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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 57: Plants and Seeds and Garden Readiness
Join me and dive into my personal journey with the medicinal mushroom chaga, hear about my caffeine-free coffee substitute blend that kickstarts my mornings, and discover the beauty of nature through the eyes of a seasoned angler. We also welcome our special guest, Bev, who brings her extensive knowledge on harvesting and curing garlic to the table. Get ready to be inspired by her invaluable tips that will elevate your gardening game.
Have you ever thought about the best ways to preserve and store your homegrown produce? Bev shares her expert advice on selecting the right garlic strains, the art of curing and storing garlic, and the incredible uses of garlic scapes in cooking. Expand your knowledge with insights into preserving other root vegetables like carrots, potatoes, and parsnips. From traditional braiding techniques to creating the perfect storage environment, this episode is packed with practical guidance for maintaining the freshness and longevity of your garden's bounty.
And don't let pests ruin your hard-earned produce! Explore natural pest deterrent methods, including the use of essential oils like citronella, lavender, and lemon balm, to keep your garden thriving. We also delve into effective strategies for managing tomato blight, the benefits of fresh, homegrown food, and the unexpected outdoor hobbies of celebrities. From gardening tips to clean eating, this episode offers a wealth of information to help you live a life closer to nature. Tune in now for a fun, informative, and inspiring journey into the world of gardening and natural living.
Back in 2016,. Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 3:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people. That will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy.
Speaker 3:Well, good morning all it's a bright and early morning for me. I was out taking my son to the airport this morning and he's back heading for Saskatchewan to be working on that potash mine. Again, it was funny. He flew in on Tuesday and we're recording on Friday and he's gone first thing on the first flight. In order to be able to get to the site he has to be able to do all the things necessary to connect the connections by the buses or the routes to get out to rural Saskatchewan between Regina and Saskatoon where he's working. So I've been up.
Speaker 3:Then I ran the dog the usual and enjoying my new blend of coffee. Well, it's not a coffee, it's something a little bit different. I've been enjoying it for probably two and a half months now and I look forward to it. It's a chaga, chicory root and dandelion root blend, no caffeine. So I get a lot of people asking for a coffee substitute and I think I've got it down to what people would look for and so we'll be having some samples for people to test. And all those listeners we want to thank you for listening to us again and those people listening to us from Africa. As always, we appreciate the support there. I see we're still a very top ranked there, which is always in Ghana, which is nice to see, and this morning we have our guest, bev. Welcome back to the stage again, bev. It's always a pleasure to have you out with us no thanks, jerry, for having me yeah, it's a pleasure and I know, I know.
Speaker 3:When I was out running the dog this morning after I went to the airport bright and early, I happened to see and pick some sumac drupes, which are ready now. And for those that listen to our sumac podcast, up here in Canada, just east of Toronto, where we are podcast Up here in Canada, just east of Toronto, where we are, the sumac appears to be ready and when the berries are ready it's the red sumac. They make a great tea. Or for those of us that remember what it was like when I was a kid when we had these sweet tarts. They kind of taste like sweet tarts. But, bev, you were up. This you were. Before we got on the air you were out. What were you doing? Tying up some garlic. Or is my grandmother?
Speaker 4:used to be braiding some garlic. Yeah, going through my supply of garlic and sorting, you know what I'm saving for seed and what's maybe and then my cell groups. So I tie them and I've got different sections in the shed. That and the different varieties are all labeled, but there's a cell section and a seed section. So I was once you get them up in the shed, then the curing process just it's a nice place to finish them off. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So, bev, we did the show before and we talk a lot about garlic pizza. I very much enjoy it and I see a lot of benefits to it. But I planted and I got some of your garlic. The bulbs and the cloves are huge, they're like the size of your thumb.
Speaker 3:You get like four cloves in a bulb of garlic which are just great to work with, because I know you get all those little rinky, dinky ones and they're hard to cut up and chop it up and get it into the, into the food when you're doing it. But your great big cloves, inside those, like I said, you get some four and a size, a large bud, but mine I planted a bunch and it came up and it was not good, it was small. It was what happened? Or give me some direction? Or did I harvest it too soon, cause the leaves were still green when I was picking it, but pulled it up and very small, very small buds or cloves, and although it looked like there was only four, four or five of the cloves in each of the bud, but they were very, very small, not like about a third of the size of, maybe even a quarter of the size of the ones that you have. What did I do wrong?
