September 2, 2020 • 21 mins
In early March, slim pickings on grocery store shelves, news of meat plant shutdowns, skyrocketing demand for food bank services, predictions of supply chain breakdown and food shortages drove many Americans to do what we haven't collectively done since WWII: plant home gardens. Tom checks in with journalist Morgan Levey about the boom in seed sales and interest in home gardening.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So in the middle of March, with COVID pandemic and
full swing in New York City, I started to get
nervous about I was nervou spent a lot of things.
I was nervous about my restaurant's closing. I was nervous
about the health of myself and my family, and and
what my kids were going to do in terms of school,
and and But I also, and maybe because I spend
(00:21):
a lot of time of thinking about the food system,
I kind of started, you know, wondering whether or not
our entire food system was going to come to a halt,
whether farmers would continue to grow crops, whether people farm
hands were gonna get out there and pick and process food,
whether or not the distribution channels to get that food
into the supermarket was going to break down. What was
(00:41):
going to happen if the entire system came to a halt.
My thoughts turned towards my garden in my home. I
have a small little house in North farkh Long Island,
and I started gardening about six seven years ago, and
I started thinking, I gotta get out there, I gotta
start planting team because I may have to use this
(01:02):
garden to survive and feed my family. In fact, I
remember having this conversation with with my wife and because
we were talking about, right, let's figure out what's essential
in terms of going forward for the next couple of months.
And I said, I gotta go out in the garden,
and yes, I cook from my garden, so that's also enjoyable.
And I turned and said, no, this isn't about enjoying something.
This is about survival. I think we may need this
(01:24):
food to few of our family. My privilege here is
showing because I had the property and I had a garden.
What if you don't. What if you are going through
the same struggles, and maybe you have a small little
bit of land in your backyard. You've never garden before,
you've never thought about gardening before, where do you start?
A lot of people started with those seed companies. People
(01:44):
started gardening, and they started turning to the soil to
take back that sovereignty. And so so for this episode,
we're going to explore this people who are new to
gardening and a whole system of and years of not
being able to farm for their communities and what they're
doing to take back that food sovereignty. Let's jump in
(02:08):
so during this time, when people started to grow their
COVID gardens, they turned to seed companies. That's where it
all begins. You had these websites crashed. In fact, Burpies
I think sold more seeds in March than any month
in their hundred forty four year history. Food gardening is
up quite a bit. People want to One local plant
(02:29):
shop is seeing demand rise. Johnny's Seeds saw sales jump
two hundred and sevent the week after COVID was declared
a national emergency in mid Mark. Victory gardens played a
big role on the home front during the dark days
of World War Two. They're back. So we're just gonna
(02:49):
check in and uh see if people are actually um
planting more gardens and um buying way more seeds than
they need, kind of freaking out about the food supply
in general. Let's hear from journalists Morgan Levy who talked
to farmers and business owners in Montana about the pandemics
effect on their business. Um so so, Morgan, who did
(03:11):
you an interview from Triple Divide Seed co Op. I
talked to Leslie Klein, who was the manager or who
is the manager of Triple Divide Organic Seed co Op
and I interviewed her at their seeds storage room, so
it was pretty quiet room. That wasn't great background audio
to hear see. Those seeds don't make a whole of them.
They don't. But I did ask her to read the
(03:33):
names of some of these seed packets because they are
sort of beautifully named and it it sounded like poetry
as she was reading them. Um. But yeah, Leslie and
I had a great conversation about the uh crazy popularity
of organic seeds this year. Yeah you know, I didn't.
(03:54):
I didn't recognize the name. But when you told me
about the crazy names and I now I know you're
talking about. Um I I kind of, you know, started
gardening a few years back, and I kind of joke
around that, uh I started reading seed catalogs like I
used to look at Playboy. I guess when I was
sixteen or so. Names, well the names in the ritals,
(04:16):
and um, you know, you realize that there's so many
possibilities and so what what what what did you learn? What? What? What?
What is going on? Is I know that you know
a couple of seed companies like Johnny's and Baker Creek,
they actually had a shut down for a period of time. Yeah,
so what did you learn? So Triple Divide is a
smaller seed co op. They're not one of the really
(04:37):
big ones, and they are a small company, but they
are growing consistently every year. However, usually most of their
sales come from racks that are in retail stores. Um.
But when COVID hit and in Montana we really shut
down at the end of March, there online sales skyrocketed.
I think in March last year they had eleven online orders.
