#80: Plenty Heirloom Farms: Cultivating a Garden-to-Table Community with Sarah Sailer

Sarah is the founder of Plenty Heirloom Farms, an educational non-profit and neighborhood farm located in Loveland, Colorado. As a mostly self-taught gardener, she began the neighborhood farm with a desire for more healthy food for her family but was amazed by the beauty and abundant life she discovered in the process!
In this episode, Sarah shares so many helpful gardening tips for starting your garden and helping it flourish. We cover the gardening process from starting seeds yourself (and why you should consider not buying your plants from a garden center) to amending your soil at home. If you've ever thought you didn't have a "green thumb", Sarah's advice might make you feel otherwise. Get ready to feel inspired to dig your hands in the dirt and start gardening after this episode!

Connect with Sarah and Plenty Farms:
https://www.plentyfarms.org
https://www.instagram.com/plentyfarmsloveland/
https://www.facebook.com/plentyheirloomfarms
Sarah's blog: https://livinginplenty.com/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] to the Plan to Eat podcast. Where I interview industry experts about meal planning, food and wellness. To help you answer the question. What's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello, welcome to another episode of the Plan to Eat podcast today. I have Sarah Saylor on the podcast. She is a local gardener here in Northern Colorado. Uh, she actually, her home is really close here to our Plan to Eat headquarters. And Sarah runs a community garden in her neighborhood, so she has planted her front yard and a couple other yards in her neighborhood with gardens and she runs sort of a CSA project out of her gardens that she does in the neighborhood.

She explains more about it in the episode and what it actually looks like and entails. Sarah founded plenty farms in 2014 with one of her neighbors and they sort of [00:01:00] joined forces to do this community gardening project. She shares all about the inciting incident that brought her to want to plant a garden to be able to feed her family, more vegetables and homegrown foods. And I just had a great conversation with Sarah today.

She has such a great story and so much knowledge about gardening and plants. So hopefully this is coming out at an opportune time for you to feel motivated to want to get started with your own gardening 

and I hope you learn a little bit from Sarah. Enjoy this episode. Hi, Sarah. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today.

Sarah: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Roni: So to get started, why don't you just tell everybody who you are and what you do?

Sarah: Yeah. My name is Sarah Sailor and I'm the founder of Plenty Heirloom Farms, which is an educational nonprofit and a neighborhood working farm share. So we operate about six [00:02:00] working plots in downtown Loveland. And that sort of grew out of my own journey of falling in love with growing food in my own yard, which was a result of some health issues in our family about 12 years ago.

And. It's been kind of a fun journey just to see how that led to these community connections and, and now this thriving neighborhood farm that we have.

Roni: Yeah, I think what you do is so interesting and unique. If you don't mind sharing, could you share a little bit of that backstory of what led you to start the garden project?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, in 2011, well, let's see, I guess it was 2010 that my, my oldest daughter, we have four daughters, my husband and I, she ended up, um, getting real sick with a MRSA infection, which sort of came out of the blue. Um, we were really. Unprepared for that. And, we had to take her into the hospital every eight hours for an IV drip of really super strong antibiotics after the [00:03:00] regular antibiotics, um, didn't work.

And in the process of that, I did a lot of research and realized. Wow. This is, you know, this is really dangerous. This is something that, is affecting her whole immune system. And as I researched, we ended up finding, well, we, we ended up having a situation where the antibiotics failed and, it continued to come back.

And I was learning that a lot of other people with MRSA had dealt with that kind of as a lifelong battle. So, We ended up, um, discovering sort of an alternative treatment for that, which was a silver based product called Silversol. And in the research of that, I also learned about diet that could help with helping a MRSA infection.

And really what I was learning about, this was 12 years ago, was pretty new in terms of, What the public was aware of it in that our microbiome is responsible for most of our immune system health. So obviously Emma had a really hard hit to her immune system with that, and we needed to help rebuild it. So the MRSA was taken care of with the [00:04:00] silver, which was amazing.

And I also learned about diet and how important that would be. So for us. Um, my husband is a contract carpenter. We had four girls that we had just started to homeschool and, financially we weren't able to just pop over to Whole Foods and become Whole Foods shoppers and fill up our basket with all organic produce.

Um, but I did learn that we needed to. Eliminate processed foods and incorporate a ton more fresh vegetables into our diet. So with sort of that predicament, like, hmm, finances are tight. We need to increase our, our vegetable consumption. I talked to my husband and said, what do you think, how much do you think we could grow if we dug up the whole front lawn and planted vegetables?

