Taken a trip lately to a grocery store? Notice the empty meat shelves? Notice the price jumps on what’s left of the beef, chicken and pork? Worried about you and your family getting enough protein? Maybe it’s time to grow your own protein. And I’m not talking about a backyard full of creatures that moo, cluck and oink. I’m talking about garden plants that are rich in protein. We talk with Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour about tips for growing protein-rich plants. During these days of shelter-in-place, your garden can be your happy place, an oasis of gratitude. And gratitude is something that can really help get you through these trying times. Developing gratitude as an attitude…and your garden can be a big part of that.
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. We’ll have you in and out in under 30 minutes. Let’s get started!
Links for today's show:
All about growing beans, from the UC Vegetable Research and Information Center
The Little Book of Gratitude, by Robert Emmons
All About Farmer Fred:
Visit the Farmer Fred website: http://farmerfred.com
Daily Garden tips and more on Twitter
The Farmer Fred Rant! Blog
Facebook: "Get Growing with Farmer Fred"
Instagram: farmerfredhoffman
Farmer Fred Garden Videos on YouTube
Garden columnist, Lodi News-Sentinel
Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.
Taken a trip lately to a grocery store? Notice the empty meat shelves? Notice the price jumps on what’s left of the beef, chicken and pork? Worried about you and your family getting enough protein? Maybe it’s time to grow your own protein. And I’m not talking about a backyard full of creatures that moo, cluck and oink. I’m talking about garden plants that are rich in protein. We talk with Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour about tips for growing protein-rich plants. During these days of shelter-in-place, your garden can be your happy place, an oasis of gratitude. And gratitude is something that can really help get you through these trying times. Developing gratitude as an attitude…and your garden can be a big part of that.
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. We’ll have you in and out in under 30 minutes. Let’s get started!
Links for today's show:
All about growing beans, from the UC Vegetable Research and Information Center
The Little Book of Gratitude, by Robert Emmons
All About Farmer Fred:
Visit the Farmer Fred website: http://farmerfred.com
Daily Garden tips and more on Twitter
The Farmer Fred Rant! Blog
Facebook: "Get Growing with Farmer Fred"
Instagram: farmerfredhoffman
Farmer Fred Garden Videos on YouTube
Garden columnist, Lodi News-Sentinel
Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Welcome to the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well you've come to the right spot.
Speaker 1:Okay,
Speaker 2:so have you taken a trip lately to the grocery store? Did you happen to notice the empty meat shelves? Did you notice the price jumps on what's left of the beef, chicken and pork? And maybe you're getting a little bit worried about how you and your family will be getting enough protein? Well, maybe it's time to grow your own protein and I'm not talking about a backyard full of creatures that move clock and Olink. I'm talking about garden plants that are rich in protein. For example, did you know that a cup of dried beans has about 80% of your daily protein needs, but there's so much more you can grow to get your protein. We talk with master gardener and vegetable expert, Gale pot hour about tips for growing protein rich plants during these days of shelter in place. Your garden can be your happy place. And Oasis of gratitude and gratitude is something that can really help you get through these trying times. Developing gratitude as an attitude and your garden can be a big part of that. Welcome to episode nine of the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. We'll have you in and out in under 30 minutes. Let's get started. Well, whenever we get questions about growing vegetables, we turn to our vegetable expert, master gardener, Gale, path hour and Gale protein and vegetables. Is there some,
Speaker 3:there are actually, there are quite a few. Uh, I think probably the one of the highest protein vegetables would be dried beans and there's a lot of great dried beans out there there. Um, one that I grow every year. Um, something you can store for a year or two and great high protein.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you can put them in all sorts of dishes, a crockpot, slow cooker recipes, and a side dishes, main dishes,
Speaker 3:right? Yeah. If you eat it with rice, it makes it more of a complete protein. So yeah, it's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Beans, uh, have as much as 41 grams of protein per cup. So yes, that that is an excellent meat substitute. If you're looking for protein and you want to grow it in your backyard. So how do you grow dry beans? Which varieties do best
Speaker 3:you grow dried beans, just like you do green snap beans and they grow as Bush or pull. So there's the two different types. Bush beans, you'd generally grow a couple of feet, maybe three feet tall, may need a structure to kind of support them. Maybe not a pull. Beans can grow quite tall. So you do need some sort of a TP or wires work that climb up, but they're really easy to grow. They're not particularly drought tolerant, they need regular water throughout the season. However, there are some varieties of dried beans that come from the air in Southwest and so they could tolerate a little bit more water stress.
