Session 290: Growing Foods At Home

Published Jan 18, 2023, 8:00 AM

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

Today I’m joined by internationally recognized urban farmer and food activist, Jamila Norman. Jamila or “Farmer J” is the founder of Patchwork City Farms, a 1.2 acre farm planted in downtown Atlanta. In our conversation Jamila spoke about the kind of foods to grow in your home with limited space, some of the key tools you’ll need to get started with gardening, what to pay attention to during the crop development process, and the rich and empowering history of Black folks stewarding the land. 

 

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Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for such In two ninety of the Therapy for Girls Podcast, we'll get right into our episode after a word from our sponsors. M m hmmm. Let's see leafy greens, hot peppers, fresh fruit, and aromatic herbs. No, I'm not making a grocery list. I'm making a list of all the incredible foods you can grow in the comfort of your own home. Some of you might be thinking to yourself, well, Dr Joy, I don't have agreed thumb to grow my own food, so which I respond. You're not born with a green thumb. You earn it today. I'm joined by internationally recognized urban farmer and food activists Jamila Norman. Jamila or former j is the founder of Patchwork City Forms at one point to Acre form planted in downtown Atlanta. In our conversation, Jamila spoke about what kinds of foods to grow in your home with limited space, some of the key tools you need to get started with gardening, what's to pay attention to during the crop development process, and the rich, empowering history of black folks steward in the land. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag tv G in Session, or join us over in the Sister Circle to talk more in depth about the episode. You can join us at community dot therapy for Black Girls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jamila, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for the conversation. Yeah, so, I would love if you could get us started by talking about who in your family got you into forming Talk to about your ancestral ties to For me, yeah, my ancestral ties to farming. It's really through my parents, right my family from the Caribbeans. My mom is from Jamaica, my dad is from Trinidad. They're the ones that grew up with a farming background. Their grandparents were the last farmers on both sides, and my mother really talked a lot about her childhood growing up in Jamaica. She was raised by her grandmother, so my great grandmother and great grandfather, she was raised by them, and they lived off the land. They lived in a small village up in the mountains in Jamaica, and then my parents met in New York. So even though I grew up in New York, I also got an opportunity to live in Trinidad for a couple of years on and off over a two year period, to visit my dad's home country and just being surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables, and that memory definitely stayed with me, and it just was something that I knew growing up, even being born and raised in New York, I just knew I wanted to have for myself at some point. It feels like you're still very connected to those stories of your appearance and your great great appearance. Can you talk a little bit about why it might be important to get kids involved with things like farming. Yeah, it's really great to be involved with farming in a sense of just really having a connection to your food, really understanding what comes from, what it looks like, and the accessibility of it for people to be able to grow something. Farming is definitely not an industry for everyone as a careator choice, but gardening is definitely something anybody could do right. And gardening is sort of you know, what you do at your home, what you're able to do in your community if you're part of the community, garden things like that. So it brings a lot of joy, kind of slows you down, it kind of gets you connected to the cycles of nature. It just really gives you a different perspective in life on just how the natural world is operating around us, for us, how we can be part of it really actively. Whether it's food and medicine, beauty, clothing, shelter, all those things come from the land. It's really rewarding when you get to practice that through garden and through farming. Mm hmmm. So you mentioned being born in growing up in New York, and I think a lot of our community also live in cities like New York in places where they have limited space. Right, so people are talking about like trying to start gardens from their balcony or from their window and those kinds of things. What kinds of foods would you recommend for people who have limited space. Yeah, I mean one of the easiest things are definitely like herbs. Herbs are really easy. They add a lot of flavor, and leafy greens are really easy and rewarding. Some things that don't necessarily take a lot of skill, but it might take a little bit of time, or like things like onions, garlic like that. You know, you're kind of just sticking in the ground and leave it for six months and you come with your harvested. It's not a whole lot. They're not really fussy plants, but they just take time. So yeah, especially people with balconies or growing in containers. Always tell people are kind of started off with herbs, leafy greens, and that can be from lettuces to rugle us to kill to colors too. You mustard greens, so just kind of find out whatever that sort of leafy green that it's probably really culturally relevant to you. And then some herbs of perennial, like you plant them one time and they just keep producing year after year. Some things you have to plant every year, and then you know, also