Hey, it's Tinisha, Spain, hos of Mid American Gardener, and we are continuing our summer of fu on the road.

This week, we're at Sola Gratia Farms in Urbana.

We're going to learn all about growing watermelon on a trellis, how to harvest and dry herbs, even how to make a sunflower room at your place.

And we're going to tell you how you can get involved in the good work that these folks are doing on the farm.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

So we are officially on the farm now joined by Fiona.

So Fiona, introduce yourself.

Tell us little bit about you.

Your title here, what you do at the farm?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So my name is Fiona Munro.

I'm the Outreach and Education Manager.

I've been with the farm for about five seasons in this role, and then I was a field hand for two seasons before that, so I've got a little bi of different experience with the farm.

I help manage all of our kind of outreach and education projects, which are very varied So this Community Classroom is a really big one.

This is our like, flagship project, just a space that we're building for the community and for our educational partners.

But we also work closely with the Urbana School District.

We work closely with a number of community gardeners around town, just to provide a support network and some kind of Farm to School Education for those groups.

So this is for folks to get tha hands on experience, to see it, touch it, watch it grow, harvest it absolutely and a great thin about this space is that we get to be a little bit experimental So for the first time this year, we're trying straw bale gardening.

So these bales we brought out here early in th season, we conditioned them with blood meal, and then we plante a number of different things in them.

And we're actually also using this garden as our seed saving garden.

So we've tried to focus on different crops that kind of seed in different ways so we can show off how to harvest those seeds.

So we've got mustard greens here.

Those are going to create those cut little brassica pods.

We've got some beans and dill bean haven't gone super well.

We have had some trouble with actually getting seeds to germinate in the straw bales, anything tha we've planted into them is doing awesome, but the seeds are not germinating, so great see, and I love that, because it's learning in real time.

You're seeing what works, what doesn' work, perhaps things to try next year.

So you said th transplants, the little starts, they're doing great, but seeding in these is kind of tough.

That's exactly right.

And, yeah, it's a great opportunity to really engage with the communit and talk about, you know, here's what we've done and what's worked and what hasn't worked, and also to bring in some of th other gardeners in the community that have loads of experienc and can say, Well, this has been my experience with doing this, and just kind of create that community like knowledge base.

Now, which gardener is this?

Is straw bales for?

Is this to save space?

Is this for someone, perhaps with mobility issues, who could, who could benefit from something like this?

So there's a lot of reasons that you might choose straw bale gardening, but I think th biggest one is if you have soil that is not conducive to in ground gardening.

Building garden beds that can be an expense and difficult.

Straw Bale beds that allows you to kind of have the bed structure ready to go.

You can place it in place.

You don't have to worry about the soil underneath.

Yo just have to get that bale ready to go as you're kind of ready made bed.

It also cuts down on your weeds, because ideally, i you get good straw, you're not going to have any weed seeds germinating in there.

You're just going to have the plants that you want to grow.

So it, ideally is a little bit of a labor, labor saving way of gardening too.

Gotcha.

Very nice.

Okay, I se over here, off in the distance, you guys have melons and slings, and I've never seen that in application, so I would love to go learn awesome more about that.

Let's go check it out.

Okay, we're checking out the melons now.

What is this structure called?

What do you guys call this?

So we call this our trellis tunnel.

It's made of cattle panels that we've attached to posts.

And this is our first year growing melons on it.

Now, I've heard a lot about this method of trellising melons keeping them off the ground, but never tried it, so I was reall excited to try it this year, and I would say that it's goin really well so far.

So we've got the melons growing up th tunnel, and then we're attaching them.

We're hanging them in these string bags to keep the melon as it's growing, from pulling on the vine and maybe breaking off the string bag Also, a little bit is protecting them from like birds, stuff that would peck at them.

Yeah, we've been really excited about it.

S far, just seeing the melons like growing and producing on these tunnels has been really effective.

Now, a lot of folks, whe they're out at the store picking their melons, they'll look fo that spot on the ground to find out if it's ready.

So in here, when you don't have that spot, what do you look for in terms of ripeness?

How do you know when they're ready to pick?

Yeah, so on the vine typically the tendril.

Uh, this kind of tendril that will, you know, attach to something to grab on the one directly acros from the melon will start to go brown and crispy.