Speaker 2:Do they have different productions? Do Bush beans produce less than pole beans?
Speaker 3:Bush beans tend to produce kind of all at one time, and it's a shorter period of time. Pole beans take a lot longer to grow. Still not terribly long, but um, they produce over the whole season. So if you're growing them for a green bean, for a fresh bean, you can harvest them all along. But if you're growing them for dry beans, you want them to dry on the vine or on the Bush. So that takes an additional several weeks.
Speaker 2:All right. So what are some of your favorite, uh, Bush and pull bean varieties to grow?
Speaker 3:My favorite of all time dry being is called yellow Indian woman. It's an old heirloom and I suppose type, actually it's a runner type, which is sort of between a Bush and a pole. But the variety I've been growing, I don't know if I'm, it's adapting to my climate, but mine now reaches about eight feet tall. So mine is turned into a regular pole beam, but it's a small yellow beam that is sort of reminiscent of a black bean in flavor.
Speaker 2:Hmm. And what color is the bean itself? Nadine is kind of a golden yellow. And again, the name of this bean, yellow Linden woman, yellow Indian woman.
Speaker 3:And I was first introduced it by Rancho Gordo beans. He, it's heirloom beans out of the Napa area and um, it's one of his best sellers and it's my favorite.
Speaker 2:So how do you create dry beans or you mentioned to let them stay on the Bush or, or the on the pole until they're completely dry, but then how do you prepare them to last a long time?
Speaker 3:Well, what I do with mine is I start harvesting the dried pods. I don't want to wait until they all get dry on the vine because they'll start to shatter and then the beans will drop out. So I'm out there every couple of days picking off any of the dried ones. I sort of keep them in a bucket until I have nothing to do in the middle of winter. And I sit there and show my beans. There are techniques where you can put them on a tarp and walk on them and that sort of thing. I've tried that. To me, it's kind of messy. So I prefer to just sit there while I'm watching TV and individually shell the beans. Then I have learned from one of the commercial growers of yellow Indian woman beans. He says to put them in the freezer for about three days, no more than three days to kill any insect eggs. And then you can store them without worrying about something happening out, making the holes in the beans and it will not affect the germination. If you freeze them for three days, they will still germinate so you can grow them next.
Speaker 2:I would imagine that they have to be completely drive for you to be able to store them without developing any sort of molds.
Speaker 3:Right. And
Speaker 2:when you harvest them, when the whole pod is already dry and papery the bean is pretty hard inside. So I let them sit for a few more days and then I freeze them. You can also spread them out on a baking sheet, 175 degrees for about 15 minutes. That will kill any AIDS as well. And I would imagine too that when you take them off the shelf to put them into a meal and come winter time or whenever a, you would have to soak them overnight.
Speaker 3:Um, you can, I find with this particular variety I can show them just for a couple of hours and cook them. They tend to cook up a little bit faster than some varieties. Some of the larger, like a Christmas Lima or some of the larger beans take a little longer to cook. This particular variety cooks in about an hour. If I soak them for a few hours ahead of time
Speaker 2:for people just starting off gardening, sometimes when you introduce them do heirlooms, bad things happen. I'm not saying that heirlooms have problems, but sometimes heirlooms have problems. Are there any hybrid varieties that you like that would make a good Bush bean or pull beam that are easy to grow
Speaker 3:dry? A typical snap bean who have my favorites, my favorite snap green bean is called Stripe. That's the one I like. You could drive at. It doesn't have quite the flavor of, of uh, being that it's grown just for drying. But you could do that.