depending on kind of where you are, if you are in a climate that gets cold or if you're a climate that's warm, it'll help determine and some of the things you can't grow in the varieties as well. M m m mmmm. We talk about often here and we're starting new things. I think it's important to kind of get a boost of confidence and like to start pretty easy so that you feel like, Okay, this is something that I can keep up with. So the things that you mentioned, like the herbs, like garlic, onion, the leapy greens, are those things that you feel like are good for like beginner beginner people to give them a boost of confidence. Yeah. Absolutely, I definitely would say those are good things to start. And I would also say to really add to that, make sure you start off with transplants as opposed to seeds, especially with herbs, because a lot of herbs, the seeds are really small and they take a really long time to germinate right for instance, partially will take up to three weeks before that seed coat will open up and bring it forth. So if you can't go to your local nursery supply store and you buy your little earth plants and get going with that. You can take them out of that smaller pot, put them in a bigger pot so that they grow bigger. I would always recommend people start off with transplants first. So figure out how you can kind of keep your plants going in, figure out how water it, how mu's light and everything you need. And then seeds starting. It's sort of like another level, right. I think a lot of people think just kiss some seeds thrown in the ground or grow and then they're discouraged. You just get a little finicky. So definitely start off with plants. So Jamie, I just want to stop you because you know there's maybe some beginners. So you're saying, like go to like a local nursery or something and find like something that is already bloomed or something like you go and find natural plant that has already like propagated whatever. Absolutely. Yeah, So they're called transplants, right, so you know you're gonna go go find the baby plants at your I don't know, you know, your home depot, your ace hardware, your loads, your Pike's nurseries, you know, whatever that garden center is and usually they'll have a section where all the edible things, right, and so you know, you'll find a little small rosemary, or you'll find a small oregano or something like that, and you take that and those are just they're in a small, like four inch pot, and you take that and you're gonna grow it out. I mean, rosemary can grow really big. Regular that things can grow bigger. So then you can take that small transplant and you transplanted into your bigger pot or you contain a garden or into your raised bed or into the ground, and then it grows to like a full, full bush, full plant. You want to start with seeds and you want that experience. Lettuces are really easy from seeds, so when you think about leafy greens, the leafy greens are much easier from seeds. Right, So your lettuces, your kale, your colors do sprout pretty quickly. So herbs, I would say they start with transplants and then the leafy greens you start off with seeds, and you can kind of have both. But your herbs can be a little finicky from seeds. So I'll still people go get those transplants. You're more than halfway there. So how much sun does someone need to be able to like start an indoor kind of a plant, Like what kinds of things should we be measuring for adequence and light? Okay, this is the biggest thing because and working with people over the years, people totally underestimate how much sun things need. You need a animum of six upwards to eight hours, So six to eight hours of sunlight that you need to really grow your herbs, your vegetables. Like these plants, they need sun. They do not grow in the shade, So do not find the shadiest corner. If you have a challenge get in sun, then you're probably gonna have to look at getting some grow lights if you're really committed to like growing some things. But yeah, if you have a balcony, if you have a sunny window, you just kind of want to pay attention to how much sun comes in. And it doesn't have to be like direct like Parson's sunlight, but like like coming through your window for at least six to eight hours is what you want and you'll have success. So do not underestimate. That's number one thing bad. You need some good sun to grow food. Are there any plans that grow better in shade. Not really. There are probably some lettuces you could probably get away with that will grow in some shady environments. What you you won't get like probably like a good head. You'll get some some leaf and it won't be like the most robust it can be, right, the plant is not going to be the best it can be. So not really, there are plants that wouldn't mind, like they'll get the few sunlight. And Georgia, something you know, during the summing gets really really hot. So if I wanted to like say, grow lettuces in the summertime in Georgia, then I might plant it near my cucumbers or near my tomatoes. A plant that kind of gets getting a little big, so it provides a little bit of shade during the hottest part of the day so it doesn't really burn up too much, because to much sun can be a thing too and it's really more so too much heat, right, And so that's a situation where you would be looking for a little bit of shade. But really in the super time, we have like ten to twelve hours a daylight, so you know what I mean, you have a really long window of sunlight. So you're just providing a bit of a break for that plant. So yeah, sixty eight hours. And like I said, if you don't have that, you might have to supplement with some lights. And you know people do that, you know, fake grow plants, indoor plants and you don't have enough flight, get a grow light and you