(05:00):
This year they had eighty, and most of them came
in the last two weeks of March. And uh, it
was an overwhelming amount of growth, so much so that
Leslie said she had to shut down the website a
couple of times, and then in mid May they actually
shut down the website for the summer um. And that
was because Leslie is a farmer herself, she is, you know, busy,
(05:24):
and it was it was overwhelming, and because of COVID,
she had to be doing the fulfilling most of these
orders on her own. She couldn't have a lot of
people in there together. Um. But it was such an
overwhelming um number of sales that even they ran out
of seed packets even because across the country, organic seed
(05:46):
companies were you know, having these explosive sales, and the
seed packet company was you know, slammed, so they had
to be hand labeling packets and it was I think
I think she was grateful for the sales, but also
overwhelmed by them, and so she is, Um, these are
seeds for for gardeners, not farmers. She's not doing bulk
(06:09):
seeds for corn and soy. They do have different amounts
they sell to. I think they sell to both, but
they have no way of really differentia differentiating on their
in their online sales, so she just wasn't tracking who
specifically she was selling to. UM. She did tell me
that I think some of the bigger companies sort of
stopped selling to home gardeners and just sold to bigger
farmers just so they get fulfill those orders. All right.
(06:32):
Did she know whether the increased traffic was from recent
our new gardeners and UM, I'm wondering if she had
a helpline for those gardeners like me that I planted
I planned my you know, my peppers and they're not
growing and what do I do right? Help me? Right?
And she she doesn't really have a way to check,
(06:53):
but she does know where who, where geographically people are
ordering from. And these are seeds that are produced in
Montana and do really well in Montana. They might do
well and somewhere else in the country that has similar
weather to us, but we have a really short growing season,
so she would seeing people ordering different seed varietals at
a different part of the country way late in the
(07:13):
season and saying, oh, gosh, I hope they're not planting
these now, and hoping they'll grow. I did talk to
a woman named Genevieve Jessup Marsh who as a community
outreach director of farm and educational center here in Missoula
called Garden City Harvest, and they have four urban farms
and they provide food for the soup kitchen and the
food bank, but they also have land for community gardeners
(07:38):
and uh, you know, they normally sell out of their
community garden plots and normally they have about forty people
on the wait list. This year they had a hundred
people on the wait list, so they were totally overwhelmed.
And the big difference though, besides that, was that, you know,
every year there's some abandonment rate, right people farms are.
I mean, garden plots, any kind of growing is intensive
(08:00):
and it's hard. It takes time. People start traveling and
they're saying, I don't have time for this, or they
start growing things and they're just failing left and right
and get frustrated and abandoned it. And she said this
year they had hardly any of their plots were abandoned.
That people were there all the time. It was really
safe activity. People could be outside, they could tend their garden.
(08:21):
It probably felt really good. Um, and people new gardeners
were really really relying on people who had had plots
for a long time. There was a big community knowledge
share that was happening. People were talking about pests, talking
about varietals, and helping each other out. So I think
people were, you know, community gardeners were getting help from
(08:41):
other community garden members. I think that's really where people
were sharing knowledge and chatting. Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense.
You know, I I know, just from my own personal experiences.
You know, when pests attack, um, you know, it's it's
pretty sad. I'm getting used to it now. I mean,
I have, uh, this borer warm problem on my zucchini,
(09:02):
and so when the zucchini's first come up, they look
great and there's plenty of fruit, and then one day
they just looked sick and they wither and I can
go right to the stock and pick it up, crack
in half, and there's that worm sitting right in the
middle of the stock. And I can't seem to get
rid of them. I don't know how to get rid
of them. Um. I had a white fly problem. I
had all kinds of problems this year. Um. The other
(09:23):
thing that a lot of I think first garden, like,
my first season was amazing and I planted about eighteen
years so five by seven boxes and it was all
irrigated and it was all ready to go and it
was amazing. And someone, you know, it's second third year
wasn't as good. And someone said, well, in the first year,
the bugs really haven't found you yet, and they will. Um,
(09:43):
and uh they will, Yeah, they'll find you. Um. But UM,
it's you're right, it is. It is tough, you know.
It's I have to spend at least two hours a day. Um,
are the weeds just right now and I haven't been um,
And so the weeds just U just overcome everything and
you end up you know, and I think also people
don't realize that when things serve, you know, So if
(10:05):
you plant I don't know, peas, and you have a
great spring of peas, you gotta cut them down and
get rid of them. I don't kind of don't triple
to go away work. It's it's it's a lot of
hard work and labor and then you get you know,
of course you go down the rabbit hole hall of
buying tools. Right. It's labor intensive and expensive and you
(10:25):
can spend a lot of time. And in Montana we
have a really short growing season. I think our average
last frost state is mid May, so you really have
to get the timing right in order to you have
a small window of planting and you have a small
window of growing um and so it's easy to miss that.