Speaker 2:The vegetable research and information center at UC Davis has a lot of recommended varieties of beans to grow like golden crop wax bean, the resistant Cherokee wax bean and several snap Bush green bean varieties including contender harvester Roman and tender crop among their pole bean recommendations, Kentucky wonder Romano and Scarlet runner and they point out too that growing soybeans is becoming quite popular in home gardens because of their very high protein content. Also, our beans are edible, but those in garden catalogs have been bred to do well under ordinary garden conditions and they usually require a shorter season and they're not growing as tall as the field types. Soybeans are quite delicious when harvested as green shell beans but may also be allowed to dry on the vine. The pods of soy beans though are rather difficult to open. You may want to cook them for a few minutes to soften the pod before removing the beans. If you want more information about dry beans, go to the vegetable research and information center link in today's show's notes and it'll take you to the UC Davis, V R I C bean page. Any other dried bean varieties you want to mention?
Speaker 3:Um, yes. Uh, one called goats. I, I have the goat. That's a good one. It's another heirloom but it's a good dried one and there's one called real Zappa. It is kind of chocolatey and color chocolate and purple in color and has a little bit of a chocolate flavor. It's listed on the slow food Ark of taste and that's a good one as well.
Speaker 2:Another food you can grow in your backyard that is high in protein, 35 grams of protein per cup. I think I've grown this a couple of times. You've probably grown it more
Speaker 3:peanuts, peanuts. We have grown it one time out of the ferox horticulture center maybe 10 or 12 years ago. Um, we haven't tried it since, although it would be a great thing to grow if you have children or grandchildren. It could be a fun crop to grow.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They can dig down and find him.
Speaker 3:That's right. And peanuts are a legume. So it's, it's a being. It's not really a net. It's not like a tree. Net needs to take full sun. Uh, you need to have really light fryable soil because what happens after it flowers as a mole, yellow flower on it. Then that flower kind of Withers and the end of it goes down into the ground. It's called pegging. And then that's where the peanut will form underground. Sort of like potato soup.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. It is almost just like potatoes in that a, it forms underground and you know they're ready I believe when most of the foliage on top is Brown.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The, the foliage does turn yellow and starts to drive back. And so then you could take a, a digging fork or a spade and kind of loosen the soil to pull the peanuts out there attached to STEM. And a typical plant might have 30 or 40 peanuts on there if in a perfect world and you'd pull them out and then you kind of let them dry for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Another high protein garden, treat the, and I know you've had experience with this one and it kind of does double duty because you can eat the outside and then you can eat the seeds and that would be squash seed kernels.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the PETA says what the seed is called and um, I would recommend that if you grow of pumpkin for the seed that you get one that's a holist variety. Um, if you're familiar with squash or pumpkin seeds, there's kind of a hard shell on the outside and the ones that are homeless have a thin membrane, um, instead of that hard seed coat. So it makes it much easier to kind of process after, you know, when you toast them or whatever. You don't have to take them out of this hard seed. Some of the holist varieties that you might look for, um, is one that we grew last year. It's an all American selection and it's called pepitas hybrid. There's also lady Godiva, which makes it sound like it gets naked and khaki. Hola. So those are ones that would be pretty easy to find if you wanted to grow the whole list type pumpkin seeds.
Speaker 2:And again, those are all winter squash varieties. They're pumpkins obviously. Just look for the words holis naked seed oil seed or styrene in the variety description. And of course, uh, you know, you can make the pumpkin and then I have the seeds for dessert.
Speaker 3:Yeah, some of those might not have the best flavor for pumpkin pie, but you could certainly, you know, put it in a stew or something. There are separate pumpkin varieties that are typically grown for pumpkin puree.
Speaker 2:Here's a fun backyard crop that I know kids enjoy and it's certainly dramatic if you've got some sun in the backyard, grow sunflowers for sunflower seeds, which are high in protein.
