(air whooshing) - Prairie Yard and Garden viewers, know that I grew up at Strasburg, North Dakota.

Pretty much all the people in that community were either of Dutch descent or German, Russian lineage.

Then I went off to college, met Tom and his family and my world expanded to the Norwegian and Danish cultures.

Today on our show, we're going to learn about gardening in another wonderful culture.

Come along and see what I mean.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by, Heartland Motor Company.

Providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years, in the heart of truck country.

Hartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative.

Proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel- Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit Rural Education Retreat Center, in a beautiful Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

(gentle instrumental music continues) The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you, who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle upbeat music) - Earlier, I mentioned Dutch, German, Russian, and Scandinavian cultures.

They are all different, but gardening is common to all.

The Dutch are so well known for their tulips and flowers.

My family used our garden to produce Borscht soup and of course, Sauerkraut.

Then with Tom's family, I learned all about Cumla and even Lefsa.

So, today I'm looking forward to learning about Native American Gardening with Teresa Peterson, welcome Terry.

- Yeah, (speaks in a foreign language).

you're welcome here.

It's good you're here.

- Oh, how did you get started gardening?

- So, we grew up on a farm.

And I would say, when my oldest, was getting to be a toddler, that's when I really started thinking about what kind of food I was giving them.

So, we started gardening then, and I could just picture that first.

He drew a pumpkin patch, of course.

And so he was just excited about that.

And I've been doing it ever since.

- So did your family garden too?

- Oh yeah, yup, we all garden.

My mom canned everything.

I even remembered she canned chickens.

- What is meant by sustainable gardening?

- To me, it's not just about, you know, seed saving or taking care of the earth and of sustainable way.

So, I don't use chemicals or pesticides, but it's also a sustainability of myself, in mind, body, and spirit.

So, when I come out to the garden every morning, that's kind of my prayer time.

And so of course, physically you get a lot of workout, especially in those hot days.

And we eat really healthy, we eat really good food, you know.

Literally, I'll say go pick something and we're eating it, you know, an hour later.

And then just mentally, it's a place to, you know, unpack your day and things that you're thinking about.

I listen to the birds and really quiet.

And the bird singing to you and all of that restores, you know, mind, body, spirit.

- Do you start your own plants or do you buy them in?

- I start my own by seed.

So, all the peppers and tomatoes you see here are all started by seed.

I start those in the spring in the house and then I seed save.

I, you know, picked up a lot of my seeds from friends and other gardeners.

But also, seed savers is a place that I like to purchase my seed.

- Why do you like to get your seeds from there?

- Because I know that they, you know, have the same philosophy of Heirloom Organic.

You know, people like hybrids because they grow bigger, more, maybe they're engineered for insects and things like that, but you lose taste.

And I know different people have like tested some of like these beans, and they're off the charts for nutrition in comparison to something you buy in the store.

So, when I would cook, my kids were little.

I'd always tell them, we're eating like, you know, Popeye's or Superman or whatever this is.

Yeah, really highly nutritious.

- What varieties do you like and why?

- A Hungarian heart tomato, that's ready and that is my favorite tomato.

And I like it because it's not all full of juice and seed.

So, when you cut it, it's like butter, It just is phenomenal.

Makes the best BLTs or whatever Bruschetta.

- When do you start your seeds?

- I Start them, you know, I might get a little too itchy and I probably start them too early.

(laughs softly) So, you know, early April's volt.

And I try to remember start my peppers first cause they take longer than the tomatoes.

And pretty soon I got a jungle in the house and wished I would have waited another two weeks but... - When you get them bigger, do you acclimate them to being outside or do you bring them pretty much out and plant them?

- No, so like after they get those true leaves, then I move them into like little containers and some different soil and I still leave them under the lights.

And then eventually then, when it's warm enough out, then I start acclimating them outside.

And it takes week a week and a half, you know, I'll put them out for an hour first and then, you know, longer each time and then help it get used to the elements.

- I noticed that you have some raised beds here.

Why do you have raised beds?

- (laughs softly) It makes life easier.