And so once that gets really brown and crispy, that's a really goo sign that the melon is ready to go.

Yeah, these guys do not have that yellow melon spot on the bottom because they're not resting on the ground.

You can also look for a little bit of smell.

It's kind of a like ripe, maybe musky smell.

That's a little bit more true with cantaloupes.

I do not have a particularly good Sniffer, so that is not a good method for me.

So I mostly focus on those tendrils and seeing how close we're getting to that maturity date.

We have a couple melons on here that I think are almost ready to go.

So our volunteers later today, they might be picking and tasting, you know get that first, find out really, if it's ready to go.

Nothing's worse than popping one off the vine and opening it and it's not ready yet, truly.

And also, this is a really cool space saver, because I have tw watermelon plants in my garden, and they have taken over the entire garden, so this is a great way to keep some of the vines from just kind of taking over everything.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I've noticed that it keeps down on disease a little bit too, because those vines aren't laying right there on the soil where they're getting a lot of splash back from rain, and s they're able to get a little bit more air through, and that' really helping with keeping the vines healthy.

Very nice.

Okay, looking forward to that taste taste test later.

Hopefully you guys pick a good one.

I hope so too.

And then another place we're going to g visit is you guys have created, like a sunflower room, yes, oh, I'm excited to see that, too.

Okay, let's go check that out.

All right.

This is another really cool first for this year.

I'm really looking forward to see how this turns out.

So tell us what this is.

Yeah.

So this is our sunflowe room.

So we built a little kind of cattle panel structure aroun the outside for some support for the sunflowers.

Then we plante a variety of sunflowers around the edge so they're growing We've got some really tall guys.

We've got some slightly shorte guys trying to get a variety of blooms in there.

And a little bit later in the summer, when they're nice and big and they'r flowering, it'll be really shady in here.

In the afternoon, you'll have the sunflowers all around.

This is just meant to be a calming, cozy space that people can spend time in an enjoy that natural outside time, very cool.

And you know, this i something that folks could do at home this.

I mean, it's a project, but this looks like a very easy project with a hig payout of just being able to go inside and enjoy absolutely yes, not too man materials, something that a lot of people grow in their garden already, especially if you have kids, I think they'll love being inside that little natural house.

Yeah, I think it's a really awesome thing.

I'm excited to see it here, and I hope more people try it out in the community.

Definitely.

Well, Fiona, thank you so much for showing us around the farm.

W really appreciate it, and we'll definitely have to come back an get an after of the sunflower ro We would love that.

Yeah, than you so much for coming out, Tini Wonderful.

All right, so we are in the raised bed section of the farm now, and I'm joined by my tw friends, Jamie and Aziz.

So tell us a little bit about both o you.

Introduce yourself and tell us what you do here.

Sure.

Thank you.

My name i Jamie.

I've been at Sola Gratia for a couple years now, and started in the field.

Actually, this is the original four acre of Sola Gratia Farm, and so this is where I started.

And then I became the events coordinator.

So I plan monthly events for the farm, whether for community building, outreach, education, fundraisers.

And then also I'm working today in my role as farm educator.

Very nice.

All right, Aziz, tell us about you.

Hi, I'm Aziz.

I'm a farm educator here at Sola Gratia Farm, working alongside Jamie.

I'm a u of i grad.

And during my time there, I got a visit, a tour here at Sola Gratia During my internship, and I came back years later to work here, because I was just in love with the place, in love with the people, and I'm excited to be he You got bit by the bug, yeah?

S on our show, we love doing hands on.

We love showing people wha they can do in their yard.

And so you guys are going to talk t us a little bit about harvesting and working these above ground beds.

So where do you want to start?

You want to start with calendula.

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do that.

So this is our raised bed garden area.

A team of volunteers helped to build these yes last year, and they're holding up great.

Last year we planted calendula and chamomile.

W direct sowed them, and they came out beautifully.

They happil reseeded themselves, and now we have a nice crop going in year two as well.

So I'm going to show you how to harvest some calendula.

This is an amazing plant.

It's a flowering her that can be used at home to cure many different skin ailments.

S like last week, I got stung by a bee and used some of the resi to kind of help to soothe that.

Discomfort, and it's super easy to harvest.

