Growing a Greener World

- [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

- [Male Announcer] And the following: [gentle instrumental music] - [voice-over] I'm Joe Lamp'l.

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Innovators, entrepreneurs, forward-thinking leaders who are all, in ways both big and small, dedicated to organic gardening and farming, lightening our footprint, conserving vital resources, protecting natural habitats, making a tangible difference for us all.

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Growing a Greener World.

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[pleasant acoustic guitar music] When we last visited Dr. Lee Reich in his farm den, we spent most of that episode learning how to create and maintain a weedless garden, but Lee has a lot of interests besides just creating a vegetable garden that's nearly free of all the weeds.

He's an expert pruner, and he's written a book about that, and he has a real passion for growing fruit, and I'm not just talking about mainstream fruit like the incredible blueberries that he grows, but uncommon fruit, and I'm not talking about fruit that's either hard to find or hard to grow, but fruit that's underappreciated in the home garden, and it's not surprise Lee's growing a lot of uncommon fruit right here.

So today, we're back to talk to Lee to learn more about uncommon fruit and why we should be growing more of it in our own home gardens.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] And Lee, I also love walking through your farmdom, right?

- Right, farm den.

- Farm den, too big for a garden, too small for a farm?

Is that the right-- - Well more than a garden, less than a farm.

- Author, lecturer, columnist, blogger, horticulturalist, soil scientist, and one of the most-recognized and respected plant minds alive, with fans and followers around the world.

If there were a Mount Rushmore of true garden masters, Lee Reich would be on it, so it was a real treat to hang out with him at his home about 90 miles north of New York City.

I got an up-close look at one of his passions, uncommon fruit varieties, that he says not nearly enough of us regular gardeners are growing.

You know Lee, I always love to come and visit you and your garden of course because not only do I get to have some good conversation with you, but I get to see some great plants and eat some amazing fruit like these black raspberries, right?

- Yeah, they're sometimes called black caps.

They're grown wild pretty much everywhere around here, and you know, in the east, but most people don't grow them.

I like to grow them 'cause you get a lot bigger crop.

And they're delicious.

- Yeah.

- Here's your gateway plant, the figs in the containers.

- Yeah, so fig was the first plant I ever planted when I got into agriculture, and I still grow some in containers, and these are different varieties I'm growing just to, I wanna see what they taste like, and if they taste good, they go to the big house.

This big house?

- Right.

- [Lee] In the winter, I have vegetables in here, but this time of year, I have figs, and these are grown as espaliers.

- Right.

- And that's, and which makes it very easy to prune, and they get a lot of light, good air circulation, very easy to pick.

So the whole plant basically is just a trunk.

One stem, permanent stem, and all these are just temporary 'cause every year at the end of the season, I cut them back so they don't shade, so they don't shade the vegetables in the winter.

- And this is new growth.

One of the great things about figs, you get fruit off of new growth.

- Right, one of the few fruits that will fruit on new growth, which has two benefits.

One is you can cut it back like that, but the other benefit is that they keep bearing, so like this fig's bigger than this fig, so as it grows, it just keeps bearing figs.

- [Joe] When you pick these, you just need to eat them right 'cause they don't keep very well.

- [Lee] Right, they don't ripen once you pick them, and they don't taste good unless they are dead ripe, and then they don't travel at all.

- But I do, so I'm gonna come back here in a couple weeks when these are ready to harvest.

- Towards the end August, or sometimes earlier, but sometimes we come out every day that many figs.

It's just, you know, it's hard to eat them all.

- More for me.

- It's a job, but somebody's gotta do it.

[Joe laughing] I got interested in growing fruit, mostly I have to say because I like to eat fruit.

From the time I was very young, we did have a few fruit trees in my house, but we just, my family, we ate a lot of fruit.

It's definitely something that we all like.

When I switched into agriculture originally from something totally different.

I was in chemistry, and I switched into agriculture.

It's not like I went into to learn about growing fruit.

I just was interested in gardening, and then I guess when I took a class in pomology which is fruit-growing, I guess that re-awakened that early love of fruit, and I think this is what I need.

