Salty & Spice talk about food.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
Salty & Spice talk about food.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
spk_0: 0:02
Good morning, everybody, or good afternoon or good evening or whatever it is, wherever you are. Good morning, everybody. I am a salty I'm space and I'm looking around and I'm seeing something. It's spring and the grass is becoming green and the cows of the horses were driving to the country. The cows and the horses have their heads firmly clamped to the ground. This time of year, they're finally getting that fresh food. There's a rate here, their cows or we're just driving past some calves, actually, and this year's calves like steers. So they're gonna have a short career in this world.
spk_1: 0:47
Beef is not a career.
spk_0: 0:48
Beef is being a steer is not a career E. And then there's sheep. We have sheep around. We have goats. Well, here's the thing. A lot of preppers used a derogatory term called She people and we all. We all are it. It's, you know, referring to people who in a in a bad way, people who are not preppers, people who just believe everything and think everything's always gonna be okay. And even though most of the world may be considered by rather, uh, jaded preppers, she people there is one true fact. Sheep can live just fine on grass eating grass, just like all the other terrible We can't we can't eat grass and survive on it. It's That's a truth in life. I think my, uh, biological expert wife will agree with me. Humans just can't survive on graph here.
spk_1: 2:02
She was restraining herself from launching into the biological explanation of why, But it's true. We can't
spk_0: 2:09
we get This is
spk_1: 2:10
OK, but not believes
spk_0: 2:12
this is what our mystery up. So she does not know what the topic is. I'm just going to spring it on her and have her go because this is in her wheel. Okay, So if we have a house and if all that we have in this inner yard is grass, which we can't eat, it's not Our yard is not going to help us. Oh, very weird. Yeah, I think you know, we just passed around. I'm sorry. We just passed a raccoon that looks like it's damaged and a vulture is waiting. The new That's a nasty scene maker. Nature
spk_1: 3:01
Red in tooth and claw. This
spk_0: 3:03
morning's in Klaus morning. That Riku the damage racoon is fighting off the buzzard
spk_1: 3:10
for a while for a while.
spk_0: 3:13
For a while,
spk_1: 3:13
less car comes and hits the buzzard, which could happen
spk_0: 3:15
or the raccoon or both. Almost makes me think about stopping and going back and No, no, no. Let it play.
spk_1: 3:26
We're not charging firearms on roadways. And that's about all we could do about it.
spk_0: 3:30
Yeah, I got a story about that. But this is good. That would get us off track. Remind me to tell that story sometime. Okay. Any who? Do not shoot. Bottom line. Don't shoot Guns on the on the highway. Don't do it Never ends. Well, um, we can't eat our yard. Or can we
spk_1: 3:53
can eat our yard. We
spk_0: 3:54
can eat our yard or much of our yard. And the stuff we can't eat is the stuff that is slowly getting covered by the stuff. So
spk_1: 4:10
it's a replacement project meant to keep the whole thing looking reasonably good. In the meantime, we're gonna keeping shade and things were going to
spk_0: 4:19
talk about. And we've talked about this many times, but this is part of what we do. We're all about urban homesteading, and we understand you have limitations in some cases you have h essays that you've got Gator compelling you to follow their rules. But we can't. You could work around this. What brought this to mind today was she was talking about some some invasive plans that are planted from ornamentals. Whereas we have a beautiful little pear tree that's just getting ready to flower, and it's gonna look gorgeous. It did last year, and yet we're gonna get pairs off of it. We're gonna eat those edible pears. So why don't you talk a little bit about the difference between using edible plants as ornamentals vs ornamentals? Like, uh, the one you were talking about today? The worst, the just ornamental. It's invasive as well. It tells every what invasive means.
spk_1: 5:35
Invasive means. It's a plant that's not native to the area, so it's not controlled by the predators in the area. And when it gets established in the while, that tends to take over large tracts of native vegetation. It's not as useful to the wildlife. It's not used full of people. It's only useful to itself in making more Bradford pears
spk_0: 5:57
the Brad repair. It's what she's talking about. There are some invasive plants that are useful, like our old enemy. Autumn. All it. It's edible. You, you. If you have a ton of Autumn Allah, it's a very useful plan and hope it's not a problem. People planted it because they can use the fruit of the plant.