just a Google fried one and just and just have it. Yeah, So are there any unconventional places in our homes that we might not be thinking about that we could actually use to actually grow plants inventional places? You know, it really depends on where you have light. You probably could grow That room might be an unconventional place. And I don't know people will be open somewhere, but a lot of people tend to have a window or something like that in the bathroom and you know it stays kind of moist and things like that, so it might be a good environment. I like a kitchen window sill your bedroom. I mean, you know, you can bring plants into any room. It's gonna provide something green and fresh if you're bringing herb. They also can be something that really smells good. If you like the smell of something. If you want to grow like a lavender or a lemon, grass or something like that. You bring that into the bedroom. That can be also something that you're engaging and interacting when I think you just sort of get that that aroma therapy as well if you're not necessarily using it all the time for cooking. And then you know, off edible flowers, it provides both beauty and it something you can eat as well, and you know, those are some really cool things that you can grow and kind of dual purpose. So talk to us about what other things we need to get started with forming or having a small garden. So you've already talked about like pots so that we can like repot the small transplants that we get from the store. What other kinds of things do we need to get started? Yeah, so the most important thing six to aight, I was the sunlight. Right, sunlight is the best, but if you need to supplement your sunlight with grow light, definitely to do that. Good soil, right, do not skimp out, especially if you are going to be in pots, even if you're going to be in a raised bed. Product by the best soil that you can afford, and really look for a soil that is formulated for growing food, especially if you're buying it in bags. Once you start going into building raised beds or you're working with soil in the ground and you want to amend that soil, then you'll most likely be calling up landscaping companies and you're getting soil dropped off. But if you're doing containers, if you're doing pots, by good soil, okay, not soil conditioner, that's not a soil. Don't buy the cheapest stuff. By the best stuff you can afford, right, because the soil is everything the plants are growing like, that's the medium that's gonna give them the nutrients and everything they need. And of course water, right and you know it need your attention and your love. It needs you to pay attention to it. Make sure it's water and really get the container. You can get real creative with containers. I mean people grow in grow bags, people grow in all potato SAgs. You can grow in gallant sized bottles that you chop at the top. I mean, like you can get really creative. The container really is just to hold the soil. And you want to make sure whatever continue use has drainage holes on the bottom, right and so on the bottom. If you're repurposing something, make sure you figure out a way so that if you over water it, it it doesn't soak the roots. A lot of roots don't like to sit in water. But yeah, sun soil, good soil, you get your plant, You get your good seeds. What seeds you have to be careful in the sense of making sure that you don't use super old seeds, because the older seeds are the less likely they are to germinate, especially if they haven't been stored well. Try to get fresh seeds. So definitely, I would say the necessary elements are making sure you have a good amount of sunlight and if not sunlight, supplementing with a grow light, having really the best soil that you can buy, and obviously water. Rainwater is best if you can collect rainwater. Oh my god, plants love blah blah blave rainwater. The next thing is, yeah, you can use tap water absolutely, and then you know, you just paying attention to it, loving on the plant. You know, talk to them, check on them, make sure they have everything they need. So is there a gardening tool or something that we might need that we don't necessarily need to spoiler you on, but we should be mindful of having gardening too. Yeah, I mean if you're doing a container garden a most part you would need a simple hand spade or like a little small hand trouble so that you can transplant your plants, and maybe like a little small garden fork. Usually you know you'll find a kit of like three or four different garden and tools. Start a garden tools in a packet, but it'll be a hand shovel, a little small hand fork, and maybe some kind of weet. And two, if you are growing outdoors and you're in sort of raised beds, those would change from being a hand tool to actually like a big garden tool, so it would be like definitely a shovel, a pitchfork, which would you know, replace the hand fork. Those are the two main ones. And then something you know, some type of wheat and tool. Usually that's a good old standard garden hoe, but there are a bunch of different types of holes, so you can get more and more complicated depending on how in depth you get with your farm garden project. And those are the two main shovel, your pitchfork or your hand fork, and then some kind of wheat and got it more from my conversation with Jamila after the break, you mention the term German nation, and so I wonder if you could talk us through like the plant development process, So like what is germination, what are the stages? What are we paying attention to? So germination refers to the seed. So if you're starting from a seed, right seed, one on one, all the information you need in terms of how to plant the seed, what to do with it, what to expect, how long it takes is on the seed packet. So