S4E150 How To Grow A Garden For The Mediterranean Diet

On this episode we talk about gardening Mediterranean style?  Are there things you MUST grow while on the Mediterranean diet?  Are there things you shouldn't grow?  How is following this diet, impacting how we garden this year?

The answers might surprise you!!!

Enjoy!! 
Brian

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Brian 0:02

I'm your host Brian Wells, and I'm a fourth generation homesteader Since 2008, my family and I have been homesteading here in beautiful upstate New York. In 2019, I launched the Homestead Journey Podcast to help people just like you get started and find success on their journey towards self. Self-reliance and sustainability. This is the Homestead journey and this is season four. Well, welcome everyone to another edition of the Homestead Journey podcast. My name is Brian Wells. I am coming to you from three B Farm and Homestead here in beautiful upstate New York. This is season four. This is actually episode number 150. Yeah, let's get some applause going there. Yeah. Episode 150 of the Homestead Journey Podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone. Now, we certainly have done more than 150 episodes back when we were doing the. Uh, five minute Fridays. Uh, that certainly is not in the, uh, totals as far as 150 episodes, but that's neither here nor there. That's really just a milestone for me. It is hard for me to believe that I have done that many episodes and I still haven't run out of things to say. Now, you may be hoping that I will run out of things to say, but. Uh, if you are a longtime listener and you keep coming back for more. Well, thank you very, very much. I appreciate it. And if you're brand new to the podcast, well welcome. I am so glad that you found it, and I do hope that you will find the podcast helpful on your journey towards self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and sustainability. All of that said, folks, it has been a busy week here on the homestead. It's that time of year when things are starting to warm up and we're starting to be able to get outside and do all of the things. And so this week, well, we did a lot of things and so before we jump into the main topic of today, which is going to be talking about how to plant. A garden for the Mediterranean diet. Let's jump right into this week's homestead happenings, and I'll bring you up to speed with what we've been doing here on three B Farm and Homestead. Well, like I said, it has been a busy, busy week here on the homestead. Yesterday here in beautiful upstate New York, it was up, I think it was 70 some odd degrees. Now, today it was back in the 40 degree range, which is more in tune with what we normally have this time of year. But yesterday, boy, it just. Nice. And so I was able to get out and get some things done. Actually spent some time getting my grapes and my currents pruned a little late to the game on that. I really should have done that earlier in March. I do hope that I didn't wait too long and I haven't caused too much stress on the plants, but it is what it is. I did go ahead and get them pruned, I'm actually going to try to follow through this year on putting those cuttings into water and getting them to root, and then that way I will have either more great plants and current plants to plant here on the homestead. Or I may have an income stream, for the homestead. Taking something that would generally be a waste product that we would get rid of, that we would either throw in the compost pile or just throw into the woods and hopefully I'm gonna be able to turn that into a resource. I tried doing that last year and things, well, they started out well, but I just kind of got sidetracked and I never really followed through. And so hopefully this year I'll follow through on it and I'll be able to keep you posted on how that project. Works out this week, the seed orders started arriving, and that's so exciting. Now, of course, again, I'm a bit late to the game on this. I think according to Farmers Almanac, I should have been starting my peppers and my tomatoes about two weeks ago. And there were probably a few other things. I think some of the herbs I should have been starting a couple of weeks ago. But it is what it is. Uh, you can't start 'em if you don't have 'em. And uh, certainly I was waiting to get the seed starting system all wrapped up and that is complete and the lights are on. I've been tracking the temperature with a, I have a, um, I have a thermometer and it's a humidity reader. I can't remember all of the things that it does. It's, I, I believe, by a company called Govie, and I, I think I ordered it off of Amazon. I, I don't even remember how much it costs. I ordered it several years ago, but what that does is actually keeps track of. Humidity and the temperature in the area over time, and then you just kind of get near it with your phone. It connects via Bluetooth and it downloads all that information. And the thing that's really, really exciting to me is that it's been maintaining a temperature in that seed starting system of about 70 degrees pretty consistently. And that's with no supplemental heat whatsoever. That's just because of the lights that I have in there, which I have, I think maybe three fluorescent lights. The rest are l e d lights, but those are generating enough heat. So that that room is staying pretty consistently around 70 degrees, which is almost optimal for most vegetables to