There's something special about biting into that first tomato of the summer, or harvesting the most beautiful flowers for a bouquet.

This week, we visit with three local gardeners to hear why they tend to the soil year after year, before stopping by Happy Dancing Turtle in Pine River, Minnesota to hear from the experts there on soil health.

Coming up next on 218Life.

Production funding of 218Life is made possible in part by ... First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

HUG Hydronics, committed to making in floor heating simple providing and floor heating solutions for both commercial and residential.

More info at HUGHydronics.com.

Closed captioning of 218Life is provided in part by Renaissance Hearing Center, committed to enhancing your hearing, allowing you to enjoy life's most important moments.

My name is Josie Kleckner, I'm originally from Decorah, Iowa, but I moved up here to Bemidji about two years ago.

I work for the Forest Service out of Blackduck, Minnesota on the Chippewa.

And I'm a forestry technician with them.

We are here now in the Bemidji Community Gardens.

Hi, my name is Joyce Rairdon, I live southeast of Cass Lake, and I work for the Forest Service out of Cass Lake, and I'm an administrative operations specialist there.

I've just started my 27th year there.

My name is Melinda Neville.

I live in Bemidji, Minnesota.

I moved here in about 2012 or so, and we started the gardens here in 2013 when we bought the house.

I am currently working for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

I first started gardening when I was very young.

My parents, specifically my mom, always had a garden.

So growing up, I would help her.

And, like, for as long as I can remember, I gardened.

And funnily enough, when I first started gardening, I really didn't like it that much.

Seemed more of a chore than anything.

But as I grew up, it was a great way to spend time with my mom, to spend time with my family, and also just get in touch, with the outdoors and yeah, I've grown to really enjoy it.

I find gardening to be very beneficial, I'd say, for my mental health.

I love coming out here and weeding and just kind of taking my time and just getting... It's very... I'd say, meditative and mindful.

You know, when you're out here touching dirt, it's very I don't know, it's just good for the soul.

So this is my first year with the community garden plot, so I've been able to grow much more.

As you can see, I have quite a few tomatoes there in the back.

And, fun thing about those tomatoes is one of them is an heirloom tomato.

So it's very pretty, I think.

Beautiful tomato.

And it's fun to kind of grow those heirloom, I guess, vegetables because of their uniqueness.

And I think they're very beautiful.

But I'm also growing, you know, your classic cherry tomatoes and sauce tomatoes.

And for the first year, I've done zucchini, because I finally have the space for them.

And then I've also tried some flowers as well this year.

Zinnias.

And I tried kale this year.

And going back to the resiliency and things don't always go the way you want it to, my kale did not do very well, but that was a fun little experiment and I hope to try again next season as well.

So there is an application process.

It works similarly to like a lottery.

So you kind of put your name and put your preferences to where you want your plot to be.

And how big you want it.

I believe there's two sizes available.

My size is the more regular common size, but there is there are bigger sizes.

I'm not sure if they're at this garden or not, but it's kind of a lottery system.

For my container gardens my focus was kind of what would I want accessible to me like when I'm cooking and such.

So I have a lot of herbs in that container garden.

Just because it's nice to be able to go out on the patio and clip some fresh herbs, when I'm cooking and stuff.

And then also, I'd say like a big focus for container gardens is like, how how big is that plant going to grow, right?

Like, I think a lot of plants could do really well in container gardens, but I wouldn't want this like squash growing in that because it would kind of overtake the whole patio and like probably go into the lawn and get like mowed or something.

But yeah, I've also grown peppers and tomatoes in there, just that's kind of fun just to go home and snack on.

I don't make my pots back home.

They are like kind of a cool like design, though.

They're felt.

So like most pots will have drainage sort of at the bottom or some don't even have drainage at all, which I don't think a lot of people realize that, like your pots most likely need drainage, or else your soil can become waterlogged or whatnot, but so they're made out of felt.

So it's like very, I guess, breathable on like all sides of that container, which has been really nice.

So I don't overwater them necessarily.

Like, even if you do have an apartment, you can just start small with a little, like pot of basil or an herb or like, you know, like just growing anything you want.

I knew that I was a little nervous about taking on a community plot garden by myself.