(laughs loudly) You know, we were thinking about as we age, it's easier to weed some of the things, so especially like my greens.

I like to have in raised beds because it's so tedious.

My carrots, you know, you've really got to thin those out.

So, part of it was thinking about as we age, we want to continue to do this.

Teresa, with these raised beds, do you take all the soil out each year and put new in or how do you handle that?

- No, we just keep fortifying it.

We just keep adding to it.

So, we'll gather all the leaves and put those in.

I'll put a layer of newspaper in cause, you know, and then all that creates really good tilth and worms.

You see, I have some strong things, you know, as we've had kind of real dry weather and then real wet.

So, sometimes that helps with keeping things moist and a little more even.

And then we compost.

- Have you ever found or tried any crops up in the raised beds that didn't do well?

- Tomatoes were a little bit hard.

I did them last year over there.

And I think because they get higher up than.

It just exposes them to more wind and, you know, stuff like that, but they did okay.

I still got a crop, but I probably won't put them in raised beds anymore.

The peppers have been fine.

I don't know if it's because they don't get as tall.

Then, do you till your garden too?

- Usually, yes, we do.

This last year I tried some no-till on half of it after we planted a cover crop.

And let it go fallow for a year.

You know, I got a little mixed results on it.

I felt like they weren't as bushier and robust, like so many tomatoes.

But, so I'm a little on the fence yet about it and need to probably do some more research, but typically we do.

- And then, how do you keep up with the weeding?

- Well, we put, you know, like you see here cardboard newspaper and we'll go get straw from the neighbor or we put leaves down.

We gather leaves from the yard.

My son brings over grass clippings and I put those down.

Yeah, and then we just, you know, come out and do it.

I think if you weed early on that really helps to, you know, kind of keep control.

And then, at towards, you know, mid-summer, late summer, now I don't worry about it too much.

I pick here and there, enough to get the plants really established well is what's important.

- I see you have some flowers included two-way.

Why do you include flowers in your garden?

- Yeah, well, we need pollinators.

So, you know, the color attracts the pollinators in.

And also I just liked the look of them and I cut them and bring them inside.

- So, they have a dual purpose?

- Absolutely.

- Teresa, could you show us some of your heritage plants?

- Yeah, let's go over there to The Three Sisters.

(lively upbeat music) Well, Mary, this is my three sisters' garden.

The Three Sisters are Corn, Bean, and Squash.

And the corn that we have here is a corn that my uncle gave me, that my great-grandpa raised and other people families in our Dakota community raised.

And so this is a corn that's like kind of a Flint corn, that you have to cook it a certain way to make it into what people would probably call Hominy now we call it Bush diapee.

So, that's our Indian corn.

And then the beans, I grow probably about a dozen different kinds of beans.

And, so I like to grow either the half runners or the bush beans along my corn because I found out the hard way when I grew the full runners.

The pole beans, you know, attack my corn and was taking it down.

so I'm careful about that.

And, so I really like all the three affiliated crops, the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa.

So, in front of you here are the Arikara beans.

I have some Mandan black over there.

And then one of my favorites not in the three affiliated is the Hopi black turtle bean.

That's my favorite.

- When you plant these, how far apart do you put the corn?

- So, I do a small mound and then I put my corn in.

Probably in, you know, the mound, maybe like 10 seeds or something like that.

And then I wait for that corn to come up maybe about this high.

And then I plant my beans because beans grow much faster than corn.

The beans are there to provide nitrogen to the corn because we know corn takes a lot of nitrogen to grow.

So, I have not put fertilizer on these three sisters, the beans do it for me.

And then the squash, as you can see, spreads out and keeps the weeds down, So they complement each other.

- What kind of squash do you use?

- I'm using right here now butternut.

I had planets and buttercup and I had some squash borer issues.

So, butternut seems to be the one, I've tried lots of different kinds and that seems pretty resilient.

- What did you use for the squash borer?

- So, I've tried all kinds of things over the years.

Including putting tin foil and wrapping it around the stem that didn't seem to work.

This year, I just and piled a whole bunch of dirt on top of it.

And then where the stem was running out.

