From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour is being made each day as we head further into the spring.

But does it feel like spring today?

64 degrees in Rochester.

Not bad.

Yesterday I wore a winter coat.

Two days ago.

Woke up to some snow on the ground.

Driving in my neighborhood this morning, I noticed the neighbor had mulched their gardens.

A different neighbor had put out his patio furniture.

But this Sunday, meteorologists say high of around 45.

Unpredictable weather is not unusual for our area, but the effects of climate change are making it even more unpredictable.

In a piece for The New York Times, Darin Brewer Hofstadter wrote, quote, A year ago, winter was so warm that shrubs hardly died back, and last spring dripped with foliage, a welcome sight, but not normal.

Spring was so hot I missed that lovely cool window for transplanting.

I didn't know when to plant early season cold hardy vegetables.

Certainly not in 85 degrees or when to set out tender plants after danger of frost is common wisdom.

But when is that?

Now.

My plant hardiness zone shifted recently because the average coldest temperature in my area is now three degrees higher than it was in 2012.

End quote.

And Sonja Skelley, director of education at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, told The Times the only predictable thing is that it is going to be unpredictable.

So as we head into spring planting season, you may be wondering when you should start planting maybe a home garden?

Vegetable seeds.

Local farmers are also asking questions as they consider new challenges related to market and industry changes, in addition to the climate challenges, in addition to what's happening at the federal government.

So what do you need to know?

Our guests are happy to answer questions for you.

If you are an avid planter, you still have questions or wisdom to share.

Bring it our way.

If you are a first time planter, go for that too.

You should have seen what I did with a yard full of moss on my first year.

Elizabeth would be so disappointed in me.

I'm talking about Elizabeth.

Henderson is with us in studio A farmer and a writer on the line, Nell Gardener, who is an agronomist and forensic horticulturalist and owner of Flower Fields.

Hay now.

Thank you for being here.

Hi.

By the way, Elizabeth.

Nice to see you.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for inviting me.

Petra Page man is with us as well.

Co-Founder, friend and neighbor of Fruition Seeds.

Welcome back, Patrick Page.

Man.

Such a joy.

And happy spring.

Happy going to be bold.

Happy spring indeed.

and listeners, if you want to join the program.

Questions, comments, anything you want to share.

What are you growing is.

Are you concerned about kind of the sluggish start or the cold start to spring?

You have questions on what to grow, how and where you can call the programs toll free.

844295 talk.

It's 8442958255263.

If you're in Rochester 2639994, email the program connections at xorg.

Now, Petra, for people who have heard you on this program for a number of years, your title is a little different these days.

Co-Founder, friend and neighbor of Fruition Seeds.

get people up to date on what happened with fruition.

well, I like to think I've been a friend and a neighbor for a long time, and a co-founder of Fruition Seeds these last 13 years.

So the first 12 years of fruition, we had the courage, audacity to sell seeds.

And last year we decided we could no longer sell seeds.

But they are gifts of the earth, and we are now gifting seeds and trees and all the rest of our abundance, not claiming to not have needs, but just wanting to separate our gifts for the world from our perceived market value.

And yeah, I had to just pay forward all the gifts that we have been given by so many community members and ancestors, plant and human.

You're sticking it to the economic system.

Petra Page.

Yeah, we're here for the social experiments in our gardens and beyond.

Well, this is a person who, again, listeners that can help you greatly with questions about seeds especially.

But so much to talk about in so many different directions.

And I'm just going to start by asking our guests, Elizabeth Henderson, how are you doing this cold spring?

I mean, does this stuff bother you?

You've been you've been doing this long enough to know we get Cold Springs.

It's okay.

Right?

Absolutely.

And my approach to not wanting to plant in the ground too early is one to have a thermometer.

So I can test the temperature of the soil, because if you use untreated seed, it will rot if the ground is too cold.

So I wait until the soil is at least 50 degrees to start planting seeds in the ground, but at the same time using the same garden year after year.

I overwinter a lot of things.

And so I've already been eating leeks that survived the winter.

when I had a bigger area, I would overwinter carrots and mulch them very deeply, and then I could dig them up.

winter long and into the spring.

And I have collard greens that survived the winter and have grown really nicely in through the month of April.

And that was one of the reasons why, as I've been active with the Food Policy Council in Rochester and the Urban Agriculture Working Group, and we've been really pushing the city to change the permits on city city ground from nine months to year round, which they did.

And we celebrate because that allows people to overwinter things the way I have been doing and really enjoying, so that I have early food from my garden.