And you know, I think in June we were having
four day degree nights, so you need to pull that
(10:47):
tarp out and cover your tomato plants. And last week
we had kale. So it's easy to go wrong really quickly,
and I can see it being frustrating. Um. You know,
this woman Gendervieve I spoke with. They garden City Harvest
provides a lot of educational materials and usually that's all
done in person, but this year they transition to online.
But they were relying on their local community to sort
(11:10):
of spread knowledge. And the other thing I think most
people that that when they they're new to gardening um,
when when harvest time comes for a particular crop, there's
a lot of it. It's not like you get one
or two you know, you know a couple of zucchini,
A lot of zucchini, are you? A lot of green
beans are and so you have to figure out what
(11:30):
to do with it, and you can obviously eat, But
then I find myself canning a lot um. And so
in your experience, are they giving these cooks where they
getting lessons on canning as well and preserving the harvest? Yeah,
So Garden City Harvest provides a lot of materials, especially
on um preserving your food because this is what they
(11:51):
don't want, right So Garden City Harvest also they have
a c S A program that they have thrown a
lot of money into for the past few years to
try to get people to to buy these c s
a s. But c s a s are tricky and
that it's kind of a lot of money upfront for
some people, um, and then you're not necessarily getting to
(12:11):
pick the produce you're getting, and it can be a
lot of produce, so these can be sort of overwhelming
things for people. And they've never sold out of them
before except for this year. This year they sold out
of it for the first time, and it's wildly popular.
They have even a wait list, And it was really
just because people wanted to take control over where they
(12:32):
were getting their food from, and they I think in
a crisis, people felt like they couldn't rely on the
grocery store, so they went this way. But with that,
you know, there's a lot of produce, and so you know,
they're trying to provide a lot of lessons to people.
How you can preserve your food so you don't just
end up with a lot of wilted and rotten vegetables.
How can you make this food last longer. I found
(12:54):
the same. Not only was it difficult getting seas, I
had a heart on getting plants because I don't do
my own starts. And there's an organic farm, you know,
a couple miles from my house where I purchased a
lot of plants, you know, and so I couldn't get
you know, certain peppers that I was looking for that
I know I got the last couple of years, cucumbers.
I could get cucumbers, UM, I couldn't find parsley. UM.
(13:15):
There were like certain things. Why did why sir? Run on?
You know? And partially I spoke with a man named
Josh Slotnik, who is the owner of a farm called
Clark Pork Organics, And he's also a county commissioner in Missoula.
And uh, Clark Pork Organics typically sells to restaurants. UM
and COVID hit really during our planting season in Missoula. UM,
(13:40):
so farmers weren't having to plow under vegetables, but they
were having to plan ahead and say, oh, should I
should I plant as I typically would to sell to restaurants,
or should I change my whole operation and plan to
sell directly to consumers. And what Clark Fork Organics did
was they had a farm stand that they never really
paid a lot of attention to, and this year they
sort of doubled down on it. And one of the
(14:02):
big sellers for them early in the season was bedding plants.
Because because people all had their their own gardens and
community garden was way up and all these new gardeners
and home gardeners, and they were they were actually, um,
you know, making some money off of these bedding plants,
which they typically wouldn't have been selling. Their herbs were
(14:24):
really popular and people were just really excited to have
access to bedding plants. I was a first time gardener
myself this year, and I was really all about my
tail and my egg plant. And the second I turned
planted outside, they died. And I was like, well, no,
(14:49):
this is citizen Chef and I'm Tomic Colichio and we
are talking about homegrown. That's right, homegrown food. Victory gardens
are COVID gardens or community gardens, whatever you call them.
There's been a huge resurgence in people growing their own food.
So this is your first year, Yeah, awesome, Um, why
did you start planning? So I started planning really because
(15:12):
I actually have the land. This year. I own a
house for the first time and have a yard. We
had one raised bed, but we built two more. Um.
But then I think it's spent a lot of time
there because I was just spending a lot of time
in my house and at my house, and it was
a great way to be outside. I wasn't super concerned
(15:33):
about relying on the garden two feed myself, but I
was really upset when things failed. It's really hard. Yeah,
it's it's hard to do. I say the same thing
every year too. And I had help. When I first started.
There was a restaurant that I was involved in on
the south Fork of Long Island Um and we had
an acre um that we were planting in ground, and
(15:56):
so I had that farmer helped me out. He had
a much better handle on when to plant, how much
to plant. But it's it's you know, I agree, when
you lose something like I have melons growing right now,
and you have to keep them on the vine is
as long as possible to ripen up. And they get
to the point where you're just ready pick and you
see the stem starting to dry out, and you'll let
(16:18):
them go another night and the bugs get to them,
and it's like it curse these bugs. Yeah, it's tough.
