A Common Life
Welcome to A Common Life where Morgan and Taylor offer month-by-month gardening advice to help your garden thrive. We also share our personal journey in seasonal living, aiming to foster a deeper connection with others, nature, and our Creator. Our hope is to encourage and equip others who are on a similar journey and to provide a space for community around these ideals.
A Common Life
27. A Frozen Garden SURVIVES, The Seed Man, and Taylor Talks Soil-Food-Web.
"January's harsh ice storm is at the heart of our conversation, where we recount the collective warmth we found in the chill, mirroring the camaraderie of past lockdown days. Our homes became fortresses against the cold, as we sealed drafts and prepared for the freeze, finding solace and fun in the most unexpected ways. And the garden, oh the garden! It's a tale of resilience and survival, with frost cloths and straw playing the hero, safeguarding our greens from the icy grip of winter.
Our latest banter journeys through the life of seeds from years past, still sprouting with vigor, and tips for nurturing cabbage that could rival a small boulder. It's a deep-rooted discussion on soil stewardship, contrasting time-honored feeding techniques with the vibrant soil food web philosophy. Join us as we unwrap these gardening mysteries, leaving you with actionable insights and the excitement to watch your own garden thrive through the seasons."
Thanks again Jenkins, for the solid description!
Discussed in the show:
Our best friends sledding VS our kids "sledding"
Elegance Mix from Johnny's
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Music on the podcast was composed by Kevin Dailey. The artist is Garden Friend. The track is the instrumental version of “On a Cloud”
Hey everybody, welcome to a Common Life podcast. I'm your host, taylor, and I am here with my beautiful bride, morgan. Hello everyone. And in this episode we're going to be looking back over January and talking a little bit about all the different things that happened around our home and in the garden during that month. And before we jump into that, I want to say, if you are not a subscriber to our newsletter, it is acommonlifesubstackcom and we call it the common. I really encourage you to go check that out and subscribe to it. We talk a lot about the things we talk about in the podcast and more and a lot of times we go into more details about the things that are going on in the garden and on the farm and stuff like that. So go check that out. But yeah, in this episode we're going to talk a little bit about the ice storm we had and how the garden came through and how we're going crazy. But we're on the other end of it, we're close.
Morgan:We're close. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, the garden survived Well. First of all, what was the lowest temperature? We had basically an ice storm.
Taylor:Yeah, so we knew we were getting down to cold, really cold temperatures that it was forecasting On the Apple Weather app. I've heard people call it the Crap app, but it's pretty accurate. They're getting better with it and I saw multiple times zero degrees as the forecast for the low on Tuesday night. Actually, I think I saw it took a snapshot of when it said negative one as far as how low did it actually get? I'm pretty sure it touched zero in some areas of Huntsville. I think the actual one that's recorded, like if you were to go look, like at the airport, it's like three or two degrees.
Morgan:Well, when you see that, though on the app, you think snow is going to be snow, and it really wasn't.
Taylor:Well, it was calling for snow Monday. I mean, it started snowing Monday morning, I think is when it started. We covered no, we covered the garden on Sunday and it had already kind of started snowing, but it was this wintry mix of sleet and snow, very little actual fluffy snowflakes. Where we are in North Alabama it was primarily like a sleet.
Morgan:Yeah, Like little. And when you're a little kid and you're like so excited you're out of school for snow day, you're expecting like snowmen and snow angels and no, none of that. We didn't have any of that. Somehow our kids scraped together enough snow which kind of sounds disgusting for snow cream.
Taylor:We did make snow cream. They were bound to determine. I don't know where they got it, but we are two weeks out from it, so we didn't get any super bad food poisoning. But we did get. They did scrape some and actually it turned out pretty good because it was like not snow so it didn't melt, it was like little dipping dots it was like so our friend, she went and got Koolaid, koolaid, yeah, yeah.
Morgan:So it was more like a shaved ice. This would have been better shaved ice than it was like Then shaved ice from the sky.
Taylor:Yeah, it was perfect for that. So, anyways, that was actually fun though, because what happened was the snow sleet mixed your, fell, and we stayed inside and the kids went out some, and for like two days it was cool, because, I mean, the temperatures didn't get above freezing. The sun would come out, though, and cars would pack down the ice. I mean, it just turned into a big sheet of ice on everything.
