Growing a Greener World

- [Narrator 1] "Growing a Greener World" is made possible in part by... - [Narrator 2] 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".

(inspiring music) - [Narrator 1] And the following.

Rain Bird.

Corona Tools.

And Milorganite.

(bright piano music) - [Joe Voiceover] I'm Joe Lamp'l.

When I created "Growing a Greener World", I had one goal, to tell stories of everyday people, 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.

They're real, they're passionate, they're all around us, they're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

"Growing a Greener World", it's more than a movement, it's our mission.

(bright piano music) Local and homegrown food is a given when it comes to sustainable living, but for most home growers, gardening comes to a screeching halt when winter arrives.

It's those colder temperatures and shorter days that seems to make it impossible to grown just about anything, and yet, our desire for fresh from the garden produce is stronger than ever.

Well, luckily, with some simple techniques, we can grow organically, even in the dead of winter, and even in places like this.

Eliot Coelman and his wife Barbara Damrosch are two of the top experts when it comes to pushing the limits of the harvest season.

Their four-season farm is located in USDA growing zone five and is further north than Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and even Toronto, and yet, here in Harborside, Maine, they're able to grow food commercially all year round, even in temperatures below zero.

In their quest for a four-season harvest, they've tested and perfected many techniques, and along the way, pinned numerous books for both small scale farmers and home gardeners, covering organic, sustainable methods and they've even hosted several TV gardening shows.

One thing's for sure, Eliot and Barbara are passionate about sharing their knowledge for gardening in a simple, natural way.

- Well, before I even knew anything about farming, I was an adventurer and I used to spend my weekends rock climbing, whitewater kayaking, and mountaineering.

I was a ski racer, also.

And one day, I read a book about small farming.

Actually, it was about back to the land.

It was called "Living the Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearing, but the thing that appealed to me, it made that life sound like an adventure and so I just said wow, that seems like something I'd like to do for a few years, and at that point, I was teaching at a college in New Hampshire, I had a teaching job to support me, but the nice thing about teaching jobs is you had the Christmas vacation, spring vacation, summer vacation to go adventuring.

And I rented a piece of farmland, well, I thought for two more years, got my feet wet, decided this was fun, and in the course of that, I'd come to visit the Nearings and met them and we'd become good friends and they offered to sell be the back half of their farm, so we moved here, but again, on the adventure bit, it was an adventure because this was all wooded land.

It was covered with spruce and fir trees and I said, okay, that just makes it a better adventure.

This makes it harder to get to the top and getting to the top, trying to get there, was the fun part of adventures.

Well, a four-season farm is a vegetable farm, first off, but we also raise livestock, we raise chickens for eggs and for meat and we raise pigs.

And we're gonna be adding in cattle and sheep soon, but we started out as a vegetable farm and the fascinating thing was how successful we were raising every imaginable vegetable and not needing any of the inputs that conventional agriculture seemed to think were indispensable.

All of our inputs were coming from local resources and so we're near the ocean, we were getting seaweed and we were composting that with spoiled hay from the neighbor's fields and we were getting clamshells, which we were putting into the fields, and that's a wonderful story in itself.

I was spreading these clamshells, which I get from a neighbor who shucked clams, on a field when the local county agent stopped by one day and he looked at what he was doing and he said, "Well, that's foolish.

Those won't break down for 100 years."

And I remember thinking, isn't that the perfect metaphor for the difference?

Because I was thinking, wow, there'll still be some calcium in here when my great grandchildren are farming this, so I was thinking in the long-term and modern agriculture was thinking can we put something in and get something back tomorrow, but we were building long-term fertility and that's what organic matter does.

And we were able to turn this land, which started out with a pH of 4.3 and three inches of topsoil into some of the most productive organic farmland I've seen anywhere.

We now have about a 12-inch soil depth.

It's filled with organic matter, it's filled with minerals, and every year, we turn out absolutely beautiful vegetables.