I think you're just bragging for those of us struggling.

I know, I think it's wonderful as Beth, it's a nice reminder that even in tough conditions or, conditions that may challenge us, there's a lot that we can do.

I like the idea of checking the ground temperature.

I want to ask Petra on that.

When it comes to seeds, what do you make of Elizabeth's point there?

On the ground temperature and seeds.

Oh, yeah, I'm here for it, though I'm not particularly good with numbers.

I really love plants, so I am looking at, oh, when the daffodils are rising, that's when the soil is above 60 degrees.

And so I'm looking for those more ecological signs so I don't have to get out the, you know, a fancy equipment if I have it or if I don't have it.

I. Ooh, how do you know if the soil temperature is 42 or 52?

And so I has, yeah, for a few decades now, been paying very close attention to who emerges when the plants and all of the birds returning these little ecological clues so that, yeah, there's, there's some beautiful, beautiful invitations that for me are more, yeah, are easier to follow.

Are they behind this year?

Petra, the schedule that we typically see, you know, the reason was so early last year.

and what I've been noticing is that there's just if I tried to narrow into one exact metric, there tends to be a lot more chaos and everything is trending toward, you know, warming of course, but I like to pay attention to lots of different things.

And in general, I well, I don't want to fall too far down.

Wormholes.

An interesting thing.

The birds that have returned already are the birds.

A lot of the birds that enjoy insects that are in the soil or under water, not necessarily in the air.

And so, like the first warblers are already back for Louisiana awarded water thrush, who enjoys insects by foraging in the streams in the glens.

They've been back for a couple weeks, which is wildly early, but the winter wasn't bad.

Also, already the streams are beautifully thawed, so the air is a little a little cooler compared to other years at this time, so I digress.

It's a very fun and Leslie fascinating game, but, there's no reason to not be.

Planting seeds is maybe where I want to bring us back to.

Okay, there are so many seeds we can plant now.

Okay.

And, what's a good example?

What can we plant now?

Peas and spinach.

Any of those collards like Elizabeth was mentioning and a lot of other tail cilantro.

Believe it or not, when I was growing in the cold and doesn't bolt and it will be sweeter and more tender in the cold.

So yeah, the radishes are a great choice.

Also, if you don't have any, if you don't think if you think there are turnips worth eating, you probably won't find them in a grocery store, but you will find them in seed packets and they will thrive, grown, and they probably will sprout within 3 or 5 days.

At this point.

well, let me turn to Nell for some of what you are seeing so far and what this spring has been like.

what about, you know.

Yeah.

So the whole idea of, you know, this is cold and it's late, really doesn't resonate with me because, remember, last year it was really warm and everything popped out and everybody's happy and, well, who doesn't want that?

Right?

But we had a really bad freeze on April 25th.

So, you know, we had all these plants out and I had, you know, Russian sage, a bunch of perennials were really ahead of themselves and they got frozen.

And really the, you know, they got set back, they got set back and had to basically start over again.

They were okay.

But you can get some pretty cold nights coming up.

And remember last year a lot of the farmers, a lot of the orchards lost a fair amount of their flowers because it was too early.

So if you're, if you're, you know, farming, fruit trees or anything that has a blossom like that, you're happy if it stays cool longer, and then when it warms up dependably and you're not going to have those really cold snaps.

So, you know, I agree with both Petra and Elizabeth as far as the soil, warming up.

but also, you know, the air because of your, you know, your perennials or your early flowering things.

So, yeah.

So I'm okay with it, even though my body is not, you know, I want to snow the other day, but whatever.

And, you know, we we're not hopefully everything's going to be a little delayed.

And then, you know, when it warms up it's we're not going to get that surprise.

Well now you talk about that.

You know that late freeze I mean I'm thinking about the Finger Lakes wine industry dealing with the devastating May freeze a few years ago.

And you know that can those kind of the vicissitudes of weather really, really tough.

So, and we've got a question already about frost.

And so in general, let me ask all three of you.

I'll start with Nell.

For listeners who are wondering about Frost and feeling like the threat of frost should handcuff any planting, how do you consider, you know, how to protect against that?

the impact it can have.

It would do you wait, to a certain point.

So let's talk a little bit about Frost.

I'll start with Nell.

Go ahead.

Yes.

So that's very, very important.

So most people, as soon as it gets really nice to warm out, they go plant their tomatoes.

And it's really, you know, it's it's, for nurseries that's, you know, job security, because they have to buy them again because they get frost.