spk_1: 6:14
Frankly, though, you got to be fairly hard up to eat a lot of autumn Allah because it takes a lot of work to get food out of it. True, and it spreads way faster than that.
spk_0: 6:23
I'm not saying Please don't please those
spk_1: 6:26
don't They're much better choices,
spk_0: 6:28
But I am saying at least you can eat like these. These pairs, she's talking about that and grow pears.
spk_1: 6:34
Yeah, they technically make pairs, but there don't have an edible fruit people. And they're not even particularly attractive the wildlife. So they don't help sustain your deer population, for example.
spk_0: 6:46
They're only advantage, and the trees were talking about If you live anywhere in the Midwest, you've seen him. A lot of people are the ones that come out early spring with the beautiful white flowers, and they're gorgeous tree that we're driving past one right now.
spk_1: 7:01
The lovely tree.
spk_0: 7:02
It's a gorgeous tree.
spk_1: 7:04
Then they provide good shade. There are reasons people, planet, they provide shade. They're really pretty. In the spring, they are hardy and take very little maintenance. You know the
spk_0: 7:13
reason they're very They're very drought resistant. Yeah, obviously they talk if they weren't because we've had some serious droughts that they lived through. So I don't know if the advertising was drought resistance, but I mean,
spk_1: 7:26
they are.
spk_0: 7:27
They are. There's another one there, like a weed. They're literally like a weed. Think of think of invasive even though some weeds or not invasive, some
spk_1: 7:38
weeds aren't but many are
spk_0: 7:40
dead. Many are so good at it.
spk_1: 7:44
The main trade off you make is that the ones that are usually sold his ornamentals are like the bread for pair. They're pretty. They have some good attributes, their low care. But they provide no food, and there don't provide anything else of particular use. Either the trade off would be something like a fruiting pear tree. It could be Certainly be Justus pretty, and it does take more care. You got to put him a little bit if you want him to look nice and once or twice in the fall, you gotta toss and falls into your compost bin. So that's the downside. That's the trade off you're making. The benefit you get from it is it produces. Ah, hold much food for free after you've gotta planted
spk_0: 8:35
and you'll be surprised how, how few years it takes work to start bearing. We've got this one little apple tree. This. It's actually a replacement for one that died. So it's only what, three years old this year this is ser cheating.
spk_1: 8:51
We bought it a year old, so it's It's not yeah, the right about three years
spk_0: 8:56
ago, about three years old, and it's just going to go nuts this year. Yeah,
spk_1: 9:01
it's got blossom buds all over it. They haven't quite sprouted yet. Know last year I got Maur more than a dozen apples at the end of the season from it from a two year old tree.
spk_0: 9:10
Now, with our trees that we plan, we don't even pretend we're not trying to hide ornamentals in our yard. We don't care s So what we're doing is planting the best trees for fruit production and hardiness and overall good goodness for us. So we're planning dwarf trees, dwarfs and seven dwarfs our goals are to get really good tasting apples are goals, get really good tasting Pierce. Our goals are to make sure that when we have trees that require cross pollinated politization, that we have the right combinations. So we just put in 1/3 apple tree because it's a great pollinator for the others.
spk_1: 10:04
Yeah, but there's plenty of things you can do to make it a more h o a suitable yard and still be edible.
spk_0: 10:15
I've seen a lot of I enjoy going to places like like one place that I Really If you're in Iowa, okay and you're in Des Moines area, go upto aims goto, Iowa State University. They have their guard and they have several sections of their garden that are just absolutely gorgeous, and everything in it is edible. They're edible plant and the Iowa State Garden flat out. If you're if you're, ah, person who just loves beautiful things. You love plants. You love gardens. It's a full blown. Uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Are our
spk_1: 11:01
boats that
spk_0: 11:02
arboretum herbarium Arboria? It's a full blown our boredom. They haven't indoors exhibit. So even if you go in the winter, you can see it. But the outdoor exhibit is is great. And they got a really big girl. Chris is a big garden. So they need a big gnome. Yeah, they got a really, really big garden that I was your enormous garden. No. Yeah. So there's that and they have actually have artwork in the garden. It's gorgeous. Have you ever been to a big city botanical garden before? Iowa State rivals most of them that I've seen not all but most s. So I highly recommend it, and they have several. Iowa State is an agricultural university, is, you know, the whole
spk_1: 11:52
primary area of study,
spk_0: 11:54
and they have one of the really biggest agricultural programs around. So it's a good place to go to sea how to use edibles in an ornamental way. And there's books about this, too.