We don't use any pesticides because we don't need any pesticides because when you grow crops correctly, the insects have no role.

They can't maintain a population in a properly grown plant.

And our standards are, everybody says, well, can you grow stuff as nice as the supermarket?

Our standards are, if it looks as bad as the supermarket, we compost it.

Our stuff is better than that.

(upbeat country music) - Eliot, what was your goal as you started taking on the challenge of growing more things in the wintertime?

- Well, the goal was to see if we couldn't feed our local population year round, not just during the growing months, as they're called.

And so we started out with the obvious best crop, which was spinach.

Spinach is very hearty.

Whenever you cut a leaf, it'll regrow as long as the plant's established, and that worked, and then we just kept adding crops in.

We added in scallions, we added in Swiss chard, and all of the wonderful Asian greens, and carrots that we planted in August and wintered over and protected.

And the best feeling I had one day when I went in to the local food co-op that was carrying a lot of our produce, when we had nine different crops in the cooler, and this was in February, and I said wow, okay.

We're getting somewhere with this.

This is pretty neat.

- Planning to keep you busy all throughout the winter, then.

- We stay about as busy as we wanna be.

- Good.

(light country music) So what are some of the misconceptions about even gardening in winter?

- Well, probably the largest misconception is that you are gardening in the winter the same way you garden in the summer and what you're actually doing is harvesting in the winter crops that you planted in the fall because once you get into the dead of winter, there isn't enough light to start new crops, but if you have crops that you've planted in September and October, they keep growing like spinach.

It keeps poking up new leaves every time you cut one and so that's what makes it work.

You're not gardening in the winter, you're harvesting crops that you planted the fall before.

- So really, what you're extending is the harvesting season, not the growing season.

- You're extending the harvesting season and I can guarantee you, it's a shorter trip to the greenhouse than it is to the supermarket.

(Joe chuckling) (upbeat country music) - So we know there are certain crops that have no problem with the cooler temperatures, but you found ways to sort of push the temperature limits with systems that you've developed, Eliot.

- Well, what we've found is that if these were out of doors in the winter, they would survive probably until Christmas.

Spinach, it's pretty hearty.

It'd be looking pretty beat up, but after that, it gets so cold here that they would freeze and the cold, dry winds would just suck the juices out of them.

Now, if you put them in here, this simple single layer of plastic at least will cut the wind and they're gonna be doing a lot better, and that's what we found out years ago when we had them growing in a cold frame, but the time we really made the great leap forward was when after getting tired of shoveling all the snow off the cold frame, we put a simple little hoop house over the cold frame to keep it free of snow and then we discovered double coverage.

And what I mean by that is what we've learned with temperature records is that each layer moves the covered area one and one half USDA zones to the south, about 500 miles here on the East Coast.

So outside, it's Maine, inside here, you have a New Jersey climate.

If you add another layer, a second layer, that second layer moves you an additional zone and a half to the south and that zone and a half to the south takes you to Georgia.

- Wow.

- And so that's gonna give you a far wider range of crops that you can grow, and the second layer now, instead of being a cold frame, is this spun-bonded fabric, which gives you such a nice layer of protection, it's lightweight, it's self-venting, and it really does the job perfectly.

- So you're able to get enough light through both layers so that this spinach can still photosynthesize.

- Absolutely.

And for many people, when they see this, they say, oh my gosh, let's put on layer three, let's put on layer four and we can have cucumbers, but what happens is each layer cuts out an additional 10% of your light, so two layers, you've cut out just enough of that layer and this layer just enough light to get the temperature you want.

We leave it at that because maybe we could grow cucumbers in here in the winter and maybe people 50 years from now will look back on us and say, oh my gosh, how stupid they were, they could've done this, but for the moment, we think this is pretty darn good.

- And it is, and on top of that, somebody at home can do the same system on a much smaller scale, right?

- It would be so easy.

People could start with the cold frames that we started with, you can take simple pieces of wire and make wickets and stretch this over and inside a small greenhouse.