It it's always like been Memorial Day in the area.

I live in.

I live now a little bit closer to the lake.

So the lake has some sort of a warming effect as the does the through the Finger Lakes.

So the grape industry.

So that helps as far as, you know, the frost, the the chance of frost being earlier.

So the chance of the last frost might be like May 15th.

I still wait, honestly, I still wait until about, a week before Memorial Day.

And then I look at the long range weather forecast.

And if it looks pretty warm and there's nothing below, you know, 40s, if it gets into the 30s, I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not going to put things out.

So I looked maybe 7 to 10 days before Memorial Day, and then I decide what I'm going to do because I, I'm still going to use that date because we've been surprised.

And, you know, you can even you can get some pretty bad frost in May.

So as far as the Finger Lakes and the fruit growers go, you know, they they would rather you know it wait.

Because like, like you said, those late April May freezes.

I'm still going to wait till Memorial Day, but I'm going to watch the weather forecast.

So now is very scientific about it.

There's no way that's exactly what Petri does.

There's I and I, I am scientific.

exactly.

Bettcher, what about you?

well, there's so many things that you can be planting now.

Like if you wanted to plant, even transplant cold hardy, you know, onions.

Now, is there?

They don't mind.

Honestly, forgive me for saying if it snows again and even if it snows and accumulates a little again.

So there are some some plants that I like.

Broccoli, kale, even cold hardy lettuces would be just fine.

But certainly, yeah, if they're at all, I think of a lot of the cold, hardy or cold sensitive plants like the peppers, eggplants, tomatoes.

I don't think of them as frost sensitive.

I think of them as cold sensitive.

So honestly, we take our time putting those outside because they don't want to experience 32F.

They're going to die less than 45 degrees.

They're going to be stressed.

And especially tomatoes will just keep growing.

They're going to they're survivors, peppers and eggplants so far away from their mezzo American centers of origin are are pretty unimpressed that they're so far away from the sun.

And so if they're less than 45 degree, if they're planted out and even night, it doesn't have to frost.

If it's 45 degrees, they're going to be stressed and they have a tendency.

I'm literally crossing my arms right now.

They just pout.

And especially if they're, you know, other conditions are just right.

They can really you won't get anything like the abundance you would have if they were happier and healthier.

And sometimes that can be just the difference between planting them out a week later.

And so we really we look not only to that cold at night, like that frost temperature, but our tomatoes, peppers, eggplants.

We don't bother.

We don't plant them outside until we're confident.

The nights are honestly going to be in the upper 40s, low 50s, and then their growth curve is just extraordinary.

All right.

And Elizabeth Henderson in studio what do you think?

Well I'm with Petra on that because once bitten twice shy, the very first year I grew things in this in this Rochester area out in, Wayne County, we had a killing frost June 10th.

So it killed all of our tomatoes.

We had waited for Memorial Day to set them out.

Just they were really killed.

Did June 10th.

So I am very cautious about when I set out things that will be killed by a frost and finding a place where they can grow that sheltered, really helps.

Using a friend's greenhouse or creating a kind of greenhouse situation with the nice bright light inside your house allows you to save plants like the peppers and eggplants and tomatoes that will suffer.

If it's really below 55 degrees for, tomato flowers because people are surprised when their first tomato looks, really distorted or has, black spots on it.

That's because the flower suffered from cold, early in its its appearance.

So just waiting, I think makes a lot of sense.

But this is a spring that, for me at least, the joy of planting has been really dimmed by my communications with close friends who are in the West Bank of, of Palestine, who live in fear of settlers pushing out their, 400 year old olive trees with bulldozers, and who are suffering from, a very dry season right now.

So they're having a hard time getting started.

And I'm in touch with these people because I'm the honorary president of the international CSA conference.

So I have the, the really the pleasure and honor of being in touch with growers all over the world.

And we exchange information and enjoy encouraging one another.

But this is a this is a hard year.

It's hard for farmers of the size of my farm as well, because on March 10th, the government canceled the local food purchased assistance cooperative agreement and the local food food farm to school program, $1 billion of purchases from many of the farms in our network here in the Rochester area.

So farms that had already, but seed made their plans have had to change their marketing because of that billion dollar cut, which hurts both the farm economy and low income eaters all over this area.

Why do you think the federal government did that?

Because they want to give the money to the biggest farms.

That's the shift from the small to the big commodity farms.

They are now offering, $10 billion in payments for which farmers can apply.

But small scale vegetable farms don't really qualify.