But, like, I didn't let that fear, I guess, of failing stop me from doing it.

And I'd say that, like, a lot of things maybe didn't go my way or how I wanted to gardening this summer, but I think gardening is a lot about just like learning to accept mistakes and to grow from them.

And just don't get like, caught up on little things because I think the more you do it and you just if you just keep at it, like your garden will be better and better.

Yeah.

That would be my advice.

I grew up gardening, I'm the youngest of seven children, and so we had a farm and we we grew a lot of our own produce and, milked cows.

My parents were avid gardeners.

My mom like to do flowers, and dad did a lot of the, the, major vegetable gardening, and we canned a lot.

We froze a lot.

We raised our own animals, too.

And so it's kind of, you know, I, I grew up doing it.

I had a few years off of gardening because, I didn't have a place to garden, so.

But we, we moved to this place about 25 years ago and started small and have expanded this garden several times.

And, my husband says this is the biggest it's going to get.

And I'll have to agree with them because it is as much as we can handle.

I garden because it's a creative outlet for me.

Some people might paint, some people do other crafts.

I, spend money on seeds and then I get something out of it in the fall.

I, grow a lot of tomatoes, beets, just about anything you can name I grow it here, and, And we eat it, and we give a lot to, our friends and neighbors, and, so it's to me, it's it's just a feeling of of biting into that first fresh cherry tomato in the summer.

It sure doesn't taste like the ones you get in the store.

The soil, when we moved here, it's pretty sandy here.

So we have probably trucked in at least six truckloads of black dirt.

They're sourced locally, and they've been really good for for us, it our garden has flourished.

Of course, they bring in the weeds.

They bring in the weeds, too, with that type of soil.

But, we, we have probably a foot, a foot and a half of good black dirt.

And then as the mulch breaks down, it adds to the soil.

And then we add mulch every year, every other year to the top, so.

So then the weeds don't start popping through the, the mulch.

And so then that we have great worms underneath, in the black soil, and so that really helps, break down the soil and, and amend the soil.

And so, we've, we've been fortunate to, have this soil that we could, could use and it's, it's blessed us.

Well these cans here are gallon cans, and we plant the plant, and then we put the cans around them right when they're little baby plants.

And that helps prevent cut worms from getting in there and chewing them off.

And then later, as they get bigger like this, if they need to be watered when we water, it goes directly to the roots instead of out here outside the cans where there's really nothing growing.

And so we don't need to water that area.

This trellis arch you can see I have cucumbers coming up here.

And then this one here is about ready to pick.

This is a Japanese cucumber.

They get to be about a foot long and it just supports them.

And and this wasn't supposed to happen, but this is a squash that's probably about 35ft long.

And it's coming up- I’ll just Put it try to keep it back up there to stay out of my way.

Vertical gardening is, is, a thing now, you know, it saves space that you can trellis squash, you can trellis pole beans and other things to to get them off the ground and to conserve on space.

The Master Gardener program is through the University of Minnesota Extension, and it is in all 50 states.

What our group does we hold monthly meetings, we learn about gardening.

And then our main aspect is education.

We teach other people how to garden, how to amend your soil, how to make it, healthier so your produce will grow better, how to maybe prune trees.

We provide some gardening classes in the spring, typically at the library or through community education.

We like to provide classes to, to help beginning gardeners so, so they can feel comfortable and be successful.

And once again, I said, start small.

Don't think you have to plant every kind of vegetable there is because you might not even like them.

So, and then ask for help.

There's a lot of people who have experience and, you know, at the greenhouses, at the garden centers, they're always willing to help.

Master Gardeners are great resources to, to get educational materials from.

We have a hotline and the number is (218) 444-7916.

You call, leave a message and we'll get back to you within about 48 hours.

Some of my first memories were actually canning with my grandparents, and then my parents had a vegetable garden.

And then I've always had at least something small with food in it everywhere I've moved as an adult.

But this is this is the biggest production.

I think our first serious garden was when I bought my first house in probably 2004, in Maine.

And, you know, I had all the basics down.

I've done small gardens, but to actually own a place where I could set up a permanent garden was, was a new experience.