So that was 2011, the year that we decided to go ahead and try and I bought a book and decided I'm going to learn how to do this. I had only grown a [00:05:00] handful of things in my backyard, sort of as a hobby before, and it never had really tried to grow enough to impact our food budget. But this was the year that we went for it and it was life changing.

Okay.

Roni: I love that you just like went all in, like not having very much experience and you're just like, we're going to do this. , I'm curious what were some of the, if you remember, what were some of the resources that you found, like that you used or found to give you some of this information about, What to eat about the gut microbiome.

Like I'm just kind of envisioning that I'm sure it was a really long process to go through because at that point in time, there were far fewer resources on the internet and there, the internet just wasn't as like quite as ubiquitous as it is in our lives nowadays in the early 2010s. But also like, I guess I'm curious too about what led you to, to discover that more holistic approach versus, you know, the antibiotics and being in the hospital and things like [00:06:00] that.

Yeah,

Sarah: a good question. Um, there's a few different things probably that led to that. First of all, um, yeah, when, you know, being a new, when I first had Emma and just being a new mom, she was born in 2002 and anytime she would get sick with any basic illness, she was prone to ear infections and things.

I would bring her to the doctor and my pediatrician would put her on antibiotics right away. And I remember a couple of times being like, should I wait a little bit longer? And he was like, no. Definitely. It's good that you brought her in right away. So I was really just thinking I was doing the right thing by bringing her in.

And a friend of ours, that we had met in our community was seeing a functional medicine doc at the time and was really generous and said, Hey, I noticed, you know, all of your girls are having these ear infections. Maybe, you know, I should, she was really sweet. She's like, I'd love to pay for you to come and visit my, he's a great doc.

And he could maybe just tell you a little bit about some other ideas. [00:07:00] So, we did that and I, I kind of was floored to hear, first of all, to have a doctor sit with us for like an hour. And. Ask, let's talk about all the health, stuff all the way back to the beginning. And, and then at the end of the consultation, we were talking about my daughter, Ruby, who was, who dealt with a lot of like creepy coughs and a lot of stuff.

He just said, you know, why don't you try eliminating dairy and see how that, um, affects her. And being so new to this approach, I thought, well, how is she going to get. Calcium isn't that important? And he's like, well, what do cows eat? They eat a lot of green stuff. They eat grass and that's why there's so much calcium in their milk.

Anyhow, just being, my eyes being opened to a holistic approach that included diet was just, it seems so silly now, but it was so revolutionary at the time I felt really like, why has nobody told me this? It felt, it felt a little frustrating really, to be honest.

Roni: I could see how that, that would be, and that's a really cool experience that [00:08:00] you, are you still, is that a doctor you're still in contact with in Northern

Sarah: know what? It's not. And he, he had a chiropractic clinic and he did, functional stuff. He was in Longmont, but, um, that kind of just sparked, sparked the idea. And as we continue to dig and research, like I said, it was pretty new to learn about the microbiome, but one of the things that I, um, stumbled upon pretty soon, pretty early on was the Weston A.

Price Foundation. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but. Weston A. Price was a doctor. I believe his research that he did was in the 30s or 40s, but he did a ton of research on indigenous cultures and how, um, the, the traditional foods that they ate helped protect their immune systems. Part of that was like eating organ meats and lots of fermented foods and lots of animal fats.

And so that affected, um, that really taught me a lot in terms of what. To feed my daughter and how to, you know, just eat differently. For me, especially again, being limited with [00:09:00] finances. So the functional medicine doc was amazing. He opened my eyes to like diet changes, but then he said, so here's all of these supplements that I want you to take, which was like, ah, so overwhelming and expensive.

again, being forced with the limitations of finances at the time, learning about the beauty and affordability of fermented food. Was huge and learning that you can get much more probiotic content out of a simple, you know, sauerkraut or fermented carrots or different things like that. That was so empowering to me.

And that's when I started writing my blog and I, I was experimenting with these things and that was when blogs were, you know, just really happening. And so, um, yeah, 2012, I started writing about how we had dug up the garden, all the food we had grown, talking about my mistakes and the things that we did wrong in the beginning.

Fermented food. And then we learned about sourdough and you know, one step leads to another

Roni: Yeah, we've had, uh, Monica Corrado on the podcast a couple of different times, talking about both gaps and [00:10:00] Western a price. So, yeah, we're, yeah, we, we really loved learning about that kind of stuff. I kind of want to talk a little bit about the benefits of gardening in this way, because, I don't think that very many people would think about just uprooting their yard and turning it into a garden like most, I would say, if you're a gardener, a lot of people just have like garden beds or maybe have a garden plot in your yard, but like, What have you seen as the benefits of just being like, my yard is now a garden?