Taylor:Yes, it was just ice. So we, the city of Huntsville, shut down pretty much for two days and then we went around and walked all through like walked to the grand, to grandparents house, we walked to the aunt and uncle's house and walked back and it was snow and Kids were sledding Anywhere. I say snow. It really wasn't snow. It's like ice everywhere and, yeah, kids were sledding down down roads, Really cool. You know, it's just like when the world shuts down. It kind of reminded me a little bit of COVID.
Morgan:Yeah.
Taylor:When you go and everybody's outside, and so we ended up doing some sledding later in the week, but our friends definitely did some. We have a pretty funny video. We'll have to post that link in the show notes to your Instagram. Did you save that reel?
Morgan:Yeah, it's all my reels.
Taylor:It's so funny.
Morgan:Um, yeah, for two days it was great After two days Dunzi no thanks, I know it's over, fun wise. Yeah Well, you, taylor, boards up the house when it gets this cold, and maybe all people do this. But straight up, board up the house. What are those things you put in the cracks?
Taylor:Well, now they're marketed as like caulk savers, but it sees long tubes, or it's not tubes. It was like these things that you can stick in cracks. It's like foam. It's like foam yeah. And then so. But we have two French well, two French doors, four of them actually, two entrances off of our back door. That are French doors and they're super drafty. They don't seal up very well. So when it gets down to in the teens and the zeros, Right, it's like, and our front door like.
Morgan:It's pretty old, lots of air is getting in. It's very drafty.
Taylor:I take those things and I shove it around all the cracks and we only go out one door and the best ceiling doors you better not open the doors.
Morgan:Yeah, they're cocked up, so we only go out our laundry room door, which is on the side of our house.
Taylor:It's on the other side. It's kind of silly but it's necessary. So our HVAC doesn't run all the time and we've got four kids. If we didn't seal up those doors, it would be. It would be 50 degrees in our house constantly.
Morgan:Yeah, it's true, I think it's a good idea, but I'm just saying it was fun for two days and then it was like, okay, we are boarded up and now everybody's coming in. They're moots, or moots are buddy, they're Boots are muddy, they have all their gear. I have such respect for people with small children in really cold places because the mittens and the socks and the crying and the ship shoving the boot on the foot and it's a lot.
Taylor:Yeah, it is. It was fun for two or three days. I can remember going outside being like, wow, where am I? This feels like Alaska. I'm such a.
Morgan:I'm such a explorer like wild man. Here I am.
Taylor:You know. And then on day four, I'm like you know take me back to the cell and like. This is ridiculous. I'm over it. Yeah, I'm ready to move to the beach never again.
Morgan:Yeah, I know Well as Alabama does. Within five days it was 60 something. Well, no, not exactly.
Taylor:We started with really cold temperatures like that Sunday night, and then the like nine, 10 days later it finally started to thaw out and then we did once it. Once it thawed out and temperatures started swinging up. They did swing up into the sixties and we got some rain. We did yeah.
Morgan:Um, so, anyways, I will say Wendell, out of all of our kids, our oldest son loves the cold and he went out there and I don't know how cold it was that day it warmed up into the thirties. Yeah, he's sitting out on our patio by himself just in his long johns whittling his, he got a whittling the whittling kit for Christmas.
Taylor:Who knows who? He's just chatty patty out there, talking, talking, talking. When we asked him about it, he was like I wasn't talking.
Morgan:I'm like no, you were definitely talking, but he's like oh okay, but it just showed me because we're going crazy inside. But he wants it's like once they are geared up and they get out there. I mean he could have been out there forever, you know.
Taylor:Yep, yeah, wendell is. Is peak Wendell outside? Yes, he is.
Morgan:He's the most enjoyable version of himself outside. So after it warmed up and we had rain and rain and rain, I was like you boys go. I got them all in their rain gear, little cute little rain overalls and jackets, and I was like, just go be in the rain, it's warm enough. And I'm not kidding you. They come back to the house knocking on our glass, naked and covered in mud. They had just taken mud. They're like mom, we're Indians, you know. They've covered their whole stomach and face and anyway.