Speaker 3:Right? I'd look for the PO. Um, don't get the ones that are Paul's list. There's a lot of varieties out there that are growing more for the cut flower trade so they don't drop pollen cause at Penn state kind of messy if you have it on a vase on your table. So get ones that have pollen, the pollen, enlist varieties, do not produce seeds. And then after the pedals crop cut off the head, leaving about a foot of the stock, hang it upside down until they're dry and then kind of rub out the seat.
Speaker 2:Do you put the head in a paper bag so the seeds fall in the bag?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can. Sometimes it'll fall out on the road, but typically they take a little effort. You'd need to kind of rub them out.
Speaker 2:Do you have any favorite sunflowers varieties for to grow for seed?
Speaker 3:Mammoth is a good one that produces a huge head, so you get quite a large number of seeds out of it. It's also very tall
Speaker 2:and another source of protein in the backyard if you want a tree are Allman's almond trees and there are some good semi dwarf and dwarf varieties like all in one or garden Prince and both are self fruitful, although usually if you have a different two different varieties of almond trees, you get better pollination. In fact, for the uh, home orchard, the all-in-one genetic[inaudible] is a the best selling variety. If you have room for an almond tree and you can keep it at the height of a shrub, six or seven feet tall in order to ease the harvest situation and it makes it easier to net to keep the crows away from it as well.
Speaker 3:The, if you get a variety, a variety of where you need to have an another tree to pollinate it, be sure that they flower at the same time. That's important.
Speaker 2:Some of the better Pollenizer is of other almond trees to have include Butte, caramel and nonPareil. They tend to uh, pollinize, uh, many other different varieties of almond trees, but yeah, mix it up and you'll get better pollination. Now there are two very common garden crops that do have protein in them, not as much as beans, but still a good amount of protein and that's broccoli and spinach. Two crops that we like to grow here in California as cool season crops between sale, September, October and April, may and uh, other parts of the country can grow them in the summertime,
Speaker 3:right? Yeah. Here in the Sacramento area, they are a winter crop, which you do plant in the fall. Um, I know in some parts of the country they can grow that in the summer, but not here. We're a little too hot, especially for things like broccoli. When the temperatures too high, the broccoli tends to bolt or prematurely go to flower. So it's best to plant it here in the fall and the ideal time to plant it here since September.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And what's nice too about broccoli and spinach is because they are cool season crops here. They can get away with being grown in areas that don't get full sun part shade.
Speaker 3:Right. And you could also grow them in a large container. A lot of the cool season crops tend to not be as deep rooted as our summer crops, like tomatoes and things like that. So if you had a large container, you could also grow spinach and broccoli and that. In fact, we grew broccoli in the straw bale this last year.
Speaker 2:Ah, yeah. We're going to have to have you back to talk about straw bale gardening.
Speaker 3:Okay. We're, this is our eighth year, so we've, we've been doing it. We're going to probably, um, regret it, but we're growing indeterminate tomatoes in straw bale. So you have a container that's already two feet off the ground and indeterminate tomatoes that will get eight feet. So what we're going to try it, we've got, uh, a structure set up around it to control it. You know, folks, we'll be climbing a ladder to harvest, but we thought we'd give it a try.
Speaker 2:All right. All right. I'll see something happening out at the ferox horticulture center. If you're ever in the Sacramento area, you want to drop by and see it in ferox park, the ferox horticulture center, Gale pot tower. We learned a lot about protein. We can grow in our garden. That doesn't a cluck move or oink.
Speaker 3:That's right. There's a lot of choices. Even if they don't have a lot of protein in them by varying your diet and have a lot of different things, vegetables to eat, you'll get that protein that you need for every day.
Speaker 2:There you go. Gail pot or my master gardener. Thanks for a few minutes of your time.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks Fred.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:here on the garden basics podcast. We want to answer your garden questions a couple of ways you can do that. Give us a call,(916) 292-8964 that number again,(916) 292-8964 you can either leave a message or you can text that number as well. Be patient. There are a lot of rings before we pick up. Another way is email. Send your garden questions to fred@farmerfred.com that's fred@farmerfred.com one benefit of email is you can attach a photo of a bug or a plant that you're trying to identify. We're looking forward to hearing and seeing your questions and thanks for listening to the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. I appreciate all your support and all your comments. This is the segment of the program I like to call the feel good stuff.