spk_1: 12:12
And, you know, if you don't live anywhere near Iowa, they have a web page.
spk_0: 12:16
Whoa. That's
spk_1: 12:18
how we found him in the first place. We were just looking for something to do when we were on a wonder.
spk_0: 12:22
If we have an accompanying story for this, I'm gonna have to take up. But we have a picture of the big garden. I'll try. I'll try and dig better. Yeah, I'm gonna give you
spk_1: 12:30
some ideas of species. But there are things like one of the problems some people have with fir trees is the first drop. And the fruit drop can attract bees and be unsightly. And stuff like that I hear attract bees. And I'm like, Hey, you want a lot of bees around? These are pollinators were
spk_0: 12:48
going todo friend. Bees are good for us. These are?
spk_1: 12:52
Yes. Now, If I had a kid who was a be allergic, I wouldn't be as excited about attracting bunch bees to the yard. That's true. So some species drop a lot more fruit than others. Things like apples. Very little fruit drop with the apples in my so far limited experience. But we've had very little fruit drop with him of Cherries. Have Maur pairs have
spk_0: 13:14
more. Yeah, We're gonna have to do something on our peach tree this year. We're just gonna have to net it, I think to keep the damn.
spk_1: 13:21
Yeah, We didn't have a fruit drop. We had
spk_0: 13:24
deep dark. That's a problem. Squirrels were a problem. I've got the air gun out. I may have to. I'm gonna Yeah, squirrels air. They're cute, but they're there. Rats, rats, squirrels and bunnies. Bunnies. You can handle bunnies. They're not that big of a deal.
spk_1: 13:45
Money spends easier than squirrels.
spk_0: 13:47
Unfortunately, bunny fencing takes a lot of work. She just did our money. Which reminds me this is a true story. If you want to save your family's life by a couple of rolls of chicken wire and set up in your stores, Why? Because if you have to guard if you have to guard it, you you're not gonna You're not gonna be able to survive Bunny coming in and eating your garden one night. That can kill your family. And I'm not exaggerating. Bunnies could destroy your garden in tonight. You must keep money out.
spk_1: 14:33
But if you want it to be a pretty yard if you ah, lot of the decorative fences don't keep out rabbits very effectively. However, you put a little wire fence in and you put the decorative fence closer to the outside of the bed, just outside it. And that does it nicely
spk_0: 14:52
right now. I was talking about just for anybody. He proceed. Bank, you need to keep chicken wire to go with it. Yeah. If you're a normal Gardner, you're gonna have to cap money. £2.
spk_1: 15:02
I have little confidence in the seed banks with no prior preparation of the
spk_0: 15:06
ground. We have podcasts stories on that before,
spk_1: 15:10
so I'm not gonna go down that road. But if you want to keep critters out and still have it looked nice, that's Ah, nice trick to use is to have your decorative fencing, but just have a little ah, chicken wire liner on the inside of it that extends a little bit below it. Often you have the, ah, little under fencing curve out a little bit. So if the bunnies try and dig under, they find the fence and they're not clever enough to back up a foot. Try again. So,
spk_0: 15:39
did you get like, a black chicken wire painted black in? You put it behind a white decorative thing in your nose there.
