Growing a Greener World Episode 1102: The Foodscape Revolution

growing a greener world is made possible in part by the subaru crosstrek designed with adventure in mind built in a zero landfill plant so you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint subaru proud sponsor of growing a greener world [Music] i'm joe lampell for 10 years growing a greener world has told the stories of the people and the places who are making a difference in the health of our environment and the sustainability of our global community but as we embarked on our 11th season life changed overnight so many things we took for granted would never be the same again now it's up to each of us to take a more active role in not just saving our planet but making it better feeding our families with organically grown food conserving vital resources protecting natural habitats starting in our own backyards growing a greener world it's still our mission and it's more important than ever [Music] old habits are hard to break long-established ways of thinking can be tough to suddenly re-examine with a new eye but oftentimes if you're able to take a step back and shift your perspective just a little bit you start to see things in a whole new way and it changes everything usually for the better here's an example from the world of horticulture why are landscaping and gardening so frequently treated like two completely different things both disciplines are about the same core things working with mother nature putting the right plant in the right place making sure that there's enough sunlight and proper water and then helping the plants along as they grow so obviously there are more similarities between landscaping and gardening than there are differences so why not treat them both with the same approach why does your vegetable garden have to be tucked away in a far corner of your landscape why designate certain plants just for show around your home and living spaces and keep them totally independent of the food that you're also growing to feed your family why not mix your vegetables in with those aesthetic plants to create an edible landscape it's called foodscaping and if it sounds like a new and radical concept to you maybe it shouldn't be maybe it should be the way more of us are doing it and for those of us who decide to include foodscaping in our gardening repertoire we'll have bree arthur to thank bree is an award-winning horticulturist a leading expert in plant propagation star of her own gardening video series and author of the best seller the foodscape revolution regular viewers of growing a greener world recognize her as a frequent correspondent drive through her neighborhood near raleigh north carolina and you may recognize her yard as the best looking one on the street what you may not recognize are some of the many intermingled food crops that make it such a showstopper one of the most unusual things that you plant in your foodscape are peanuts not likely something that most people have growing in their front or their backyard right but you love this plant i love peanuts they're so easy to grow they love heat and humidity they're very reliable ground cover during the frost three months you're not just using what's left over from your bag that you bought at the grocery store right no you can't plant roasted peanuts they won't terminate from experience you have to find raw peanuts ready for planting and you typically find those at a farm store or you can also find them from online retailers right so i think peanuts are going to become a little more mainstream now yeah if there was ever a time for foodscaping itself to go mainstream it's now with so many people returning to growing their own food whether in urban settings or backyard homesteads mindfully utilizing every square foot of growing space has never been so popular the concept has been around for a long time well before it had a catchy name so i was first introduced to foodscaping as a teenager reading roz creasy's original book edible landscape and for me it just started to really click as to why we should be growing food with our ornamental plants using the same resources in the same space but fast forward to when i bought my first house in 2005 and i found myself living in a neighborhood for the first time in my life with this thing called an hoa homeowner association having a degree in horticulture and you know this being my profession i was amazed and very disappointed by some of the rules that they had especially the rules about no vegetables in the front yard so i went back to that original book that roz wrote and i started applying those principles to my home garden and i was basically hiding vegetables in and amongst the trees and shrubs and perennials that were on my hoa approval list and you know several years into that i ended up winning yard of the year and it was a real light bulb moment for me when i realized that when you take the farm-like approach out of your vegetable production it automatically looks more ornamental so you know i realized like i'm not using equipment i don't have to grow things in a straight line i can be more creative about what i place where and and how i plant them and how i orient these vegetables to the point where people don't recognize them as vegetables hoas are really interesting i find that it's best to first start with them understanding that vegetables incorporated can look really beautiful and they add a lot of seasonal beauty so first getting them to understand there doesn't need to be a distinction between a landscape and food producing space that's always the biggest challenge and