make sure when everybody's seed package, just look on the back and it will give you everything you need. When you buy a seed and you put it in the soil, depending on the seed, you'll bury to certain depth or whatever kind of cover it with soil. Some seeds don't need much soil to cover them because they're really small. And then you water it and you're waiting for that seed to germinate, and so that seed coding will open up, that plan will send out its sprout, it'll break the surface and boom, your seed has germinated. So success number one, Your seed has germinated. Once the seed has germinated, then it'll start to form it's true leaves. So the first set of leaves are just the German nation leaves. I forget exactly what they call them. Those are not the true leaves, and then the second set will be, oh, these are the leaves of the actual plant. This is what the rest of the leaves of that plant will look like. And then it'll just grow. And so depending on the crop, it can take somewhere between a few days up to three weeks for that seed to germinate, and you'll just need to know based on the type of seed and the crop that you have purchased. And so after germinates, now it's gonna grow if it's in a small container, depending on the crop, so most people will start seeds and something smaller, and then once it's germinated, they will pick the strongest plant and they will take that plant and then they will put it in its final location, whether it's in your pot or in the raised bed or in the ground, and from there it'll grow. And if it's a leafy green, you probably are gonna let grow for about a month and a half before you start harvesting. If it's like cucumbers and tomatoes, it might be two to three months before it then flowers and then fruits. So it just really depends on the crop. But from seed, it will germinate, and then after they germinates and it will start growing and you'll have a baby plant. Then after that it'll grow a mature into the final plant that you want, and that plant will either produce leafy greens or it might produce a root crop. Those are your carrots, your beets and things like that. It might produce fruits like you're technically tomatoes and cucumbers and all those things, or fruits, because anything that comes out of a flower is a fruit. And then to you know, the final life cycle to when it's done and then you pull it out a compost. It are all of the directions in terms of like watering and all of that, like on the back of the sea. Yeah, it really is. Everything is really on the back of the sea packet. Everything you need to know how many seeds to plant, how far apart, if you're plant in multip pulls up that crop. You know, they might be like if you want to plant five tomato plants, you want to space some two ft apart. If you're planting like lettuces that you're hutting for a salad, you're gonna plant those really close together because you're cutting and grows and cutting grows, so all of that information, how often the water, how much sunlight it needs, the best placed in the garden to put it, and the full life cycle. Right, so they'll tell you how long it will take to germinate and how long before you'll start harvested from it, and the soil requirements and the nutrient requirements. So seed packets have all the information. You just flip it over to the backside you read it. And some people even have like a little QR code for like more information on website or something like that. And are usually seed packets that you're getting at the store, right, you know, obviously if somebody just gives you some seeds that I gotta go get you a book. So you're saying, like from these same places that you talked about buying the transplants, right, like the nursery and stuff like that, because I know I've seeing these like little starter kids at like a target, and I don't feel like I've seen all that information on the back of the sea packets. Yeah, and the starter kid, you know, I haven't done one of those, and they may have the instructions inside kit, but I know definitely like standard sea packets. There's all kinds, and you know they're organic brands. There are conventional ones that you'll find at your local box store, and the flipping over all that information is on there, and you know, and you might need to kind of like look up the terms. You know, they'll say something like in rows spacing, what rows? What are we talking about? And especially when you're growing in a chat, there's a little bit of translation you have to do because most of it is written for people that are growing a standard garden in the ground. And you know, you got your rose beans and you rose potatoes, and you rose a tomato, so that's sort of what it is. But if it says, for instance, it's in a pot planted twelve inches part, well, if you have a pot that's only like swa avench diameter, that's just small plant, right, and you can kind of wouldn't want to repeat that, so kind of think about the width of your pot as the kind of that width on the seed packet, so you'll know how many plants you can kind of put in that pot. So the bigger the pot, you can put more stuff and you can cluster things together too. So let's talk a little bit about urban farming, Can you talk about what that is and what impact that has on like a city sustainability and climate. Urban farming is essentially farming in the urban environment, So that can happen obviously anywhere. You know, you're literally farming in the city and the effects for me, you know, my background is environmental engineering, and I came from a background of like studying waste water, air pollution, how to solve some of those issues and some of those problems, and there's a slew of things that we're dealing within city ease that air pollution. The more heartscapes you create in a