It's that happens. It is, And I know a lot
of people who are first time gardeners in Missoula, and
we're all sort of in it together a little bit.
And I think it was like, oh gosh, I really
overplanted my greens, and now I'm drowning in greens, and
(16:40):
now I can't give them away to anyone. So the greens,
if you harvest them right, just rough, rough, chop, blanche
them in boiling water, shock mc cool water. Put him
in his zip block bag and freeze them. You're fine.
I'd heard this and I did do it, so we'll see. Okay, good,
But you know, but now there's still overwhelming amounts of green.
I need to do another I actually made. I made
(17:02):
a lot of rugle a pesto at one point, which
you know, it seems great, but now I'm going to
be eating on everything for the next six months. Um.
Do you compost, it's not a total waste. Yeah, and
we get our compost picked up by an organization in Missoula. Um,
we don't have our own compost pile because I live
(17:25):
in a canyon and there are black bears. Uh. So
you really want to limit uh the amount of rotting
food on your problems? Yeah, I imagine you do. I
don't have that problem. We have. We have raccoons. The
people that I knew who were either expanding or garden
regarding for the first time, and this happened in New York.
(17:47):
It was you know, March April, UM, and so people
just really thought that the food system was going to
gonna completely fall apart, and that's what they're They were
just concerned they weren't able to get fresh food, and
so so many people started gardening. And I think other
people also started realizing, well, yeah, it didn't fail and
you can't get produced. But still they realized that this
(18:08):
is a great opportunity to get outside, um, do something new.
And you know, at the same time, I think just
the act of digging around in the dirt, um it
does something for your mental health. That's just being in
the in the dirt, get in your hands in the soil,
has a way of ground you I know did for
me when I first started. UM My wife would always
say she could tell the difference when I was out
(18:28):
in the garden. You know, at the end of the day, Um,
the little edge was taken off. I think it's about
caring for something other than yourself too, especially during a
time of a lot of anxiety. You know, Plants are
a fun thing to at least for me, it was
really it was really fun to you know, to take
care of them and try to figure out what they
needed and take some of the the focus off myself
(18:52):
and my own exact anxiety. All right, listen, great talking
to you, and uh, I'll get back to your garden.
My grandfather he used to I guess he was an
urban gardener where when we grew up, and he used
to grow in five gallon buckets and just mostly tomatoes
and zucchini, some peppers, and mostly summer crops. So I
(19:16):
was interested, but I had no idea how much work
it is going to take and how often crops fail.
It's not a simple thing to start growing your own food.
But one thing I gotta say it does is you
get a real sense of accomplishment. It's somewhat therapeutic in
a way. When I get out there in the morning,
(19:37):
especially five time, where I'm not rushing, and I have
a good you know, hour and a half even two
hours earlier morning sist o'clock and I'm morning before it
gets hot, and you're in there digg into the soil,
and even if you're weeding, it's just a good start
of the day. And you feel at the end of
the day when you're harvesting and then you're cooking and
putting food on the table for your family. There's a
real sort of sense of accomplishment and and I think
(19:58):
we all needed that's into the college because when you're
dealing with a pandemic that you can't you have no
control over other than staying inside wearing a mask, but
you really have no control over it. Where family members
I haven't seen. I haven't seen my mother since the pandemic.
This is one area where you think you can. You
have some control over your life. You're growing your own food.
When you think about that, that's that is the ultimate
(20:21):
sense of control. You have complete control over what you're growing,
what you're eating, and how you're growing. Yet, and so
when you think about the unknown, this sort of COVID unknown,
can kids go back to school, will things get back
to normal? How long are we going to have to
go through social distancing? All these unknowns create anxiety. And
(20:42):
I think that one time I don't feel that anxiety,
it is when I'm in my garden. So this is
our last episode of Citizens Chef in season one, and
I thought this would be a really good way to
end our our season, a good way to really illustrate
that change when people are growing food and creating a
change for themselves. COVID nineteen changed the course of our
(21:04):
first season. The issues we originally wanted to talk about
had a new public health lens we couldn't ignore. But
we're going to continue to dig up these new stories
and look at them through a food lens and UH
when we return next season, we hope to hear from
more people around the country and journalists with their ears
to the ground. I want to thank everyone for listening
and tuning in, and a very special thanks to our guests,
(21:26):
producer and novice gardner Morgan Levy, and as always, a
big shout out to a place at the table. Citizen
Chef is a production of iHeart Media. Christopher hauci Otis
is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our researcher, and
Garielle Collins as our producer. We'll see you back in
season two.