Well, I mean, I was watching yesterday an interview, Elizabeth, with, one of the heads of, an association of soybean farmers, and he is a three time voter and supporter of President Trump and he was pleading, just pleading with the white House to change its policy because he said small farms like his are getting crippled.

He's got three employees.

And he said they're losing their markets.

They're they're getting hammered.

And he was surprised at what this administration is doing.

do you think that there's a way for small farms to have a voice and to get through in this political climate?

Elizabeth.

Well, we're all united through the National Sustainable AG Coalition and the National Family Farm Coalition and the National Organic Coalition.

All of our groups are working together with the Hill Food Alliance to make our voices heard.

We've had flans on through the winter, talking to congressional people on both sides of the aisle about this crisis that the tariff game is causing, the threat.

Even if even if the soybean farmers don't lose their market, the threat of possibly losing it can make it very difficult to start the spring this year.

So that kind of uncertainty is is really devastating for farmers.

So let me also ask Petra.

And now and again, we don't have to veer too much off into politics.

This is supposed to be and we're going to spend most of our time being uplifted by the thought of growing things and the beauty of spring and the beauty of growing amidst this world that we're in.

But let me ask, I'll ask Petra first on this.

you know, no matter where you are in this region, you're in, we're not all in perfect pockets of like minded people.

and the more rural you get, the more you will, encounter, agriculture.

People who work with their hands, people who work with the land.

A lot of people who do that, certainly not all, but certainly a good number.

Our supporters of the current president, sometimes things can feel really heated and really divided.

And, you know, Petra, part of what you do in your life is try to do things that support everybody that looks beyond your own, your own self.

And I wonder, do you feel that things are pulled apart?

Can you talk to neighbors or, you know, farmers around the region, people who have different points of view?

How are you feeling these days about that?

My heart is broken and I continue to try to break open rather than break closed.

And there's no generalizations that I can make.

There are just some people that feel so very differently than me, and we have enough respect that we can continue to stay in conversation.

And what I feel is a stronger generalization more than how ideologically we are aligned, feels like the commonality of the love of this land and the relationship with each other that we had most likely established prior to recognizing our vastly different ideological cosmological approaches to being alive.

And so leaning into that relationship and those relationships.

There's a very clear line to me of, yeah, who who we are.

We already considered our community.

but yeah, had we're also hungry.

So I'm, I'm really trying to focus on sharing food as well as seeds and transplants, but especially this, we have a lot of Elizabeth was mentioning all the overwintered plants in her garden.

We have, so much spinach and salad greens and so many collards that were dropping off, so much food for friends and community members right now, without any strings attached of any expectations or came to you by people that didn't vote for Trump.

but we're like, hey, we're if you're hungry, we're hungry too.

And that's why we grow food.

We would love to share food with you.

Maybe if our bellies are full, then we have the courage to feel other hungers and have deeper conversations.

Does it work?

It's case by case.

There's I mean a spring, a linear line.

Sometimes I'm like, yes, I've learned so much and other times I'm just weeping because I'm I have so little faith in our in myself, not just our species.

but I try, I think starting from the things that we have in common.

I chaired the Farmland Protection Board in Wayne County for 20 years.

I was the only organic farmer and only woman farmer on the board.

But the conventional farmers reelected me year after year because we shared the concern of keeping our farms going, of having as much farmland as possible in farming in Lean County and getting people to eat our food.

So that's a lot to share.

It's a lot to work from.

And anything else you want to add there, Petra?

I just want to give Liz Henderson such a standing ovation.

Collins, thank you for all of your decades of dedication and feeding us on so many levels and showing up when it's in the places and the places in the hardest places to show up.

I am just in awe of you and thank you.

And you've made it possible for people like me to come along and have some different ideas and try to make a go for it, and I don't know that I would be able to do make the choices that I make.

Had you not made decades of incredibly courageous, challenging choices.

And thank you.

Oh, that's so sweet, Petra, for you to say that.

And I would like to make you feel really good today by hearing that the seeds that we collected at the seed swap, which was the third, Rochester seed swap, tremendously successful people had a wonderful time packing seeds and then being gifted seeds and giving giving seeds to one another.

But Petra gave me a moment to ask everybody to gift seeds to, mujeres de Venus, which is a group of the people who belong to Alianza Agricola, the farmworker organization in western New York.

So we gathered.

I asked for two packets, each of about ten varieties, but we gathered all together something like 30 packets, and I sent them and I heard today that they got them, and they're very grateful.