Taylor:So I came home in the middle of that and they had taken off their jackets and they were like we're going to play in the rain. We're doing the, you know, we're going to challenge ourselves and see how long we can stay in the rain. And I, I think I said something like yeah, go jump in the mud puddles. You know, go jump in the mud puddles, put some mud on you. And you weren't expecting that?
Morgan:Were you expecting that, then, to get naked?
Taylor:Yeah For you to use your encourage. I was kind of hoping I don't remember if I said get naked and go put mud on yourself, but like I was really pleased to see that picture you sent me. It was funny.
Morgan:It was like that's really good. I was good.
Taylor:I don't know.
Morgan:I'm pretty sure there's some type of like a journal out there that talks about how there is about mud in your feet and you get between your toes, yeah, and your brain.
Taylor:Yeah, it does something like some different parts of your brain.
Morgan:It's good.
Taylor:So yeah, I'm really glad they they could do that.
Morgan:Well, as far as the ice, as far as the ice storm in our garden, yeah, so I was really surprised.
Taylor:I think I told you I mean it was covered with. Some parts of the garden were covered with three sheets of frost cloth.
Morgan:And did you do water bottles?
Taylor:I didn't do water bottles, or like he I was, that was part I was going to. And then I was like it's well if I committed to that. I mean, I was just gonna. I knew it was gonna be like five plus days of really cold temperatures and I was just like man, I, I'm not gonna be able to commit to that. And who would?
Taylor:Like if this was like if we were going to go hungry if our garden died. I probably would, but like that just felt a little overkill and I'm like nobody's going to do that. So there's no like, let's just see if what the bear like, like the bear minimum, or if I could just do that planned on what I did. So what I did was I took some straw, I covered the garden, your straw and our garden. We just basically had greens.
Morgan:We had some parsley Onions, of course.
Taylor:Onions and garlic and I covered, I buried the onions and garlic with straw, pretty, pretty heavy, because they can, they're, they're fine, they're bulbs, they can store the energy and even if they didn't get sunlight they would, they would be okay for a while. And then I covered the salad garden areas which are just like arugula and some kale and some mustard mixes that we'd been cutting. There were two areas. One area was one that we had cut like three or four times and we'll just keep coming back to it. And then the second area was like just coming on, like it's ready to be cut. Now To start cutting it. I covered it with some straw and not like buried it where you couldn't see it, Just enough to kind of help insulate it. And if the frost cloth was weighed down with snow or something, that snow and frost cloth wouldn't be sitting directly on top of the greens.
Taylor:It would be kind of buffered with some straw, and then I covered it with the whole garden with three sheets of frost cloth. But really two of those sheets were cut too short when I did it, like two or three years ago, and so the ends were only had two sheets over them. Does that make sense? I mean I had three sheets, one spread the whole garden and the other two were a little short. So I, you know, in the middle they had three, but on the ends it was like two. And yeah, I was on Sunday and then on you know, sunday night, monday, it snowed, sleeted and temperatures dropped below freezing, and that snow sleet that was sitting on top of the frost cloth sunk down, and you'll see pictures in the newsletter. I'm gonna talk about all this and it was like that for a solid nine days.
Morgan:Yeah.
Taylor:I covered it on Sunday, pulled them back, I think, on a Tuesday. I opened it up on a Tuesday and you know, plants need light and I was pretty sure, with temperatures dipping down into zero degrees, I mean even all that buffer, I mean that ground does provide some warmth, but I was pretty sure they were gonna be toast. Also because last year, last winter it was December of 2022, you know, we dipped down into single digits then and it was only covered for three or four days and I pulled it back and it was a lot of the stuff in the garden was killed. Granted, it was a different set of plants, which I think the moral of the story here is what you plant definitely matters. Some plants are more hardy, so, like broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, even kale it's after our kale, you know things like that would not have survived. I don't think this round, but the salad greens were really low to the ground.
Taylor:Yeah, they're not growing up and two winters ago, before the cold, really cold snap, we had temperatures in like the 60s. And so you know that affects plants too, like when you dip into cold temperatures and you stay there, plants get hardened and their tissues get tougher.