city, the more runoff you have because now the waters is not soaking into the soil, loss of diversity of plants and animals. So in you're doing a farm in the city, you're taking a space that for some people starts off as just a parking lot or a site that nobody's doing anything with, and you're transforming that space into a lush, green environment that is helping to clean up there are because plants, do you know, they're taking it in carbon dioxide and putting out oxygen. You're taking an environment that now you're growing all this food and that food is using up the rain, and so it's using up a lot of that water that falls on it, as opposed to you know, maybe before it was just running off for whatever. It's just providing beauty. And you plant a garden and you will be surprised what shows up from the animal kingdom. I mean all kinds of things you plant hour as you bring back all concert pollinators and birds now have a resting place, and you see caterpillars and butterflies and and just all kinds of stuff. So it really burns back all of that diversity. And then you know, just people in general just are like people love a garden's face, and people come about all the time and they're just like, oh my god, it's so beautiful. And I love when older people stopped by, and then they're like remembering them growing up having their garden maybe out in the country, and they're just like, why are you doing this right here in the city, And they're just so proud and so excited to see young folks, as they say, take it on this profession. And so it just sparks so like this sort of magical kind of thing that it brings a whole another type of life. To a city. Besides like nightlife, garden life, you got the farm life in the city too. So I love it. I live five minutes away from my farm. My commune is easy. I get to just be out side and get fresh air. I get to be active and you know, get to bring people along for the journey with me. So I love it. M So, is there anything you would have to be careful about growing in an urban environment? Right? Like? Are there anything that you would not want to introduce into the middle of a city? The only thing I would say, like, I don't know, don't grow some weed on it, you know. But really that's the only thing I've ever cautioned in me. But I'm like, there's a lot of eyes people watching. You do not want to attract that kind of energy for any reason at all. People will come thinking something else. Has some friends that were trying to grow hemp, And I was like, it looks the same and it smells the same, and people might think the same thing, And so I would caution against that. What besides that? Not really, I wouldn't say there would be anything that I wouldn't grow. I would say that some of the challenges of growing in urban environment is all the things that are challenging about being in an urban environment, people staling stuff and us a little bit of vandilism. But you know that comes with just being in an urban environment. I've got friends that don't grow in urban environments, and you know, dealt with some of the same stuff just like regular human existing stuff. But besides that, one thing you do want to be careful of, be mindful of the space that you're going to be growing on. Right if you're in an urban environment, some spaces have a tendency to maybe have had a previous history where I don't know, let's just say it was a gas station. I would not recommend you try to start a guarden on a gas station or a laundry mat, just because the chemicals, the oils, the gas, you know, that kind of stuff is in that soil. It's in the ground, and plants really do take up whatever is in the soil, and so E p A has some recommendations around what to do. You would want to test your soil. I definitely tested my soil before I started growing, and you just want to make sure that it doesn't have any high elevated levels of really heavy metals. Is the biggest concern, and any other hydrocarbons or anything like that. Hydrocarbons will come from like oils and gases and things like that. So yeah, I mean that is the only thing I would say to really be mindful of in the urban environment is know the history of the site that you're getting ready to grow on, if it's like a standalone site, and try to test that soil. If you're not able to do that, then most people would say grow in a raised bed or growing containers so that you're not really growing in that soil in the ground and you're growing in soil that you brought in. Got it? So can you give us some tips about how we might identify what would be native or would typically thrive in our geographical location. So I'm guessing I'm also here in Atlanta, so what we would grow here might be different than somebody who would be maybe in Arizona. How do we know what will thrive depending on our geographics? Okay? So what you want to find out is you want to find out your growing zone. And there's zones I think one through eight and maybe nine down in Florida, right, So in Georgia we're zone it used to be like seven b I think we're like eight eight because it's just progressively gotten warmer. So you google what growing zone am I in, and then you know you're like plants and vegetables for that zone, and it will give you a list of the things you can grow. The difference between the zones is how long of a growing period you have. So in the South we pretty much can grow year round, right, if you're up north, you might only have six months that you can grow something, you know what I mean, And so it just really reduces the time frame that you can grow. And then sometimes, for instance, you might pick a specific variety of a crop. So let's say and grow sweet potatoes. Sup potatoes generally take four months, right, twenty days. That's fine in Georgia, we got some for as right for a long