I'm crying with my standing of the standing ovation as well.

So it's a great story.

Let me also ask now, are you concerned now with what's going on on the federal level?

How will it affect, you know, agriculture, planting those kind of efforts?

Anything you want to add there now?

Well, if I just focus on flowers, which is primarily what I consultant and have grown for 33 years, I've made, you know, a decent living growing cut flowers.

And when I first started, believe it or not, the internet was just coming online.

That makes me pretty old.

but the the whole idea was, oh, let's just get flowers from somewhere else, you know, why are you growing them locally now, of course, you know, there's more of a movement back.

so 80% of the flowers that are used in this country, or actually probably more than that, are grown in South America.

Holland.

So some but a lot, mostly from Ecuador and different countries.

So honestly, I think it's going to make and I've never, you know, I haven't gotten any government support or anything.

I've, you know, work with Cornell on trials.

But other than that, you know, been completely independent.

And I'm thinking it might make flowers more valuable here because I don't know if Ecuador has a tariff.

I hadn't really followed, you know, whether Holland has a tariff on.

So I don't really know because, you know, flowers are coming in for the most part.

They're not going out.

and the support is in like, hoop houses and from NRCs and, you know, I don't I, I haven't participated in that.

So honestly is I'm hoping it's a positive if I don't I don't know what do I know?

But, it might be I'm not going to sell for the first time this year, so, but the prices have seemed pretty good.

and then I work for some parks in Buffalo, and I think that's really important.

The homestead, the old Richardson homestead, site was a, therapeutic hospital.

And people, you know, use nature as restorative and also farming and they, you know, worked in gardens and harvested and basically were self-supporting, producing their own food.

And the homestead park is amazing.

But over the years, it's been degraded and we've gotten some state money and honestly, it's it's it's heartwarming.

Now we're finally getting somewhere on it and we're getting it back restored to what it should be.

we have some projects this year, so it just kind of shows us that nature and production and getting your hands in the dirt and producing something and seeing the the wonder of what nature does, is, is like totally across the board for everybody, you know, every human.

It's just a really good thing.

So we're doing that and, what I do is I focus on what I can do myself in my world that I live in, and I try to make a better place wherever I go.

And to help other people to, make wherever they're at better and to help them, you know, contribute to this success.

So, you know, it's hard to conceive the whole picture for me.

So I focus on my part and what I can do locally.

So that's, you know, that's my, view at this point.

I try to stay out of things that aren't that I don't know a lot about.

So I, I hear you, I appreciate it.

No talking.

There's so much good stuff going on locally.

Yeah, well, let's focus on that.

Let's do this.

I'm late for our only break, and I've got.

First of all, I want to focus on that good stuff.

And I want to get through, a pile of your emails with questions for our guests.

And we're hearing from people all over watching on YouTube.

Hi, Petra and Evan.

Ichi and Ken say hi between Sawyer songs watching on the YouTube channel.

Hello each.

Ken, thank you for watching and we've got a lot more to share with you on the other side of our on the break and we'll talk about planting.

Take your questions about spring planting, what you should be planting and where and when.

We got the best people who can help you with that.

It's all on the other side of this break.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Join us next week on connections.

We've got reporters from the sexy newsroom hosting conversations about their work.

We're going to talk about the upcoming film festivals.

Rochester's food and beverage scene, Seneca Language and Environmental Connections is back on next Friday to cover climate and sustainability issues.

Right here in our region.

It's all coming up next week on connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, so, before I jump into your questions, listeners, Elizabeth Henderson was saying, right.

For our only break, there's so much good happening.

So let's talk about that Elizabeth Henderson on this Friday afternoon.

What's some of the good happening that you see?

Well, one thing is the, gardening conference that we held last year, we had 120 people.

So this year we thought we'd really stretch it and get insurance so that we could have 200 people.

Well, 320 people wanted to come.

We could only let 220 in because of the insurance.

So there are lots more people who are excited and engaged in gardening.

And the Urban Agriculture Working group is combines the Food Policy Council, the Cooperative Extension, the Soil and Water Conservation District, taproot, voice, Volunteers of America and several other organizations.

And we're all working together really harmoniously.

And of course, Stephanie Ben Way from the city itself.

And that's what allowed us to improve the, permit for getting a community garden in the city of Rochester.

And something I wanted to be sure to mention is there's going to be a plant swap on May 16th, at the public market from 430 to 530.

It will be free plants for the community, gardens for all the gardens that are on city permit land.

What's the date again?

May 16th.