I found another place to put an amount of dirt, hoping that it would kind of create some root system.

- Then, do you delay your planting or anything to, or change your planting in order to try to avoid the... - Oh yeah, I rotate my garden everywhere.

I move stuff around.

I keep track of where everything I plant in my garden.

I map it out every year, and I plan in the winter where I'm gonna move things.

What worked well.

I also go down into my cellar and assess what do I really need.

- This is a beautiful big garden.

And what do you do with all the produce?

- Well, so, my Indian corn I'll plant that every other year because, I don't, you know, need as much you know, with only two people in our house.

And then beans, like I said, I like to grow about a dozen of them.

So, I grew maybe six or seven varieties this year.

And then I'll alternate.

- And then, do you save your seed too?

- I do, I'm a seed saver.

So that's another sustainable way is, you know, save all your seeds that you can.

So, my beans, I have a big collection and I save them all.

- How do you do it?

- Well, it's really easy.

You know, the hard beans you don't pick them until they're dry, and I just shell them.

I sit sometimes with a big bowl and watch TV and just shell them, it's kind of therapeutic.

And then while I'm doing that, I pay attention to how many seeds in a pod.

I've gotten up to seven seeds in a pod, you know, that looked really good.

So, then I'll start saving the seeds that are sevens because, then that, you know, makes good offspring.

- Do you wait until they are completely ripe on the vine?

Or do you pick them and dry them like in the garage or someplace?

- So, my beans, I wait till they're dry.

And then just to make sure they're completely dry 'cause it would be horrible to put them in a jar and have them rot.

So, I put them on in a cake pans.

And, so there's cake pans, always sitting all over our house during this time of year.

- How do you keep track of which varieties are which?

- I don't know, you kind of get to have a relationship with them.

So, you know which ones, and then, you know, when you cook with them and you nurture, you know, you get to know them.

- Do you save any seeds from anything else besides the beans?

- Well, the corn, the squash, the peas, I saved the marigolds and I'm gonna try this year, the zinnias.

- Teresa, you have a Sizable garden.

How do you keep up with the watering?

- You know, we try not to water.

We try to make our plants a little bit more tolerant of less water.

But there's lots of things that we do.

We put the newspaper and grass clippings down, and that helps retain some moisture.

But you do see that we have some hoses and we got a little smarter as time went on.

instead of dragging one hose across the whole garden, we now have hoses lined up through different ones.

And we also have a rain catcher and we water like say, your tomatoes or something that is a little bit easier to water with a can.

- You're out in the country.

What do you do for deer and critters?

- Well, at first we didn't have an electric fence up.

And I plant peas, you know, along a whole fence, front on both sides, just tons of them.

And they just came and mowed it down.

So I was like, "Okay, I'm willing to share a little bit, "but that's ridiculous."

So I talked to my dad again, who's a farmer.

I said, "Dad, will you help me put up a fence?"

So my dad and I put up an electric fence, my son made me a solar generator so it's run by solar.

So we plug it in every night, sometimes I go to bed and I holler to Jade.

"Did you plug the fence in?"

You got to say, 'cause honestly, I never thought raccoons would eat Indian corn, but they did, they did one year.

So I yeah, I don't trust them.

- How about rabbits?

- Yeah, some of them get in yeah, one year I found little baby rabbits made a little nest by my blackberries here, and I had a chase mother.

I kind of felt bad about that.

But there's plenty of them, you know, things for them to eat here.

We have about, seven acres, so they don't need to be in the garden.

- Can you actually show us with some of these foods look like that you grow so beautifully here?

- Yes, I'd love to show you.

Let's go check it out.

(gentle instrumental music) - I have a question, is it feasible to grow grapes in Minnesota?

- Actually, it is, but it really depends on which part of Minnesota we're talking about.

As most of us realize Minnesota is a pretty big state and it really varies a lot.

Commercial growers have their best luck in the Mississippi Valley, the Minnesota River Valley, or the St. Croix river valley.

And the reason for that is that grapes really do love to be grown on Hills.

The Romans came up with this expression.