Speaker 4:So you always remember that garlic is part of the onion family and they're considered a heavy feeder. So when they're in their growth mode you've got to fertilize them or at least supply good nutrients to the trench or holes that you've planted them in. And of course planting in October, as opposed to the spring, is always going to give you a bigger bulb. So let's assume you did plant in October and you've dug your trench. And I always line my trench with some well-rotted manure and set my clothes in, bury them an inch and a half deep and then along I put a band of manure along the top as well, over top of where they're going to erupt from the soil, and that way when the rains and the snows occur you get like a trickle down effect, like a manure tea that gives them a steady supply of some nutrients.
Speaker 4:And then you know it all depends on your soil. But we have sandy soil here which is not rich in nutrients at all. So in the spring, when my garlic pops up in april, when it gets to be about four to five inches tall, we do a foliar feed here and you can use like a fish emulsion, you mix it up in your watering can and you go up and down the rows, and all plants are able to absorb nutrition through their leaves and stems as well as their roots, so feeding them is important, and also the size.
Speaker 3:You said you put large pieces in the ground. Right, yes, I put large cloves in the ground, but I planted in november. Basically, the top layer was frozen to the ground still just like a little skiff of it yeah, I've, I've done.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that shouldn't, that shouldn't uh affect at all, as long as you can get them in the ground in the fall okay, yeah, no, I got them in in november and I thought I did.
Speaker 3:Okay, I know we talked a show about how to kill off all those weeds that we have a patch at the camp of the cottage that we have and we tarped it, um, but I kept one section of the tarp open and and planted the garlic in that small section, but I only had a half a dozen just to try it to see how it would grow up there. But I did not fertilize her. So you provide fertilizer, but manure or mulch and things like that needs to go into there as well as you said, yep, manure or compost.
Speaker 4:Now, did you have any weeds or were they growing just themselves?
Speaker 3:No, there was some weeds around that. I tried to keep the weeds out. But when Are they growing just themselves? No, there was some weeds around that. I tried to keep the weeds out. But when you only get up every couple of weeks in between those couple of weeks, you get weeds growing in the meantime.
Speaker 4:Because that's going to affect your growth as well. The competition with the weeds, both for like moisture nutrition and sunlight, is going to affect Right, so I always mulch them when I plant with some. We use straw here, but you can use leaves, you know Okay.
Speaker 3:Leaves. Yeah, we've got a lot of wood chips up there, because I'm constantly we're constantly cutting a lot of trees to clear the area. Still We've got quite a few just dumping down Wood chips of trees to clear the area.
Speaker 4:Still we've got a well something about wood chips. Wood chips can actually rob your soil of nitrogen, because that's the nitrogen that helps with the breakdown of those wood chips. So it's you. You can lose some nitrogen by using wood chips yeah, oh. So don't use wood chips as a fertilizer, because it robs nitrogen not as yeah, unless you're going to put you know manure in as well.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, hmm, okay, you know that tarp, that tarped area that I mentioned, we tarped it. I haven't pulled the tarps up yet because you said leave it on, let the sun bake it and it'll kill all the weeds and everything else. Mm-hmm, would now, because I tarped it last fall, so would now, because I tarped it last fall, so would now be a good time to pull it off, and we're into august now well, it depends on what your plans are for that area.
Speaker 4:If, um, if you're not going to plant anything there right now, I would leave the tarp on, because as soon as you like let's assume some of the seeds didn't get solarized and therefore are still viable, right? Um? Once you pull that tarp off and it doesn't take long it's like 24 hours of sunlight, can you know trigger those seeds to germinate. So I would leave it on until you're ready to plant.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, because we had a lot of raspberry cane in there, which was and you get some pretty big canes after they've been there for a while and a lot of milk thistle and things like that that make it difficult to pull out in jewelweed and a whole bunch of other things. So, yeah, so wait until we're ready to plant whatever I'm going to plant. Yeah, so the garlic has always been something interesting and I know I've got a. I'm on the board of governors for Durham local college here and one of the guys on the board his wife, is actually an active gardener and loves growing garden garlic. I'm going to pick up some more garlic with the large cloves from you to give to Peter so his wife can try it because it's really good. But we've talked about this before how many different strains of garlic do you actually have?