Speaker 4:I think it started with the very first episode where I was telling you about a post on Instagram called daily quarantine questions. It was posted by Brooke Anderson of the greater good science center at UC Berkeley and it's simply six questions to ask yourself every day of this Corona virus pandemic where you're especially sheltered in place. Questions like, what beauty am I either creating, cultivating, or inviting in today? How am I moving my body today? How am I getting outside today? What expectations of normal am I letting go of today? Who am I checking in on or connecting with today? But the number one question to ask yourself while you're sheltered in place while this pandemic is going on, according to Brooke Anderson, the number one question is what am I grateful for today? Gratitude. What an interesting concept. Now, it may not make sense to you right off the bat about why is that so important? Well, the wall street journal had an article about gratitude back on May 4th called a surprising way to stay resilient, reminding yourself what you're grateful for can boost your mental health and help you cope with Corona virus stress, the wall street journals. Elizabeth Bernstein wrote this article and she calls gratitude a very important strategy, especially now reminding ourselves what we're grateful for is one of the most powerful ways we can boost what mental health experts call the psychological immune system. A strong psychological immune system keeps us mentally resilient and of course many things we do to strengthen our physical immune system. Also support us mentally eating a healthy diet, getting good exercise regularly, getting enough sleep, or finding time for pleasurable activities in our day, like gardening for example. But right now as we're battered with coronavirus stress, it's important we all try to actively strengthen it. One of the people she interviewed for the article on Jacquelyn Sperling, who's a psychologist and director of training and research at the McLean anxiety mastery program in Cambridge, Massachusetts says, our psychological immune system is like a cell phone battery. We drain it more quickly in a crisis because we use it more so it's important to continue to recharge it and to boost it. We need to take active steps to regulate our emotions. Experts recommend focusing on what you can control. Acknowledge that life is tough right now and don't beat yourself up for feeling bad. Research shows that gratitude is a huge psychological booster. Studies show that people who practice being grateful reports higher levels of happiness, more psychological wellbeing than those who don't. They're less depressed. They have fewer and shorter episodes of depression and they have lower levels of stress hormones as well as reduced cellular aging. They sleep better, they have more success at work, and they have better relationships. The best way to start practicing gratitude is to keep a journal, to identify things in your life for which you are grateful each day. Robert Emmons said that he's a professor of psychology at the university of California Davis. He is actually a leading researcher on gratitude. He refers to them as gifts which will underscore their importance as something positive. Emmons also wrote the book, the little book of gratitude. You can find a link to that book in the notes for today's show. One of the best ways to keep a journal, keep a garden journal. I do it. I know it when plants are flowering, maybe they've put on a spurt of growth. When I planted, when I harvested, and also look at flowers up close, I mean really close as they open, as they flourish and as they decline, because even though a flower may be declining, the seeds for the next generation are developing. So take a good close look at flowers. When you're looking at flowers, you're looking at the cycle of life. Feelings of gratitude is the perfect coping skill for our era when so much of life feels out of control. Gratitude gives us something. We can change our thoughts. We don't need good things to happen to us to be grateful. We need to reframe our thoughts about what has already happened. Irving Berlin, long time ago wrote a song called count your blessings, and he wrote that song after his doctor recommended that he try counting his blessings as a way to deal with his stress induced insomnia. Gratitude can make you realize that things are not nearly as bad as you make them out to be. Initially. Some people keeping a gratitude journal like to write down what they want to accomplish. Like what is your big task for the day? What is your 90 day goal? What was your big win? What lessons did you learn? But one question is more important than all the others. It's what are you grateful for? Answers could be as simple as sunshine. Maybe you heard a bird chirp that you've never heard before or maybe you had a pleasant long walk. Sometimes the answers are a little bit bigger. You're enjoying the slower pace of life. You're spending quality time with your wife and family. Maybe a new baby is on the way. You can get excited about that, that's for sure. Now the question is how do