I'm just using my fingers as a rake and poppin off these blooms.

And by the end of this harvest, my hands are going to be really sticky, but that's a good thing, becaus that means that it's loaded with the resin that contains thos healing properties.

And so I've got a nice handful of calendul blooms here.

I'm just going to use this as a vessel to brin them to our wash pack facility, because this plant does have a little bit of bug damage.

They will get a little bit of a bath, but not too much, because we don't want to wash away tha important resin.

And then all we do is we lay it out on a tea towel or paper towel until they're completely dry, and then they are going to be shelf stable for a long time until you decide what you want to do with them.

Yeah, and so calendul typically does its best in cool weather.

It's, we're mid July right now.

It's very hot.

It's actually still looking prett decent, so I'm going to leave it for now.

Okay, the chamomile we might do something with.

That's its own thing, right.

Now.

Once those are dried, how do you use them medicinally when they're dry?

Okay, so once they're completely dry, you can infuse them in a carrier oil.

So my favorite i extra virgin olive oil.

I fill a mason jar with the dried calendula flowers, fill to the top with the carrier oil, and let that infuse for several weeks so the carrier oil ca absorb those healing properties, and then I use that infused oil as an ingredient to make something healing, like a salve for example, very nice.

In fact, one of the events I planned last year was a calendula workshop, and all the participants got to make their own salve.

Very nice.

Yeah, so you're jus letting nature do what it does.

That's exactly right, workin with it, working with it.

Okay, all right, now we're going to talk about the chamomile this.

This is a volunteer, right?

Yo said this receded itself, yes, and we're going to do some harvesting here as well.

Yes, ma'am, so how do you do that?

All right.

So you have our vessel, pint container here.

So similar technique.

We're going to do a hand rake.

Okay, so if you want to do, I'm going to jump in.

This looks like a really beautiful patch here.

And so want to just get a handful, okay, so you want to have your hand spread, go right through the plants.

And you want to just, just plug, pop them right off, flowers, just like that.

And we want the whole thing, right petals, flower, all of it.

And th beauty of the chamomile is that it has a spongy texture to it.

And if you rub this spongy element and you give it a smell, a really fruity scent, Apple like Yes.

And this is good for teas.

I personally do a Blackberry chamomile holy basil tea.

So I take blackberries raspberries, mush them up till it becomes like a juicy Pope.

Let that steep in some boilin water, and then I add some dried chamomile and some holy basil leaves, and all I add is a little drizzle of agave syrup.

And that's my tea that sounds amazing.

You guys are killing it out here, farmers like ourselves, chamomile is perfec to aid in relaxation.

Hope you sleep at night after a long day of work and Jamie.

Yes, Jamie is a parent, so I'm sure she need more sleep than I do, but this is still good element to relax yourself at night.

Very nice.

Now thi you guys are not going to leave this plant in here, right?

This guy's coming out, yes.

So similar to the calendula, i is a cool season crop, and you can see that it's kind of drying up, not looking as healthiest.

So we're gonna pull this up and replant some more appropriate summer crops that are more hea tolerant, and that'll give us a good harvest.

Wonderful.

Okay, so the flowers are the only things that you use.

We're not using the stem or leaves or any other parts of the plant, right?

We just want the flower.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay, yep.

And the more you harvest on your chamomile plants, the more flowers it's going to bloom.

That's a common harvesting principle for many crops, cut and come again, pick and come again.

Just keep it harvested, because it'll keep blooming for you and producing the product that you want.

Once your plant starts to produce seed, it thinks it's done, so then it's going to stop producing for you.

Gotcha and then.

So what we're harvesting today, what will you guys do with those?

Will these go to the market?

Will they where will they find their home?

Good question.

So they're going to be drying in our wash pack shed, and then once they're dry, we're going to store them properly until we decide what how to use them.

Maybe we'll save them for a future workshop, or maybe we might be partnering with some people to make some value added products like tea season and cosmetic products.

S yeah, we're just kind of keeping these in our back pocket for now, very nice.

And then if we have an abundance, like we do with many of our crops here, those will go out to our free markets and donation centers.

Awesome.

Okay, so this is all coming out once we get all these.

Yes, harvested.

All right.

More you.

Okay.