a lot of times i will start with simple perennial things like blueberries and strawberries and figs and and then ease them into the idea of seasonal vegetable production in breeze foodscape blueberry bushes can be found lining a side yard pathway in a spot a lot of us have been programmed to place an evergreen hedge or grouping of some other flowering shrub these beauties serve the same purpose in the landscape but will produce homegrown berries that you can put in everything from pancakes to pie or just snack on straight from the bush just follow a few special tips when planting and growing them couldn't be easier [Music] okay brie incoming special delivery of one beautiful blueberry shrub and your favorite mulch triple ground shredded hardwood right yes okay so let me ask you first of all about your blueberries because i grow a lot of blueberries and i think i have some good looking ones but honestly i'm envious of yours i need to know exactly what you're doing differently so i can emulate that back at my place well i've learned early on that the trick to growing blueberries is to add copious amounts of soil conditioner which is this right here right this magic stuff this is ground aged pine bark aged is really important because it won't rob nitrogen from the plant versus say buying pine bark that is in the mulch form that is still going to be decomposing and can rob nutrients from the plant so the fresh mulch hasn't finished breaking down yet and it needs the nitrogen to do that and we don't want to run the risk of that in the soil right around those roots because that's going to deprive the plant from the nitrogen and this is all around it down there so that's why that's so important makes a lot of sense all right well i think we're ready incoming that's a beautiful hole i'll give you all of it perfect now the next step will just be to water this in okay and i can't wait to show you what this produces a year from now i'm ready i'll be back i think there are probably a million reasons that people should get excited about growing their own food i always use an example in my presentations about food miles and i use garlic as the example because garlic is the most consumed vegetable in the united states but since 2012 90 of the garlic sold in american grocery stores is being imported from china and that's a really long distance and it doesn't make sense to me when you really look and realize that every sunny landscape in america could grow some garlic to support the people that live there or the community the restaurants why are we why are we moving products so far across this planet when we have developed landscapes that offer opportunities you know foodscaping you're not going to never go to the grocery store but you grow a crop and eat it next time you buy it you have a greater understanding of what it took to get it there i think in this time particularly in 2020 where we have food shortages at stores this is the perfect opportunity to get people to really understand the opportunities that they have in breeze foodscape every bit of every planting bed represents another opportunity great borders and i love this garlic i'm looking at that but what variety is this it's huge this is creole garlic i got this at the mobile botanic garden and it's quickly becoming my favorite variety it's enormous and it's so flavorful right well everywhere i look i see garlic growing but for you it's along your borders and i know you're a big fan of that not only for self-serving but it also serves the purpose of pest deterrent too yes so i believe very strongly in planting your bed edges intentionally with food crops that we like to eat but that animals don't like so garlic onions arugula basil potatoes these are all really practical food crops to bring in and eat yourself that will deter deer rabbits groundhogs and voles wow bowls that's my biggest nemesis now all of those that you just mentioned i understand the ones that have that pungent smell to them but then you mentioned potatoes and i know that that doesn't have the smell but it's because it's a solanaceae crop right the foliage is poisonous poisonous nightshade take advantage of that and again edges are the easiest place to plant and harvest you don't have to do a yoga move to get to it it's right here where you're walking and you know the other thing about everything that you mentioned some of those are what you would plan in the cool season that overwinter and then you know there's the potatoes and other things that would prefer the warmer climate that's right and basil especially yeah the globe basil is a fantastic edge plant because it's neat and organized it kind of looks like a boxwood yeah and it does its job all summer long nice can't have too much basil either never have too much basil or have too much garlic correct obviously if you're growing things you're frequently harvesting like garlic and basil in a highly visible landscape bed you'll need to change those plants out more often than if they were just perennial ornamentals but that's a guaranteed way to constantly reinvent your landscape and keep it from becoming stagnant and as one plant comes out with the change of seasons it's a great time to really consider what should go in its place ideally you want something that still works and looks great in the existing bed but also sets you up for success down the road when the seasons change again foodscaping over the last nine years here on my property has led me to a whole new obsession with growing cover crops now this is a really confusing idea for most people because traditionally cover crops have been used for