So in the middle of March, with COVID pandemic and
full swing in New York City, I started to get
nervous about I was nervou spent a lot of things.
I was nervous about my restaurant's closing. I was nervous
about the health of myself and my family, and and
what my kids were going to do in terms of school,
and and But I also, and maybe because I spend
(00:21):
a lot of time of thinking about the food system,
I kind of started, you know, wondering whether or not
our entire food system was going to come to a halt,
whether farmers would continue to grow crops, whether people farm
hands were gonna get out there and pick and process food,
whether or not the distribution channels to get that food
into the supermarket was going to break down. What was
(00:41):
going to happen if the entire system came to a halt.
My thoughts turned towards my garden in my home. I
have a small little house in North farkh Long Island,
and I started gardening about six seven years ago, and
I started thinking, I gotta get out there, I gotta
start planting team because I may have to use this
(01:02):
garden to survive and feed my family. In fact, I
remember having this conversation with with my wife and because
we were talking about, right, let's figure out what's essential
in terms of going forward for the next couple of months.
And I said, I gotta go out in the garden,
and yes, I cook from my garden, so that's also enjoyable.
And I turned and said, no, this isn't about enjoying something.
This is about survival. I think we may need this
(01:24):
food to few of our family. My privilege here is
showing because I had the property and I had a garden.
What if you don't. What if you are going through
the same struggles, and maybe you have a small little
bit of land in your backyard. You've never garden before,
you've never thought about gardening before, where do you start?
A lot of people started with those seed companies. People
(01:44):
started gardening, and they started turning to the soil to
take back that sovereignty. And so so for this episode,
we're going to explore this people who are new to
gardening and a whole system of and years of not
being able to farm for their communities and what they're
doing to take back that food sovereignty. Let's jump in
(02:08):
so during this time, when people started to grow their
COVID gardens, they turned to seed companies. That's where it
all begins. You had these websites crashed. In fact, Burpies
I think sold more seeds in March than any month
in their hundred forty four year history. Food gardening is
up quite a bit. People want to One local plant
(02:29):
shop is seeing demand rise. Johnny's Seeds saw sales jump
two hundred and sevent the week after COVID was declared
a national emergency in mid Mark. Victory gardens played a
big role on the home front during the dark days
of World War Two. They're back. So we're just gonna
(02:49):
check in and uh see if people are actually um
planting more gardens and um buying way more seeds than
they need, kind of freaking out about the food supply
in general. Let's hear from journalists Morgan Levy who talked
to farmers and business owners in Montana about the pandemics
effect on their business. Um so so, Morgan, who did
(03:11):
you an interview from Triple Divide Seed co Op. I
talked to Leslie Klein, who was the manager or who
is the manager of Triple Divide Organic Seed co Op
and I interviewed her at their seeds storage room, so
it was pretty quiet room. That wasn't great background audio
to hear see. Those seeds don't make a whole of them.
They don't. But I did ask her to read the
(03:33):
names of some of these seed packets because they are
sort of beautifully named and it it sounded like poetry
as she was reading them. Um. But yeah, Leslie and
I had a great conversation about the uh crazy popularity
of organic seeds this year. Yeah you know, I didn't.
(03:54):
I didn't recognize the name. But when you told me
about the crazy names and I now I know you're
talking about. Um I I kind of, you know, started
gardening a few years back, and I kind of joke
around that, uh I started reading seed catalogs like I
used to look at Playboy. I guess when I was
sixteen or so. Names, well the names in the ritals,
(04:16):
and um, you know, you realize that there's so many
possibilities and so what what what what did you learn? What? What? What?
What is going on? Is I know that you know
a couple of seed companies like Johnny's and Baker Creek,
they actually had a shut down for a period of time. Yeah,
so what did you learn? So Triple Divide is a
smaller seed co op. They're not one of the really
(04:37):
big ones, and they are a small company, but they
are growing consistently every year. However, usually most of their
sales come from racks that are in retail stores. Um.
But when COVID hit and in Montana we really shut
down at the end of March, there online sales skyrocketed.
I think in March last year they had eleven online orders.
