- [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

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- [Male Announcer] And the following: [gentle instrumental music] - [voice-over] I'm Joe Lamp'l.

When I created Growing a Greener World, I had one goal.

To tell stories of everyday people.

Innovators, entrepreneurs, forward-thinking leaders who are all, in ways both big and small, dedicated to organic gardening and farming, lightening our footprint, conserving vital resources, protecting natural habitats, making a tangible difference for us all.

They're real, they're passionate, they're all around us.

They're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

Growing a Greener World.

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[upbeat energetic music] Whatever you're going: vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, annuals, perennials, the name of the game is the same maximize productivity, get the most out of your garden that you possibly can, because let's face it we invest so much time, energy, and money into our gardens, we want to maximize that return on investment and yet we're all dealing with challenges whether it's a garden space that feels too small or maybe it's a sloper hill or a tree that creates shade or wildlife that gets to our flowers or fruit before we can or maybe it's a growing season that just doesn't feel long enough.

Well, today we're meeting a gardener that's dealing with all of those challenges and more and still getting blockbuster results.

From finding ways to extend that growing season to reviving times, [mumbles] and techniques or coming up with innovative DIY solutions to challenging problems, or just learning from failed experiments in the garden.

But the tips that you'll learn today or ideas that you can implement in almost any garden, anywhere, so that your garden can be more productive too.

[upbeat music and whistle] On the outskirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Meg Cowden and her family embarked on an adventure of sorts.

The idea was to embrace Meg's passion for gardening by growing as much of their own food as they possibly can despite the obvious challenges that come with living and USDA Hardiness Zone 4B.

Three years into it, Meg's garden is absolutely thriving but so is something else: her following.

Meg has shared every step of her journey, both the triumphs and the troubles on her highly successful Seed To Fork blog as well as with her Instagram followers which now number in the tens of thousands.

With her approachable demeanor and accessible teaching style, Meg is helping lead the way for a new generation connecting with young organic gardeners all over the world and showing that if she can do it here, they can be done anywhere, no matter how humble the beginnings.

- Gardening feels like it's been a part of my life for ever.

I mean I kind of can't remember, I can't imagine my life without it but also don't really remember when it started but if I'd to go all the way back, I would go back to college and indoor plants is sort of like I think what hooked me.

I mean our friends, we would exchange plants and cuttings, and from there it grew literally into growing outdoors.

And once John and I got together, this has always been a part of who we are as a couple and so this garden is very much a part of our relationship, and a part of what we built together.

So it's been over 20 years that we've been gardening.

[gentle peaceful music] Our very first garden that we ever grew together was simply five tomatoes in five gallon buckets.

Drilled the holes in the bottom, they sat on pavers in the side of our rental house and that was it, you know.

It was, you have to start somewhere and starting simple, I think, is actually the best place to start.

Once we have the five-gallon buckets the following year, we actually moved to a rental house in grad school, where we had land and one of the first things we did, didn't ask permission, was we went and got compost from our local compost supplier in our college town and we brought compost into the backyard where we wanted to have a garden and we laid compost and started [mumbles] and building mounting up in ground raised beds.

From the very first time we ever grew something together, I mean we knew this was part of what, but the joy that we shared together as a couple and as individuals and growing food has always been just it, phenomenally joyful experience for us so I would never be without a food garden and so joyful.

So when we decided to leave the city several years ago, I was looking for property that would accommodate a large garden but I was looking for no trees, ideally, that was on our list for our property and it needed to be the right house and the right price, and the treeless area were probably the biggest factors.

We were okay working with the soil that we have, I didn't have to cut all the trees and we ended up compromising a lot with this because it is on a slope, it's hard to see but there's some terraced beds and we had to take a one tree out and there's a stump still here but I knew I can make this work.

I mean what really sold it was the barn.

I mean how can you not...

But the barn frames this garden to me and as soon as I saw that barn, I knew that I could turn this into a dream garden.

- And that's exactly what Meg did.

With approximately an eighth of an acre and over a hundred and forty edible varieties protected behind a tall fence that was a key to the garden's creation.