agronomic purposes so this applies to farms so for the past few years i've really been trying to take this agronomic approach and apply it to my residential landscape and it's been amazing the things that i've discovered with regard to my ability to improve soil to grow legumes to naturally fix nitrogen to bring in plants that will attract beneficial insects it all together makes my growing experience easier now one example that i love to use is the daikon radish i've become completely obsessed with the daikon radish you would want to sow those seeds directly in the ground in september and they will develop through the cool season of fall and by the middle of december you're going to have these large dense roots that basically act as natural tillers i live in a former tobacco field i have a major root knot nematode issue which really has created a big challenge for me growing my favorite crop tomatoes what i read for commercial production farmers who are growing tomatoes will use daikon radish as their winter cover crop and then they till the foliage in and as the foliage breaks down it releases a chemical that suppresses the nematodes so this year i went all in on daikon radish and i planted almost 3 000 square feet they grew all winter and actually we recently discovered the daikon seed is so delicious it's crunchy and fresh tasting in its perfect addition to a salad but now i am taking a push mower and i am mowing over all that daikon foliage letting it decompose in place so that as it breaks down it suppresses those nematodes and i can once again grow heirloom tomatoes and that concept brings us back to the peanuts that brie and i were planting earlier they're not only a great snack they make a perfect cover crop for part of the year crack the shell open and actually take the raw nut out of the shell as you can see here i planted these 10 days ago and they're already germinating so i think that's a reasonable assumption to plant them as the raw nut yeah and then i'm not speaking in code when i say just thumb it in yeah i literally mean you're gonna plant it about the depth of your thumb right so that's only about an inch deep so peanuts do grow really well in loose soil so if you have hard compacted clay you're going to want to add a little bit of compost and then plant the peanut in the compost okay how many of these are they going to produce so a healthy plant you can get more than 50. gosh that is nice return on the investment yeah it is and then what about harvesting time can you tell by looking at the plant when it's time to harvest yeah they get ugly that's my rule of thumb when a plant gets ugly it's time to rip it out and usually with vegetables especially root vegetables they're getting ugly as your sign that it is time to harvest okay so typically planting these sometime mid-may into june harvesting around halloween okay cool very cool so in this obsession with cover crops i've discovered a really important thing that farmers have known forever but i think home gardeners never got the notification on if you rotate a grain in a legume you take the greatest advantage of what the roots of these cover crops can do for you one of the advantages of grains is that they have very deep root systems those roots act as a natural tilling service but they actually get so deep that they scavenge nutrients from below the surface and they draw those nutrients back to the soil surface ultimately feeding the other plants that you have in your garden so you do a grain in the winter and then a legume through the summer the legumes naturally fix nitrogen ultimately replacing the nitrogen that those grains absorbed and here's where bree takes foodscaping to a new level she's not just mixing up her landscape beds with traditional vegetables herbs and fruit how about a small stand of wheat in your front yard or using barley like an ornamental foundation plant or sorghum or rice these are crops that many home gardeners can't even identify on-site bree not only grows them right in suburbia but makes them an integral and beautiful part of her landscape so my grain journey started about six years ago when a great friend of mine handed me a bag of wheat seed and challenged me to grow it and literally up until that moment i had never once crossed my mind to grow grains and it was literally like a light bulb went off over my head when it occurred to me that i could grow barley for beer or i could grow rice in the summertime or that corn is an actual grain it really was a life-changing moment to open my eyes to all of the opportunities and know that i can cultivate carbohydrate sources 12 months out of the year right here in my residential landscape so on top of having this realization that grains are this vast array of plants in the poace family the grass family the most commonly grown plants on the planet everybody knows how to grow grass we all have lawns duh they're really easy to grow so when it occurred to me that i could incorporate these things in my landscape both as sort of an edible meadow approach you know i really like the cottage garden style and grains lend themselves to that but i could also grow them just like we do ornamental grasses all the things that everybody already has included in their landscape you can grow grains the same way you can just direct seed them in a clump and let them germinate in place and they look just as beautiful as pennisetum or miscanthus or pink newly grafts except the difference is you can harvest the grains to eat if brie has inspired you to think about foodscaping in your own yard rest assured that the steps to get started are really