time. But if you're up north, it's not warm early enough to put the plant in. Pick a different swee potato variety that might produce in ninety days. You're gonna pick varieties specific to your zone. And then they're just some things you won't be able to grow in certain zones, right, just because they just don't do well with the cold, or they don't really do well with the heat. So yeah, find your growing zone and then just find out what those fruits and vegetables and the varieties that you can grow in that zone. But generally, again I mean not to be like, you know, I should have stock in these big box stores, but what they are carrying locally, all the things that can grow in your region, right, they're shopping for the region. And then if you want things that are saying not in that store, then you know you're gonna have to kind of do a little bit more research, go online, find different varieties. More from my conversation with Jamila after the break. So each episode of your Magnolian Network HBO show has a different theme. So the themes are patients, Discovery, inspiration, different themes, different life skills. Can you talk about the skills that are important informing and why that was important to kind of name them in that way? Skills that are important? I would say definitely Patients is a good one, like discovery, just just being open to the journey, not being super tied to an outcome. I still have crop failures, I still have things that I try a little bit different. Even after teen years of doing something, things go wrong. You're just you know, the weather it was different, or you try a different variety and they were like, oh this is supposed to do this, and you try and you're like, well that didn't do that, or you know. I mean, just be open to constantly learning, being patient, and just be excited. People like well I just I don't have green thumb. Well, hey, none of us have one until we do, right, because it's just it's practiced. If it's something that you're really committed to, you're just gonna like do a lot of reading. Definitely connect with your broader community, other people that are growing, problem solved with other folks, Hey did this do this for you because today you know, or people take notes. Journaling is really good to know what you did where it works. Sometimes plants can you know I planted it over here and didn't do so well, let me try it over here, and then you're like, oh this is a good spot for this plan. So yeah, Just those qualities of just constantly being open to learn, being patient, observant, and just try to build a community around due of people that are doing it that you can talk to and constantly be learning, reading, educating yourself. I mean I read all about garden, and I read gardening books for years long before I even started a guarden. I just knew was something I wanted to do, So I just was like just filling myself with information thinking about it, and then you know, the opportunity presented itself and I went for it. So so you're reaching something that I want to follow up on, Jamilia. You talked about like the failure that sometimes happens, like when a crop doesn't happen. Can you talk a little bit more about, like how you feel like you are paying attention or attending to your mental health as a farmer, Like what kinds of things pop up that people might not anticipate that they may want to know about. The biggest thing really as a farmer is the weather. That is the thing that like, you can do all the right things and then something crazy happens, like too much rain. Oh, like it's drive for a really long time, you know what I mean. So a drought in Atlanta. You know, we literally just had a major super freezing cold storm event. It was like negative ten below Me and all my farmer friends. You know, we covered all of our because it's in our plants, and you know, I had eight crop failure, like in terms of full grown plants that are just gone. So you know it happens. That part of farming can be definitely like when you talk about mental health, like farmers just being like, oh my god, what am I gonna do? Because you know, your farm is your livelihood. You know what you have in the ground, that's your money. Like I'm growing my money. It's that money doesn't grow on trees. Just it does if you're a farmer. It grows on the fruit trees, it grows on those kale bushes, you know, to be like it does, I'm like, that's the money out there because we have to go sell that and that's how we make our money. So when you have those failures, it can be really just like whoa because you're trying to figure out have employees and myself, I've got bills. You know, we'll running business right as a farmer. And so that's why it's important to have a network. We're talking to other farmers as a network of organizations that really support farmers. So they're looking for ways how they can kind of give us a little bit of money to help us get transplants, get some seeds back, get that back in the ground. I mean, you definitely have lost that time. You can't gain that time back. You gotta say a prayer. I literally just came back from the cake shop. They sent me a message and they were like, Jabilla, how's it God? I said, you know what, y'all, I'm not thinking about it. So I'm on vacasion and when I get back, I will get to it because I can worry about it. It's happened, right, And the end of the year is a time where, you know, the oneter time. It's a time, you know, things are growing slower. It's a time that I generally, me and my farm staff, you know, and team, we take some time off because you know, it's the holidays. Stuff is growing slower anyways, Winter slows everything down, so it's a really good time for us to take some time away and just sort of recoup. And I was like, and I'm gonna do that