The first fruit that I became interested in growing was a fig for some reason, which is especially odd since I was living in Madison, Wisconsin where temperatures always got down to 25 or 30 below zero, so I bought a fig tree, and I lived in an apartment not with a sunny window, and I bought a pot, maybe a 12-inch flower pot.

I dunno what kind of potting soil I made or bought, and I stuck the fig tree in there.

It did grow, but of course it never fruited because it didn't have sun or any of the other conditions that a fig tree would like, but that was my first fruit.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - [Joe] That first experiment eventually led to Lee's farm den, a two-plus acre test orchard of sorts where Lee grows what he likes and hopes that he can teach others about fruits that go beyond the basics at the supermarket.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] This is what, black currant?

- [Lee] This is European black currant, Ribes nigrum.

- [Joe] You love this one, don't you?

- [Lee] Yeah, this is one of my two favorite fruits, the other being blueberry, and the nice thing about it is it's a plant that tolerates shade, so that's why I have it in between these paw paw trees.

- Right.

- [Lee] And it's super high in vitamin C, and deer don't particularly like it, so it's deer-resistant, not deer-proof.

- [Joe] Okay, that's a good one.

That's a plus, especially with fruit.

- [Lee] And the other thing is I really love the taste of it.

Sweet-tart, but to me, it's resiny.

- So maybe not a positive for you?

- No, that's a really positive.

- That's a good thing?

- I love this thing, this fruit.

You have a descriptor?

- Different, that's a different kind of taste.

- So a lot of people don't like them, I have to admit, fresh, but everybody likes 'em as juice, as jam.

The drink cassis is made with black currant.

- And this is very high in vitamin C. - Yeah, very high in vitamin C. - [Joe] Kinda makes oranges or orange juice not so potent compared to this.

- Right, orange juice is like water compared to this vitamin C-wise.

[pleasant music] - [Joe] White currant, right?

- [Lee] Right, this is a different kind of currant, white currant, which is a different species, same genus, but it has a lot of the same benefits as far as deer-resistant, tolerates shade.

That's why it's grown in between these trees, and easy to grow.

Basically these are very pest free.

I have to admit it's not my favorite fruit.

They're pretty tart.

- I was about-- - Interesting that young kids when they come here, they love this.

You'd think kids would only like sweet stuff.

- It's like that sour candy.

It's interesting how different it is from the black to the white.

- Yeah, oh yeah, totally different flavor, and this, even though it's tart, it's not high in vitamin C, but it makes a really good jelly or meat sauce, whatever.

I'm not a good cook with fruits, so I dunno.

- But you're a good grower of them.

- Right.

It started out along my driveway, as many people do.

I had a row of forsythia bushes, and in spring it was great.

It was just this glowing yellow, it was like warmth emanating from it, and then, but after that, it's sort of a green blob.

Maybe you notice it, maybe you don't, but it's not ugly, but it's not pretty, so I ripped those out.

I had been researching, and I was somewhat familiar with a plant called Nanking cherry.

Planted a row of Nanking cherries.

Nice thing about the same time the forsythia would have been in bloom, Nanking cherries come into bloom, and they're just awash in white, pinkish-white blossoms, so much so that people on the street would often stop and ask what is that plant in bloom, and then after that, a month or two after bloom, or two months after bloom, there's just cherries all over the place that I could just walk down my driveway and eat these cherries.

It's one of my favorite plants, and it's a very tough plant.

It comes from the hills of Manchuria where temperatures in winter are minus 50.

In summer, they're plus 110, so you know, that was a great plant, and that's one thing that got me started, and then I went on to many other fruits.

[pleasant music] I grow a lot of kiwi fruits.

- I see that.

- What I grow is hardy kiwi fruits.

There's a few species that are edible.

This is one of them.

So this is Actinidia kolomikta.

So this species is nice because it's first of all, it's not overly vigorous.

It does need pruning every year, or actually you don't have to prune it, but it's better for fruiting if you prune it.

The other species is this one up here, which is Actinidia arguta which is different from the other one.

You can see the leaves look different, but very decorative.

- It's a lot bigger, too.

- Yeah, and it's super vigorous, so you have to prune this or it'll take over your house.

And these ripen in early, late summer.