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. So many benefits. So we did the same in terms of like starting out with some garden boxes when we first, um, you know, got our house, bought our house here in Loveland. But like I said, that year when it was like crucial, it was like, okay, Wait a second. We really need to shift our, our food and our vegetable consumption.

So our backyard had mature trees. We live in an old, old, um, neighborhood in downtown Loveland and the majority of the sun was in the front yard. So typically, you [00:11:00] know, Gardens tend to be in the back because that way if it's a little messy, nobody sees. And we tend to, you know, the typical American house has, you know, a lawn in the front.

Anyway, so we had a lawn in the front but yeah, it was quite large and we decided, I, in terms of what we started out doing to what we do now. It's quite a bit different. When we first started out, we did have those small garden boxes. And, um, and that can be a great start. I really would encourage people, whatever you have is wonderful, but notice where you have the most sun. That to me is, I think, a really important place to start. So the year that we decided to go bigger, we rented a sod cutter, which because we had all this lawn, we thought, Oh, we're gonna have to cut out the sod.

And then we rented a rototiller. And then we did all this excess, work that now I would just never recommend. So what we've learned is the simplicity of the lasagna method of gardening. If you have an existing lawn site, space that you'd like to transition to a garden. It's [00:12:00] very simple to do. And the lawn can actually really help increase, the soil quality over time.

If you layer on top of that grass, it can turn it into just this wonderful moisture holding sponge. So, um, had I known better what I would have encouraged my younger self to do is to collect a bunch of cardboard, to collect wood chips, not collect, but you can reach out to local tree crews. Uh, if there's a tree crew in your area doing work, usually they will be willing to dump chips at your place.

If you have enough space for that, or you can in Loveland here, we have a local recycle center where we can go and pick up. you know, a pickup bed full of wood chips. So I would recommend people if they want to start something in the spring, in the, in the winter time, or even late fall, kind of mapping out your location, layering cardboard on top, right on top of your grass, And then adding at least three inches of wood chips on [00:13:00] top.

And then once you're ready to start planting, you can spread the wood chips apart and add compost to create whatever beds you want, or you can build a garden box or rate some raised beds up above that. But in doing that. You really. You're you're making use of all that organic matter where the lawn once was, but we didn't know that.

So we dug it up and tilled it and did all sorts of things made it a little harder. But eventually it worked.

Roni: Wow. So, okay. I love the picture. I like the lasagna method is like getting a really good picture in my mind of putting the layers. I really like that.

Sarah: Yeah. And there's lots of different ways to do that. What I was just sharing is a simple way if you wanted to just. So what you're doing is you're smothering the grass, you're blocking the light with the cardboard, you're layering on top with the wood chips, but you wouldn't, you would have to do a little more work from there.

Some nice ways to do that besides just chips though is you can collect bags of leaves, Grass clippings, you can layer all of these different [00:14:00] materials. So one of the things that we do plenty here in the neighborhood, we do fall garden classes where we teach people how to build soil and really what our whole goal is, is to mimic nature.

So if you were to walk out into a forested area, usually you'll recognize, you know, Colorado is pretty rocky, but if you get deep enough into the woods, the ground underneath your feet is going to feel really spongy because there's going to have been. Many seasons of, you know, leaves and needles, um, and dead wood and branches that have laid there on the ground.

They've had moisture from from snow and rain. They've had animals come through. And so there might be some, you know, manure animal droppings in there. And Over time, all of the insects and all that is feeding the forest floor, which is full of microorganisms. So, what we try to do, even here in the neighborhood, is mimic that environment.

So, there's always organic matter to collect, whether it's leaves from your neighbors, um, [00:15:00] whether it's, yeah, again, grass clippings, but you, there's so many ways that you can Add layers of organic matter. And then as long as you have enough moisture and warmth from the sun, like in Colorado, we don't, we don't put our compost or these beds in the shady areas because all winter, they're just going to be frozen solids.

So you look for those warmer spots.

Roni: Hmm. That's really good to know. So hearing about this, somebody is thinking like, okay, my front yard does get a lot of sunshine, but it feels really intimidating to take over my entire front yard. Even not only just the, the, the aspects of like planting all of that, maintaining weeds and things like that, but then the amount of food that you would have, you know, planting an entire front yard.