I think one of the common denominators with every gardener is trying to figure out how to keep the pest out of your garden, the big ones and the little ones, and it looks like you've had to address both of those concerns, right?

- We have.

So, we knew that we're moving to an area with an extremely high amount of deer pressure, so this was the very first thing we installed before we built any beds, we put a deer fence-- - [Joe] Smart!

This is the standard 8-foot agricultural deer fence?

- [Meg] Yep, it's it's fixed [mumbles], it's eight feet, everywhere around, and it has been-- - [Joe] Effective?

- [Meg] Bullet-proof against deer so far.

- [Joe] Good.

- And because I've had experience with rabbits in the city, we also rabbit-proof it at the same time.

- [Joe] So you got chicken wire for that, yeah?

- [Meg] I do.

- [Joe] And does that work for the rabbits and everything else that smaller than the rabbits?

- I found out this past year.

- Not so much?

- We had voles eat all of my fall beets last year, I mean they just hollowed them out and they were trails everywhere.

So now I know voles can get through chicken wire.

- So you would want to do what, hardware cloth, smaller openings, yeah?

- Some buried about six inches below ground.

This is buried but now I know, you can only do so much.

You can only do what you know, and I did the best I could.

[bright guitar music] So the other major garden design element we had to kind of struggle with and decide right away was what do we do for our pads.

Okay, do we mulch them, do we tear it all out, do we replant it with something, and we just decided to work within the lawn that existed.

It was long, it was Kentucky Bluegrass, the last owner loved to spray and do all the things, he loved his lawns, right, it's very typical, American, suburban areas.

So I sod cut all of the beds, I laid them out and sod cut them, and we left the lawn.

So we over seed it with Dutch white clover and that has done really well in a lot of areas and then this adds a whole another layer for the pollinators.

[soft guitar music] The garden to me is just the essence of life I mean it really is life, it gives life to us, it gives life to insects, and to be able to grow food, I don't know I mean I love any kind of garden, I love enjoying formal gardens, flower gardens are great, but I am really all about growing something that's kind of dual purpose you know, and so that's where food gardening I think is just this beautiful, it's to me is the essence of what any garden could be.

I think it's a gorgeous way to have a garden, to actually have it to be edible as well.

And I love the challenge of making it even more beautiful by inter mixing with flowers and bringing the butterflies in your garden and pollinators and that's what really just brings me so much joy.

[soft guitar music] - Meg, one of the things I love about you is your love for these livestock panels too.

You know me and my tomato cages and I have a lot of them but I love what you're using right here in the single panels to support all these tomatoes.

So tell me your rationale for using this method and how you went about putting this together.

- Well, this is our largest tomato garden we've ever had.

In our [mumbles] of growing food, there are 23 plants in here.

So, in February, we start to have this crisis moment of thinking, oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

And for about two minutes I thought, I wanna build those cages like you have.

Let's just go to cages!

But then we decided, we wanted to be economical and we had some leftover panels from last year, and they were already eight feet in hight.

And we decided, what the heck?

This could be a really economical way of trellising tomatoes.

It actually surpassed all my dreams here of what a tomato garden could look like.

- [Joe] Well, what you've gained is a lot of air circulation and a lot of light into here.

- So, we're kind of growing them two-dimensionally, and you know, I think I'm traying five or six tomatoes on a 1/16 foot panel, that's pretty economical.

Once you invest in this, I think it is a great economy.

This middle row might be a 16-foot row, one, two, three, four, seven or eight maybe, I don't know, there's a lot of tomatoes in here.

- [Joe] There are!

- But it doesn't feel like it to me, it doesn't feel overgrown.

It feels efficient, it feels beautiful, I love being able to see the fruit clearly, have access to them for harvesting.

I don't think I'm ever going back.

- [Joe] you know what I also like about this?

Talking about maintenance.

Yeah, you just take out the suckers but now rather than the plants growing in a cage where you're having to try to feel your way into the plant to take out that disease foliage, when you do need to cut something out, I mean, it's right front and center.