germinate. So I'm very, very excited about that. I probably will still go ahead and put a few heat mats under things like peppers, which, you know, sometimes need a little bit of extra help. But, uh, other than that, you know, I'm, I'm really, really. To see how things go and right now I am very happy with, with where we're at with that system. But since the seeds were here and the seeds starting system was set up this afternoon, my dad came by and he and I got some seeds in the dirt and that is so exciting. Now, I keep track of everything that we planted, but I have not gone through and, uh, added it all up. We did, I think it was eight or nine trays of different things using wind strip trays. I also am trying out some, they're not the, these red solo cups, the large red solo cups. They're kind of the smaller red solo cups. I am starting some things in those, and we'll see how that works out. I love the winds strip trays because they're so easy to fill with the potting soil mix they're just, they're really easy to use. But I also don't have enough of the larger trays, and so that leaves me starting a lot of things like peppers in trays that aren't necessarily optimized for them. Um, and I, I can't remember exactly what the cell counts are. There's one that I think has 72 and one that has 128, and then there's one that maybe has 50. And the, and the one that has 50 is optimized for things like tomatoes and peppers. But because I only have two of those trays, I use those for my tomatoes. And then the 72 cell trays, which really aren't optimized for peppers and tomatoes, uh, I use to get my pepper started. And so technically I probably should pot those on, but I don't think I'm going to But anyhow, was very, very exciting to get all of that done and into the seed starting system. Now, I'll do another round of starting some things here in a couple of weeks. There's a few things that I want to get a jumpstart on. Things like some melons and some squash and, and a few things like that. A few more herbs, some flowers that I want to, uh, get started indoors. The bulk of it. I, I got started today and that was one of the nice things about waiting is that, uh, usually I would've started some peppers and tomatoes a couple of weeks ago, and then I would've started some herbs and I don't, maybe some brass I think would be around this time and now I just, you know, kind of got it. All started at one whack. And so that was really nice. It's kind of one mess, clean it up and you're kind of done now, like I said, in a couple of weeks we'll start a few other things, but you know, it, it just feels great to have those seeds in the dirt and things underway. Now, one of the funny things, uh, that did happen is I went to start planning some herbs this afternoon and I realized I made a bit of a mistake. And that mistake is that I ordered 20 grams. Of Greek oregano. Now, if you're listening to this audio only, you're not going to see the size of the package, but the size of the package is about postage card size, and it is. Filled with many, many, many little itty bitty, almost, it's almost like a dust. It, it, it's, these seeds are so teeny tiny. I probably have enough a Greek oregano seed for the entire state of New York. I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous. Another reason why this is ridiculous is because this is a perennial. So it's not like if I do this right, I'm gonna have to keep planting this over and over and over again. It should keep coming back if I don't kill it, right? And so I have 20 grams of Greek oregano seeds and folks I planted four squares, uh, uh, four cells, we'll call it, of Greek oregano. And in order to do that, I needed to use like a, a, a little bit of, like a pinch of, of this, and it kind of just dusted on there. It, I mean, th this is just absolutely ridiculous. I have, I have no idea what I was thinking and why I would've ordered 20 grams of Greek oregano, but I have, I have Greek oreg. Forever. Like, yeah, this is, uh, wow. So, yeah. Um, anyhow, I, I just, I, I looked at that, I kept shaking my head and, uh, I just couldn't stop laughing. Now, some of the things that we got done this week here on the homestead, I have fallen behind in getting wood chips into my pigpens this year, and I've felt really, really bad about it. It's just, in part it's been, there's been some infrastructure issues. In part it's been because of winter and snow and not being able to get down to the town barn where the wood chips are, but my. Pig pens have been just an absolute mucky, muddy mess. And I, I don't like it, but it's just, it is what it is. But finally this week I was able to get down, get some wood chips, and started addressing some of those issues. And I just feel so much better about things around here. Now as a result, uh, a buddy of mine, Sam, came over this week and he helped me move some and then I will, Went and got some tractor bucket loads full, uh, and moved it up here, kind of one bucket load at a time, which is not really the way I like to do it, because you're burning a lot of diesel to do that. But right now the farm truck's having some issues, so it's over at a buddy's house getting looked at. Not sure what I did to it, but. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. And so I was able to get those pig pens addressed. But the, the lower pig pens where my young grow outs were located at, it's very difficult for me to get down there this time of year because it's just past my leech field. And I have to be very, very careful where I drive with my tractor cuz I don't wanna mess up my leach field and. The ground being soft right now, early spring, having had some rain is just not conducive for me to be able to get down there with wood chips. So what I did is I, I subdivided one of the pens and hit it with wood chips yesterday. And then today, uh, while my dad was here, we went ahead and moved those piglets up over the. Now, initially my plan was just to root force it. I was going to get them some feed and kind of sneak up behind them, grab 'em, and then, carry them, lug them up over the hill, kicking and screaming. Literally kicking and screaming, and then put them in the other pen. Now there's a couple of them that were of the size where I could do that. I, I still could pick them up, but there are a bunch of them that are probably close to a hundred pounds and. A hundred pounds kicking and screaming with mucky, muddy feet. It's just not something that I was looking forward to, but I was just gonna do you, you know, you just do what you gotta do. These pigs are not one ones that have gotten out yet, so I've not had the opportunity to really see if they are bucket trained. And so I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to roll the dice on that, but my dad said, Hey, come on. You have those rubber feed pans. I'll just go ahead. I'll hook onto it with your handy dandy little grabber stick and I'll just pull that and see if they'll follow it. And don't you know. They followed him right up over the hill and boop, right on into the pen. So dad, this is for you. Some applause. Woo. Yes. Uh, no. It worked out very, very well. And if you wanna see that, uh, and you don't follow us on social media, head on over to our Facebook page. I have uploaded a video of those pigs just following my dad, so I think we're going to call him now. The. Pig Piper or the. The pied Pigger. I, I, I don't know. You helped me out, but, uh, it certainly worked very, very well and I'm very happy that those pigs are where they're supposed to be right now. The last thing I wanted to share with you is that things are really coming together well for the home setting festival that will be taking place here in beautiful upstate New York, the 19th, 20th, and 21st of May. We have been nailing down speakers. In fact, we nailed down, I think our last speaker this week We had really struggled to find somebody local to speak about gardening. We had several people that were interested, very, very capable of doing it, but for one reason or another, just their schedules didn't match up. And I was able to find somebody this week who is a master gardener. She's a, a friend of mine and it is just why I didn't think of her. I don't know. Uh, but she is somebody who has run actually a cut flower business for over 20 some odd years. Um, but like I said, she's a master gardener and so I am so excited to have her speak on the topic of gardening at the home setting festival. But folks, we have a really great lineup of, of speakers. And we've got sponsors that are coming on board, which is just so great to see. And so if, if you're in the area or you can make it to the area the 19th, 20th, and 21st of May, it's gonna be a great time. The first, hopefully annual Southern Adirondack home. Steading Festival. So if you are interested at all in that, you wanna check it out, head on over to the homestead journey.net/festival. You'll find some more information there, and you'll also find a link to the website where you can download the schedule. You can see all of the speakers that we're going to have, the workshops that are going to be available, and you'll also be able to buy tickets. So check it out, but I am so excited. The first annual Southern Adirondack Home Setting Festival. It's gonna be a great time, so head on over to the homestead journey.net/festival to check that out. Well, that's it for this week's Homestead happenings, a lot of stuff going on here on three B Farm and Homestead. I'm so excited about springtime. I so love this time of year. I hope things are well wherever you are at. All right, let's jump on over to this week's charting the course. Jenna, a member of the supporting listeners program asked me this a few days ago. Are you planting anything new this year? To go along with the diet change. Well, Jenna, I'm so glad you asked. That is a wonderful question, and that is going to be the topic for this week's episode. When I decided to do the series about the Mediterranean diet, one of the first things that came to my mind was that I needed to do an episode on gardening for the Mediterranean diet, and I started doing a little bit of research into what that would entail. Now, I think when I first started looking it up, I was asking the wrong question because I started googling. How to plant a Mediterranean garden. Well, that's not what I'm trying to do because a Mediterranean garden is gonna have all of like these Mediterranean flowers and plants, you know, the Flo and fauna of the Mediterranean. No disrespect to any of that, but that's not what I'm looking to do. And in fact, as I started looking at that, I'm like, oh my goodness, there really isn't much here that I can grow here in beautiful upstate New York. And so then I started asking the right question, or I think it was the right question, and that was, how do I grow a garden for the Mediterranean diet? Now, I still got things like olives and artichokes and dates and