May 6th, Friday evening.

And then from 6 to 730, it's open to everybody to bring plants that you want to give away and get plants for free.

So it's a wonderful plant swap in the middle of the seed swap that Petra has been overseeing all around the region.

Her schedule is amazing.

She is getting people to swap seeds every week, several times a week.

How do you.

Petra?

You're just on the road just convincing people like, get in there, swap those seeds, get going.

I mean, if I'm enjoying myself, maybe other people can enjoy this as well.

But certainly, yes.

It's been amazing to have so many community partners, and especially in Rochester across the years and connections at the top of the list.

Thank you, Evan, for continually putting wind in our sails.

Well, it's easy to spotlight what you guys do.

There's so much interest.

I mean, and I think to Elizabeth's point about having more people than you could accommodate for conferences and events and things like that, and the seed swaps that have gone so well, there's so much interest in this.

So let me read just some some feedback from listeners.

Michael says vegetable gardening teaches valuable lessons about life, like hard work and patience.

I used to grumble about having to turn over what my father called back, breaking lake bottom clay.

But.

But then I loved being able to pick delicious tomatoes, corn and lettuce and have them for dinner.

So, yeah, yeah, I love that idea.

Michael.

Elizabeth, you probably wouldn't remember the first meal you ever had that you knew that you grew yourself.

It was probably at a very young age.

I imagine.

No, actually, my parents didn't garden at all.

They were city people through and through.

But when I was a teenager, I became very depressed.

And when all my girlfriends became cheerleaders, I said, I'm not going to cheer for those football players.

And to cheer me up.

They sent me to, a summer camp on a farm.

And I discovered growing in the country when I was 14 or 15 years old, how lucky we were that you decided.

No, no.

Rah rah!

Sis.

Gumbo, we're not doing this.

Phenomenal.

And do you remember, do you have any recollection of the first meal that you ate?

That you knew that you had grown yourself?

What it would have been?

Are you asking me?

I'm asking.

I'm going to ask all of you.

Elizabeth is stumped on this one.

So now what about you?

I yeah.

Well, I grew up on a self-sufficient horse powered farm in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and it's a difficult place to grow things.

So as a child, I learned about soil and compost and recycling.

I mean, it was, I guess you'd call a regenerative farm.

I don't know, there was hardly anything that wasn't something that we grew or made.

So all I remember when I first, okay, when I first left home and tasted, commercial food, I wouldn't eat it.

It did.

It just didn't taste good.

And it's taken me a long time.

I grow most of my own food now because there are things in food people don't even know.

I mean, all the different ingredients and the, you know, sugar or whatever chemicals.

Everything tasted so strange, even neat.

So yeah, I mean, that that was the experience I had growing up and I really didn't know any other.

And so my taste buds are formed for that.

So, you know, I have some really great stalwart things I grow in the garden.

One is, perpetual spinach.

And honestly, once you grow this, I love it because you can pick it almost every day and it keeps regenerating and it doesn't bolt.

And I don't know if you ladies have experience with this, but it's one of my favorite plants now.

So spinach Egyptian onions.

yeah.

So I have to keep them stuffed because otherwise I'm not going to be.

I have a hard time eating store food.

I call it for my first meal that it's all grown by stuff that I had grown.

Yeah.

Was only green beans.

It was.

And yeah, it was at that camp, we grew a lot of green beans and harvested them, and then we had a meal that was just gorging on fresh green beans.

Where are they?

Good.

Oh, they were wonderful.

But it wasn't until, probably 20 years later when I started to actually garden, that I had a more rounded mutant that I drew for myself.

And when I started farming in Massachusetts, I wanted to have the experience of doing all of the aspects of, growing things, including raising chickens and sheep and slaughtering them myself to see how I felt about that whole experience.

So it was in the, 70s that I had my first rounded meal.

What about you, Patrick Page?

Man, can you remember?

I would love to share a little story.

Yeah, I definitely grew up in my father's garden, taking for granted that we rode bicycles and brush our teeth every day, and we saved seeds because we wanted to plant more seeds in the garden next year.

And so food was all our homegrown food was just so central to our lives.

And I have this really fond memory of making going out to the garden to harvest supper, for with my father, for friends that were coming over.

And I remember mostly putting the snap peas into my mouth as you into the basket.

And I was watching my dad and I were watching him walk up to the biggest, nicest head of lettuce in our garden, and he went to cut it, and I said, but wait, dad, dad, dad, that's the nicest one.

And he said, exactly.