What would you recommend for somebody who's feeling intimidated by this process to get

Sarah: Sure. Yeah. Well, I would, I always would recommend that you start with what is your family enjoy eating. So when you're thinking of your first garden, obviously you want to think of what are those favorite things that, Oh, we just love to eat. Maybe you're not, [00:16:00] maybe your family doesn't love to eat a lot of vegetables, but you, you know, that's, uh, you know, something you're aiming toward.

Some of the things that you could start with are a simple, um, salsa garden. So that would be a great. simple one to get started where you can look for, you know, some unique varieties of tomatoes, some peppers, you know, you could plant your basil cilantro. So maybe like a pizza salad, you know, pizza or a salsa garden.

So you've got some stuff to maybe make some sauces and some stuff to do some salsas. That's an easy place to start. One of the other things to consider is what are the vegetables that cost more to purchase organically or cost more to purchase In general, as far as produce goes. So that's going to be your, your tomatoes, your peppers.

And actually leafy greens are actually one of the more expensive things in comparison to growing them yourself. So a bundle of kale, like once you grow your own kale, you'll be like. Oh my gosh, it's painful to pay what we pay for a bunch of [00:17:00] kale because it's so prolific in most gardens. So, look at the things that cost a little more at the grocery store, you may not want to like take up a whole garden bed with onions because onions are less expensive.

Carrots are less expensive. However, carrots are pretty fun. It's fun to grow a carrot. It's satisfying to pull that up out of the ground.

Roni: Yeah, I'm actually thinking of like, I really love beets. And so like, I like to, I like to plant beets in my garden because I feel like to get really high quality beets, you get like three beets and it costs 5. And it's like, wow, that's a lot of money for not very much food.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. And so definitely, I mean, prioritize the things that you love. If there's things that you really like, start with those things. Start with the things that you're motivated by. And I would also say, in terms of the intimidation factor, find a friend that will do it with you. We'll find someone, even if they don't live in your neighborhood, someone who also is motivated, like, Oh, you know, I've been really wanting to do that.

So one of the things in [00:18:00] our farm situation that we have the, the, this dynamic. So my, my good friend, Lynn, her and I have been growing food for the last 12 years together. And she lives around the corner from me. And, um, she had reached out to me when, when I had, been writing on my blog. And ask if I would come and look at her garden space.

And she also had a whole front yard space that would be ideal for growing. And I sort of roped her into it. I said, okay, Hey, what if we work together? I'd be happy to help you. And we could share, share the produce. So that's been a partnership that has been so fruitful for both of us through the years, partly because.

You know, it's easy to feel inspired to begin. And then at a certain point you kind of feel like, oh, I don't know. I don't have the energy to go out there and weed those beds or, oh no, something's eating my tomato. I'm discouraged. But having. another person, um, doing it with you can be really helpful.

Roni: Well, and I know that's something in general that you're really passionate about is this idea [00:19:00] of growing food in community. And I actually think that your process of doing this, of having all of the produce be in the front yard, like while it's advantageous for the sun and all those kinds of things, it's also a, like a really good representation.

Like you're showing the, the, the rest of the neighborhood, you know, like, Oh, like we come out here and we tend to the garden. And, uh, it's like a really lovely, kind of like a road sign, you know, for what you do for a living.

Sarah: It's, it's fun. Um, I mean, that's actually one of the reasons that this community was born is because I, I, the front yard was the only space I had to grow and I had so many neighbors come and stop and comment and be like, what are you doing up here? I mean, cause it's not. something people tend to do. And it was kind of a wild transformation from having just grass to suddenly like there's green bean trellises and there's squash sprawling and potato mounds.

And it was, I mean, I I'm Italian. That's the other thing. I'm half Italian. So I didn't quite realize that what this was going to do. It's like it unlocked something inside of me where all of a sudden it was like, [00:20:00] Oh, This is the best thing I've ever experienced. So, I mean, I was out there all the time and just so in love with these plant babies, with my camera taking pictures up close shots of the, you know, I never knew that potato blossoms could be so gorgeous and I had no idea that you could grow striped dragon beans and that you could, I mean, so I'm a little bit of a sharer, so people that were walked by before they knew it, I was telling them all about it.

Yeah, but the front yard. The front yard is a great, a great thing in terms of building community and starting conversations. Um, and so yeah, it is it is a fun, a fun piece to that just having it instead of hidden in the back, you invite conversations and That is how I met my dear friend, Will, who taught me how to bake sourdough.

I had an overflow of salad greens that first year I was like, Whoa, I really went for it. I better find some people to help me eat, eat all of this. So yeah, it's a fun way to share. It's a fun way to learn from others [00:21:00] and yeah. And inspire people.

