrooms, herbs, roots, berries, and greens! Learn how Amyrose Foll of Virginia Free Farm cultivates generations of gardens to feed her family and community.

TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Amyrose Foll: It rained here in quite some time, so we are just going to be watering our raised beds, the garden beds are not quite so bad, and cleaning these up. So one of the things we’re going to do is actually go through here, and I know a lot of you would say, so this is obviously potatoes. This pokeberry, get that out of there because it’s a weed.

[00:00:52] Wrong. So we are actually gonna utilize that, their leaves as wild edibles. We’re gonna [00:01:00] go through everything in here and sort it out into different- different piles. So we’ve got some purslane. We’ll leave this little guy here because it’s very high in omega-3 fatty acids. We’ve got some sorrel. Those we’ll dry for a tea for when we have a headache.

[00:01:17] And we’ve got some chickweed that has seen better days, so we might just pull that out and also make a tea out of that chickweed for allergies and whatnot. And so one of the other things we could do, we’re trying not to waste what the land has given us, is I have these big beautiful redbud trees. Now, there is a nursery close by here that actually sells redbud saplings for about $110 apiece.

[00:01:45] So these little guys, now that they’re wet, will easily come out of the ground. So we are gonna go through all of our beds and very carefully all of our white oak, redbud, and maple tree saplings we’re going to carefully remove and re-pot so that they will be [00:02:00] available for sale next year. And it’s a really great alternative way to make a little bit of extra cash on your farm, and it’s something that’s basically free.

[00:02:08] Nature gives us, the land provides everything we need if we know how to look at it properly and listen to her. Now, these gardens may look a little bit unruly to you. So these are actually going to be seed gardens. The potatoes we will eat, but we will collect the botanical seeds from these potato fruit flow- or p- potato fruits if the flowers do make them this year.

[00:02:31] They don’t do it every year. And we will be collecting this fennel seed for subsequent gardens and to distribute to the community. So we actually supply a lot of community gardens in the area, so these beautiful sage flowers will end up supplying the community. And this is an inflorescence. That is w- how the carrot flowers in its biennial schedule.

[00:02:59] Now, [00:03:00] we’ve got a lot of licorice here, goosefoot. The goosefoot we’re actually gonna save as food. We have some in a bed in another area of the garden. And all this rocket arugula is going to go to seed, or already has started to go to seed, because we can see from just doing a quick inspection that we do have some fatties started out here.

[00:03:21] So basically we’re gonna let these flowers run their course. You can eat these flowers. I love eating flowers. But we’re going to let these guys… I got some dirt on my hands. We’re going to actually let these guys run their course. They get very swollen and dry up. And the, here’s one that’s a little bit farther along.

[00:03:40] So basically what we do is let them do their thing. They go into a big, blue, 55-gallon Tupperware c- container, and that is what we use to clean our seeds. So we’ve got beets. These are Chioggia beets. Those are the ones that look like a bullseye when you cut them open. [00:04:00] So we’re gonna let these bl- these beet flowers do their thing.

[00:04:04] And we’ve got some more carrots. So I am a huge proponent of polyculture, so we actually have some licorice. Sorry, my finger got into the frame there for a second. Some licorice growing in the corner and that is a perennial so it can live there, and we’ll gradually harvet that- harvest that.

[00:04:23] We do harvest some beet leaves off of these. There’s a carrot that’s ready to go, and we have onions interplanted in here, and somehow actually a potato made its way in here as well as some radishes. So we do this purposely. Nature does not present us with fields of just one particular cultivar. So what we are doing here is actually safeguarding these plants, safeguard- guarding our own harvests by making sure that if a pestilence comes through or a virus that hurts some of our plants, we’re gonna make sure that we [00:05:00] do not lose all of one thing to that.

[00:05:04] And also polyculture actually helps a little bit with the bugs and confusing the bugs. The bugs won’t eat all of your garden if they’ve got one favorite thing to snack on. So you can see here I’ve got blauer speck kohlrabi, and they have– We do get organic gardening, so they have a couple of holes in there you can see.