And I'll always be so grateful that he caught me in that moment.

I don't know who I was hoarding that lettuce for.

And it was a very, very, very important moment in my life that not only we grow this food for us, but we share this food with our friends and with everyone.

And that's tied exactly to what the decisions, the decisions you've made with fruition seeds.

I think, if I didn't make it up, it turns out, yeah, yeah.

Amazing story.

Marcia, a couple questions from Marcia.

Wants to know what planting zone number is Rochester and what planting zone number is the finger Lakes.

That is not my expertise.

Planting zone number I Elizabeth.

And does it 6 or 6.

Was it.

Let's just pretend I don't know what that means for a second and why that matters.

What is that?

Well, it's a way of having a short shorthand so that people, can be guided in when they plant things like not grown avocado plants or what they can't plant.

Yeah, we're not growing mangoes and six.

Right?

I mean, like, a little short.

Unfortunately not.

Okay.

So it's okay.

All right.

So it's the Finger Lakes.

There's a whole region six.

Well I think everything is changing a little bit okay okay.

It's getting it is getting overall warmer and that makes a difference.

Now anything to add there.

Yeah I think you know when you're up by the lake you can be in like six b.

So there's like A's and B's of course.

And but you know I think yeah Elizabeth is right I mean I plant some time some perennials for zone five or even four because sometimes when we get some really, really cold weather, you can kill some things from zone six in our zone.

So it depends where it's planted on the property and whether it's sheltered or not.

You know.

So yeah, we're generally zone six, but honestly there's different microclimates within your property because of the shelter and wind and all of that stuff.

Okay.

Anything to add there Petra?

this is a reference point.

my friends in Alaska grow in zone two.

and so if you're closer to the equator, you have a much higher, higher number than, than six.

And I always laugh when I remember that we're zone six these days because I've, it's safe to say that I've made thousands of videos on how to grow in zone five.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

It's always nice to feel relevant.

Yeah.

The heartland of climate change, perhaps.

Marcia did want to add.

She wanted to add, she said, I'm going to build my own bug houses out of small coffee cans open at both ends.

I will fill it with twigs, dried leaves and pieces of old tree bark.

Should I put them out before I plant?

now?

Or do I need to wait until after I plant Elizabeth Henderson?

I would put them out now, get things ready and one of the things that really helps in a garden is to have some flowers around that attract and officials.

I try to always have some buckwheat and especially buckwheat flowers in my garden.

So I planted as a cover crop for part of the summer, and then I have some of them growing around, that this year it's cover crops that usually would die over the winter despite it being cold.

Did not die.

I have a wonderful stand of peas and one of my beds.

one of the things that I'm worried about.

I'm thinking about Marsha talking about building a bug house.

we have very sandy soil, and we get ground bees in right about now.

Right about dead middle of April.

They come for two weeks.

There's hundreds and they're pollinators, and it's great.

And, and then then they lay an egg and they, they take off and they're, they're gone for the year.

So they're due back any second now.

My concern is that a freeze in the next two weeks could wipe them out before they can, lay the egg for, for next year.

Because this weather, even with the turning here, you get some of these really clear cold mornings and you get some cold temperatures and ground bees do not like that.

But, we're going to be optimists.

We're all going to be optimists, everybody, because we're moving right into this beautiful planting season.

We've all waited.

We've had a tough winter.

Everybody needs a little hope here, a little sun and a little bit more here from listeners.

there was a question.

Boy, oh boy, I've got so many in front of me here.

let's let's talk about this.

Let me ask all of our guests to kind of offer a little, a little how to a short how to for the novices out there.

And I'll start in studio with Elizabeth.

You want to talk to people who've never really planted for themselves and feel a little overwhelmed by it.

Maybe they didn't know what the zone number they're in, you know, maybe they thought they're in five because they're still watching Petra's videos.

And, what do you want them to know about what they can be doing?

especially if they want to feed themselves.

What would you tell them?

Well, I would advise them to start hanging out with other people who are growing food rather than trying to reinvent it.

YouTube.

Good advice, things like that.

Yeah.

So in the city of Rochester, there are 80 community gardens.

taproot gives workshops.

The Cooperative Extension gives workshops in how to to get to know a lot of other people who are doing it and don't try to reinvent it.

Growing food is something that's developed over millennia by human beings who needed to feed ourselves, and the best way to learn it is from other people rather than books.

So that would be my first piece of advice.

Okay.

Very good.

let's get Noelle Gardner next.

What would you tell them now?