On the outside, you can see it's smaller than a market kiwi.

Right.

- A fuzzy kiwi.

- It has a smooth skin, so you just pop them in your mouth, and inside, it looks just like the market kiwi, and the flavor, most people agree and I surely say, much better.

- Nice.

- It's a sweeter and more aromatic, so it's a great-tasting fruit.

The one thing about both species is you have separate male and female plants, so you need one male to pollinate up to eight females.

- [Joe] Very important.

- This is a fruit that was introduced into this country as an ornamental, and people grew it for decades just as an ornamental.

The fruit isn't, it's green when it's ripe, so people don't realize, they didn't see a fruit basically.

- So you've got the best of both worlds.

Yeah.

- I like that.

- Most of the common fruits have been, well they've been selected for good marketability.

You can pick them.

Apples have a lot going for them.

You can pick them, you can store them, they ship pretty well.

A fruit breeder at Cornell when I worked for Cornell, he bemoaned the fact that 'cause he had bred an apple, jonagold, which at that time, now it does pretty well, but at that time, people didn't buy it 'cause it wasn't a red apple.

It was yellow splashed with some red, and he said he really bemoaned the fact, he said Americans eat with their eyes.

The American persimmon, paw paw, mulberries, all these fruits, they're very easy to grow, but very hard to handle, and also that certain look.

Apples, they can be, they're bred actually to have this nice bright red look which is, that appeals to us whereas paw paw I have to say is not that attractive a fruit.

It looks sort of like a fruit that, it's green with some black splotches on it, but once you eat it, if it's about flavor.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - Lee, I've got a lot of catching up to do if I wanna grow as many varieties of fruit as you are growing, but I am growing paw paw, and I am loving it.

They are very popular these days.

- Yeah, it's an interesting fruit.

It has a lot of tropical aspirations.

First of all, it's the northern-most member of the custard apple family, which some people may be familiar with.

Also it has this very tropical looking leaves.

- [Joe] Very tropical, and yet this grows way north, right?

- Way north, this is survive below minus 30 at my house.

- That's crazy.

- And then the fruit grows in clusters like bananas, and interestingly, the fruit has a flavor very similar banana.

Matter of fact, it's sometimes been called the New York banana, the Hoosier banana, the Michigan banana.

Any state that happens to grow in banana-- - Claims it.

- [Lee] Or sometimes I like to think of it as creme brulee without the fat and cream.

- And it's nice and ornamental, and yet I notice that you have topped these, but even in the mature state, they only get about what, 20-- - 25 feet high, but that's because I collect 'em from the ground, let 'em ripen totally on the tree, drop, and then over a certain height, they will splatter.

- Oh, okay, that's a smart technique.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] Now Lee, when it comes to uncommon fruit, blueberries don't fall into that category, but what is uncommon is this place right here.

What do you call this, this is the-- - The blueberry temple.

This is only anointed ones are allowed in here.

Well I am honored.

- Welcome.

- Thank you very much.

- [Lee] So the area's about 25 by 30 feet, 16 plants, almost 200 quarts of blueberries.

Per year?

- Yeah.

- [Joe] That is incredible.

- [Lee] We eat about half of those and freeze the other half.

So blueberries basically are very easy to take care of.

They have very few pest problems.

It's a native American fruit, but the one thing that's very important for blueberries is soil.

- Yeah.

- And it's easy to get the soil right.

You just have to do it, so basically they like a soil that's very acidic, very high in organic matter, and consistently moist, but well aerated, which the organic matter does.

- Right, so as far as the soil pH, we're talking 4.0 to 4.5.

That's like super low.

- [Lee] Well four to 5.5 is still super low.

- [Joe] But way lower than what we would consider neutral.

- [Lee] Most plants would not like that.

So, and it's easy to do.

A lot of places don't have soil that acidic, and you just add elemental sulfur which is a naturally-mined mineral.

You add that to the soil in the right amount, and it lowers the acidity, and over the years, you might have to reapply it, but it's not that big a thing.

- But you don't recommend that people try to lower that pH with pine shavings or pine needles or peat moss, right?

- They can try if they want, but it won't do anything.

- [Joe] Because why?