Roni: Is that how you got started with doing the, you know, like the classes and focusing more on education? Was people approaching you and talking to you about the garden?

Sarah: So actually what happened is we had, Let's see, maybe three years into growing for myself. And then I had started partnering with Lynn a little bit. Uh, we, we ripped out the driveway, uh, and used to have rock and everything. And we decided I can park somewhere else. I need more space to grow vegetables.

So we built some raised beds on the side of the yard and I planted the whole driveway. With all of my salad greens, because I learned that I needed it to be on a sunnier location. Um, I'm really thrilled to be, um, like right now, although it's February, we have, we have a whole hoop house full of salad greens, spinach and kale and lettuces that we pick.

And so when I first was embarking on that, I finally had a really successful year with the salad over there and a friend of mine who is a part of a working CSA. I think she had been driving to Boulder to do it. [00:22:00] She's like, Sarah, people would love to join an in with you. They might even pay to help with this.

I pay to help with a working farm share. So that was the first I had heard of that. And I thought, really, are you sure? Because I mean, I could use the help and I have so much to share. So that's when we first started. Like a little working CSA share situation. And slowly we started to, to learn systems of growing together.

So we, we haven't started, we didn't start teaching anything until maybe about six or seven years in, when we really felt like we had some tips that was, that would be helpful for others. So once we sort of had that organization and we'd been really You know, doing this for enough years, we felt like we could share.

We did. We started to invite people to learn.

Roni: Oh wow. That's great. So now you function as a, like an As a CSA, primarily. Right. And you have multiple garden spaces that do that.

Sarah: Um, so yeah, right now we're, um, [00:23:00] we're calling it garden memberships. Uh, CSA is what we started calling it. Cause for a few years we did have people who just paid to come and pick up a share once a week, from us, we had working members and then we had. Pick up members or people could just do that. But we soon realized like we're not really doing this for the money.

We're doing this more for the food and community. And rather than getting more money, we really just needed more hands to help. So, now we operate just purely as a working, Working garden memberships is what we call it. So we have three key leaders that help, you know, plan, organize everything, make sure that we have the seeds started and, and the starts going in the calendar organized.

And then we bring on, uh, 12 extra members. That pay to come and work on Monday and Friday, just for two hours, once a week. So we've got, options. They can come either on a Monday or a Friday, and then they go home with the share of whatever we're growing. So in the early spring, we've got salad greens. But right now we're doing.

Just our spring [00:24:00] early spring members and those members are helping learn how to start seeds. They're going to help us with our spring plant sale. They're going to be helping us in April when we're first getting our beds in the garden ready and planting some seeds in the ground. Then we have summer memberships, which is like the bulk of our growing season.

And then we have fall memberships where they're going to finish with. You know that last haul in the garden, learn how we layer the beds and prepare for winter. So it's kind of three different ways of getting involved in learning, but it helps us because we have, we need the hands to keep it going. But there are six, six homes, residential homes that we grow food on in our neighborhood, including one sort of city owned wasted space that we proposed and the city allowed us to, um, to grow on.

So.

Roni: Oh, that's amazing. That's awesome. I want to touch on the, the seed starting portion of this a little bit, because I guess by the time this comes out, it might be a little late for some people, [00:25:00] depending on where they are in the country to start their seeds. But I, as somebody who does more of like hobby gardening in the past, I've never really started my seed, my own seeds inside.

I've always gone to a, you know, a plant sale and just bought things and planted them in the ground. So I'm really curious to learn more about. The seed starting and what kind of like some tips you might have for somebody who's a novice and doesn't really know what they're getting themselves into. Yeah, I didn't

Sarah: So in most places, let's see if this comes out in April, there's still definitely time to start a few things and indoors. One of the first things that I would say, for starting seeds, like why would you do that when you could just go to a garden center? So the first reason is cost savings.

So, if you, if you're especially trying to grow a larger amount of food and maybe impact your, Your food budget a little bit more when it comes to things like tomatoes and peppers, if you know, those, those ones you need an earlier start to get them going. So I wanted to have enough to can. I wanted [00:26:00] to have peppers that I could roast or preserve or pickle or whatever.

So I really, um, It is much more cost effective to start some of those, especially from seed. The other reason to do to start your own seeds is that you can choose unique varieties that you couldn't find in many garden centers. I love because I'm Italian I love to find varieties that come from the regions of Italy where my family come from that feels like a really special connection so maybe you have, you know, people, whatever your heritage is.