So the chamomile is gone.

Now we're ready.

Now, what are we planning today?

Okay, so I picked blac beauty zucchini to plant today, because this just thrives in the heat, and we're going to get another big heat wave next week, so this should be just fine.

Now, the reason I feel comfortable still planting in mid July is because this crop has a 45 to 65 day maturity rate, and so it's plenty of time to still harvest some beautiful summer squash.

And those are such a great producer.

You're just passing those out to everybody on your on your block.

That's exactly right, whether they like it or not, whether they like it or not.

You're getting one on your doorstep.

Yes.

Okay, so I'm going to g ahead and plant.

I'm thinking I have space for about two plant here.

Okay, so I'm going to take two seeds just to ensur germination, and if I need to go back in, and then I will, okay so a little planting hole here.

I don't usually measure, I jus kind of eyeball it, but quarter inch to a half an inch i usually the gold standard there for zucchini.

I've got anothe planting site right here, and so in a couple of days, as long a we keep this moist, and I think we can do that, because we're expecting some rain coming up, these should germinate in no time, and in 45 to 65 days, we should get some beautiful fruit, plenty of time left for a good harvest.

That's right, wonderful.

Okay, and Aziz, what are you planning?

So I'll be planting a bush bean variety called Gold Rush, and I'm going to use this corner over here.

Okay.

Do these need any type of support, or anything, or so bush beans don't require trellis.

If we had a pole bean variety that would require trellis, if you look over, we have a bean teepee, which is climbing up.

So that is a pole bean variety.

These will b bushy, similar to how, like this koenja is growing.

And with th beans, these are also 55 days to maturity, so we have more than enough time, and it loves full sunlight, and this part of the garden is definitely gonna get that sunlight that we need for our bush beans.

And these are definitely gonna require less spacing than the zucchini.

We can definitely condense ou space with these bush beans.

So I'm going to plant them approximately three to four inches apart, and make a little grit layout.

Now with the zucchini, while he's making his holes over there, I'm thinking of the vines and spilling out.

And is there any idea of how you're going t train them, or you just kind of sort of let them do their thing and let zucchini be zucchini.

Yeah, we might like zucchini be zucchini.

We'll probably see how it goes.

We d have some perennial herbs that surround it, lavender in the front.

We've got some cat mint here, some spearmint here, an so I don't want the zucchini to encroach on those, because want those to come back nice and strong next year.

So I might train it a little bit if there are some really big leaves.

might kind of cut those back if it becomes too, too big.

I migh do this technique that I've seen online where you can actually train the zucchini to grow up like, like a bamboo stick, a T post, and you just bring it up as it grows, so that it doesn't necessarily flap over or flap on, on the on its neighbors, yeah?

So we'll, we'll see how this goes.

But in my experience, zucchini plants can get pretty big, yeah?

So yeah, I might get to intervene a little bit.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And so this bed is all finished for the season, right?

Yeah.

Last thing we need to do is jus water it in good.

We might amend the soil a little bit, just ad some more nutrients back in, but otherwise, yeah, as long as we stay up on watering, we should be good.

And you know, I love that you were able to pull something out and put new things in, just to kin of keep this bed always growing, always doing something like yo were saying that seasonality of the growing season, yeah, and even when it starts to get cold, we can do season extension techniques, like w can cover this with some remake cloth we might put, like, sor of cold frame cover over it.

We love to grow as much as we can in the season that provides because not only is thi demonstrating those techniques, but it's also helping to feed our community.

Wonderful and the at home gardener who's watching all of this is so easy to do at home.

If you've got something that perhaps is at the end of its harvest or looking a little tired, it's okay to plan something else in that spot and just keep on growing all the way to the frost.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for this hands o lesson to both of you, I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for coming out Yes, of course!

and now I'm joined by Traci, the director of Sola Gratia Farms here.

So tell us a little bit about.

You and how you're how you came to be working here?

Well, I actually asked to be a part of Sola Gratia Farm and changed my career to come here because I was so enamored with the mission.

So I grew up on a family farm and have always cared about just health and welfare.

Of you know, individuals, families, communities, had a career in working on clean water protection and advocacy, and partnered a lot with a grou called faith in place, and they had a hand in starting this farm in partnership with st Matthew church to address food and nutrition security, make sure that people can eat wel regardless of their means.