It's mental health.

It's anger management.

You know, if you're really fit to be tied, going out and ripping out weeds by their roots can be really good anger management therapy.

But on top of that, it's also peaceful and brings in wildlife.

I, you know, sometimes just sit out here and watch the bees.

Like it can handle the full range of human experience that I have experienced so far.

Whether it's, you know, pride in the perfect tomato, or sadness over the carrots that never sprouted or, you know, good weed management or a bad harvest or, you know, an excellent harvest or your first success with the crop.

It just ... it's here.

It's here when I have time.

And I think if I didn't have it, I don't yeah, I don't know what I would do.

We've got this garden here with the four raised beds.

The grapes on the vine hanging around here.

And then a bottom garden, which we just call The Bottoms, where we do some crop separation to prevent disease cross-contamination.

So, yeah, we we prefer to grow things we can eat rather than what we have to mow.

We brought the soil in for these beds.

So it's, rich organic Red River loam that does really well.

However, it's not cheap.

And so down below we didn't build raised beds.

We just tilled it up and worked with the soil that was there.

And the soil in our area is very sandy.

Certain crops do better in sandy soil.

And then there are certain things that you don't want in the same garden.

Now potatoes and tomatoes can share disease.

And so if we had both of those up here, we're increasing the chances of a bad outbreak of early or late blight.

And so we always grow potatoes down below, we grow tomatoes up here.

And the melons prefer the sandy soil and they take up so much space that trying to put them in a raised bed would involve, you know, some fights with my spouse to keep the melons where they belong rather than overtaking something else that I'm trying to grow.

What we see around here is early blight.

And so that's going to be a fungal infection, usually brought up from the soil underneath a plant.

And it really affects the nightshades.

So think, tomatoes, potatoes, are particularly susceptible.

And so starts with the yellowing leaves and then brown spots.

And I’d seen a little bit of it before moving to Maine.

But one day I looked out in Maine and saw a ripe tomato.

I'm like, that's weird, it's early July.

And I realized that my entire plants had died and the tomato was ripe because the plant was dead.

It just blight wiped us out, from that fungal infection on the plants so quickly.

So here, when we're gardening, we do a couple of things.

First is we rotate our crops.

And so here we have four beds to choose from.

And each year we figure out, okay, which is the longest time since tomatoes have been planted in that bed.

And so we’re on a four year rotation.

Additionally, we try to keep our plants upright.

We want good airflow through our tomatoes so that, if it does rain or if we do have some blight, it dries out and it doesn't spread so fast.

The next thing we do is keep soil from actually splashing up and touching the leaves.

So it's a really, a growing style more than it is, you know, pesticide application.

But even with all those, we still go through and spray copper, elemental copper.

You can pick it up at most of the garden stores, it's an organic approved method, and it stops the fungal blight from continuing growth.

I think gardening knowledge is easiest shared in person.

So finding a friend or a colleague who likes to garden, offer to help them.

And usually most gardeners who have gotten in over their heads would love to have some company while weeding for an afternoon or God forbid, you help during canning season, because that is really what it comes down to here in Minnesota.

If you grow a lot, you're going to want to preserve the food, and if you know how to preserve the food, it makes it more likely that putting the time and effort into gardening will be worth it.

I mean, opening a can or a jar of perfect tomatoes in February, there's nothing quite like it.

Or, you know, making your own tomato sauce is spicy and garlicky as you want it.

Or something as simple as, you know, those dill pickle beans or cucumbers that just offer that crunch of summer when the when the daylight is sparse.

So I think gardening really is a community minded thing where if I decided not to grow zucchini this year because I know Mary has zucchini, perhaps I'm going to be bringing her some of my cherry tomatoes.

And so there is a share ecosystem, and there's a knowledge ecosystem that both contribute to making gardening much more successful, pleasant.

And that way, maybe you won't drown in zucchini if you actually plant it.

My name's Dave Wilson, and, I'm the Food Production Coordinator here at the Happy Dancing Turtle, and we're located in Pine River in Minnesota.

Jim Chamberlain.

I'm the Conservation Outreach Specialist here on campus.

I've had several different roles working here.