spk_1: 15:49
Yeah, even the normal chicken wire behind a white decorative picket you don't see or the woven vine fences that got popular a year or two ago. There's a lot of those around town Now those look really good and they're easy, very easy to put an unobtrusive body block behind of the berry bushes we have the berry bushes. Do not have a lot of problem with fruit fruit drop. They don't make a big mess if you keep them. You do have to keep them corralled. You keep them pruned. But if you do that, you could make a nice, pretty little hedge with them. They got their full of white flowers in the right season, and then they're full of fruit and they'll attract some birds. But I've never found those birds to be a problem. They don't run around pooping on the neighbor's cars and causing stains and things like that as think, mulberries. You're bad for that, but they're actually not as bad for that. It's in my experience. From what I've seen around up I've been, I have a whole fence line that's various kinds of berry bushes and grapes. It used to be just a no old, cruddy falling down fence between me and our neighbor, and I hit it by putting Berries over and letting the Berries climb the old nasty fence.
spk_0: 17:08
And it's much more Impenetrable now that it would have been boosted old defense. Yeah. Now,
spk_1: 17:14
in a heck of a lot less work than replacing the fence.
spk_0: 17:17
And this Paris put a
spk_1: 17:19
spirit sent to.
spk_0: 17:21
She had her first asparagus last night.
spk_1: 17:23
Yeah, I love asparagus and its perennial crop. So I made a bed last year, planted it. Didn't get a thing out of it, of course, because you have to let establish here. But I had my first asparagus meal last night, and it was pretty awesome.
spk_0: 17:35
Yeah, she was. I'm not in the various. So all for her. Yeah, she's good with that.
spk_1: 17:41
So the berry bushes, they're good. There's these things in our area called June Berries. One of my horticultural friends. Actually, my sister hooked me up with her because I'm not a master gardener and she is and, ah, my sister's friends with both of us hook you both up. You can learn. It'll be great. It's been great. Just this horticulturist is cool person, and she grows a enormous decorative garden, and she was showing off some pictures of her lovely June Berries. And I'm like, Oh, wow, you got June Berries. How are the Berries from those minor? Just starting to get big enough to start producing because I had. I didn't figure out for the first couple years that I had to keep the rabbits off those two, and she's like, Oh, yeah, the Berries are edible. I tried some last year when they're a bunch of them, and they were good, but it was completely an afterthought with her. She was putting him in because they're beautiful and they didn't make a mess, and they fit nicely in her garden. And that's why she put him in and loved him. I put him in because Joon Berries there's not a whole lot of thing that's bearing already in June, and I thought it would be a nice try. An time, the garden. So we have food from early spring all the way till last frost, or sometimes a little bit beyond theirs, grazing from the art available. They also do things like when the old shade tree yeah, I forget what species it was. Maybe an Elmer so common sort of big old shade tree we had in the yard died of old age about five years ago. When I replaced it, I replaced it with a butternut, which will also be a similar large, stately, beautiful shade tree of a sort that fits well in this area. But it also makes well butter nuts, which I'm I have never had a butternut tree before, but I have recommendations from people who know that they're really nice eating. So you can replace the big shade trees with big shade trees that drop nuts.
spk_0: 19:58
No, you the country's air big.
spk_1: 20:01
Yeah, I've got some pecan trees planted that they are slow growers. I've got an almond tree planted, but it's a fairly slow grower. The plan is I'm planting these little ones. So I've got some more really big old shade trees in the back of the yard. They're getting some age on them. They're gonna die alive years. So I'm developing Maur. So I always have this nice, beautiful shade. But next generation of nice, beautiful shade is not bearing.
spk_0: 20:26
That's right. No, that's some of the things that you could do in your in your guard. But what happens if you live in a full on Stalinist type Hscei that we'll just not allow you to do anything? What happens if you live in an apartment? How are you going to do this? Well, there's a I got an option for you and it will really help you if Tian walkie the end of the world as we know it has. It won't really help you that, but in a normal quote, unquote normal or more common disaster, Or even more importantly, at this point in time to gain the skills you will need to farm in an emergency, you need to be doing it Now. That option is often available in community gardens. Now we've seen community gardens, and they're in all kinds of ways, shapes and forms. There are cities and towns that have their own community gardens. There are privately sorry, I'm passing a tractor. Their troubles. There are private community gardens. There are people who just opened up their yard for community gardening. There are all kinds of options.
spk_1: 22:08
A lot of times, universities have them ever says one.
