Jamie Todek is a listener who reached out to me and with a little coaxing is on the show today to share her gardening journey which is just beginning! Jamie shares her struggles, successes and passion for creating not just a place to grow food but caring for our planet with intelligence and care. Graphic designer by day, gardener by night, Jamie builds her skills and knowledge base as she combines these loves at her website the Astric Studio. 

Tell us a little about yourself.

Well, I’m born and raised Michigander. I’m 27 years old, me and my boyfriend just moved out of Suburbia to Oxford, it’s a little bit of a rural town in Michigan. We have 13-15 acres, about half of it is farmable and then we have a 2 acre pond and some wooded area as well. We’re just loving it, it’s so much fun!

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

Well I remember growing up with my mom mainly, she would garden a little bit in our backyard, I just remember playing with the compost a lot, helping her turn it, finding a lot of worms. Like me, I have 2 brothers, and we would have clear buckets, we would have worm farms, I was thinking maybe that could be why I’m very conscious of the soil.

Having a big brother as a kid is the best!

Yeah, it makes life interesting for sure!

What does organic gardening/earth friendly mean to you?

Earth Friendly gardening to me means, growing your own vegetables or flowers and disrupting the natural cycle of things as little as possible. So not only are you using less fertilizers and chemical additives to it, but you can get organic things that also impact the natural course of bees and other insects, so it’s just being conscious that even the little things will roll, if they don’t get solved it develops a larger problem, letting nature run its own course, pretty much.

Who or what inspired you to start using organic techniques?

It all goes back to I used to be a very big meat eater, and in high school one of my friends bet me that for lent I could not give up meat, and I ended up doing a research paper on vegetarianism. And from there I’ve always been health conscious. And then in college I did some research papers on GMOs and learned all of the harmful things that can cause  can be not only to yourself but to the environment.  So wanting to stay away from those, led to what is causing that? OK, chemicals. So let’s try and grow organically so we can help the world be healthier.

I heard this woman called Vani Hari on Lewis Howe’s School of Greatness. And she goes by the name Food Babe, and she is developing the Food Babe Army, she doesn’t really like that name, but it stuck. But she is doing these studies that are changing the world. She’s the one that got Chipolte to list their ingredients, and then lately I think she is responsible for Kraft Food, that were putting dyes in American food but they weren’t able to put it in food in Europe and now I think they don’t put that dye here either anymore because she got so many people to sign her petitions. She influenced me to really give up processsed food.

It’s right up my alley, it’s amazing the kind of things Europe bans that are still legal in the U.S. It’s the public’s duty to do the research themselves so I really commend her on all of her work.

She really kind of fell into it, I can’t remember if she got sick, and she started eating healthy, but food was expensive so she started buying big bulk loads of food. But to get the discount she had to order like a whole truckload of food, so she would have like these giant food sales in her parent’s garage. Like a CSA, but from the grocery store. But eventually her neighbors weren’t too happy with all the traffic on Thursday evenings and it just took off from there…

How did you learn how to garden organically?

Doing my own research,looking it up on line, having to write a research paper, kind of doing in looking at both sides of the story. I wasn’t one of those just do it just to do it people, I wanted to know why. And why is that in our food to begin with? And a lot of times it comes to the corporations that are growing the food. So it comes back to Buy Local.

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

Our garden I’m so excited! It was a lot of fun! I did have a little garden, back at my boyfriend’s moms, just cucumbers, tomatoes, and beans. And I couldn’t figure out what kept eating the beans. I had a fence around it, and I couldn’t figure it out until it rained, and I could see the tunnel sink into the ground, so I knew it was like a mole or something that finally devistated all of those!

This year we have a little bit of everything, corn, squash, cucumbers! What did most prolific so far, I got some seeds at work, I thought it was mustard greens, so I planted it, but it’s actually mustard seed! So I have a bountiful crop of mustard seed that I will be grinding down soon. It’s laying out to dry right now!

Really! How exciting is that! What are you going to grind it in?

I’ll probably get a grinder to do some of my herbs as well. Everybody asks what are you gonna do with mustard?

Now that I’m harvesting more things you’d be amazed how many recipes call for mustard! So It’s gonna be exciting. Add it to pickles etc. Really you can hang the whole plant up upside down, just over a cardboard box or some paper bags. So as they dry, the seeds just fall out, so you just sift it, so its really easy to harvest!

Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new?

Keep better records of all my planting, I do love watering, waking up before work at 6 o’clock and going out there, but I think installing a drip irrigation would be really helpful for those days I can’t get out there.

David from Arlee said his favorite tool was his drip irrigation system in Episode 69. And my husband keeps telling me he’s gotta do something about water. Joyce Pinson recommended Jean-Martin Fortier‘s book called the Market Gardener: A successful Grower’s Handbook for Small Scale Organic Farming in Episode 45 of the Organic Gardener Podcast. Mike said there was an irrigation system where you build holding ponds for water, because our wells keep running dry…

Tell me about something that didn’t work so well this season.

That would have to be my sugar snap peas, the animals ate them. I do have a fence up, but it’s just a favorite, but they would get em before they were even 6 inches they would just chomp on them. I had put, I started doing seedlings cucumbers and squash indoors early on and when I put them outside. I did watch some videos on how to harden them off and introduce them to the light and it was raining season. So I would put them outside gradually increasing the times, and then it would rain for like 3 days, and I kept them inside, so finally after I got them out all day, they burnt to a crisp in the sun, so I actually had to replant all my cucumbers, but now they’re doing ok.

It’s hard sometimes when they are shocked they come out better in the end. It’s hard to keep on top of everything.

Especially when you work all day and school and I’d rather be out in the garden so it’s hard to find time to do the stuff I need to do!

Something that you find is easy to grow and is generally successful every-time.

Mine is that seedlings this round with the cucumbers. I’ve had pretty good success with them. Last year they were humongous! They really we’re growing too fast, I couldn’t get rid of them on time. Other then that, herbs, basil is pretty easy to grow.

Something you would steer new gardeners away from that you find is typically challenging to grow in your climate.

I heard, like we have a pretty short growing season here up in Michigan. Watermelons that take a longer season to grow, they might not ripen in time. The past couple of years, tomatoes, some people might have a good harvest, but it can get really cold, really fast here in Michigan. A lot of people I knew, that grew tomatoes, they got rotten last year, so that’s been a challenge, so hopefully this year mine seem to be on track, so keeping my fingers crossed.

It’s hard, tomatoes are hard. They’re hard here too. I was going to ask you about the basil. Because to me basil’s the most fragile there is. 

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