[00:05:24] But for the most part, it’s really great, and I wouldn’t wanna eat anything a bug wouldn’t m- munch on anyway because a lot of times animals know When there is poison afoot and they are very intelligent. They will eat the good stuff. There’s some little Mexican tarragon that’s popped up and some sage in with our onions.

[00:05:46] And so today we are actually going to be spending some time going through this, cleaning all of this up, and then replanting. This is pretty sunny during the day, and we will be putting some [00:06:00] peppers in place of some of these kohlrabi that I’m going to be picking today. So in this, these, this is also a perennial pot.

[00:06:07] It’s really big. I know you can’t really tell from the video, but it’s got little baby asparagus starts in here. And these are actually gladiolus. So the reason for the gladiolus, in case you’re wondering, yes, it is for the pollinators, but it’s not just for the pollinators. So these guys actually produce edible flowers.

[00:06:27] Gladiolus, I believe, are native to Africa, and you can- don’t need to cook the flowers. You can put them directly into salads, and wow all of your party guests if you wanna do something like that. They are really great to work with. So it’s the last day of July here. We have won the war against the squash beetles and the cucumber, or, the Colorado potato bugs, and we still have some squash.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] So the white stuff on the ground here is diatomaceous earth for a little bit of calcium. We had a slight hind rot problem, but that’s pretty much been remedied. As you can see, the tomatoes are fine. And we do have polyculture planted. These sunflowers are gonna be harvested for the goats. We’ve got a mix of vegetables in here.

[00:07:26] Keeps the bugs on their toes.

[00:07:33] We’ve been doing this for several years now on weed cloth and it has worked really well. So as I said, we had a little bit of a hind rot problem. That diatomaceous earth, you can see a little bit of the remnants of the white on here. That cleared it up pretty easily. I like to pick these when they are just starting to get orange.

[00:07:52] They’ll ripen up in a day or two. We had a pretty significant windstorm, which unfortunately blew all of [00:08:00] our tomato cages over, but at least we tried this year to be a little more organized. These collard greens are actually o- overwintered from last year. You can see how tall this stem is, and they look like they’re doing pretty good and will probably make it until next year.

[00:08:16] We saved ones from the previous season for seed and that is being processed In the greenhouse where it is drying, and over here we do plant beans and squash along the along the fence line, and Derek is getting ready to start harv- harvesting these. So these are Potawatomi beans. They are a flat, like lima bean, a long season, and as you can see, they’re growing along the fence line.

[00:08:52] This time of year they are nice and dry. They’re beautiful beans. And these are Gita beans that will [00:09:00] be dried and given out to the community gardens in the area for them to grow their own next year. And so it’s kinda flopping over. This is our second year in this area. Normally we’ll do two years in one area, and this has seen better days.

[00:09:17] As you can see, where he is, the whole fence is flopped over. Yet last year it was nice and upright, but the fence, as you can see what he’s doing, it adds a lot of square footage to the garden. Normally it would grow up like that, and as you can see, it provides a pretty good trellis. This is the second year, so it’s gonna have to be moved for next year.

[00:09:41] Generally what we do to keep the bugs down and keep the weeds down is burn the area that we’re going to use for next year. So in here we have all of these nice long beans. So these ones will be picked for food. Look how beautiful [00:10:00] those are. And then we’ve got a couple bad boys. There’s always some hiding in here.

[00:10:04] So these guys, they’re not too worse for wear. We’ll let that dry on the vine just as it is, and that actually provides some more pr- product for us to give away in the form of community garden support and mutual aid growing. So we provide free seeds and plants. We do start a lot of these seeds ourselves and then directly provide the plants to people that want to grow for themselves, for either self-sufficiency, to tribal gardens, or to school gardens, or for children’s education.

[00:10:40] We have a lot of volunteers in here, which is surprising, because we do use this weed cloth. This saves a lot of heartache and backache. And so this is how we set up every year. Once an area is burned, the plants will go throughout the season, be planted directly in [00:11:00] here. There’s some kale. That’s a pepper plant.

[00:11:03] We’ve got other peppers in here. And then we’ve got, if you walk right over here, there’s some beautiful tomatoes growing right next to the eggplants. And as you can see, I’ve got some ants in here, and they’re probably scouting for for a meal. But we have minimal weeds and beautiful success. You can see there’s a lot of fruits on here.