spk_0: 22:12
Yes, and basically you can either rent or by or borrow space in that garden to grow your plants. It learn how to garden. The really good thing about this is there are some very good community gardeners, people who do this garden and their home garden. People who are knowledgeable, who know the tricks of gardening, and they're right there working next to you. You can ask them for help. You can get you could question them. You can actually help them a put their stuff in and doing that learn.
spk_1: 22:55
They love to talk about that stuff, too. It's a nice social thing. I've never used a community garden because we've always had our own. But my certainly liked the idea, and I know you would learn a lot from
spk_0: 23:08
I don't really have the money to do it. But I would love to buy a lot in the town we live in and put together a community garden. I'd love to do it. It's a little difficult, not because the lots are expensive. We live in a little town in the middle of nowhere, the lots of dirt cheap. The problem is the dirt itself. Most of these lots are from where a pie. Kali that is going to be a dollar general store. We're driving past the dollar General Store to be again, or generals putting in stores and some really unusual places. Okay, pressing Raylan, you can. These community gardens are They're great. Amazing resource. Our town sister cheap. The town is a good idea. Actual lots. The problem is they used to have houses on them and some of those houses for old old old local houses and head lead paint on them. So now you get into the okay. What is actually in this ground? Is there any toxic poisoning in this crap? I don't know.
spk_1: 24:29
You can grow plants on lead, paint tainted soil. But you got to be a little careful about what you plant because a lot of the lead is concentrated in the leaves. So the things that you just eat fruits from like tomatoes are often fine. But I wouldn't want to be eating spinach or lettuce out of lead tainted ground. Right? And we used to have lead on our house. And when I decide what to put where in my garden, I make sure that the greens are nowhere near the spots were I've got old lead, the front of the house. I was gonna put it an herb garden, and I'm like, No, I don't want to eat a lot of leaves from right there. I'll just make this front one ornamental
spk_0: 25:14
and by ornamental what we do, we don't just mean ornamental. We put in actually native flowers. They're not nearly as is pretty as you know, the fancy ornamental stuff.
spk_1: 25:25
They are at some parts of the year.
spk_0: 25:27
And so, yeah, but mostly not because they're bigger, taller, kind of weedy looking a lot, but they are a be a tractor like crazy. So that's what we go for. Pollinator attraction.
spk_1: 25:40
Yeah, a lot of garden plants need those pollinators, For one thing, and for another, I'm just a friend of B's. Let's
spk_0: 25:46
including the Big Apple or those apple trees we have in the front yard. Oh yeah, we have apple trees in our front yard, our houses just now surrounded by fruit trees. Yes, which is cool. So but community gardens are great option. If you have now, let's say that's not an option for you. Okay, well, if you work in an office of you work at a at a business of any kind with multiple employees, there's always somebody in August or July starting to bring in these long lines. Zucchini
spk_1: 26:23
lick it, log zucchini for
spk_0: 26:25
free zucchini. Zucchini is that
spk_1: 26:29
may not be a thing everywhere in the world. But it's this thing in the West it looks at in our part of the world.
spk_0: 26:35
What that means is that person is a gardener. Now here's what you could do. If you want to get your in and gardening, you remember who it waas. You go talk to them right now, just go and talk to him. So, hey, I want to learn how to garden. Can I come over and help you garden? And the answer, unless they don't like you, will always be. Absolutely. If you want to come in and do some of this work for me, yes,
spk_1: 27:11
there's a yeah, I'm doing. I got a lot of jobs this time of year, including riding my bicycle out in the beautiful.
spk_0: 27:18
It's going the grass and Yanni Yanni out. You know,
spk_1: 27:22
there's a lot less grasping,
spk_0: 27:23
little stressed. In fact, we actually used to have AH service coming into our yard, but now they want to quickly. We have too much stuff in our yard, but on the other hand, it's really easy. Pro tip, non colored mulch wood mulch around your garden around your garden boxes makes it really much easier to mow around. You don't have to. We'd eat up next to the boxes. You can take your mower and take it right up to the the mulch. Now, don't use the treated mulch. Don't use the D.
spk_1: 28:09
I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I just not decided not to try.
spk_0: 28:13
I don't think it's a good idea.