And I just more and more thought it was a beautiful, beautiful mission, and I really wanted to be a part of it, so I came to the board back in 2014 and asked if they were looking for an opportunity to grow the mission and the implementation of the mission.

Wow.

So let's talk a little bit about tha mission.

It goes it goes beyond the food and the plants, yo know, tell me a little bit about what the lifeblood of the farm is.

So everybody that's here, whether it's staff or volunteers, board members partners, are here because they know that everybody deserves t eat well.

So the mission really is threefold.

It's that we are addressing food nutrition security by growing wide variety of crops and making them available, improving access affordability through a lot of partnerships in our community We do that by following organic and regenerative practices and making sure that we are doing the best we can do to be goo neighbors and caretakers of the earth, and then we also th third part of our mission is to build community and to teach people how to grow good food.

And so that's where we're we.

Where we are right now is Community Classroom.

And this was set up really to as an education demonstration firm t help people see that there are many right ways to grow food and to learn, not only from us, but from each other.

That's one of the reasons why we wanted to come out today, was to kind of see the farm in action, se what you guys do.

And, you know, I got a hands on lesson in in the herb garden, so I can see how people can come here, lear a skill, learn a technique, and then take that home and apply it in their own gardens, in their own backyards.

Is that the goal?

That is the goal.

We really want to create a space where people are comfortable volunteering.

So we have volunteers in the background that are here a couple times a week.

We have events here so people can lear in more of a structured way how to grow good food.

And we also know there's just a lot of knowledge in our community.

So when people come here, whether it's for an open house or just walking through the farm, they're going to meet each other, and there's an opportunity to build and reinforce that we can work together to feed our community.

Excellent.

And so with all the work that you've done, because you guys are doing a lot, you partner with a lot of groups, you're at the market, you're all over the place, not just with your harvest, but with your message, is there still that need in the community?

I mean, is there still more to do?

Yes, and that's part of why.

So we started on this ground.

This is the original four acres.

We're on the campus of St Matthew Lutheran Church.

Over the years, we've added few parcels that we leased to be able to grow more food.

A coupl of years ago, five acres that we were farming was sold to the city that's now a new fire station just north of our farm, and that really for us, was a turning point of, okay, we either need to shrink back to our original four acres, or we need to expand.

And looking at what community services we've been offering and what needs still exist in our community, it was clear to us that we needed to expand.

So we purchased 29 acres just right around the corner, actually across that tree line, which allowed for us to turn this four acres into more of an education space.

We have considerable need in our community.

We have a lot of people that don't know where th next meal is coming from, and we have a lot of people that are knocking the nutrition they need, and it's really hard to have a quality life when you don't have enough food or enough good food.

That's really the anchor of health and wellness.

So we're really trying to use th investments that we've made and our staff's expertise and the land that we have to create an opportunity to not only support our community in eating well, but also to teach each other okay.

And if someone sees thi and they are inspired, they want to be one of your volunteers.

They want to be in on the mission.

How does one get involved?

So this is something we prid ourselves on.

There are so many ways to get involved.

So you can sign up to be a volunteer, and that can look like once a seaso or five times a week, if you wan Or, you know, there's a lot of ways to plug in, whether it's here the Community Classroom on our production farm at market special events, you can also sign up to be a CSA member.

So that's a veggie subscriptio service.

So you can get a box of weekly produce from us each week.

You can shop from us at markets.

You can attend one of our events.

We try to have at least one event every month.

And, you know, try to meet different needs in the community.

Sometimes it's like a dance on the farm or yoga on the farm, or, gosh, I mean, we've ha workshops teaching people how to make salve.

We had stargazing out at the farm.

There's a lot of different ways to plug in.

Any way to get people here is a good way.

Yes!

And to connect and learn fro each other.

And just know that, you know, we have some of the best soil in the world.

We should be using it to, you know feed ourselves and our community Wonderful.

Well, Tracy, than you so much for letting us come out today, and thank you for all the good work that you and the folks here are doing.

If you've got any questions fo us or questions for Sola Gratia, please send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com you can also search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid American Gardener.

Thanks so much fo joining us this week, and we'll see you next time.

Good night.

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