figs, and like I mentioned, uh, I think it was on last week's episode. I, I, I really got focused on some of that stuff and I got focused on what I couldn't grow, what I, I couldn't. But then as I started looking at the list, I started realizing that most of the stuff that it suggests that I can grow here in beautiful upstate New York. I already grow, I'm already growing a, a garden that is compliant with the Mediterranean diet. I mean, who knew? This was the list. Cucumbers, tomatoes, paste, slicers and cherry tomatoes, beans, peppers, winter squash, radius, radishes, beets, turnips, carrots, onions, garlic and shallots, asparagus and eggplant, lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale, and chard, melons, okra, zucchini, summer squash, peas. I grow all. Of that. In fact, on the list of things that can be grown in beautiful upstate New York that was recommended for the Mediterranean diet on that list, there were three things that I don't grow yet. Rido, which it's kind of looks like a lettuce, but it's really leaf chicory. It's, it's a bitter green and it's used commonly in the Italian. Celery and broccoli, Rob. Now, broccoli Rob is not the same as broccoli. It's more closely related to the turnip, I believe. Buto and I, I, I hope I'm. Saying that right. Rido and broccoli. Rob, were already on my kind of my list of things that I might want to try out in the future, and celery is something that I've never really had much interest in trying to grow, in part because I think my dad's tried growing it before and I don't remember having much success with it. But those were the three things that I saw on the list. That I don't grow and I was already considering growing two of them anyhow. I already have a garden that is in tune with a Mediterranean diet. Yay me. Yay me. When I saw that, and again, going back to how I had kind of ended up in a bit of a funk because I was so focused on all of the things that I couldn't grow, which wasn't that many things to begin with, I thought, man, Brian, how foolish you are. you're already doing the things now. I I, I do think where I've landed with this whole Mediterranean diet and this whole garden for a Mediterranean diet thing is that I don't really need to get caught up in growing exotic vegetables just because of the diet. In fact, like I said, there really aren't too many exotic vegetables that I can grow, that I, I'm not already growing anyhow. But instead, I just need to keep following my own advice. And what is that when it comes to gardening? What do I say? Grow what you like to eat. That's it. Grow what you like to eat and, and I just need to take that advice. I just need to continue doing what I've been doing and that is tweaking every year what I grow in my garden based on what we like to eat now. There are a few things that I didn't have on this list that I talked about on last week's episode, such as grains, and the reason why I'm not covering those things is because I, I, I'm just not sure on a small scale the amount of land that I have to work with, that I can grow enough grains to really where it makes sense to use the amount of space that I have available for those purposes. That's part of the reason why I don't grow corn is because corn takes up so much space and for the amount of space that it takes and what it produces. I would rather buy corn from somebody else and preserve it. And so that's what I choose to do. And again, going back to be getting all worried about, you know, that I couldn't produce olive oil. I don't worry about golden buying. Aye. Aye. Aye. Ah. How dumb am I? But anyhow, we're not gonna talk about that, right? But back to the grains. One of the things that I am excited about the upcoming Homesteading Festival is that we are going to have somebody who is going to be talking about growing grains on a small scale, and I'm very excited to hear what he has to say. That's one of the sessions that I'm really, really excited. Not that I'm not excited about all of the sessions, but that's one that I'm really excited to go to because I want to hear what he has to say because it really does impact what we're doing here on three B Farm and Homestead. Who knows, maybe next year I will be growing grains on a small scale. But leaving that aside, I I, I'm just gonna continue doing what I've been doing and that is tweaking every year and trying to be very intentional about what we grow and not growing what I think we should eat. But instead, I'm going to focus more. Growing the things that I know we do like to eat. You know, I think the key is that we just eat more vegetables than we've eaten in the past. As I mentioned, with regards to the plate diagram for the Mediterranean diet, it's one half veg, one quarter grain or pasta, and one quarter lean protein. That's what my plate should look. That's what I should be aiming for. Now, we may prepare the vegetables a bit differently than we have in the past. For example, I love to steam green beans and then smother them in butter, but I also know that that's probably not. The most Mediterranean diet compliant way to eat green beans. So maybe what we'll do instead is we'll steam those green beans, we'll put some herbs in there toss 'em with a little bit of olive oil, and we'll eat 'em that way, and I'm sure they're going to be just as delicious and maybe even more so. and we'll eat 'em that way, But certainly we're going to be preparing vegetables a little bit differently, and certainly eating a lot more