Speaker 4:well, I used to have up to seven, but I've brought it down to to four. Um and uh. Two of them, I think are, are quite a bit alike. Um, one of them I know for sure is music, and the other one I, which I got over 30 years ago and that's, that's my original strain that I was growing. I'm pretty sure it's music too. Like you cannot tell the difference, flavor wise. And then I have a hot garlic and I have a purple striped one called kabar. But I brought it down because I found that a lot of the varieties aren't as good at keepers. Like you know, by March comes around, they start to either sprout or or start to decline in their quality, you know, rotting and things like that. So the main reason I brought it down to the three is that they're the best keepers.
Speaker 3:Right. So the garlic scapes. Now, I'm not sure we talked about garlic scapes before. Maybe you can give people a bit of a rundown on what garlic scapes actually are.
Speaker 4:Well, it's a stalk that comes from from the center of the plant, usually shows up somewhere around the second or third week of june and it's considered a false flower because it doesn't actually have male and female parts. It develops some like small little clones of of the the bulb down underneath the ground and they're're called mobiles and they will develop into actual, the exact clone of the parent. But you're two or three years from sizing those up. So before it reaches the stage of where the mobiles are actually developing, a lot of people will cut them off and make a pesto and apparently the garlic scape pesto is one of the best pestos you can make.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know we've cut up a lot of the garlic scapes and frozen them and they've been great to use all year long and they freeze very well, which is very good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, now you were talking about you. You know how do you prepare it or tying it up. What do you do to to make sure that it lasts the year? Because I know sometimes I have one of those little garlic like a clay pot sort of thing and I put it in there and it dries up like crazy and I don't find it very good afterwards. But what do you do to keep it?
Speaker 4:no, I think being properly cured on the stem is important. If you cut them off too soon, you don't get the dryness of the bulb to be stable for the six months or whatever is ahead of it, or eight months, could be even 10 or 12 months, depending on where you're at in the drying cycle. Um, so that's number one. Um you can tell whether the stalks are ready to come off is if you take it and and you bend it. If it snaps like it's dry, then you can cut the stalks off but hung on their stalks in a. You have to have a covered building. Um, if you see garlic sheds, there'll be a covered building, but there'll be vents in between the siding, like little um half inch slots, and that way the wind, the air moves through freely.
Speaker 4:But um, when you, when you're drying garlic, it's the time of the year that we start to get a lot of um overnight dew and that if you're drying outside will just make your your garlic wet again in the morning and then it dries out again.
Speaker 4:So somewhere under cover hanging um, you can use uh like slotted benches. I've seen people make benches out of um like chicken wire and just lay their garlic on the on the benches. It depends on the, the amount you've got to dry, really, where, as long as there's good air movement, and then once they're they're they're dry and you've got the stalks cut off, then I use uh like a mesh bag, similar to what you buy uh onions in if you go to the grocery store, those mesh bags I think they're normally orange and that's a great great um thing. Just that's where I store my garlic, like all my my seed. Now, when we get into September and we start having some cool nights, your garlic needs to be moved inside because the cool temperatures I think it's below 54 degrees Fahrenheit I believe It'll make your garlic sprout. You don't want that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know. My mother's mother was Ukrainian, so she was my baba. She used to braid it and have it in the basement all the time, and when she needed to use garlic, she would just cut the bulb off the braid, or whatever you call it, and just it that way, which I found very interesting when I was a kid yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Um, it depends. Her basement was probably like a drier basement. If you have any dampness in your basement, I don't recommend it as a good place to store your garlic. Like you need a dry area, so I use my broom closet for my own personal use garlic. It's out of direct light and room temperature. Never put garlic in the fridge because it'll sprout for sure.
Speaker 3:So what are the kind of plants? And now that we're starting to harvest stuff like the garlic which you mentioned, and other plants, how do you cure and store a lot of those plants and other plants? What do you? You know?
Speaker 4:how do you cure and store a lot of those plants, Such as I'm not? Following you which plants are we harvesting Well, so I don't know so like carrots Root plants.
Speaker 3:Yeah, carrots and potatoes and parsnips.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so your potatoes when you go out and your plant that's above the ground on your potatoes. Once it dies down, it's time to dig your potatoes, and as I'm digging, I lay them out in the sun so that they dry off a bit. Stored potatoes should never be washed because there's a protective coating on the potatoes, that helps them stay good longer.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, yeah. And so once they're dry and I just I put them in bushel baskets and now those can be stored in the basement because a little bit of humidity doesn't bother your potatoes at all. Carrots, my carrots. I wait until the ground has had like a light frost and then it'll start to crust up and I take bags of leaves and I cover my carrots. So I dig fresh carrots all winter long. They're delicious.