[00:11:32] And then there’s okra right over there. That’s Derek’s favorite. But really it’s pretty convenient to use this weed cloth. This is a little bit overgrown but if this is the worst you get in a season, or this, that can come out right there and just be fed to the chickens. That’s a whole lot better than weeding in between your rows constantly.

[00:11:55] And then whatever bolts go- and goes to seed, like those beans got went to [00:12:00] seed. Can’t always get to everything but not all is lost. This is some spinach. We’ve already started to save the spinach seeds to plant for next year. And then occasionally we’ll use flagging to mark off plants that we really want to save.

[00:12:18] If something’s growing particularly nicely then we will save it for seeds. See these okra, we didn’t get to them in time. If they’re spongy at all, we’ll take them. If they get a little hard and woody, they just end up staying, like this bad boy’s a little hard so he’ll just stay on that stalk and dry

[00:12:43] Amyrose’s Assistant: A couple of these are okay

[00:12:44] Amyrose Foll: These guys are pretty good up here. They can come off

[00:12:46] Amyrose’s Assistant: There’s a nice one down here too. That one’s just a little bigger than perfect in my opinion. ‘Cause and these guys up here look like they’re probably okay

[00:12:57] Amyrose Foll: Yeah

[00:12:58] Amyrose’s Assistant: Give ’em a squeeze and they’re good [00:13:00]

[00:13:01] Amyrose Foll: So this is typical. This is actually a little bit light of a garden for this time for us in July.

[00:13:11] Things were very busy so we really didn’t get as much or as many plants in here as early. Generally, it is a jungle in here this time of year. And as you can see, the- a lot of these we keep, they go to seed. This globe basil is going to seed, so that’ll be saved, and this cilantro. Unfortunately, my husband has the gene that cilantro tastes like salt or soap, so he doesn’t partake in that.

[00:13:39] But we can provide seeds to people.

[00:13:41] Amyrose’s Assistant: There’s a couple big eggplants that are ready to go too.

[00:13:43] Amyrose Foll: And generally what we do is run hosing underneath just the drip hosing underneath these. This garden does not have it. It’s a little bit drier than the other garden, and you can tell the foliage is not as lush.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] That garden over there on the other side of what was last year’s squash tunnel and now has some Seneca bear paw beans growing up on it, that one is a little more lush because the hosing has r- been run underneath. Okay, so I’ve stood up this wild seed garden area for dried beans. You can hear the chickens and the g- or the ducks quacking, crowing.

[00:14:26] So we do have a lot of Potawatomi beans in here, and I’m filling my bucket up. They will generally mature a little bit faster than these guys. So this is a bear paw bean So pretty

[00:14:47] I just can never get enough of those colors, and they’re huge beans. And then you’ve got, sorry, I’m not great with this camera here. [00:15:00] These are the Potawatomi beans. They’re very flat, whereas those bear paw beans are big and fat

[00:15:09] So this is what I was talking about when I said believe it or not, we actually have volunteers in our weed cloth. And it’s pretty tight. We get just little slots, and then we drop the plants into these little slots. That’s how we grow here. It works really well for us, but believe it or not, we do occasionally get volunteers.

[00:15:28] So this plant right here is one of our volunteers. We have many of them. I did not plant these this year, and this is an Abenaki Hardwick ground cherry. They are native to New England. They have a cute little husk, and you can make a great jelly out of them, or you can pop them out of the husk and eat them raw just they kind of taste like a funky combination of a pineapple, tomato, strawberry-ish. They’re very interesting tasting. But [00:16:00] once you have some, if they go to seed and you lose a few in the ground, they will very easily re-seed themselves everywhere. And so this is the last day of July, and these will continue to produce well into the fall to our la- or our first frost.

[00:16:17] Sometimes they may get a little bit past the frost. And if you leave these just so in the paper husk and don’t pop them out like I did right here, you can actually leave them in the refrigerator, and they will last for months. I was eating ground cherries that I’d forgotten about in the barn refrigerator in January last year