- [Lee] 'Cause any organic matter, when you add it to the soil, what it does, it drops the pH, but then over time, the pH goes up to neutral.

Okay.

- Or seven.

- [Lee] So really the only way to do it, and you can tell from the leaves.

A lot of people grow blueberries, and they'll get this sort of yellowing of the leaves, and you can see these are nice and green, and that's an indication of a correct pH.

- [Joe] Well you also recommend when somebody wants to venture into growing fruit in their back yards to maybe start with berries.

So I assume that we're talking low pest and disease pressure with blueberries, right?

- Yeah I mean blueberries is one fruit that I've never not gotten a full crop, and I think we didn't mention is that they're really pretty plants.

I mean, you can see the way that-- You know, people grow a lot of ornamentals like ornamental crab apples, cherries, and if you look at the foliage this time of year, it's not that pretty, but look at this.

This is like totally healthy, green, lush, and then in spring, you get these nice white flowers.

- [Joe] Yes.

- [Lee] In the fall, the color's unbelievable on these.

- [Joe] Fire red.

- [Lee] Yeah, it's really nice, and even in winter, the stems on some varieties, especially when it gets cold, turn red, so it's a plant that's got everything except for pests.

- [laughs] Sounds like my kind of plant.

- Yeah.

- Well much of what's growing at Lee's farm den is uncommon, and his results are certainly extraordinary.

It all comes down to the basics, giving the plants what they need to thrive.

It almost always starts with soil structure, and it's not as hard as you think.

All right Mr. King of Compost, I know you've got a lot of talents, and this is one of your highest ones.

Talk to me about your secrets for making incredible compost.

- The main secret, number one secret, a bin.

- A bin.

- And this happens to be, I have to say, this is to me is state of the art bins.

[Joe laughing] And basically it's made out of artificial wood deck, manufactured wood decking, and so it won't rot away, and you can see they're notched.

Fits together like Lincoln Logs.

It's really nice 'cause when you build it, it gets higher and higher, and then when you start taking the compost out, you don't have to reach down.

It gets lower and lower.

Keeps a lot of the heat in, keeps moisture in, keeps some scavengers out.

This is it.

- [Joe] Now, are you the guy that comes in here and turns it all the time, or do you just let it cook?

- No, I don't turn it all the time.

Basically I built it through the summer into fall.

I mean, I build many piles, but I build 'em all summer long into fall, and then next spring, I turn 'em once, and it gives me an opportunity to look at it.

Maybe they need water, maybe it needs to be mixed up a little better, and also I can see how far gone it is, and I write that down, and then during the summer, but surely that fall, I use it.

[pleasant music] - [Joe] But a closer look at Lee's compost pile uncovers some techniques that range from the uniquely uncommon to the downright weird.

And then what about watering?

What's your system for that?

- So every few layers, what I do is I have this little contraption here.

It's called the Bend-a-tron.

[Joe laughing] Oh no, Water-tron.

- A Water-tron.

- And basically, here's a pressure reducer like from a drop irrigation system, a valve, and then a sprinkler with a little stake to put it in, and I put this right here.

- This is basically equipment from a drip irrigation kit.

- Yeah, except for the sprinkler.

So what I do is so I'll have a few layers that need watering and then I can go to another pile while I turn on this water which I have it set for to go about this big, and I leave it for 20 minutes, and that's it.

- It's done.

Now Lee, there are certain rules that aren't always followed as far as what you can and can't compost, and you're the guy, I don't think there's anything you don't compost.

- Right.

- And you've got some samples of some crazy things, right?

- Well one thing is 'cause I have a respect for the soil, and if the alternative is to bury something in the soil, I would always rather compost it.

- All right, so [laughs], I don't think these smell any more, but-- - These are actually leather shoes that I guess there's a lot of non-leather in here, but anyway, all the leather's gone.

It was composted.

- And I think this one might be my favorite.

The only thing I can identify on here is a zipper.

What is this?

- These were a pair of designer-ish jeans that my daughter had, and then she was finished with them, so I guess the pockets are really tough.

Keep that in mind when you use the pockets.

- Now is this just an experiment for you, or do you truly say I'm gonna compost this stuff?