Speaker 5:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, all the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing.
Speaker 7:To scientists.
Speaker 6:To chefs.
Speaker 5:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, here we are in Lindsay with Bill, who's actually? This gentleman has given blood over 230 times 233, yeah, 233, and that's amazing, and you've had some success with Chaga. Tell us what you're dealing with and what you did and how you what you used.
Speaker 8:Well, I had mild high blood. Mild high blood pressure wasn't very really high, but I was on medication for a few years and then I quit drinking coffee and started drinking this tea, the combination tea, the green and the shaga Right, and my medication is gone.
Speaker 3:Your medication's gone, gone and you couldn't give blood during the other times.
Speaker 8:Yeah, I could, oh you could, I could yeah. But a few times the machine kicked me out. Oh yeah, but now it doesn't anymore.
Speaker 3:So you think the green tea and the chaga helped normalize your blood pressures?
Speaker 8:Oh yeah, oh very good, because it wouldn't be just stopping coffee, it would have to be something else.
Speaker 3:And that's the only thing you did different. Yep, something else, and that's the only thing you did different. Yep, well, thank you very much for that. My blood pressure is probably that of a 40-year-old man, and I'm 71. Oh, very good. Well, that's good to hear. Thank you very much for that. No problem, okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness.
Speaker 3:If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode. Okay, so the new potatoes. Once they're dry and you put them in a, what do you put them in?
Speaker 4:Just a bushel basket and they can go right into your basement. I always, at that point, I sort my seed out for next year, so I don't eat my seed and I keep them in two different sections in the basement.
Speaker 3:Right, well, I remember we had friends, charlie and Ursula Robson, very nice people. They had a root cellar that went down. I can't remember how many steps it was, but inside the root cellar was bins filled with sand.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what they would do would put all their root vegetables in the sand and then, throughout the year, they would just go through the sand and pick out their carrots or their potatoes or well, I'm not sure potatoes, beets or whatever they had. And that was the way that they did theirs, which I found very interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I do. I've heard of storing your carrots in sand. You can put them in like a five gallon pail and do layers like a layer of carrots and then a layer of sand. Carrots in sand. And you can put them in like a five-gallon pail and do layers like a layer of carrots and then a layer of sand.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:But I find just out in the field and I kick off the snow, off the big bags of leaves, and then I kick off the bag of leaves and the soil is not frozen underneath and the carrots are delicious because they're kept at such a cool temperature.
Speaker 3:Oh, very good. So, bev, what kind of plants out there that can people use to deter insects or even people like I know? My son Garrett and I we talked about stinging nettle, about planting stinging nettle to keep the break-ins in the area around. So if they had to walk through the stinging nettle they may have second thoughts about coming in again. But what kind of plants are people using to chase insects away?
Speaker 4:Okay, it seems to be popular the citronella and the lavender, and lemon balm is another one that people are looking for.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, but lemon balm I'm not. Do you know much about lemon balm? Because I've got lemon balm growing in my house, but not very large patch.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know it's a member or a relative of the mint family and you can get quite a large patch. I used to have it here, but the section that I had it in the sun the trees got so big the sun wasn't getting like. I used to have a big herb garden and all of the herbs kind of deteriorated because the sun was no longer there after you know, 35 years of being here. So they need full sun and you know like it can be quite a big patch if it's happy where it is. But it's, um again, one of the ones that you can you can use. I I find myself that there's um you actually have to brush up against these plants to get the oils released into the air, or the wind has to move the plants Like I think they might work, but I'm not sure how well they work. I find if essential oil spray that I use to keep the bugs away works much better than having some plants out where you sit Right.
Speaker 3:Well, and I've picked up. I used to have a nice patch of in the front gardens of the house at home, a bunch of black-eyed Susans and I get the rabbits. I haven't seen it, but I'm pretty sure it's the rabbits that actually eat all the flowers off my black-eyed Susans. What can I put on that? Like if I were to spray, oh, cayenne pepper on or something like that, would that kill the plant or the flowers or destroy it or burn them? Oh, I don't think so.
Speaker 4:No, the cayenne pepper is safe to use on your plants. Just remember that you have to reapply after every time it rains. Right, remember that you have to reapply after every time it rains.