(05:00):
This year they had eighty, and most of them came
in the last two weeks of March. And uh, it
was an overwhelming amount of growth, so much so that
Leslie said she had to shut down the website a
couple of times, and then in mid May they actually
shut down the website for the summer um. And that
was because Leslie is a farmer herself, she is, you know, busy,
(05:24):
and it was it was overwhelming, and because of COVID,
she had to be doing the fulfilling most of these
orders on her own. She couldn't have a lot of
people in there together. Um. But it was such an
overwhelming um number of sales that even they ran out
of seed packets even because across the country, organic seed
(05:46):
companies were you know, having these explosive sales, and the
seed packet company was you know, slammed, so they had
to be hand labeling packets and it was I think
I think she was grateful for the sales, but also
overwhelmed by them, and so she is, Um, these are
seeds for for gardeners, not farmers. She's not doing bulk
(06:09):
seeds for corn and soy. They do have different amounts
they sell to. I think they sell to both, but
they have no way of really differentia differentiating on their
in their online sales, so she just wasn't tracking who
specifically she was selling to. UM. She did tell me
that I think some of the bigger companies sort of
stopped selling to home gardeners and just sold to bigger
farmers just so they get fulfill those orders. All right.
(06:32):
Did she know whether the increased traffic was from recent
our new gardeners and UM, I'm wondering if she had
a helpline for those gardeners like me that I planted
I planned my you know, my peppers and they're not
growing and what do I do right? Help me? Right?
And she she doesn't really have a way to check,
(06:53):
but she does know where who, where geographically people are
ordering from. And these are seeds that are produced in
Montana and do really well in Montana. They might do
well and somewhere else in the country that has similar
weather to us, but we have a really short growing season,
so she would seeing people ordering different seed varietals at
a different part of the country way late in the
(07:13):
season and saying, oh, gosh, I hope they're not planting
these now, and hoping they'll grow. I did talk to
a woman named Genevieve Jessup Marsh who as a community
outreach director of farm and educational center here in Missoula
called Garden City Harvest, and they have four urban farms
and they provide food for the soup kitchen and the
food bank, but they also have land for community gardeners
(07:38):
and uh, you know, they normally sell out of their
community garden plots and normally they have about forty people
on the wait list. This year they had a hundred
people on the wait list, so they were totally overwhelmed.
And the big difference though, besides that, was that, you know,
every year there's some abandonment rate, right people farms are.
I mean, garden plots, any kind of growing is intensive
(08:00):
and it's hard. It takes time. People start traveling and
they're saying, I don't have time for this, or they
start growing things and they're just failing left and right
and get frustrated and abandoned it. And she said this
year they had hardly any of their plots were abandoned.
That people were there all the time. It was really
safe activity. People could be outside, they could tend their garden.
(08:21):
It probably felt really good. Um, and people new gardeners
were really really relying on people who had had plots
for a long time. There was a big community knowledge
share that was happening. People were talking about pests, talking
about varietals, and helping each other out. So I think
people were, you know, community gardeners were getting help from
(08:41):
other community garden members. I think that's really where people
were sharing knowledge and chatting. Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense.
You know, I I know, just from my own personal experiences.
You know, when pests attack, um, you know, it's it's
pretty sad. I'm getting used to it now. I mean,
I have, uh, this borer warm problem on my zucchini,
(09:02):
and so when the zucchini's first come up, they look
great and there's plenty of fruit, and then one day
they just looked sick and they wither and I can
go right to the stock and pick it up, crack
in half, and there's that worm sitting right in the
middle of the stock. And I can't seem to get
rid of them. I don't know how to get rid
of them. Um. I had a white fly problem. I
had all kinds of problems this year. Um. The other
(09:23):
thing that a lot of I think first garden, like,
my first season was amazing and I planted about eighteen
years so five by seven boxes and it was all
irrigated and it was all ready to go and it
was amazing. And someone, you know, it's second third year
wasn't as good. And someone said, well, in the first year,
the bugs really haven't found you yet, and they will. Um,
(09:43):
and uh they will, Yeah, they'll find you. Um. But UM,
it's you're right, it is. It is tough, you know.
It's I have to spend at least two hours a day. Um,
are the weeds just right now and I haven't been um,
And so the weeds just U just overcome everything and
you end up you know, and I think also people
don't realize that when things serve, you know, So if
(10:05):
you plant I don't know, peas, and you have a
great spring of peas, you gotta cut them down and
get rid of them. I don't kind of don't triple
to go away work. It's it's it's a lot of
hard work and labor and then you get you know,
of course you go down the rabbit hole hall of
buying tools. Right. It's labor intensive and expensive and you
(10:25):
can spend a lot of time. And in Montana we
have a really short growing season. I think our average
last frost state is mid May, so you really have
to get the timing right in order to you have
a small window of planting and you have a small
window of growing um and so it's easy to miss that.