It is the easiest thing in the world to get this amount of climate change for free just by having two layers of covering.

(light inspiring music) - If extending the growing season is something you'd like to try, then you certainly need a way to protect your plants during the winter, and the right systems can be used year round.

In summer, they're great as a barrier for insect protection and for keeping frost off your plants in fall and early spring.

And you don't need an expensive greenhouse or hoop house for that.

For a nominal investment, you can build a low tunnel just like the ones that professionals use.

How's it going, Sean?

- Good, Joe.

- Awesome.

Now it all starts with this.

This is galvanized electrical conduit, known as EMT piping, and it's really inexpensive at only about $2 a piece, but once it's formed, it creates a hoop about six feet wide and three feet high before you put it into the ground.

And you definitely wanna use galvanized piping as opposed to plastic PVC because this is really strong and sturdy to hold the snow loads.

Plus, it doesn't break down under UV lighting and once you form it, you'll have it for years.

So how do you bend the pipe?

Well, there are commercial pipe benders that you can buy, but I like this device that's made specifically for the purpose of bending pipes into the hoops we'll need to put into the ground.

You can mount it to any solid surface such as the corner of a work bench or picnic table and it's secured with two screws and bolts.

By securing it to a fixed position and pulling the pipe around the bender, you can maintain perfect control of the tubing as it's bent.

To start, insert a 10 foot length of tubing into the holding strap so it's even with the end of the bender.

On the first bending stroke, pull the tubing towards you, around the bender, until it touches the operator's end.

Next, release pressure on the tubing and push only about half of the portion you just bent through the holding strap to make the next bending stroke.

It's important to not push anymore than half the bent length through at a time in order to maintain a smooth, consistent radius.

This is the time where it's helpful to have an extra pair of hands to provide support for the bent end already shaped in order to keep the hoop on a single flat plane.

Otherwise, it could corkscrew or twist.

As you approach the end of the tubing, extra leverage is needed, which is provided by the enclosed bar.

Just make sure there's adequate room on either side of the bender for the tubing to be inserted and slide through.

It's great to have some help if you can get it just to help stabilize the pipe during the bending process, but it's not required.

This really is a simple job and you can do it yourself.

Hey, thanks a lot, Sean.

- You're welcome, Joe.

- See you later.

(inspiring music) - Once the hoops are ready, insert them to a depth of about 10 inches and space them five to six feet apart.

Then cover with a protective layer of plastic or spun-bound fabric.

You can hold down the cover a number of different ways, including sandbags, stones, bricks, or whatever's handy.

If you'd like step-by-step instructions for how to make your own low tunnels at home as well as where you can get the supplies, like the pipe bender, we have that on our website under the show notes for this episode and the address is the same as our name, growingagreenerworld.com.

(bright piano music) So we know that soil and light are really important and you've got a handle on that, but there are other elements that you consider just as important for a successful winter garden.

- It's the fertility of the soil that's gonna make everything work.

We're sitting here looking at some beautiful dark brown soil.

This is a potting mix that actually contains 40% compost.

And the wonderful thing about compost, here it is, it's really, it's the world's best fertilizer and you can make it for free in your backyard from waste products.

Mother Nature is on our side and she wants us to be well fed.

And we use a lot of compost.

We make all we can because what that does for the soil is it allows moisture to be there in the proper amount, it allows air to be there in the proper amount, it holds nutrients in just the right way the plants need them, and it's giving you an even, gentle feed for your plants.

It's the way plants have evolved to grow.

So compost is really the key to getting the soil into the shape that it will then take care of your plants because if you want to prevent insects and diseases, you want to have your plants growing in about as benign a climate as they can grow.

Well, we've created a benign climate with different levels of protection from plastic, but the other benign climate is your plants want to be having the right amount of air, moisture, and nutrients so they aren't stressed.