because there's no point in crying with respec me again. So tomorrow I'll be back on the farm and you know, we'll just go from there. But yeah, for some people it can be it can be really detrimental. Yeah, so we love it. You if you would use your expertise to help us with a little activity. So we have a couple of scenarios that we want to share with you. See if you can give us some input on what these people should do with their form or their garden. All right, so Remark put off gardening all of last year and is ready to get started today. She believes she has procrastinated long enough. She has a guest room in our apartment that has a ton of natural light. She loves to cook a retreat food. So she's looking for anything to reach back to her family's roots. What would you suggest she grow? Okay, So, actually it's interesting. I grew a specific type of basil and a pepper this year that was both used heavily and that cuisine and it was called holy Basil Best ballah B s B O l A is the type of basil, and it's one of those earths like girls really well, really easy, smells amazing, and she will have to find the seeds and have to start that from seeds. But basil sprouts really well from seed. And then I grew this hot pepper and it's brown and it's like used heavily in that cuisine as well. Mirco fauna. What's the name of the pepper and peppers are also a summer crop that is super abundant. Most people that grow peppers are like, okay, you just need one pepper plant and will produce a ton. So in her apartment. The only thing with the pepper is it does need to be pollinated. Bees, butterflies, all kinds of things just need to kind of come and move. She might have to hand pollinate, like so you take a little a little brush, a little paint brush, and you go from one flower to the next, and that's how you hand pollinate. You're just getting pollen for one flower, put on the next, and just kind of do that a little bit. I would do herbs. She could probably do some greens, Yeah, some leafy greens. They don't need to be pollinated. Yeah, leafy greens and pots. Keep them all near the window. If she needs to supplement with a growl that I would try a pepper and maybe a couple of tomatoes. Peppers and tomatoes would need their own, like one pepper plant in a at least a twelve inch pot, and tomatoes as well, no crowd of in a twelve inch pot. You could probably do maybe like three collars or kale or some kind of leafy green and then basil can be like a six inch pot or I mean you can get bigger with basil. But yeah, okay, alright, that's story. Yeah, that is a good story. That's one time a second person. So Maranola is a Nigerian mother whose children have both moved out. With her free time, she wants to get into growing some fresh herbs. Morenola loves to have a fresh cup of tea every morning, so growing anything that she can add as a flavor to her tea, she wants to sign up. She plans to grow outside on her balcony, which gets a ton of sun, and she also wants to be mindful not to grow anything that will harm her dog. What would you suggest, Well, I mean tea is really easy. I mean you can grow you can grow man, she can grow lavender, you can grow lemonrass, lemon ball. You can grow different types of basils. Some basils are really nice, and tease rosemary if she likes camerameal on the but alcony, you can grow toime. You can grow a bunch of different nerves. So yeah, lots of options. There, lots of options. Yeah, because now we've moved outside, we're getting fresh air, pollinators are coming on the balcony. You also getting raine. You'll probably get a lot more sun, so kind of opens it up a lot more, got it? Okay, so we have one last one. So Na Lena is a new mom. She wants to start a small garden to begin teaching her son the value of growing your own food. She doesn't have a lot of time. It needs something that will not die on her easily and all so be fun for her son to interact with. She plans to start her garden on a window field that gets a ton of natural light, which is also a rather small one with suggestions would you have so yeah, so I would do lettuce citizen greens. I would do some herbs. Kids surprisingly a love love rashes, which who would have known. I mean I started grow radishes with kids at school. They're beautiful, they're red, and when kids grow stuff themselves, they eat it. And radish is a little spicy, and you know, kids like like spicy things. They're like, you know, they're like talkies and they're like spicy chips. So like radish is kind of like that, and that girls in like thirty days. It's like, it's fun. So it's like a root vegetable carrots. Carrots might be a good one too, because they don't need a lot of space. And then try cucumbers or tomatoes because generally kids are always like, yeah, I always want to grow pickles, and I'm like, yeah, grow cucumbers, and then you can write pickles, so they like pickles. That that's a fun thing to grow with kids as well. Chickunvers are produced faster and there will be a lot more easier than like tomatoes, but generally those are the two you're not big on tomatoes. Peppers could be a good substitute for that as well. Yeah, okay, I would not have thought that about radishes, but I love that you introduced that. Kids love radishes and it's fun, it's easy, it's found really fast, and it's beautiful. It's color, and then you can get really crazy with radishes in terms of the different carl their purple ones, white ones, pink ones, red ones, there are ones that are around, there are ones that are long and scanny, you know. So they can get really fun with radishes and they're super good for you too. H got it, Got it? So something that you mentioned earlier, Jamila, that I want to go back to. You talked about like how you will have sometimes elders visit the garden and really kind of feel