It's really wonderful to think through or ask your your relatives like what kind of food did our grandparents grow? Do you remember any recipes? Do you remember any of that? And it's, that can be a really beautiful connection point. Finding unique varieties. My grandpa used to grow these fuzzy Italian cucumbers.

Cucumbers and melons are in the same family. And so these ones are kind of fuzzy, like a melon. And my mom, when I first started growing food said, Oh, my dad used to grow these cucumbers and you can never find them anywhere. And so I was [00:27:00] Googling and before I knew it, I was like, I found it. Carosello barese cucumbers.

And so I've been growing those every year. Um, but. Many other varieties that are unique. It's really fun and it gets the kids involved, especially. But the other huge thing that I'd love to say is for so many people, you go to a garden center. Okay, let's maybe it's April or May, I guess, usually May. May and June is when people would be shopping for that.

And you're in this beautiful environment. Who doesn't love being surrounded by green when you haven't, you know, it's the beginning of the season and you pick out your, your plants and you're thinking, Ooh, yeah, I want this one. We'll look at this pepper plant. It even has a baby pepper on it. That means it's going to be a, you know, it's already got a good head start.

They bring home their pepper plant. They dig a hole, they plant it, they water it. And, and then oftentimes. Something starts to happen where the plant doesn't look as pretty anymore. And that little starting pepper starts to turn yellow and fall off. And they think, Oh, look at that. I'm a failure. I don't have a green thumb.

Well, one of the [00:28:00] things to realize is that most of those plants, depending on the garden center, unless you find one that's maybe more organically focused, almost every garden center is going to be feeding those plants with liquid fertilizer every single day. So that plant has been used to receiving its nutrients.

form. Also, many of them you'll recognize when you open that pot, the roots are really bound up and tight in there. And that's because it's been sitting in that pot for so long. The reason it's still growing is because of that liquid food. But if you stopped doing that, There's nowhere for those roots to get food any other way.

So, when we start our seeds, we have, um, a seed mix that includes compost. Many garden centers, if you go and buy a seedling mix, the, um, soil has no compost because they're expecting that you're going to buy compost. like a miracle grow or some sort of liquid food to feed your starts. I don't feel like that's the best way to do it.

We, we amend our soil in, in the ground in our gardens with [00:29:00] organic matter, with compost. We have chickens and rabbits and goats in our neighborhood farm. So we utilize that. Those are the, you know, the nutrients that our plants are going to feed on. So it makes sense to start our plants out with a similar beginning so that they're going to have the best success as they move into the garden.

So those are just some tips to think about. There, I have a seed mix, um, recipe in my book that is really simple that you can put together, but even if you go to a garden center, check, check the seed mix and see if it has compost. Um, and that way, you know, cause those are some things that can go wrong and it makes people think that they don't have a green thumb when that's not the case. 

Yeah. Yeah. And another thing is if you do buy a plant with a pepper, a baby pepper on it, pinch it off. It feels painful and sad to do, but that plant is going to be struggling to put its energy into that little fruit. But if you, if you pinch [00:30:00] it off and put it in the ground, it'll be able to put its energy toward establishing roots.

And then you'll have a better chance of success as it gets bigger.

Roni: And so as far as somebody who's still a beginner and trying to get started, are there certain vegetables that are easier to start growing compared to others? Like, are there some that are a little more finicky? Uh, like, This may not be true, but it seems like, you know, I'm like envisioning your like fuzzy cucumber thing.

And I'm like, Ooh, that sounds like kind of intimidating, you know, to, to grow something that would be so different from what we're used to is like, that's maybe just a preconceived notion that I have that's incorrect. But are there some vegetables that are easier to grow than others?

Sarah: So that question is a tough one for me to answer because depending on your climate, what makes something difficult to grow is going to be different. So for example, one of the challenges in Colorado is that we have a very dry, arid climate. So, keeping our plants, so for example, some people might have a really hard time starting carrots because carrots need a lot of water.

[00:31:00] even moisture to germinate well. Um, and it's easy to, you know, in Colorado, you water it and then things dry out so quickly that it seems like my carrots never came up. What did I do wrong? And really that's just climate wise. So one of the things we do in Colorado is we will lay a piece of fabric, which is like a frost blanket over over the soil after we water and we just keep it covered.

Some people even will put a piece of wood right on top of where they planted their carrots, just to hold in the moisture, peeking to see. When it starts to germinate, you take the wood off. When it starts to germinate, you take that frost blanket off. So that's a tip, you know, climate based. Whereas some people who live maybe like in Arizona, the heat is so extreme that their plants just struggle so much because of that stress.