And you know, I think in June we were having
four day degree nights, so you need to pull that
(10:47):
tarp out and cover your tomato plants. And last week
we had kale. So it's easy to go wrong really quickly,
and I can see it being frustrating. Um. You know,
this woman Gendervieve I spoke with. They garden City Harvest
provides a lot of educational materials and usually that's all
done in person, but this year they transition to online.
But they were relying on their local community to sort
(11:10):
of spread knowledge. And the other thing I think most
people that that when they they're new to gardening um,
when when harvest time comes for a particular crop, there's
a lot of it. It's not like you get one
or two you know, you know a couple of zucchini,
A lot of zucchini, are you? A lot of green
beans are and so you have to figure out what
(11:30):
to do with it, and you can obviously eat, But
then I find myself canning a lot um. And so
in your experience, are they giving these cooks where they
getting lessons on canning as well and preserving the harvest? Yeah,
So Garden City Harvest provides a lot of materials, especially
on um preserving your food because this is what they
(11:51):
don't want, right So Garden City Harvest also they have
a c S A program that they have thrown a
lot of money into for the past few years to
try to get people to to buy these c s
a s. But c s a s are tricky and
that it's kind of a lot of money upfront for
some people, um, and then you're not necessarily getting to
(12:11):
pick the produce you're getting, and it can be a
lot of produce, so these can be sort of overwhelming
things for people. And they've never sold out of them
before except for this year. This year they sold out
of it for the first time, and it's wildly popular.
They have even a wait list, And it was really
just because people wanted to take control over where they
(12:32):
were getting their food from, and they I think in
a crisis, people felt like they couldn't rely on the
grocery store, so they went this way. But with that,
you know, there's a lot of produce, and so you know,
they're trying to provide a lot of lessons to people.
How you can preserve your food so you don't just
end up with a lot of wilted and rotten vegetables.
How can you make this food last longer. I found
(12:54):
the same. Not only was it difficult getting seas, I
had a heart on getting plants because I don't do
my own starts. And there's an organic farm, you know,
a couple miles from my house where I purchased a
lot of plants, you know, and so I couldn't get
you know, certain peppers that I was looking for that
I know I got the last couple of years, cucumbers.
I could get cucumbers, UM, I couldn't find parsley. UM.
(13:15):
There were like certain things. Why did why sir? Run on?
You know? And partially I spoke with a man named
Josh Slotnik, who is the owner of a farm called
Clark Pork Organics, And he's also a county commissioner in Missoula.
And uh, Clark Pork Organics typically sells to restaurants. UM
and COVID hit really during our planting season in Missoula. UM,
(13:40):
so farmers weren't having to plow under vegetables, but they
were having to plan ahead and say, oh, should I
should I plant as I typically would to sell to restaurants,
or should I change my whole operation and plan to
sell directly to consumers. And what Clark Fork Organics did
was they had a farm stand that they never really
paid a lot of attention to, and this year they
sort of doubled down on it. And one of the
(14:02):
big sellers for them early in the season was bedding plants.
Because because people all had their their own gardens and
community garden was way up and all these new gardeners
and home gardeners, and they were they were actually, um,
you know, making some money off of these bedding plants,
which they typically wouldn't have been selling. Their herbs were
(14:24):
really popular and people were just really excited to have
access to bedding plants. I was a first time gardener
myself this year, and I was really all about my
tail and my egg plant. And the second I turned
planted outside, they died. And I was like, well, no,
(14:49):
this is citizen Chef and I'm Tomic Colichio and we
are talking about homegrown. That's right, homegrown food. Victory gardens
are COVID gardens or community gardens, whatever you call them.
There's been a huge resurgence in people growing their own food.
So this is your first year, Yeah, awesome, Um, why
did you start planning? So I started planning really because
(15:12):
I actually have the land. This year. I own a
house for the first time and have a yard. We
had one raised bed, but we built two more. Um.
But then I think it's spent a lot of time
there because I was just spending a lot of time
in my house and at my house, and it was
a great way to be outside. I wasn't super concerned
(15:33):
about relying on the garden two feed myself, but I
was really upset when things failed. It's really hard. Yeah,
it's it's hard to do. I say the same thing
every year too. And I had help. When I first started.
There was a restaurant that I was involved in on
the south Fork of Long Island Um and we had
an acre um that we were planting in ground, and
(15:56):
so I had that farmer helped me out. He had
a much better handle on when to plant, how much
to plant. But it's it's you know, I agree, when
you lose something like I have melons growing right now,
and you have to keep them on the vine is
as long as possible to ripen up. And they get
to the point where you're just ready pick and you
see the stem starting to dry out, and you'll let
(16:18):
them go another night and the bugs get to them,
and it's like it curse these bugs. Yeah, it's tough.