Taylor:I wish I knew better at the science of actually like how that works to confirm, but I'm almost positive that is a real, legit thing, and so that was more like what happened now. Now, as temperatures are rising back up, we're here at the end of January, looking forward into February. We're gonna have another cold snap, but we really need temperatures to stay lower.
Taylor:We don't need to get up into the 60s or 70s, because then things are gonna start waking up for spring and it's gonna make them very vulnerable to more cold temperatures. But anyways, I pulled the sheets back and our garden is alive, baby. I pulled the straw back and we're still cooking Now. Here's the thing this morning, when I went out and I was feeding the chickens, I didn't cover the garden. Last night, I think it got down to 23 and it looks beautiful.
Morgan:Oh no.
Taylor:But I'm wondering now if the sun's hitting it like if it's gonna perk back up. I mean, they wilt. It's like they're frozen. These things are frozen. I hope they made it, and the thing that concerns me is it has been a little warmer, it's true, so I hope that would be pretty sad if we made it through the cold winter and then the dip down into the 23,. I didn't cover it and it just got sapped.
Morgan:Well, we cut most of it before, and I just cut most of it down, put them in big gallon Ziploc bags, got all the air out and put it in the fridge and they are storing so well, I mean, it's been.
Taylor:I mean, we're coming up on two weeks now and they're still, they look just great. Or coming up on two weeks. Yeah, yeah, so that was awesome.
Morgan:That was really good. So the blend, the mix that we did, can you post that?
Taylor:Yeah, I can. It's the elegance mix from Johnny Seeds and baby. It was from 2015. The seeds yes, those are good. Shout out to Johnny Seeds for having, like, I haven't done anything. We haven't frozen them, we've. They've just been sitting around. They've gone from the farm to, we've moved into town now and they just that bag of seeds elegance mix is from 2015. Yeah, that's unbelievable.
Morgan:I know it's pretty cool, okay, moving along. So oh, will you talk about? So you went and got seeds for the next season.
Taylor:I did. I went to our local feed and seed store. So a lot of our listeners are from the North Alabama area, huntsville in particular. So listen people, ct Garvins shout out. They are awesome in many ways. I mean like it is a local store that is owned by local people and I like going there to support them. And one of the reasons I like going there is because you can get seeds there for cheap. I paid a dollar a packet for broccoli, cabbage, celery what else did I get? Kale. Now I'm not gonna be able to get all the varieties that I want.
Morgan:And the truth is I had.
Taylor:We had planned to get in the Johnny's magazine and sit down and order it, but life happens and it's like man. I had to back up plan B, which was just go to CT Garvins and dude for in a packet of seeds you get way too many. It's like a daggum that gives me a tablespoon of seeds and these seeds are tiny. I mean, if you counted them all out, there's like thousands of seeds for a dollar. And not only that, you get to go and you get to talk to the seed man. So I went this time and I call him the seed man.
Taylor:I should know this guy's name. No disrespect to this guy, I really like him. I look forward to seeing him every time I go in there. He's an older gentleman, wise man. He knows his gardening stuff. He's got the white hair, white mustache. I mean he's cool and you could tell he's been around he's garden, he's done his thing and if you start talking to him he'll tell you some stories. I like going and talking to him and cutting it up with him a little bit. But he's different now, like he doesn't see things the same way that I see things.
Morgan:I mean he's kind of old school.
Taylor:So I was there and I was like, hey, these are the seeds that I need. And he's like all right, so you got some cabbage. And I'm like, yeah, what kind of cabbage you got. What do you recommend? He's like, well, I recommend this kind of. You know, you need to get this kind of. It always comes in nice and early. I'm like, okay, well, this particular thing with cabbage I was. I told him myself my head's like my head's never get really fully formed, they don't ever get really big, and I think it's a sun issue. Like what do you think? Like what do you think it could be? And he's like well, you need some of that middle letter. You need some of that P Cause that middle letter is what's going to help you with your flowers.
Taylor:Well, well, well making, making, making fruit, yeah, npk.