- Well at first it was sort of a joke, but now it's like what am I gonna do, put it in the landfill?

- So you really compost this?

- Yeah, yeah actually if we dug down here, I had some shorts.

Everything goes on the compost.

- Everything here, as long as you get it hot enough and cook it long enough.

- Yeah, time and / or temperature.

- Okay, plus the price is right 'cause everything in here is free.

Right.

- I love it.

- People talk about the greens and the browns and the ratio to use, but it's not really all that important because first of all, you can't compute it exactly, and also any pile of organic material, when you pile it up, it eventually becomes compost.

Yes.

- So that's it.

Just make compost.

- Just like in nature.

- Yeah.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - [Joe] And nature is always on full display in this fertile region of the country.

I'm struck by it every time I come to New England, and this part of New York in particular, so while visiting Lee, I couldn't help but pay a visit to the iconic Mohawk Mountain House, just a few miles away.

- We're about 90 miles north of New York City right now, and so it's a very short trip for one of the largest metropolitan areas of our country.

The original settlers came up here to cut poles for ships, shipbuilders back in England, but it was kind of that growth out of New York City, and we're just off the Hudson River.

Everybody's heard of West Point.

They've heard of Rip Van Winkle.

They've heard of the Culinary Institute of America, and these are all institutions, and they're right in our back yard.

- [Joe] Mohawk is steeped in history.

Five U.S. presidents have stayed here.

Movies have been shot here.

It's won multiple travel awards, appeared on numerous best-of lists, and it's listed as a national historic landmark on the Register of Historic Places.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - The resort itself sits on 1,200 acres.

We were originally founded in 1869, so we're 150 years old this year, and one of our major attractions is our gardens.

The show garden which we're standing in today is actually built of five acres of rock.

Topsoil was trucked in, and this was back in 18, late 1860s, early 1870s, to build up a garden on top of a mountain.

It's kind of an odd place to build one, but the resort needed one.

We serve in the peak of the season, we'll serve over 2,000 meals a day, and we source as much of that food as we can locally through local farmers and through a farm cooperative.

Historically, we had seven farms on the property where we would actually produce the food, both meats and vegetables.

In a typical year, we compost approximately 190 tons of raw material which produce about 125 yards of finished compost.

The majority of it goes into the gardens, top dressing on the grounds, and top dressing on the golf course.

A portion of it also ends up in our greenhouse for potting mix, so with such a great growing community, there's plenty of opportunities to partner with local farmers.

We wanna support those local businesses.

Our focus is really on hospitality, so that's what we wanna be able to focus on, and work with those partners to source what we need in season.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - [Joe] Maybe it's no coincidence really that this part of the country gave birth to Lee Reich's amazing farm den and all his uncommon fruits.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - So the reason these fruits are uncommon is because a lot of fruit are treated as commodities, like apples, just red orbs, and it's really not about the specific flavors, beyond a few flavors, but there's 5,000 varieties of apple, and people are most familiar with what they see in the supermarket, so you see the usual apples, peaches, cherries, plums, and these other fruits just don't make it, and there are reasons.

Some of them don't ship so well, so some of them are really good back yard fruits, but you'll never see them in a supermarket.

For instance, I grow American persimmons which, when they're ready to eat, they're about this big, and they're super soft, and you can't handle them commercially, but in a back yard, it doesn't matter how soft they are.

You just pick them and eat them.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music] - Well I hope that today's episode inspired you to try growing some uncommon fruit in your own home garden just like Lee is growing right here, and if you'd like to watch this episode again or learn more about growing uncommon fruit, we have that information on our website under the show notes for this episode, and the website address, that's the same as our show name.

It's growingagreenerworld.com.

Thanks for watching everybody.

I'm Joe Lamp'l, and I'll see you again here next time for more Growing a Greener World.

[dramatic music] - [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

- [Male Announcer] And the following: [ambient electronic music] [male announcer]: Continue the garden learning from the program you just watched, Growing a Greener World.

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Classes are on-demand any time.

Plus, opportunities to ask Joe questions about your specific garden in real time.

Courses are available online.

For more information or to enroll, go to: [funky techno jingle]