Not only are you able to easily harvest everything but when you are maintaining the plant it's just right there for you.

I really love the system, I may have to steal this idea from you.

- You know, that would be great.

[bright guitar music] - This is something that I keep telling myself I'm gonna do, season after season, and I've yet to get around to it.

And it looks so easy to do, plus you have that vertical element and a place to come when you need a little bit of shade too.

- Right, right.

- So tell me how you made it.

- So this is another cattle panel wonder here.

- I love it!

- We put several cattle panels together, we connected them at kind of a U-post, is kinda our seam.

We overlapped them in that spot, zip-tied them together and called it a day.

- [Joe] And those are flexible enough that you just kind of arched them over and as long as you have something to secure it in place it's kind of done, right?

And now this could be a permanent structure.

- [Meg] That is definitely our intention, it's a permanent structure.

- And then as far as what you're growing, of course the sky's the limit there, but tell me what you've decided to plant here.

- Yep, so I have climbing nasturtium on the ends just for a nice colorful element.

I've got two different kinds of cucumbers I'm growing: Armenian cucumber on one side and a Persian cucumber on the other, and then the last thing I'm growing is I'm going cucamelons on both sides as well.

This is the second year I've grown them.

- [Joe] Now tell me about that because that seems to be all the rage these days.

People love these, they're kind of a novelty and I love that little bit of fruit there that looks like a tiny baby watermelon.

- [Meg] They are adorable.

- [Joe] They are and [crunches] - They are novelty to have in the garden, they are still a novelty for me.

You know, we had them a whole season last year to enjoy and share and they continue to be a novelty to all my guests in the garden.

There are great, also known as a mouse melon or a Mexican sour gherkin and I sowed them from seed in late April and then I transplant them in early June and they take a little while to take off but once they get going and the heat of summer, they're, obviously, very happy and productive.

- I love the flavor and I especially love that little crunch.

[soft guitar music] - [Joe's Voiceover] From cucamelons on an arbor to a row of 15 espalier fruit trees that take up about a foot of bed width, Meg is making the most of every square inch.

- So just like other elements that we've talked about, we really love having features that are architectural interest in the garden.

I think it adds a beautiful element, a year round element.

So this has high tensile wire and two-by-fours are the structures that we attach the branches to as we train them.

So the idea is that this will become a living hedge as it grows up, edible living hedge.

- Edible living hedge in a nice architectural element, a sound barrier potentially.

What are you doing for pest control because that's one of the reasons a lot of people don't even bother with this type of fruit is the pest.

And as an organic gardener, tell me what you're using.

- [Meg] Right, we spray sulfur several times in the spring.

- [Joe] For disease?

- For disease prevention, yeah.

We try to take a pro-active approach with this, whereas another parts of the garden I might just wait and see and watch.

With fruit you kinda can't do this.

- No!

- And I'm not even expecting unblemished fruit, I just want some healthy trees that have resistance to diseases.

The other thing we're using is we're using Kaolin clay this year for the first time, which is a protective barrier.

We use a backpack sprayer and we just spray the leaves and it goes on wet and it dries.

You can see here a little bit of the remnants.

- And sticks, yeah.

- Yeah, it sticks and provides a film.

- And you're also using it here on these raspberry plants and that's for what, the Japanese beetle?

They love it.

- Oh, they love our raspberry plants.

We're never gonna get rid of them, this is one if these things.

We're just trying to figure out how we can co-exist.

Can we get enough fruit and not have so much damage, keep their population in check.

I'm not ever expecting to get rid of him but I'd like to minimize them as much as I can.

- Well, here is a good demonstration of this.

You have the Kaolin spray here, and you have very little Japanese beetle damage.

But you look just right behind it, where that spray is either washed off or never got applied, and look at that, I mean it's completely different.

That comparison is night and day.

- Using a pesticide just never really crossed my mind, to be honest and so we just kind of if there is something that comes up, you know soapy water, use your hands, I mean I'm very hands-on and so the idea of trying to manage it with my own hands, bringing insects in, enticing the insects in by how we interplant, it's really that whole system approach.