"The vine loves the hills," and it's true today, just like it was 2000 years ago.

So if you have a hill and some property on a hillside down near Winona you can probably grow any number of different grapes and you can actually grow them commercially, believe it or not.

There's over 30 wineries in Minnesota now, and they're always looking for more grapes.

But if you're up in the Red River Valley, or if you're up near Ely grape-growing is really gonna be more of a hobby in those situations because there's not many hills and it's extremely cold.

In many cases, the soils might not be suitable.

And so we have to take into consideration, which part of the state we're talking about.

Another point to make is that you know, Western and Southern Minnesota, some of those areas that are fairly flat and grow excellent corn and beans.

Some of the richest farmland in the world that isn't necessarily the best for grapes.

As I mentioned, they like hills and that really rich black dirt that we have that we're fortunate to have.

In some of those Prairie soils leads to excessive vegetation and the fruit tends to be shaded and poor quality.

So the best places for commercial growing beyond hillsides in the river valleys, but grapes can be grown as a hobby anywhere in the state.

- [Narrator] Ask the Arboretum experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to enriching lives, through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

- Well, Mary, you can see, I like to store my beans and these antique jars.

This is the Hidatsa white shield.

So you saw that growing around the Arbor one, and then the brown teaberry that were right in front of the popcorn.

This is really great with hummus and I put this in for soup.

- So they will stay, they'll keep just fine in the jars all season long?

- Well, and probably for years.

Yeah, because you've dried them well.

So I have a counter full of all my different beans and I'm sure we make beans every week if not more often.

So we use it in multiple dishes.

So today I made us a, I guess it's kind of like a three-bean type of salad and with some I improvised a little bit, it has wild rice.

This is the Indian corn.

- Is that this?

- Yes, yeah, but this is what people would probably call hominy and they'd maybe just go buy a can in the store, but this is our Indian corn.

And then wild rice which I get from a friend up North.

And let's see, we have the Mandan Black bean in here.

The Mandan red, some red onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and green pepper from our garden.

And so I hope you try it.

- Oh, I'm going to, oh I've got to try this.

- Yeah, let me know what you think it has.

Some people don't like cilantro, so hopefully, you do.

- Oh I do.

- This is really, really tasty.

Is there some kind of a dressing on the cell?

- Yeah, it's lime and honey, lime, honey, and salt.

- Whoa, well, I know I'm gonna eat this after we're done with shooting.

This was so tasty.

Now, you said something about you cook the corn in ash, what is that all about?

- Yeah, so this corn is, you know, really hard if you wanna feel it.

But you use hardwood ash and it has lye in it that helps take that outer hall off.

We call it XXX the Skype that takes the head off the older part and then it puffs up.

So it takes several hours to cook it.

And then you rinse it under water 'cause we don't wanna eat lye.

So you rinse it really well.

And then we typically make a (speaks in a foreign language), which has you know, traditionally it'd be buffalo.

We use sometimes deer meat, but some kind of protein, some kind of meat, and then turnip and rutabaga and then the corn and some seasoning.

And it's fantastic, so it's a soup that we've made for eons.

- How do you use ash to get that cooked?

- Yeah, so I go to my uncle's and I get hardwood ash and he uses a flour sifter, you know, to get to separate the black part from the gray soot.

And then it takes about for a quarter corn about a cup and a half of hardwood ash.

And you just put that in with water and you let it boil and boil for, I don't know I would say probably it would take three to four hours maybe.

And you can kind of smell when it starts to change and then I might take a kernel out and test it.

Of course, you have to really rinse it.

And then when it's done, you rinse it really, really well, because we don't wanna have lye in our system and yeah, and then it's ready to, you know, incorporate into the rest of the soup.

- Oh, that's interesting, really fun to learn that.

What is this beautiful tomato that you have?

- Yeah, so this is my favorite tomato called the Hungarian heart.

And so you saw, it was kind of shaped like a heart, it's a pink type of a tomato.

And I really like it because it's meaty, it's not watery and has a ton of seeds and it's delicious and I hope you try it.

- How, what do you use this for?