So there's different reasons why things can be hard, but I will say in general, Instead of looking at, what do I need to do for my plant in terms of like, uh, how much water or do I need to fertilize? I would just say start with building the health of [00:32:00] your soil. Take a look at wherever you're growing, dig, you know, look underneath that top layer.

Are there any worms down there? My biggest tip for people when it comes to growing and preparing your beds is to never leave your garden soil uncovered. So in the forest, you see there's it's layers, it's layers of leaves, it's layers of all the different decaying matter. That's why the soil underneath is dark and rich and it's full of microorganisms and worms and decomposers.

So if you keep your soil covered, even just ask your neighbors, Hey, I'll take your leaves and you know, cover up those beds, water them in. If it gets windy, cover them again. Make sure you've got, um, it's sort of like, Mulch is the skin of the earth. It's what keeps everything safe and protected. It protects from erosion.

It protects from, you know, in Colorado, we get really dry and cracked. You don't want your soil dry and cracked. The more you keep it covered, you're building all sorts of nutrients in the soil. So I really think even if You're [00:33:00] just buying some plants from a garden center. If you've prepared your soil, if you've kept it covered, if you've, um, you know, get, get some, talk to friends who might have chickens, see if there's anyone, you know, in your neighborhood who have, you know, if there's anyone nearby who's raising beef or goats or sheep or something and say, Hey, would you have any, um, excess manure that I could come with a couple of buckets and bring home?

I promise you, anyone with animals is going to be. Willing to let you come and take some of that. So any of those inputs, whether it's organic matter, like leaves and grass clippings or some manure, if you do that in the fall, and you let it sit during the winter, it's like the easiest thing. And then in the springtime, you're like, Oh, look at this.

It's magic. There's all these worms. It's so healthy under here.

Roni: Oh, that's a great tip. I like that. It's like a zero cost option for that as well, because I think it can get really intimidating to think like, Oh, now I need to go buy like sheep and Pete or something, you know, to be able to cover my garden beds in the [00:34:00] spring and, you know, give them nutrients and stuff.

So I really like that. That's a, an easy zero cost thing to do. That's like,

Sarah: Yeah. And again, this is my, this is my biggest thing. I feel like so many people, You know, you start to dabble and you start to research like, how do I, how do I start to garden and, and they get really overwhelmed by all of the science behind. I mean, soil science is very complex, but I'm just gonna, I'm here to tell you, I mean, go on our website, look up Plenty Heirloom Farms in Loveland, Colorado.

Look at what we're growing. We have not tested. I tested my soil at my one neighborhood, lot one year, but it was so different from one side of the house to the other side of the house. And I just got really overwhelmed. I trust how nature does things like, you know, seeds fall to the soil all the time and they sprout and they grow.

And as long as there is decaying matter that is going to feed these plants. Plants. So yes, people get worried about, Oh, but what if that, you know, what about funguses? What about diseases? I'm telling you in general, if you improve your [00:35:00] soil and if you are excited, if you love your plant babies, I am a big, I'm a big proponent of talking to your little seed starts.

Like I have so much excitement and love. And it's like, look at you babies. You did it. You're so beautiful. You know? I mean, just, just that excitement versus coming to like, I don't know if this is going to work. I don't know. Look, two of them didn't come up. I'm already, you know, like you can approach it with different ways of looking at it.

So all those things matter.

Roni: totally. Isn't there, wasn't there a study that was done like at Harvard or something where they had two different plants and one of the plants, they had little kids go up and like, say positive things to it, or they were really happy and they were like talking to the plant. And then the other one, they like said a bunch of negative things to the plant.

And actually like one of the plant, the plant that everybody talked negatively to was like not growing, it was wilty. Like there really is an energetic force going on

Sarah: it is. I mean, water holds information. So plants are mostly water and So there's so much, [00:36:00] there's some fascinating studies around, around how all of that, the energetics of it are, are really important. So yeah, I think maybe some of it is just my enthusiasm and excitement, my desire for the food.

Like I said, I'm Italian and it's just like, it's like, brings me so much joy to be bringing in baskets full of gorgeous produce things. I will never stop being in awe of the fact that these little seeds have everything within them to become these giant sprawling plants. I have a family squash. My mom's maiden name is Cucuzza.

And when I started growing food, I ended up finding out through my cousin that There is something called a Cucuza squash. It comes from Sicily, which is where my Cucuza family comes from. And it's this long, skinny, it's like the size of a baseball bat. If you hang it from a trellis or it will grow kind of snake like, it's called Serpente de Sicilia, which means serpent of Sicily, but this, this vine, the seed is [00:37:00] like.