And studies have shown that when plants are under stress, there's actually a change in their internal composition that makes them more suitable for insect nutrition and so my role as a grower is I'm the stress reducer for the vegetables.

It's a wonderful job.

I'm sure there are famous people out there who have their stress reduction experts.

Well, my plants have one too and it's me and the better job I do growing stress-free plants, the better job I do having plants with no diseases, no insect problems, and optimum nutrition for the people who are gonna eventually eat them.

(bright piano music) - Okay, so sound gardening practices are just as important no matter what time of the year it is, whether it's a home garden or a commercial farm setting and this is the greenhouse connected to the main house for Eliot and the other famous gardener in the family, Barbara.

And Barbara, it looks like you're off to a great start for supper tonight.

What are are we growing here?

- I sure am.

- This is tatsoi.

- Tatsoi.

- This is my favorite Asian green.

It's super hearty, grows in an unheated greenhouse.

We've been having this in stir-fries all winter and in salads.

It's just so tender and sweet.

- This is delicious.

Now you have one, two, three, four crops growing right now.

Talk about that.

- Well, this one is about over.

I mean, you can see, it's starting to go to seed.

And we'll be pulling this out and planting something else, but meanwhile, look what's coming along.

We have this beautiful cut and come again salad mix with different colors.

- Look at that.

- Beautiful.

- So I'm gonna put some of that in the salad and this'll regrow, so this will have several successions.

I'll cut, then it'll regrow again.

This will keep going all spring long.

- Now, another thing that you're doing is you're growing spinach and it's clear that you've planted this at different times.

- Yes.

Now, that's another example of succession with a single crop.

So we have some older spinach there, which we can be picking right now, and here's some young spinach coming along for the spring.

Then over here, these are some carrots, and I think I might pull some of them for supper too, those have been in the ground all winter long and they're starting to regrow.

So we're soon gonna be pulling those out and we're gonna plant something in a different family from carrots.

We're gonna put lettuce in there, not this lettuce, but some head lettuce so we have some of both.

Then that other bed here, which we have to clean up and start over with, that's gonna have some of the brassica family.

We're gonna have arugula, we're gonna have some baby turnips, we're gonna have some radishes.

They're all related, so they'll be fine there.

- But I hear you mentioning specific families and how you're gonna plant a different family when the carrots come out and you're referring to crop rotation there.

- [Barbara] That's right.

- [Joe] Talk about that a little bit.

- You wanna follow one family with another family so that diseases aren't transferred to the next crop.

Sometimes the root system of one will benefit the following crop, and the over wintering pests, you don't wanna have follow the next crop, that kind of thing.

- Now eventually, all the lettuce is gonna run its course.

What are gonna put back in that bed?

- Same thing I'm gonna put in this bed, flowers.

I'm gonna plant both of them with zinnias and I'm gonna have them at least three weeks before anybody else.

- Why am I not surprised?

(Barbara giggling) (Joe chuckling) (upbeat country music) Now, you may be familiar with the term succession planting and it's come up a couple times already and Barbara and Eliot are experts in succession planting.

Now, what is that exactly?

Well, it's essentially just making the most of the space that you have during the time or the season that you have to grow that particular crop.

Now, what is that exactly?

Well, it's essentially just making the most of the space that you have during the time or the season that you have to grow that particular crop.

Now, Barbara mentioned single crop succession planting and then another example of succession planting is when you come in after that crop is finished, the bed is empty, and then you replant with a crop from a completely different family.

So let me just show you those examples from what I'm doing right here in my own garden.

Let's start with single crop succession planting, and like Barbara and Eliot, we eat a lot of salads around here too and I can't imagine a time where we don't have fresh lettuce ready for a meal.

So in this bed, I planted a row of leaf lettuce about two weeks ago, and a week after that, I planted another flat of leaf lettuce and so you can see the difference in size here between that first planting and succession planting number two, which I'm gonna do this weekend, day after tomorrow.

And so that will be two rows of leaf lettuce.