no different than planning out any new planting so the first steps in developing a foodscape and i challenge everyone to do this is to think critically about what you eat all the time so i usually will pose the question what vegetables have you eaten in the last week write it down and look at the things that keep recurring because not only are these things that you enjoy eating but you're comfortable cooking with and i want you to focus on growing those five things and grow them in a meaningful way so that you change a habit at the grocery store so when i posed that question to myself i recognize that grains were a really big part of my regular diet and though grains in my lifetime have never been part of a home gardener's repertoire there really was no reason for them not to be included i just had to be really creative about figuring out where to grow them and then how to harvest and actually get them into a stage where i could bring them into my kitchen and cook with them so the next step in foodscaping is to just walk around your property and start evaluating the sites that you have so most vegetables need to grow in more some than shade not really seeing a lot of farms growing in the forest right there's a reason for that so you need to identify your sunniest areas and then i want you to really focus on the areas that you walk past on a regular basis because that's going to be your zone where you can grow high maintenance things like tomatoes or zucchinis in fact brie had some planting for us to do today so i can get a hands-on look at how planting out a foodscape works we're here we're standing in what i call zone one because there's a hose right here yeah you know this makes it so i can easily water it i park my car right here this is the area that is on my radar right you see it all the time i see it every day multiple times so i need to put my highest maintenance plants here because this is going to be the easiest place for me to manage them yeah so we've got an area right here that obviously is ready for planting what's going there well we're going to do tomatoes and peppers and um well i have a whole array of things it's about 50 edibles 50 ornamental so that it's a true foodscape perfect that way no one in my neighborhood can think that i am disrupting our our infrastructure i am i'm accommodating the need for beauty and bounty simultaneously perfect [Music] well i have to say bree in 11 seasons or in the works of 11 seasons this is the most fun i've ever had because i'm the dirtiest i've ever been other than my own garden i thought you were going to say this is the most work you've ever done this is not work this is fun and what an honor to do in your garden but this is this is that classic i mean this is really a foodscape bed because you've got the ornamentals and the edibles and a nice balance and front and center you know like think of the amount of productivity here that most people would associate with growing in rows yeah and when you plant the mix together it seems less vegetable gardening correct a vegetable garden that seems less vegetable gardening for a couple of horticulture professionals that may seem to be a counter-intuitive end goal but encouraging more people to include edible crops in their home landscapes might be the single best way i can think of for all of us to start growing a greener world so when you think about it maybe it really should be the ultimate goal [Music] at the end of the day it's just being logical with our allocation of resources and our land stewardship and just getting the most out of the space that we have and i don't understand why it's not already totally mainstream that everybody grows vegetables and flowers together i think the most empowering part about foodscaping is the reality of growing enough food that you feel like you are changing some habits and i think this is an opportunity for everybody to feel like you are contributing to the world in a meaningful way just from using your own little yard everything that you grow that you eat really does shake out to make a difference [Music] growing your own food can be one of the most rewarding aspects of gardening and yet between the perceived and actual limitations on where to grow that food in your own yard that can create some real challenges but hopefully today you gained a fresh perspective and some new inspiration on how to make that happen with tips for incorporating edibles into your existing landscape beds and if you'd like to learn more on foodscaping we'll have that information on our website under the show notes for this episode the website address it's the same as our show name it's growingyourgreenerworld.com thanks for watching everybody i'm joe lample and we'll see you back here next time for more growing a greener world [Music] [Music] now you can continue your garden learning online and course is for me joe lampl in my online gardening academy classes are designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills explore the courses available right now plus new topics covering everything you need to know to grow like a pro take each class on your own schedule from anywhere plus you'll have opportunities to ask me questions about your specific garden in real time go to joegardner.com learn for details [Music] today

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 125,844

Keywords: foodscaping, foodscape, edible landscape, edible landscaping, landscaping with edibles, brie arthur, foodscape revolution, growing a greener world, ggw, gardening shows, gardening tv

Id: y7ktFFhVits

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020