It's very funny looking like a little tooth. And I remember when I, when I received the first seed pack and I thought that's weird, but having just one or two of these seeds started on the side of my house, by the time the middle of summer came, it had completely grown up into the tree. It was massive. It was covering the whole South side of my house.

And I'm always amazed at that. I mean, All of this information is inside of these little plants or, or even just a lettuce seed planting. That's, that's a really good place to start. As long as you watch the moisture so that it germinates, like I said, Colorado's can be kind of dry. Use those tips that I talked about keeping the soil moist while you're waiting for it to germinate.

But lettuce is a great example. If you plant lettuce, in your beds and you harvest them and enjoy them. But let's say one of one or two, you let go to seed. You'll know that your, your lettuce has gone to seed when it tastes really bitter. And when it starts to get really tall, it's starting to produce a flower, a seed head.

So if [00:38:00] you let it go, um, it produces all these little tiny flowers and one single lettuce seed. If you let it go to seed will produce probably the equivalent of. four or five seed packets worth of seed. So one single and lettuce seeds are so tiny. So there's so much generosity in these plants. There's so much that we can learn from beyond just the practical benefit of eating the food.

There's so much about the process that's so beautiful.

Roni: I really love that. I, I have tended to think about that when I look at trees and just think like this massive tree came from a seed at one point, you know, like it came from something that's like, you know, smaller than the size of my thumb. And now it's a, you know, like a Redwood tree or something like that.

It's a thousand years old and it really is fascinating. It's so amazing.

Sarah: Yeah, just just start with something. I just want to encourage people. It's so worth it. And again, every time every season that you do this, you will make some mistakes. Maybe [00:39:00] you'll, you'll, you'll learn something new through the process, but find a friend. Start something just do a little something new, but keep your soil covered.

Those are so many tips.

Roni: I love it. Well, is there anything we didn't cover today that you wanted to, wanted to talk about?

Sarah: I mean, I just always love talking about this. This is my favorite subject. Right now I'm revising my book. So I, when I was blogging in 2012, we were chosen to be, um, the homesteaders of the year in 2014. And, We put together all my blog posts into a book at the time, and that was kind of done a bit in a hurry.

And so it's been, 10 years, since that time. And I really thought, you know, I want to, I want to add some of the tips that we've learned as a neighborhood farm and the things that we've also incorporated, like medicinal herbs. We now grow a ton of those, and that's been a wonderful, um, addition to the farm.

So my new book is, it's going to be called Living in Plenty. And it has all the story of how we first started. It has tips on [00:40:00] soil. It has recipes in there, sourdough, sauerkraut, things like that. But then the herbal recipes as well are a fun addition. So all of those things will be in that book, which is a fun thing to get to share with people.

It's a practical tool.

Roni: That sounds awesome. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. other than that, why don't you, uh, share where everybody can connect with you, um, as well, if they want to learn more about plenty farms.

Sarah: Yeah. So plenty farms. org is our website. If you want to check that out right now, we're also working on creating a reproducible model for others. So if this sounds exciting, if you're thinking, man, I have some friends in my neighborhood, we can, I would love to do something like that. We really believe in this.

concept of having three key motivated people, and then having, you know, another gathering of helpers who pay a little bit reasonable amount to come and join. When you have that combination, you have the accountability in both directions, and you end up with so much food and so much abundance. So we really want to share.

What we've learned through that and remind people that even [00:41:00] if you live in a neighborhood, even if you're not on acreage or you don't have a farm, you can grow food. You can feed yourself just like they did in the in the 1940s with the Victory Gardens. America used to grow 40 percent of its food in backyard gardens during that period of time.

So it's very possible to feed ourselves, even in suburban or urban areas. So that, yes, you can find out about that Plenty farms.org. My blog is called Living in plenty.com. Um, and then, yeah, I'm on Instagram living in plenty and Plenty heirloom farms on Instagram. So yeah, check us out in both of those areas.

Roni: Beautiful. Sounds great. Thanks for joining me today. I've, I've personally learned a lot. This was awesome.

Sarah: Oh, I'm so glad we got a chance to talk. It was wonderful. Thanks.

Roni: As always, thank you for joining me for today's episode. There'll be links in the show notes to connect with Sarah, to learn more about plenty farms and to find the revised version of her book. [00:42:00] If you are enjoying the plan to eat podcast, please leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or audible, or share this episode with a friend, and maybe you guys could get started gardening together.

I will see you again in two weeks and thanks for listening.