Taylor:Oh, yeah, yeah so he says basically, yeah, he said you need some of that P. And he's like you know, cause that's what's going to help get the good fruit, you gotta get, you gotta get some of that good fruit. And I was like, oh, okay, so the N, you mean like NPK, and he's like, yeah, yeah, you know, the N is for the green, the growth. You know it's going to give you all your good growth. And the P is for the the fruit makes you, makes you get good fruit. And then the K is for the roots. You know it helps you go good deep roots.
Taylor:And he's like so you need to get some of that. You know, I got a bag of it over here. It's like five, 23, 23. He's like you don't need, you need to cut back on that nitrogen. And I, and I said, well, I was just going to give him some bone meal. You know, if you need, if you need phosphorus, you just do bone meal. And he's like, no, you don't want to do bone meal, cause you're going to have every credit of this side of the Mississippi, over there in your garden trying to eat it and I was like well, that's true and he's right, he's right.
Taylor:But I told him I said well, if I just feed him straight up synthetic phosphorus, he's going to mess up the whole entire food web, the soil food web.
Taylor:He told him yeah, that's what I said. And then he's like he kind of looked at me funny and he's like well, I just figured, if I'm going to go through all this trouble of, you know, growing some food, you know, and I just need to feed it directly what it needs, you know, I, I, I, you know, if I'm going to go through all this trouble of growing this food, I want to actually get some fruit, you know.
Taylor:So I got some back for you. I got five, 23, 23 over here if you want some of that. You know, he kind of just like the soil food web, went in one ear and he looked at me like oh, this is one of those guys.
Morgan:And it went out the other, you know and.
Taylor:I was like you know hey listen, I bet if I had a garden and I started growing a garden and he grew right next to me, this guy's garden is going to be nice. You could probably grow. And you come look at it and you're like all right, Taylor, you don't know what you're doing, this guy does.
Morgan:Yeah.
Taylor:But you give us a few years. Maybe I feel like, as I build the soil right, it's more of the longer game. And then if you start looking at the actual fruit that we're growing, the nutrient density, and you start examining the soil in terms of like the net.
Taylor:You know, the inherent fertility of the soil. Like my way, the holistic, you know from agroecology perspective. You know that that way is the way I believe in like it is it is. It is not going to be the quick fix and you're not. You know what I'm saying like right.
Morgan:It's not the one season get the biggest fruit this season, Right, Right.
Taylor:But anyways, the whole, the whole experience with him was a lot of fun. And then I was, I was going back, I walked around, I was looking kind of just seeing what they had in terms of fertilizer and what, what some of my options were. I ended up getting a bunch of bags of compost. But he said, you know, he kind of yelled at me across the store Like I got somebody's five, 23, 23, you know, if you want some, I said nah, that's not organic enough for me, and he just kind of chuckled and you know, went on about his way. But you know it did get me to start. It got me to start thinking like, okay, it first of all. It's true, you know, I know blood meal for night, for for nitrogen right, and bone meal for for phosphorus is what I use in my, in my seedlings starting kits and I put a little bit of that in there. But you know, I pull that blood meal out and our dogs come up.
Taylor:I'm like, yeah, they're like I want to eat some of this and that's just. That's just the way it is with other animals too. And I'm sitting here thinking I'm like, all of a sudden, my brain just kind of broke. I was like, oh crap, like yeah, like how, how do I feed the soil? Like how, how do I feed my plants, like in my garden? What do I have to? What do I have to do, you know to, to get them what they need, if I'm not? Because I actually have some fertilizers, a liquid fertilizer, and I looked at the ingredients and it's marketed really well. It looks organic, it looks like um, it looks like, oh, this is good stuff. It looks crunchy.
Morgan:It looks like you know what I'm saying. Like greenwashing, yes.
Taylor:But it's all synthetic chemicals blended together. It might as well be called miracle grow with and blue.
Morgan:You know what I'm saying.
Taylor:And but it's like okay, then how do I get these things into my plants? Like what do I do? And the key truly is composting.
Morgan:I was going to say caring for your soil.