You have to look and understand what that bugs' role has in the garden.

Everyone has a role in the garden, so you just need to be able to take the time to understand it.

And that to me is like this joy, every day there is a new insect here, and they all have a purpose.

And so it's my job...

I'm along for the ride just as much as they are.

And they are here to teach me something, and always learning.

- But one thing Meg has to continually learn just like all gardeners do is how to deal with their particular climate.

- We are here in Minnesota, and we a blessed with just a long winter, longer than anyone could ever dream of.

I can't think of many people who would wanna winter four to five months long.

It's easily four months, can be five on some years like this past year.

And I get a lot of time to think about the garden.

Like a lot, a lot of months, and so by February, we are jumping at the bed to get our hands to get our hands to do a little bit of soil.

And so I have really honed that early-season growing as a way for me to create this in our short growing season.

And you can you can have an extra early start to the growing season if you hoop.

I'll actually use the snow as weights for my low tunnel.

It works great.

And you know, use what you have.

I mean it's there for me, so why not use it, and then I can warm the soil, so it's this waiting game in winter, and so once I get my tunnels up, it's me and mother nature and my soil thermometer and I am just out here stalking to see when I can get my starts out And so this past winter, I started cabbages the same day I started sowing my tomatoes and I ended up putting them in four-inch newspaper pots.

In maybe the end of February, they were huge, they actually were better starts than I'm able to start in summer.

If I start my fall cabbages, my fall cabbages don't look as good.

So this is like the plants know that it's the middle of winter and they want to grow too.

Honestly, this past winter my starts were out of control.

So once the tomatoes are in the ground and they are covered, we keep them covered as long as we can.

I want to give them their little bubble because they love the heat.

This year we went to extraordinary measures because our winter dragged on so late and we had really cold weather in April.

We brought in some of our seedling mats for some of the nights, and plucked those in.

I've never gone that far.

It feels a little too far but I really [giggles] These tomatoes grew so fast indoors, I've had them up twice and they kept growing.

Some of them I cut back, they needed to be in outside.

We did lose some to a late frost but if I don't lose a tomato once in a while, I'm not pushing myself hard enough.

- [Joe] But don't mistake Megs' habit of pushing herself for being careless in the garden.

For example, when a plant needs extra space, she gives it.

Now, while Meg may have about 5,500 square feet of ground to work with, she makes even more growing space however she can.

Those peppers are looking great and I think we need to harvest some of those tonight.

- Absolutely!

- And then here's something I wanna talk to you about.

Now, you're growing three things and I also grow in my garden, but not very many because they are so rambly, they get really big.

First of all, the tomatillo in the tomato family, this is great for that green salsa which I love so much, but you can see, you know, one plant just goes and goes.

- It does.

- Next to that you've got squash which I also love but again this is a great example of one plant will kinda take over your whole bed if you let it.

Now, I have raised bed so I tend not to grow too many of these and then just like that you've got cucumbers.

Now, in their defense, you get to grow up vertically and you've got a great trellis here by the way.

What is that, untreated wood as well?

- This is seeder, yeah.

This was one of the first trellis that we've built when we moved to Minnesota, about 16 years ago.

And it's still kicking.

- It is.

- Yeah.

- And when you're growing or planting cucumbers, I think a lot of people including myself when I first started, you know, you plant them close together, 'cause you think you need to but you don't realize how much they sprawl.

Like for example here, this is a full trellis but how many total plants are growing here?

- I have two plants on each side and this chalice is maybe three feet wide.

- Right.

- So, they're at least two feet apart.

- Case and point.

- And as you can have one plant on each side if you really wanted to.

- So what you do to keep them really healthy because that's a complain a lot of people have as they tend to take on a lot of diseases but I think they could be more proactive with cutting down on that like you're in your case, you're taking some of this foliage out.

- I am, I really like pruning.

You know, part of that I started pruning my tomatoes more actively this year in a new way and I decided that the cucumbers maybe could use a little haircut once in a while.

- And you've had great results.