I worked in the garden for quite a few years, and for the last 5 or 6 years been mostly working with doing outreach with local producers and around mostly rotational grazing as part of our Cows for Clean Water program.

Happy Dancing Turtle is a is a we're a nonprofit organization with a, I like to say a really broad environmental mission.

Our goal is to grow good stewards of the planet.

The food side, food and water security, I guess, has kind of been one side of our mission.

We do a lot of youth education as well.

But, yeah, our board and our founders have always felt that food security is important.

So that's been a a big, big push with Happy Dancing Turtle.

There's as much living biomass below our feet in the soil as there is living biomass above.

So that are all those critters, those micro, micro and macro organisms in the soil.

And those are- Having a living soil, is important to cycle those nutrients.

Like I said, the sort of the definition of soil health is the ability of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem.

So the important in that, in that definition, the things that are important in my mind is that living soil.

So recognizing the fact that there's a living component that's important in soil, which are those microorganisms and macroorganisms and, you know, the ability of the ability to function, continued capacity to function.

And that's the ability of soil to, to cycle water and nutrients.

I like to tell people that, soil, our soil is like, is like the stomach of the earth.

So, like the microbes and things that we have in our gut that consume and convert nutrients for us, that's what the microbes are doing in the soil.

So the organic matter that's breaking down all of those microorganisms and fungi, they're breaking down that organic matter and they're making those nutrients available to the plants.

So nothing we can really grow without the microbes in the soil.

So that's, like, kind of what helps me understand those natural cycles and processes.

I like to consider, for things like, adding organic matter to your soil, especially if your soil is really sandy, or if you have heavy clay your soil.

it is important to get that organic matter in there.

If you, are like, more rural, you can go out in your forest, if you have a nice deciduous forest, you can get some nice forest soil out of there.

Or if you know a local farmer, it's good to talk to them and maybe bring in a little bit of good broken down manure.

-Soil health principles are what I always go back to and that's, you know, minimizing soil disturbance.

Anytime you disturb your soil, your, your, you know, through tillage or any kind of disturbance, you're disturbing the home for those microbes.

Keeping the soil covered.

Any time there's exposed soil, you open that up for erosion, evaporation and soil temperatures increase or get colder without that cover on top.

So keeping the living plants or some kind of mulch on top of the garden at all times is important.

I guess I'll talk about keeping living roots in the ground.

That's one that's really important, I think.

Plants exude about 30% or more of the photosynthate they make.

The plant sap gets exuded out of the roots.

They do that for a purpose.

It's to feed the biology and the soil.

So in that rhizosphere, that area right around the roots is really active with that biology.

And that's mainly bacteria coming in to eat that exudate that's coming from the plant but it's fuel for the microorganisms.

And those are eaten by smaller organisms like mostly bacteria, which in turn are eaten by larger and larger, larger and larger organisms.

And then those defecate or die, they release nutrients to the plants that they can use.

So it's kind of a cycle where the plant feeds the biology, and the biology feeds the plant.

And then the last one that we like to talk about as far as soil health principles is context.

So what is what does your land want to grow?

What's the context of your land.

What does it want to grow, or grows well on your site and your location.

And then what do you like to grow?

What is your context as a person?

What are you able to do?

What are you passionate about?

What do you like to eat?

What do you, you know, what's what's your ability to do this?

What's your knowledge?

What's your- what tools do you have that kind of stuff.

So I don't know if I have anything to add, I guess I don't.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think of when I've tried to convince somebody that they should garden, and I don't know that I ever have.

I'm always.

I always get people asking questions about their garden.

I never heard anybody said, I don't know.

I guess if somebody doesn't want a garden, they just.

I don't understand them, so I can't I can't help them.

I don't I don't understand it, I don't know why would you not want a garden?

I don't get it.

Production funding of 218Life is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

HUG Hydronics, committed to making in floor heating simple.

Providing in floor heating solutions for both commercial and residential.

More info at HUGHydronics.com.

Closed captioning of 218Life is provided in part by Renaissance Hearing Center, committed to enhancing your hearing, allowing you to enjoy life's most important moments.

Production costs for this program have been made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

And, the members of Lakeland PBS.