Yeah, I really like, this idea of, you know, plant the cold, hardy crops now.

So.

So my idea for gardening, people start out kind of too big, I think.

And, they buy a lot of seeds.

Seeds are great.

but honestly, if you have, like, a raised bed or even grow bags, be careful of grow bags because a lot of them contain microplastic.

They contain plastic, which becomes microplastic.

So I try not to use anything plastic in the garden, but, because it can erode into the soil.

And then of course we're going it's going to take up into plants, which has been shown to happen.

So I would say start small with a little raised bed or some organic grow bags and, you know, keep it contained and just start simply just have, you know, a few of the seed things like Pedro was talking about and then the plants, like, if you like tomatoes or peppers or whatever, and buy good, healthy plants and don't start too early, okay, Petra.

And grow, grow some basil so you can make pesto.

All right.

First things first.

Yeah, exactly.

What about you, Petra?

So good.

I would love to lift up two things.

One, that we all come from a lineage of people.

And it might be we might be really far away from knowing and hearing stories of our families that were farmers and growers, lovers of plants, and felt really connected to land and landscape.

But we all, for hundreds of thousands of years, have been in deep relationship with plants and growing alongside plants.

And so I think of it less as learning and more of just remembering and reimagining what those relationships are like.

Our DNA remembers so deeply what it's like to be in relationship.

And so, yeah, trust that your ancestors and deep, deep knowing are right there beside you.

And I definitely agree with Liz.

I find the humans we all have too much screen time.

So how can you find the humans that can laugh and cry and celebrate and remind you that they aren't mistakes, they're doing opportunities and that this is delicious.

This weed?

Why call it a weed?

It's delicious.

And of course, is how we have the Urban Agriculture Working Group and anyone who gardens is welcome to join.

You can join by letting Mallory, who is the coordinator, know about it.

Her email is MDH 286@cornell.edu.

Just email her and ask her to be added to the list of the Urban Agriculture Working Group.

And that way you will get notices about what's going on of the meetings through the summer.

We're going to have a series of work sessions at different gardens, as well as more formal meetings where we will plan for a special, cover crop day that we're going to share, and for next year's conference.

Then our last two minutes here.

So let me move fast and try to squeeze two more in here, della says.

If we're going to be paying through the nose for Mexican fruit, what fruit can we start growing here?

Elizabeth?

Well, I try to grow all the stuff I need for a salad.

I am grow regular lettuces, kale and collard greens.

and I cultivate the edible, weeds, like dandelions.

And there are many other edible weeds.

I give a whole workshop on that.

Okay.

Any fruits you want to add here, Petra?

Fall in love with crown cherries.

Ground cherries.

Okay, imagine if a tomato was the size of a marble, tasted like a pineapple, and had its own little husk, like a bun bun and hundreds of them.

Now I know you're like, oh, like now we've finally reached that point with Petra where I thought I could trust you.

that sounds to.

They're really good.

Actually, I think you got to be true.

Okay.

Great.

Seeds.

Now you know why I've dedicated my life to regionally adapted seeds.

Let's get everybody on ground cherries.

It's awesome.

Nell Gardner, anything you want to add here?

Yes, I would say that, raspberries are probably my favorite.

They're not that hard to take care of.

Strawberries.

Also, I grow blackberries.

Raspberries are not difficult.

there is some pruning and there's some, you know, there is a little bit of a learning curve.

but you can harvest a lot of raspberries.

You can, you know, make jam, jelly, whatever.

Lots of things you can do with them, eat them all summer.

So I have fruit snacking in my yard.

That's just incredible.

and I think that those are some things that are kind of expensive in the store and not as good quality as what you would be paying from shipped stuff.

So I think, you know, starting your own little berry patch with raspberries to start with.

And strawberries, those aren't that as hard as other things.

Christopher, as we fruit trees are tough as we wrap up, Christopher says growing family farms loves fruition and nofa.

Thank you Christopher.

and what a lovely hour as we look forward to a growing season that it's coming everybody.

It's coming warmer today and getting outside myself in a little while can go for a long run and enjoy being outside.

Elizabeth Henderson, it's always lovely to see you.

And please come to the, plant swap.

May 16th at the Public market, 6 p.m. for the public in general.

Thank you for being here, Petra.

Paige Mann, lovely to talk to you.

Thank you for being here.

As always.

Such a joy.

And Nell Gardner, thank you for making time for the program.

Thanks so much.

Appreciate it.

Petra.

With fruition now with flower fields and from all of us of connections.

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