- Well, of course, the first time we get a tomato, we have to have BLTs, so we've had those twice.

I'll probably start doing some Bruschetta, things like that.

And then when we have enough tomatoes, we start our canning.

And we make spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, tomato soup, yeah.

And we, that's a family affair.

My parents come over and my husband, and if I can recruit any of my kids, I try to do that.

- Well, and then I noticed that this is a tea?

- Yeah, so try this Mary, and then see if you can tell what it is.

- There's mint in here.

- Yeah, that's all it is.

It's just yesterday I picked some mint and I simmered it and shut it off and then let it sit and then strain it out and that's all it is and I put in the fridge, isn't it.

It's like refreshing, isn't it?

- Very much so, no honey.

- No.

- Nothing at all, what kind of mint did you use?

- That's spearmint, so I have three.

I have that Apple mint, spearmint, and peppermint, and I just alternate and I'll dry some too, so I can make hot tea in the winter.

- And then are these more things here that you've dried?

- Yeah, so this is I wanna just show you so every year again like I draw a map and I identify every place I plant everything so that I rotate around.

So this winter I'll take this back 'cause I'll forget, I'll say, "Oh, I can remember, but I won't."

And then, yeah, this is my seed saving.

So here's my bean bag.

So this is my favorite bean, the Hopi Black Turtle bean.

And I got this gifted from Diane Wilson from Dream of Oil Health.

And I like this bean 'cause it's a bush bean and it's very prolific.

You get a lot of beans, a lot of beans with it.

And the other reason I like it is it cooks up faster than my Mandan Black.

- Okay.

- So that's a good bean and I got all kinds of other beans.

So like here's where I got the Tohono O'odham, this is the white Tepary.

And I, you know, I bought these and then I liked them so much.

I was like, well, I should try just to grow some of these so that I just keep saving my own seed.

I just use the same packages.

Yeah, and then I could just go on and on.

So here's my seed for the White Shield Hidatsa.

So again, you know, I saved the best seeds and I planted those this year.

- Do you have, if you don't get someone year, do they tend to maintain their germination for the second?

- Yeah, they do but I do try to like every other year, try to plant them.

So the one that was along the fence, that's very green and just starting to blossom.

That is Good Mother Stallard, aren't they pretty?

And those make really good baked beans.

This is the bean we're eating in our dish.

This is the Mandan Black and you can tell the difference between that and the Hopi, because these are shiny.

The Hopies are matte and they're a little bit smaller.

- Okay.

- I have painted ponies and they look like a little pony.

This is the red peanut bean.

That's the one I grew they're, half runner I grew on the corn, on the Indian corn.

Oh, Morris really liked this one when I gave him this is called Tiger's eye 'cause of the colors, the maroon, and gold.

- Do you grow that here in your garden too?

- Yeah, that's over by the potatoes I grew some.

- Okay.

- Yeah, so that's my beans.

This is my squash.

This is my flour bag.

Here's my I'll never run out of Marigolds.

(both laughs loudly) And this is my corn bag.

So I have, you know, this Indian corn, sometimes you can just plant the whites, you know, you get different variety.

You can plant just the reds.

This year I did mainly the reds.

So we'll see how those turn out.

I've grown this sweet corn golden Bantam, which is a really old type of sweet corn I think it's from 19, early 1900s.

(gentle instrumental music) Yeah, and then people have gifted me beans.

Oh, and then I'm growing that popcorn, that Dakota popcorn.

So that looks a little bit different too.

That's it almost looks black when it's done.

- Do you actually, can you actually use it for popcorn?

- Oh yeah, yup, yup.

- Teresa, with all of this wonderful knowledge, do you teach classes?

- You know, I've shared with folks.

For example, the native students have at the University of Minnesota, Morris have invited me in a couple different times and I've gifted them seeds and they're growing those as well.

So I will on occasion and people come out for garden tours every year.

- Thank you so much for letting us come.

- I'm glad you came.

- And I can't wait to tear into all of these things that you fixed for us.

- [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a Non-Profit Rural Education Retreat Center, and a beautiful Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you, who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle upbeat music)