you become grateful? It's kind of like anything else. Practice, practice, practice. Here are some tips in the article about how to be grateful. Prepare yourself, spend time in nature, spend time in your garden. Listen to relaxing music. Slow down and pay attention to your surroundings. Start in the right frame of mind because gratitude can't be forced, and we talked about the importance of keeping a gratitude journal. Write down things you're grateful for each day. Think of them as gifts. Reflect on your feelings and the depth of your gratitude. Writing things down helps you focus on the details and makes the feeling more tangible. And another way to keep that journal is take a lot of photographs. You probably have one in your phone. This may help you focus on your positive feelings longer. That photo seeks out experiences that make you feel grateful. When you take action, like taking a picture of a really nice looking plant, you're telling your brain that this really matters. And then the feeling gets highlighted by the brain circuitry instead of floating away like a random thought. Now there are some things we can do as gardeners that will also enhance the feeling of gratitude. Find ways to use your strengths and talents to help others. We become more grateful when we become a giver rather than a receiver. See all that zucchini that's going to be popping up in your yard here in a month or two. Giving away that extra zucchini can help you too. So there and sometimes you know, you can think about the bad recall the worst times in your life and that can make you grateful that you made it through grateful for what you learned in the process and how it made you stronger. I certainly had that happened to me back in 2012 when I had open heart surgery and recovered and I'm stronger than ever. Remember that gratitude is an attitude. It's not a feeling that can be easily willed, but by performing grateful motions, you may be able to trigger real gratitude. So get in the habit of smiling saying thank you. In other words, just fake it till you make it and think about the language you use to less grateful. People are preoccupied with burdens, curses, deprivations and complaints and their words reflect that focus. Instead of saying that you have to do something, tell yourself you get to do something. Practice the three S's, the three S's. What's that? Well, be open to surprise each day. Surprise amplifies positive feelings. I like to think I have a surprise garden in the front yard. It's a popular walking area for neighbors and I like to put plants way in the front that may look rather nondescript, but then for a couple of months they are amazing in bloom plants like the red hot poker or the tower of jewels and aromatic plants too, like the banana shrub, the Medallia, FIGO, excuse me, the Magnolia Vaco. It changed names. It just has this wonderful sense of what I like to say is juicy fruit gum every April and may the other two S's besides surprise. Be specific, dwell on the concrete ways in which you're supported and sustained by other people and you know that scarcity. You know those empty shelves in the supermarket right now. Is there a benefit or a silver lining to that situation that you will not have in the future? Well, it certainly makes it easier to pick out cleaning products these days or cuts of meat. Another good way to make yourself feel good is make someone else feel good by writing a letter. Even if you don't send the letter, you'll benefit because you have strengthened the brain's gratitude circuitry and activated the region of the brain that produces dopamine. Say thank you, thank you. Increases gratitude, especially thank the people you're living with right now. It'll make you both feel better. Thinking of happy memories increases your chances of increasing your gratitude. Happy memories increases the production of serotonin, the feel good neurotransmitter in your brain and focus on the future. Things will change. Things will may not get back to the normal we know, but we'll adjust. As I'm fond of saying, we are trees in the wind. We can bend. Think of reunions coming up. Imagine how good it'll feel to eat at your favorite restaurant or get back to your favorite hobby. This will help prevent you from taking things for granted in the future. So ask yourself that question every day. What am I grateful for today and for gardeners? It's a pretty easy answer. Thanks for listening to the garden basics podcast. I appreciate your support. Remember, you can subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts. I love your comments. I appreciate you letting me into your ears.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:thank you for listening to garden basics with farmer Fred. I appreciate you listening. Would you please subscribe? You can find the podcast at Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcast, attic, and Hey, Alexa, play the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. Thank you. Here on the get growing with farmer Fred Poe. We're no Fred. That's not the name of the show. What is the name of the show? I don't know. I'm so confused. Thank you.