spk_1: 28:15
I decided out too. So
spk_0: 28:17
because I mean that stuff, that stuff is gonna go into the ground as the multi giri. It's I don't really want that on my food. So slightly
spk_1: 28:26
cheaper, too fades, but it fades to grey. It's not elected.
spk_0: 28:33
We're going toe that bug out,
spk_1: 28:35
huh? Nah, It's a harmless little thing. We'll just leave it, OK, leave it be. We'll make No, he's
spk_0: 28:40
flying around, which is nice. Bugs air out. Yes, I We have bees on our porch complaint ago.
spk_1: 28:47
You know, it was a long, cold spring when was excited. The bugs, right?
spk_0: 28:53
Yeah. They say that as cold as that winter got at winter got cold here. It got much colder than it usually got. We topped out at 20 below. That's pretty cold. And since we have the the community weather station in our garden. We know that that's the actual temperature. We have an actual weather station, not just a when I was little. Keep things. You hang on the wall, we have an actual weather station. You could go and look online and see what the weather's like in our yard. If you can guess which one of us, which one of the 25,000 of them is us? Um, okay,
spk_1: 29:41
some places you'll find a little bit of ground that nobody cares about anymore, and you can just ah, oh, stick some stuff in there and go visit it. There's no guarantee it'll stay there. It's kind of guerrilla gardening, but I have gotten a lot of my fruit over the past years. Four started to put in my own trees. I got a lot of my fruit that way, just finding trees that no people no longer cared about in the back corners of yards and stuff, and saying, Hey, it doesn't seem like you care much about those apples which mind if I came by with a bag
spk_0: 30:15
they're like, Absolutely come pick him up. I mean, come get about you taking them. Keep saves me from picking them up. There's a There's an old guy in our town, really nice old man. He's older, The dirt. I mean, he was retired when I moved to the town 35 years ago. That's how old this guy is. He's gotta be pushing 100 a nice guy. And he had, you know, some apple trees, or has you had to cut a couple down? But he's left some up that were planted by his wife. His wife loved apples, but she she past 25 years ago, and he didn't care about Apples and his daughter, who lives with him and takes a kind of takes care of. She doesn't care about apples one way or the other. So every year we go and clean him out of apples.
spk_1: 31:07
Yeah, he's a sort of guy who plans a bunch of tomatoes, even though he doesn't like him so he can put him out on a stand on his front yard. He puts a little donation box out there, but he doesn't tell you that it doesn't tell you to pay and don't tell you how much they cost. He just puts a little box out there and signed tomatoes, peppers, onions,
spk_0: 31:30
Yeah, or whatever he's got. And then you go up there and you put that we do, we stop by all the time and put it, if you
spk_1: 31:36
Yeah, what? I'm dehydrated or a whole bunch of stuff at once. I'll go and collect his, Uh, I often pick up the seconds because they drive just fine.
spk_0: 31:45
So anyway, that's pretty much what we wanted to say today.
spk_1: 31:49
There are some options for getting it done, even when you're a city person that might not think you've got options.
spk_0: 32:01
So again, we don't way just keep coming back to this point over now because it's so critical. It's something we have learned. You cannot expect to grow food. If you've never grown food before and get it right the first time. You can't expect to do it. You won't. If you don't have the what you need on hand to successfully garden, the little garden kit will do you no good. Yeah, you don't know how to do it. You don't have soil that you can easily transfer into a garden. You don't have the tools to do it both mental and physical then you're not gonna have a garden. If you don't have fencing to keep the rabbits out, you're not gonna have food even if you get the garden.
spk_1: 32:50
It's not that I think that these gardens are going to be the difference for people between starving to death. And not it's that I think they are can very easily be the difference between a very dull, very monotonous, a nutritious diet of straight up carbs, greens and not much else. It makes a giant difference to your well being. And to your it feels like real food. For example, instead of what can you get Bread, canned junk?
spk_0: 33:28
And we're gonna actually discuss this in a future podcast. We're gonna come. We're gonna call this podcast anti oxidants, and you and you can expect to hear the infected me. That podcast may even come out before this podcast. So anyway, let's support if it's out there already. Please listen to it. All right, we'll talk to you later. Bye bye. Goodbye.