Speaker 4:Right, rabbits and squirrels. There's so many of them around now I hardly know what to say. Yeah, and you know, be careful what I say too, because sometimes I get so angry because there's so many of them Out here. Everybody from the you know, neighboring largest of lindsey, which is infested with with um squirrels. They, they bring all their squirrels out here and let them go. So I am inundated with squirrels now. Um, at the time we moved out here there's a little red squirrel that was native and and you don't, you don't even see him anymore. The big ones have bullied him right out of the way.
Speaker 4:But you can use um fencing for the rabbits, you can. You know some chicken wire around your crops, um, you, you can. Also, you used to be able to buy at um kind of the outdoor shop some of the predator uh scents, the oils I guess from might be urine. It could, could be urine. You can use that. But again, it's like the cayenne. You'd have to reapply that after a rain. And well, the squirrels, you know what I mean. They're going to climb all over your fencing. That's not going to keep them out. Heavy netting, I think they chew right through. The squirrels are a big problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very problematic and I know my mother again, she turns 90 this fall and she still goes to the cemetery to take care of, you know, her parents and her brother's gravesites. And one of the things that somebody told her to do was to keep the squirrels out was take those plastic forks and put them upside down and the squirrels won't climb over the plastic forks to get into around the flowers around the gravesite. I don't know if it works or not, but it certainly looks different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when you go by and you see all these forks upside, you know, upright around the flower bed at the cemetery, and I'm sure people are wondering what the heck is that all about?
Speaker 4:oh well, you know what it's interesting? Um, I used to use, um, all the cuttings from my roses, the thorny, thorny things. Um, like, even there's some of the like the thimbleberry brambles.
Speaker 3:They would be a good one to cut and lie down around your plants to to keep those little feet off of them yeah, yeah, that's what you had in the past was uh, I think it may have been rose bushes or something along that, with something with thorns anyways that uh certainly chased a lot of them or kept them away, but it looked terrible. But I don't know if the the upside down forks, if that's better or worse, but it certainly looks interesting and people are probably wondering what the heck is that all about? Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:So, Bev you were talking about. Here we are, we're taping in the middle of August and you went to pick some tomatoes. So what's going on with your tomatoes? I hear there's some issues there. What happened? Tell us about that.
Speaker 4:I hear there's some issues there. What happened or what? Tell us about that? Well, I'm seeing that the late blight is showing up a little bit early and it's due to all the moisture in the air, on the ground, in the soil. It's everywhere in the trees, so it's something that is in the air and we usually get it. It comes from the southwest, southwestern Ontario. It'll hit there first and it just travels right up through the province and it's a fungal disease. And early blight is a little bit different. You can, um, you can, you can, uh, get a fairly good crop and still, you know it's not as deadly as the late blight.
Speaker 4:The late blight is very quickly, deteriorates your plants and, um, it'll show up as a brown spots on your leaves initially and then, once it hits your fruit, these like you get patches and it's almost like overnight. You think it's um, maybe even like a little bit of frost has hit, because that, visually, that's what it looks like. That visually that's what it looks like. Um, the only thing that I know that can keep it at bay is, um, if you use, like a copper sulfate, copper sulfate, which is um, organic growers are are able to use it. So it's, it's a, it's a safe product to use, but you have to use it. Starting at about the end of July, you have to spray your plants about every week to 10 days, and it's more of a preventative thing to avoid the blights, right, and I know people that have used it and they say it helps a bit.
Speaker 4:But also, there's some varieties of tomatoes that are are blight resistant.
Speaker 4:You, when you're shopping for tomato seed, you'll see the um, the ones that have um, but they're usually a hybrid, like all your heirlooms are are susceptible to it, right, it's just one of those things you've got to deal with.
Speaker 4:Like, growing tomatoes is is not easy, it's a, it's a lot of work and and your crop failure can be rather large and your bounty can be very large too. So it's, you know, from one side of the swing to the other and keeping also another one, like, again, preventative with your tomatoes is plant, your, your, your plants in the spring, um, when, when you're setting out your garden, like, leave lots of space between like three feet if you've got the room, I usually go about two and a half feet, but it's never enough because my plants get so big here and then, once the plants get going like take off a lot of the old leaves that are on the bottom foot of the plant, especially with the determinants that grow quite tall. They can be five, six feet tall or more and if you keep that air movement it helps drying down the plants and once and see, the blight always shows up once the heavy dews start, because your plants are wet during the night and that's prime conditions for fungal disease.