Now, the beauty of a leaf crop like this is you can harvest from the outside or cut across the top and it's going to regrow, but it's nice to have the option to have lettuce at various stages of growth so you always know that you've got fresh lettuce.

And I'm taking it one step further here because I've gone to a third succession and I sowed these just three days ago and that's the beauty of lettuce in particular is that it germinates quickly, it's easy to grow, it doesn't take a lot of space.

So if you're looking to have successive plantings, lettuce is a great one for that, especially leaf lettuce, but you know those one and done crops work well too such as cauliflower and heading lettuce because once you harvest those, they're done, and if you want more of that goodness, you need to do succession planting.

So a week or two later, you're sowing more seeds, you're planting them in the garden wherever you have room whether side by side or in a different part of the garden.

It doesn't have to be right next to each other.

The key is just to create those incremental plantings.

So the beauty of this is you do not need a lot of space.

You just wanna make the most of the space that you have and then you're gonna make the most of the harvest opportunity.

Now let's talk about direct sowing into the soil versus starting seeds indoors.

Now, both will work, especially for fast growing seeds like lettuce and kale, for example, right here, but whenever I have the opportunity, I love to start inside because I have more control over the growing environment.

So obviously, I started these inside and, as I mentioned before, these were three days ago and they're already germinating and I just like knowing that I can put my eyes on these and control the environment versus last week, for example.

If I had direct sowed my lettuce seed outside, it rained all week and it rained really hard and it could've rained so much and gotten those seeds to the point that they potentially rotted and I would've lost a lot of time.

So this way, by sowing them indoors, I have a lot of control over what's going outside and the quality of the seedlings is really good.

Now, if starting sees indoors is a little intimidating to you, not to worry.

You can do it outside successfully no problem.

For example, Thomas Jefferson.

He was a great gardener and a prolific succession planter and every week, he would sow a thimble full of lettuce seed directly outside in the garden all throughout the year and he had great success.

Like Barbara, I have a few beds of summer crops that are on their way out.

It's mid September, they've done well, but I'm ready for some fall crops to get into place as a new family and take over that spot.

This happens to be a bed where I've got some broccoli and some collard greens and some cabbage here and I love all of those crops, but what I really love is that I have some appropriate room, space between these plants where I can find a pocket to interplant, and that's the other technique for succession planting, is finding those spaces between the plants where you can sow something that isn't gonna be bothered by the plants around it and vice versa, and for me, that is arugula.

I love my greens and arugula is something that you can direct sow.

So I'm just gonna draw out a line right here on the edge and I'm gonna lightly sow these seeds.

You don't need to grow these inside.

In fact, it's not even recommended that you do because they germinate so quickly, they're easy to sow.

You just kind of pour them out and then you thin them out as they sprout once they grow.

To harvest, you're gonna take cuts off the sides, it's gonna continue to grow, and that way, you're gonna make the most of this bed space and maximize your yield at the same time.

(upbeat rock music) Well in case you still had any doubts, we hope by now you've seen fresh, organic produce can be had during those winter months no matter what the thermometer says outside.

With some simple techniques, you too can harvest delicious food any time of the year.

Now, if you'd like to learn how to extend the harvest, you can get that on our website, and the address is the same as our name.

It's growingagreenerworld.com and you'll find it under the show notes for this episode.

I'm Joe Lamp'l.

Thanks for joining us and we'll see you back here next time for more "Growing a Greener World".

(inspiring music) - [Narrator 1] "Growing a Greener World" is made possible in part by... - [Narrator 2] 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".

(inspiring music) - [Narrator 1] And the following.

Rain Bird.

Corona Tools.

And Milorganite.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 3] Continue the garden learning from "Growing a Greener World".

Joe Lamp'l's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills.

You can take each class on your own schedule from anywhere.

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

Courses are available online.

To enroll, go to growingagreenerworld.com/learn.

(upbeat electronic music) (inspiring music)