- I have, I think it's really doing a nice job of keeping the airflow open in here.

- And the light in.

- Sunlight.

Disease pressured down.

So, I'm, just like tomatoes, putting out suckers.

I look for suckers on the cucumbers and this is a great example.

This is not need to be here.

- Even though you've got future cucumbers here, you still have plenty of cucumbers on you plant.

- I do, I'm gonna take this one.

- Okay, so I'm gonna take that one out.

- And I got another one down here, it's got a cucumber on it but I could probably just take the cucumber too.

- [Joe] Yeah you could.

- That cucumber looks ready.

- Got it.

- Awesome.

So yeah, I just really try to keep these plants as open as possible while still keeping it productive.

It's just a really nice way.

It doesn't feel quite as overgrown.

August is an overgrown garden and that's just part of what the garden wants to do this time of year but I think taking an active role in trimming some of these things really helps extend the growing season that much longer.

- Yeah, it absolutely can.

[soft guitar music] One of the main ways Meg maximizes a short growing season is through succession planting.

You can stagger sowing times and make the harvest of that crop last much longer than if you planted all at the same time, or you can try interplanting, sowing more than one type of vegetable to share the same space at the same time.

When you time it right, the quicker growing crop may be ready to pull just as the slower growing crop that's been in the understory all along is finally ready to take over the garden bed.

It's having each of your garden beds do double duty and it's a technique Meg depends on, even if it comes together on the fly.

[soft guitar music] Omega in your world of succession planning, this is when that blank space gets quickly fill back in.

- Absolutely.

- So, we're doing bok choy today, yeah?

- It looks like I have plant but I kinda don't have a plan.

I mean I started just roll with it, I know where the big things, I know where my tomatoes are gonna go, I know where my earliest succession of Brusca's are gonna go, and after that I start to wing-it.

I have to think, I rotate my crops, so I could think where were things last year, where do I want things this year, what do I want vertically where, so I sort of think about that whole, it's a puzzle, and every year I try to change it up where my earliest cabbages were, that's where my second succession of beans goes.

Almost every year, that's a rotation I like to do.

I know I can do it, the timing works.

They come out in early June, I sow beans, those are ready in early August, and it's great, I get two full successions out of that one's base, even more if you count the radishes, that were growing in there and things like that.

The key to succession planting is having a plan, And a plan that you can implement.

You'll have to know exactly where everything's going but just knowing that when a space opens up it's [mumbles] for the year.

Every year the garden is just as playground for me.

I mean it's literally like I am playing in the ground, right?

I mean that is like almost a vocation for me in a way.

It's so beautiful, I mean it's tears of joy and I just feel so blessed to be out here every day.

I've been a closet artist kind of my whole life until maybe this garden.

I mean this feels like the first time I've been able to see a vision.

I mean it feels like a piece of art to me.

Inside, I always have this creativity that was just longing to express itself and this to me embodies finally achieving what's been yearning in my heart and I have been seeing in my mind for so many years.

[soft guitar music] - I've been gardening for over 40 years and yet I still learn something new from every gardener I meet.

But I have to admit I've been blown away with my visit with Meg because all the tips and techniques she deploys around this garden, the amount of productivity she gets and in a relatively short period of time it's really amazing and I can't wait to try some of those ideas when I get back home to the Garden Farm.

But if you'd like to watch this episode again or learn more about Meg, well we have that information on our website under the show notes for this episode and the website address, that's the same as our show name.

It's growingagreenerworld.com.

I'm Joe Lamp'l, thanks for watching, everybody, and we'll see you back here next time for more Growing a Greener World.

- [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

Subaru, proud sponsor of Growing a Greener World.

- [Male Announcer] And the following: [ambient electronic music] ♪ [male announcer]: Continue the garden learning from the program you just watched, Growing a Greener World.

Program host Joe Lamp'l's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels, from the fundamentals to master skills.

Classes are on-demand any time.

Plus, opportunities to ask Joe questions about your specific garden in real time.

Courses are available online.

For more information or to enroll, go to: [funky techno jingle] ♪ ♪