like reconnecting to history and kind of reconnecting to an older time. And that's something else that's I think it really important about your work is that there is a clear reverence of like the history of black folks in gardening and informing. Can you talk a little bit about maybe something that's overlooked related to black farming that you think people should know. Yeah, the narrative that we hear a lot around black farming is like, oh, we've lost so much farmers, and you know that is true. Black people have lost a lot of farmland through all kinds of discriminatory practices. So we didn't lose it, it was stolen from us. I like to use the right words by our govern that I don't think people really think Black people are that connected to farming and to the land, and you know, we really are. We I've been carrying ancestral knowledge for a long time. So part of the reason we were brought to this country not just labor, but really the knowledge that we had of working the earth, of growing things, of cultivating, clothing gotten, you know, shelter all the things. And so that was knowledge that we came with, and that was knowledge that we retained and really passed down through different generations. And so in all of our culinary traditions as well, it's very much food and land related in the sense of like Southern cuisine, Caribbean cuisine, African cuisine. I mean, it's so much of like what's fresh, what's available. You know a lot of people talk about their grandparents, especially here in the South. You know how we used to go to the South, we visit our grandparents and we go out into the garden and you pick your peas, or you pick your greens, or you do this or you do that. And you know, I have memories of doing that when we lived in Trinidad. You know, we would harvest vegetables with harvests, fruit off the tree, you know, go up to the mango tree, get this, Go get your tamra and go get this, and you know we would be using that to fare our meals for the week. We have a rich history. It's still alive. It's just not publicized, you know what I mean. And Black people are still connected to the land. They're out here doing it. They love it, they have a deep respect and of reverence for it, and we know it's part of our healing and it's part of our story. It will always be part of our story. Something else that you talk about is food sovereignty, So can you say a little bit about what that means to you and how it impacts us as Black book. Food sovereignty is really about having control of the food that you're consuming, having access to it, and also food that's culturally relevant, food that is necessary for your cultural expression through food because foodhist culture, and just being in the position to be part of creating food that is feeding your community. Right you're cultivating that food with a certain type of intention of healing, of growth, of culture, of togetherness, and so that is going to carry on through the people that are engaging with you, that are buying from you, that are all of that. And people want to see themselves reflected in the things that they're engaged with. If you're going healthy or going to the farm table movement or what have you, and it all looks like everybody else. It doesn't feel like there's a space for you there that you should be there. I was like, that ain't for me, you know, And you hear people say that that and I think, yeah it is. It's actually was I think before was anybody else's thing. But I'll be going off on people stuff. Look here, let's talk about history. So it's really important for us to get connected. And again, like I said, everybody doesn't have to be a farmer, doesn't have to get into farming, but being connected to it, engaging with it. Find your black farmers, support them if there's an opportunity to bring that to your school or your community or your neighborhood, supported in some way, and just uplift and highlight and just do the work of being connected in some way. So, speaking of connection, how can we stay connected to you? What is your website as well as any social media handles you'd like to share. I am Patrick City Farms dot com. It's Patrick City Farms on Instagram and on Facebook and on the website. I have all the information about how you can support me kind of locally and buying fresh produce. I do online sales and you can come to some local farmers markets. Also with Magnolia Network you can watch the show Homegrown where you're showing people how to kind of garden from themselves, and that's available through HBO Max and Discovery Plus. The best way to contact me is an email and not through the d m s on the socials. I'm a little bit older than I probably present, and I am like I couldnot do business on the stuff, So yeah, emails farmer J at Patford City Farms dot com. It's the best way, but we will be sure to include all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Thank you for having me. I'm so glad Jamila was able to share her expertise with us today. If you're interested in watching her new show, Homegrown, it's now streaming on HBO Max and was on and Discovery Plus. To learn more about her, you can also visit Therapy for Black Girls dot com sash session to ninety and don't forget to text two of your girls and tell them to check out the episode right now. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters. Come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet, designed just for black women. You can join us at Community dot Therapy for black girls dot com. This episode was produced by Frida Lucas and Elise Ellis and editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care

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The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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