It's that happens. It is, And I know a lot
of people who are first time gardeners in Missoula, and
we're all sort of in it together a little bit.
And I think it was like, oh gosh, I really
overplanted my greens, and now I'm drowning in greens, and
(16:40):
now I can't give them away to anyone. So the greens,
if you harvest them right, just rough, rough, chop, blanche
them in boiling water, shock mc cool water. Put him
in his zip block bag and freeze them. You're fine.
I'd heard this and I did do it, so we'll see. Okay, good,
But you know, but now there's still overwhelming amounts of green.
I need to do another I actually made. I made
(17:02):
a lot of rugle a pesto at one point, which
you know, it seems great, but now I'm going to
be eating on everything for the next six months. Um.
Do you compost, it's not a total waste. Yeah, and
we get our compost picked up by an organization in Missoula. Um,
we don't have our own compost pile because I live
(17:25):
in a canyon and there are black bears. Uh. So
you really want to limit uh the amount of rotting
food on your problems? Yeah, I imagine you do. I
don't have that problem. We have. We have raccoons. The
people that I knew who were either expanding or garden
regarding for the first time, and this happened in New York.
(17:47):
It was you know, March April, UM, and so people
just really thought that the food system was going to
gonna completely fall apart, and that's what they're They were
just concerned they weren't able to get fresh food, and
so so many people started gardening. And I think other
people also started realizing, well, yeah, it didn't fail and
you can't get produced. But still they realized that this
(18:08):
is a great opportunity to get outside, um, do something new.
And you know, at the same time, I think just
the act of digging around in the dirt, um it
does something for your mental health. That's just being in
the in the dirt, get in your hands in the soil,
has a way of ground you I know did for
me when I first started. UM My wife would always
say she could tell the difference when I was out
(18:28):
in the garden. You know, at the end of the day, Um,
the little edge was taken off. I think it's about
caring for something other than yourself too, especially during a
time of a lot of anxiety. You know, Plants are
a fun thing to at least for me, it was
really it was really fun to you know, to take
care of them and try to figure out what they
needed and take some of the the focus off myself
(18:52):
and my own exact anxiety. All right, listen, great talking
to you, and uh, I'll get back to your garden.
My grandfather he used to I guess he was an
urban gardener where when we grew up, and he used
to grow in five gallon buckets and just mostly tomatoes
and zucchini, some peppers, and mostly summer crops. So I
(19:16):
was interested, but I had no idea how much work
it is going to take and how often crops fail.
It's not a simple thing to start growing your own food.
But one thing I gotta say it does is you
get a real sense of accomplishment. It's somewhat therapeutic in
a way. When I get out there in the morning,
(19:37):
especially five time, where I'm not rushing, and I have
a good you know, hour and a half even two
hours earlier morning sist o'clock and I'm morning before it
gets hot, and you're in there digg into the soil,
and even if you're weeding, it's just a good start
of the day. And you feel at the end of
the day when you're harvesting and then you're cooking and
putting food on the table for your family. There's a
real sort of sense of accomplishment and and I think
(19:58):
we all needed that's into the college because when you're
dealing with a pandemic that you can't you have no
control over other than staying inside wearing a mask, but
you really have no control over it. Where family members
I haven't seen. I haven't seen my mother since the pandemic.
This is one area where you think you can. You
have some control over your life. You're growing your own food.
When you think about that, that's that is the ultimate
(20:21):
sense of control. You have complete control over what you're growing,
what you're eating, and how you're growing. Yet, and so
when you think about the unknown, this sort of COVID unknown,
can kids go back to school, will things get back
to normal? How long are we going to have to
go through social distancing? All these unknowns create anxiety. And
(20:42):
I think that one time I don't feel that anxiety,
it is when I'm in my garden. So this is
our last episode of Citizens Chef in season one, and
I thought this would be a really good way to
end our our season, a good way to really illustrate
that change when people are growing food and creating a
change for themselves. COVID nineteen changed the course of our
(21:04):
first season. The issues we originally wanted to talk about
had a new public health lens we couldn't ignore. But
we're going to continue to dig up these new stories
and look at them through a food lens and UH
when we return next season, we hope to hear from
more people around the country and journalists with their ears
to the ground. I want to thank everyone for listening
and tuning in, and a very special thanks to our guests,
(21:26):
producer and novice gardner Morgan Levy, and as always, a
big shout out to a place at the table. Citizen
Chef is a production of iHeart Media. Christopher hauci Otis
is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our researcher, and
Garielle Collins as our producer. We'll see you back in
season two.
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