of them. Another thing that I want to change is to eat more straight from the garden. So a lot of times what we do is we are really great about preserving the harvest. So we'll freeze beans, will canned beans, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But then you know, you're kind of in a hurry and so it's kind of a pain in the butt to go up and pick the beans in the garden and bring them down and clean them and steam 'em that night. And so we'll just open up a, jar of green beans, or we'll grab some green beans outta the freezer just because it's more convenient. Well, I really want to do a better job of eating straight from the garden instead of kind of passing it through that preservation phase. Now, that's not to say that we're not going to continue to preserve. The harvest because we will continue to do that. Um, certainly living in, in beautiful upstate New York, if I wanna have beans in December, I'm gonna have to preserve 'em somehow. So we, we gotta keep doing that. But I do hope to change our approach so that we're eating straight from the garden instead of. Intermediate step of preserving them and then eating them. But one of the biggest changes that we are going to be making this year really is I want to focus more on herbs now. We've grown herbs in the past. I've grown Basil, I've, I've grown, I think, just about all of the herbs. But what I've not been as intentional. Using and preserving those herbs. They've kind of played a second fiddle we'll say to the rest of the vegetables, and so it's been a matter of if I'm, you know, pressed for time and I need to deal with the bean harvest, well, too bad parsley, you know, you're on your own and I want to be more intentional with regards to the herbs. And so one of the things that I'm going to do is I'm going to take the green stock plant that I, I bought last year. It's a vertical planner. I'm going to use that as an herb garden. I'm gonna relocate it to our front porch so it's more convenient. It's where I will pass it more than where it's currently located at. And then that way I will be able to step right out from the kitchen and grab some herbs and we'll be able to use those right. Our cooking. And so definitely my goal is to be more intentional about growing, using, and preserving those herbs. The other big change I plan on making is introducing some hydroponics so that we can have fresh lettuce in the middle of the winter, that we can have arugula in the dead of winter Herb. That we might otherwise not be able to have fresh unless we go to the store and buy them. I'm hoping to do some of those hydroponically, so that's just gonna be something else that we'll talk about later on in the season. But it's going to be a matter of slightly tweaking the way that we grow things. So for us, the diet really isn't resulting in huge changes to what we're going to grow. We've been growing all of the things, rather for us, I think the impact is going to be on how much we grow, when and how we grow it and how we eat it. Now, if you are brand new to this podcast and maybe you've arrived here looking for guidance on how to plant a garden for the Mediterranean diet. Well, let me give you this advice. Plant what you like to eat. That's really, that's really it, folks. I, I thought that I would have so much more in depth information and specific plants that you should plant, but really where I've landed on this is just grow vegetables and eat. I mean, that's really it. Now, if you are going to be strictly following Mediterranean diet recipes, you may want to consider growing these staple things, tomatoes, and that would include slicers and plum, tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, onions, and garlic. And if you have room, I would also highly recommend that you grow lettuce, spinach, arugula, something like that. Basil time, rosemary, sage, oregano, zucchini, and eggplant. Those really are all staples of Mediterranean diet recipes. And so if you have room for all of those things, certainly I would recommend that you grow them. But if you have room for just a handful of them, certainly tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, garlic, and probably basil would be high up on that list as well. Folks, I, I really don't wanna overcomplicate it. And I probably could have said, and maybe I should have said, if you want to plant a. For the Mediterranean diet, grow the vegetables you like to eat. That's really the long and the short of it. If you like to eat it, you're probably going to eat it. It's certainly gonna taste much better than anything that you're gonna buy at the store of the farmer's market, and it's just good for you. So have that half a plate of edge, however you do it. Just don't fry it, don't soak it in. You know, those kinds of things that maybe sometimes we have a tendency to do. Don't take the vegetables and turn 'em into bad stuff, but man, when they're fresh out of the garden, sometimes eating 'em raw. I mean, raw peas, raw beans. I mean, I love them. So who knows? Maybe we'll do a little bit more of that this year as well. I don't know. All I know is I way over complicated this folks. I really, really did, and I feel like a fool. But learn from my mistakes. All right, that's it for this episode, folks. If you have any questions, reach out to me, brian@thehomesteadjourney.net is my email address. I'd love to hear from you. You can also find me on all of the socials, and until next time, everybody, keep up the good work.