Taylor:Yes, but the question is how do you care for your soil? Yeah, and it is through composting, and it is. It is a much longer process, like with rock dust that gets your micronutrients, and composting is the way to get the nutrients that your soil needs into the soil and the way to do it in a way that feeds the microbiology of the soil. And I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole here. But the main point of anyone listening that I want, that I want to like set the difference here, that I want people to understand and recognize. The reason why, from from my perspective, that that you you should not feed plants and your garden Burtalizers that are like water soluble, that are like that are in the exact form that your plant needs, is because in that situation, you are only feeding your plant, you're not feeding the soil. It's the same idea as if you hooked a vein, you hooked an IV up to your body and you just provided the exact nutrients that your body needed and you bypassed your digestive system. What will eventually happen if you do that? It will. Your digestive system will shut down, the microbiology in your gut will die because you're not feeding it. And then, when you try to give your body some actual food, it will reject it and you will become dependent on that IV. Nothing in this world is in the form that our body can just absorb it. Our body has to break it down and so they make synthetic chemicals that you can hook up to an IV and your body can absorb it. But that's not the way we were created. We were created to put something into our mouth and then it goes in through our digestive system and our digestive system breaks it down and then we can absorb it.
Taylor:It's the same way with plants. We have to feed the soil biology because it's the plants interacting with our soil the fungi, the bacteria, the protozoans, the earthworms, all of that life in the soil is vital to feed our plants and to create an environment that is fertile, that is sustainable, that is not only fertile and sustainable. But then our plants are going to be getting the minerals and the nutrients into them that we want. Like, if you're just feeding your plants primarily in PK and you're not feeding the soil biology, those plants aren't going to get the magnesium, the iron, the manganese, the sulfur right, unless you're feeding them directly and then you're going to be dependent on that. And if those plants aren't getting that and they're not able to take those nutrients in, guess what? Your body's not taking them. It's not going to be present in the fruit. They're not making it out of thin air. So if you want to grow nutrient dense, good tasting plants, we have to feed the soil. That's where the key is. That's the key.
Morgan:Preach baby.
Taylor:Preach, I know that's clear.
Morgan:Yeah, that was really clear. That made sense to me, Okay good.
Taylor:Good. But no offense to the seed man at CT Garvins and he's just. He does it differently and that's okay For him. I disagree with the way he does it, but he has a ton of knowledge. He's a really nice dude, he has an awesome heart and that's where we like getting seeds as far as yeah.
Taylor:And he has. I can learn a lot from him. I really can't. We all can. People like that, I mean, he's been doing it his whole life, so I had a good time. I like the seed man. Go visit him. If you're in Huntsville, go to CT Garvins, get some seeds, say what's up and support those people over there. They've got, they've got some good stuff and they're they're trying to serve our community. Let's see. Well, what do you want to move on to now?
Morgan:Well, two big things that happened in January was, I kept saying, wilders going to be crawling by Christmas, he's going to be crawling by Christmas? He wasn't, but like the following week, boy, he is. Now he is everywhere and into everything and he's crawling, yeah, yeah, across the house.
Taylor:He's getting after it. Yep, we did go to the chiropractor and after that it was like bloop. That's true, that's true, it very well could have been. Just he was just ready to crawl and the chiropractor didn't do anything. But we did go.
Morgan:So shout out to the chiropractors out there, and then my brother and his wife had a baby.
Taylor:That's right. That's really fun A really big deal it's really big deal.
Morgan:Our first cousins on our side, yeah.
Taylor:Maybe they'll settle down now and get on our level.
Morgan:Yeah, start cranking out some cousins. Okay, and that's all really I have for January. We did a lot of puzzles in January. We figured out that Wheeler really likes puzzles or four year old, but yeah it was your birthday month.
Taylor:It's a big month in your family for birthdays, a lot of birthdays. Y'all are spring babies.
Morgan:Yeah, yep, now we're, I feel like we're, I'm good on winter, yeah.
Taylor:Can skip. Check Done, it's, it's time to move on, but we still have February and we'll see, we'll see, and the next looking back episode. What fun.
Morgan:February holds. Yeah, well, thanks for listening. I felt like that was really good. Taylor, about the soil yeah, I liked that I got fired up.
Taylor:Yeah, all right. Well, yeah, if you listen to the last episode, we're kicking it into gear now. It's like gardening time it's getting there, it's getting there. So we will be planting things in February. So in the garden, it's exciting. So until next time, everybody happy gardening, yeah.