Speaker 3:Okay, bev. So what are, like, the top reasons to have a garden?
Speaker 4:Well, I think often it starts with a young family. You know you've had your children and all of a sudden parenting is your priority. So to grow your own food I mean having good quality and absolutely high quality resource for food your vegetables is paramount and when you buy vegetables at a market or a grocery store, they all lose value as each day ticks along. So you know you've got 100% nutritional value when you're taking it out of your own garden. So that's the number one reason for me. Another really good thing it's an excellent exercise because you're doing so many things You're bending, you're squatting, you're digging, so you're using your whole body. So they actually say that gardening is one of the best ways to keep your bones healthy because you're doing a lot of weight-bearing exercise.
Speaker 4:Another thing is you meet a wealth of friends by joining garden clubs, people of all similar interests together. It's amazing what you can learn. You know from the seasoned gardeners, and I guess that's what I am now, but that's the way I started out I joined the local horticulture society and then, when I reached a point where I wasn't learning anything new, that's when I I guess it's almost 25 years ago now that I joined the master gardeners and got my um certificate for that um and and another reason is you're you're able to share with you know, neighbors, friends, family, because you usually have a lot of uh food in the garden that you're not going to be able to concern, consume. So you're able to to share with with neighbors and friends and family, and also down to the preserving, you can can a lot of that stuff and have it all season long through the winter, no preservatives and nice clean food. So those are my reasons for having a garden.
Speaker 3:Those are great reasons to have a garden and all those ones exactly. And I taped a show with Pierre, who lives off basically in an unorganized township in northern Ontario, and his big thing was the number one thing that we can do for ourselves is to start with basically the food that we put into our systems as being very, very key. And I know well Anne and from Waymac Mushroom Farms. Well, Anne actually did some research for the federal government and what they were doing was looking at materials, specific material coming in from a foreign country, and she said that their research indicated that this foreign country was using strychnine as well as and I think the other one was nitrates, if I remember correctly, but I can't be positive. I'm pretty sure it was nitrates and what the strychnine was designed to do was to kill any of the bugs or anything. And then the nitrates kept the food looking new. So when it got to Canada it looked fresh and like it was something new. But what this country did was then they would take those materials and then wash them all off and try to eliminate all the strychnine and the nitrates, and then they would take that slurry back to their country of origin and reuse that material on their next materials coming across to Canada again. But what Anne was telling me was that a lot their next materials coming across to Canada again. But what Anne was telling me was that a lot of these materials.
Speaker 3:There were still traces of strychnine and nitrates in the materials that were being sold in Canada, which was very problematic and a big concern for a lot of the federal government. So I know my wife Diane and family we avoid buying materials from those countries, from that country, particularly just to make sure that none of that stuff gets into our system Because, like Pierre says, the number one thing that we can do for ourselves is simple things like the food we put into our system. It's very important. Well, as always, Bev, thanks very much. We really appreciate Master Gardener Bev coming on and giving us some insight on the things, the do's and the don'ts and how I can see if I can get my garlic to not come out disgusting for next year, and we'll certainly try some more. But you know it's always great dealing with you, Bev, and even the black-eyed Susans can be found under the canopy, and thanks for being there with us.
Speaker 7:How did a small town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 5:Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 6:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that might be for more fishing than it was punching.
Speaker 5:You so confidently? You said hey.
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Speaker 6:What brings people together more than fishing and hunting? How about food? I'm Chef Antonio Muleka and I've spent years catering to the stars. Now, on Outdoor Journal Radio's Eat Wild podcast, Luis Hookset and I are bringing our expertise and Rolodex to our real passion, the outdoors.
Speaker 2:Each week we're bringing you inside the boat tree stand or duck blind and giving you real advice that you can use to make the most out of your fish and game.
Speaker 6:You're going to flip that duck breast over. Once you get a nice hard sear on that breast, you don't want to sear the actual meat. It's not just us chatting here. If you can name a celebrity, we've probably worked with them and I think you might be surprised who likes to hunt and fish. When Kit Harington asks me to prepare him sushi and me with his bass, I couldn't say no. Whatever Taylor Sheridan wanted, I made sure I had it. Burgers, steak, anything off the barbecue that's a true cowboy. All Jeremy Renner wanted to have was lemon ginger shots all day. Find Eating Wild now on Spotify.
Speaker 1:Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts.