Connect with Allison on Instagram @Long Cut Garden

Links mentioned

Patti Armbrister Composting course 

Jesse Frost No-Till Growers Podcast

Nothing Much HappensPodcast for falling asleep

Favorite Books

The No-Till Organic Vegetable Farm: How to Start and Run a Profitable Market Garden That Builds Health in Soil, Crops, and Communities

Daniel Mays 

Lean Farm: How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work

Ben Hartman

The Living Soil Handbook: The No-Till Grower's Guide to Ecological Market Gardening

Jesse Frost

Jackie mentions Nicole Master's

For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems

INTRO

Hey, Green Future Growers. Welcome to Season 3 I'm your host, JackieMarie Beyer. If you're new to the show, I hope you'll subscribe on iTunes for free or follow on your favorite podcast app and let's get growing. Hey everyone this is JackieMarie Beyer, your host here to help inspire you on your journey to create, grow, and enjoy a green, organic oasis. So let's get growing!

Not really. I, I have been enjoying listening to episodes of your podcast and just kind of getting familiar with, you know, what you do and how you conduct your interviews. And it just sounds, you know, pretty much like I expected it. So I don't know.

2m 27s

JackieMarie Beyer

So tell me, is there like a guest that, well, who's the first guest that stands out in your head?

2m 34s

Alison McClendon

Daniel Mays. I was like, holy Kerry. You know, May's on there

2m 38s

JackieMarie Beyer

Is it. He is amazing.

2m 40s

Alison McClendon

He is amazing. And you know, I I'm just a green horn and all of this, but I am super curious and super inspired by the people that I follow. Who do, who put all this stuff into action in a, in a way that seems to be really just smart. So when I, when I got, sorry, I'm, I'm just having a little brain fart here. I got

3m 19s

JackieMarie Beyer

Keep going. I'm going to mute my mic.

3m 22s

Alison McClendon

I got a lot of different books by people who I admired their work and Daniel Mays. I really love the way his book is laid out to just provide concrete information. You know, it breaks down the money part. It really just tells you start to finish. I mean, so many of the books do, but his, I guess just resonated with me just right.

3m 55s

JackieMarie Beyer

I can not agree with you wholeheartedly. And the thing I love, the way he breaks down the money, he gives you the schedule. I mean, I literally read that book twice, like once and then right in a row, right after that, I have red lines under any of it under all sorts of paragraphs, because it just, it does, it lays it up. You plant this at this time, you plant this at this time, you put these things together, you, you know, these props fit next to each other and he's, and he's got the whole note tilt system down, which is show nice. And the market gardener. And then at the back, you know, he gives you ideas. I'm like what you can charge for things. And at first I was thrown off and I was like, oh my gosh, who is going to pay $7 for eggs? Let me tell you those eggs are $7 in the grocery store.

4m 38s

JackieMarie Beyer

I'm at my mom's in New York right now. And I could not believe the price. And these aren't even like special eggs, special, you know, they say they're organic or they're cage free or whatever, but it's like, they're not like from the farm they're in the grocery store. I was like, oh my goodness. I cannot believe. I mean, you know, we are in, you know, still the throws of the pandemic, whatever, you know? So it's like, what, November 19th, 2021, if listeners are listening to this later. But yeah, but that, but all the, I mean, it's just the mate. Yeah. I loved his book. I got show much information out of his book, so cool.

5m 20s

JackieMarie Beyer

Well, I'm so glad to hear that. And then he was like one of the beginning episodes. So you, do you remember back from, because I haven't really like I'm having like this computer problem or I, I like can't even, I, I almost, it's like a magnet, you know, like when two opposing magnets with my computer, I just got so much, I'm going to it last year. So I haven't put an episode out in a while. I kind of took some time off, but I'm right about to get back into it yesterday. I got to see my GFF, my garden friend forever. I leaned control. We went into New York city to, we went to the drew Barrymore show or on Wednesday was so fun. And we walked around the city and just we're we're so like-minded like, everything was perfect. She's like, let's go find a bookstore.

6m 1s

JackieMarie Beyer

And I was like, all right. And what is she reading? Kissed the ground. She's reading that book. She had like a two and a half hour train ride to get into the city and back. And I was like, and then she brought the real button. I'm like, oh, you're reading it. I've had no, I have the real book. And just, we had so much fun.

6m 16s

Alison McClendon

Oh, that does sound fun. I haven't done anything like that in a long time. I'm from Illinois originally and lived in Chicago for quite a while. And while I really do resonate most with being outdoors, there's a part of me that really misses the, the feeling of being in a city. And it's a, it's a, excuse me. Okay. I should learn how to mute.

6m 48s

JackieMarie Beyer

No worries at all. No, let me do the meeting cause I'll do, actually what I do is I do it afterwards, super easy to edit. I have this program garage band it's piece of cake and it's fun. And you get like audio waves. You can almost see where the sneezes, I can't even like, not only that, like a lot of times I edit while I'm driving. And like, all you have to do is like command T to, to split the file and then hit the space bar to get it going again. And then I can go back when I'm not driving or like I'll pull over on the side of the road really quick and hit the command T space bar and then, and then go, you know, and then do it later when I'm at home that night, you know, just where are all the splits?

7m 33s

JackieMarie Beyer

Wow. Was really super easy. Having the, I spent way too much time on my computer since the pandemic started. And my podcast, the other thing is this guy started transcribing my show notes and I, I almost feel like I've lost like connection with my show. So I think I'm going to go back to doing my own show notes and typing them and stuff because I feel like I used to remember things better and more and whatnot. Yeah. White background noise. I'm at my mom's. And like, I can hear like there's landscapers across the street. I think the garbage men are like coming down the block. I don't know.

8m 15s

JackieMarie Beyer

Anyway, Alison, what might listeners want to hear about you show? I'm going to introduce you and we'll go from there. I might put a little bit of the pre-shot in here and there, but I'm ready to roll. I'm

8m 28s

Alison McClendon

Ready.

8m 28s

JackieMarie Beyer

And do I say your name and McLendon

8m 32s

Alison McClendon

McLendon?

8m 32s

JackieMarie Beyer

Yes. Okay. Here we go. Welcome to the green organic garden. It is Friday, November 19th, 2021. And I have an awesome guest on the line who joined your organic corner podcast, Facebook group. And I said, will you please come on because listeners, I'm looking for backyard gardeners, just like you. If you're out there, reach out to me. I would love to hear your experiences. And I'm sorry if you emailed me and I missed it because on the plane, I'm in New York visiting my mom and I on the plane. I went through my emails and I didn't find an email from a listener that I still haven't replied to, that she wrote me in like September.

9m 11s

JackieMarie Beyer

But anyway, today, Alison is here to tell us about her gardening journey. She is also from Montana or originally I think, well, we'll find out I'm going to let her talk show welcome to the show. Alison McLendon.

9m 25s

Alison McClendon

Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

9m 29s

JackieMarie Beyer

Well, we're excited because you have an awesome Instagram channel and you're the kind of people that we really learned from like in the preset. We were talking about Daniel Mays and, and I do appreciate the, but to me, it's the backyard gardeners, just like you, that bring my show to life and, and share their experiences that we can then take and turn and put it into place in our gardens. So, I mean, unless you're striving to be a market farmer, but a lot of my listeners are just like you and me. So we're going to show told us a little bit about yourself.

10m 1s

Alison McClendon

Well, so I am actually originally from Illinois, but my family and I live in Birmingham, Alabama, and we, my husband and I have a house with a third of an acre, which is really, it feels pretty big. And it looks big when I, when I see my pictures, but it's actually not. It's, it's a manageable size. We moved here about five years ago. We, we started our gardening at our old house, which had a little tiny raised bed that we built. And we were, we were inspired by permaculture and we were trying to utilize our space well by, by planting densely.

10m 47s

Alison McClendon

And we were kind of using a modified square foot gardening model in that small space. And it was a really interesting way to start. And, you know, really all we wanted to do was dip our toes in the water. So we, what we discovered is that once you put a garden in all of the insects immediately find out, so it was a good way to start kind of trying to understand what grows well here, what doesn't, what our insight pressure is. So anyway, we, we did seek out a place that had more land our backyard.

11m 31s

Alison McClendon

We are on a pie shaped piece of property where it's wide in the back. And so our lived was originally, it had a lot of volunteer pine and sweet gum trees. And so we had, and this sounds awful to say, but we had 38 trees taken out. What we have done though is add, we have a high density, apple orchard, it's on a trellis. We have heirloom cider apples that grow well in our region. And then we also have a large no-till market garden style garden, but it is really just, it's just a no-till garden with the 30 inch raised beds, wood chipped paths.

12m 17s

Alison McClendon

We also put in a, well, we originally kept these. My husband has since become allergic to them. So we had to rehome the bees, but we also put in a really big, it's a, well, it's a wildflower bed, but we're kind of letting the native stuff just come up as, as the seeds emerge from the seed bank. So now we have, you know, golden rod and bone set and a lot of stuff like that, that, that grows there. It's, it's sort of an insect. I forget how you say it, but insectary some people refer to it as a, a hedge row it's against our back fence. So there's the blueberries and blackberries.

12m 58s

Alison McClendon

And then this long bed, it's 17 inches wide by about 200 feet, no 17 feet wide by about 200 feet long. It's just all pollinator garden. And so we're, we're trying to encourage as much balance in our garden as possible. So, you know, while it felt heartless to remove a lot of those pine trees, what we've done is add diversity and life. So that's kind of what we're doing here.

13m 34s

JackieMarie Beyer

That is awesome. I know it's hard to cut down the trees, but sometimes you have to, I mean, you gotta have that sun and the apple orchard trees to produce apple cider is going to be beneficial to you and your community. And the bees are going to get more out of that anyway. So, you know, it's all, what can you do? So I do always start the show out. Alison asking about your very first gardening experience. Like, did you grow up in Chicago proper? Did your parents like ever have a garden? Like how old were you when you were a kid? Were you an adult? Who were you with and what, what's the first thing you remember growing?

14m 12s

Alison McClendon

Well, I did not grow up in Chicago proper. I grew up downstate in the middle of the state in a place called Bloomington. It is absolutely surrounded by what was not so much industrial ag at that point, but now is just all corn and beans and it's, it's kind of dismal actually. I mean, it's a beautiful environment, but the, the, the agriculture that takes place there is, is to me just sad. My mother took up gardening as I was growing up, but I think really what got me started that we, we would go camping.

14m 54s

Alison McClendon

We would go hiking. There were some wild places that we would go to in our area and I have always just loved nature. So it was really, it was really just my love of nature that kind of brought me to gardening. I lived in Atlanta for a while and had a house that had a huge yard and some people that who lived there prior to when I got the place, they were landscape designers. And so they had put a lot of really neat things in, and then they had become unable to care for the property.

15m 36s

Alison McClendon

And so it was really, my mom came and helped me with that yard. And it was, I don't know, just trying to find out what what's actually here and how do I take care of it that got me fired up. And she got me a lot of nice tools to work with a wheelbarrow, you know, good shovels, that kind of thing. So anyway, that was, that was kind of my beginning.

16m 3s

JackieMarie Beyer

Wow. So you probably, I think I'm sorry. I don't know why I thought you were in Montana. And I think I have seen you posted Joe Gardner. She probably follow Jolyon bull cause he was, he was out of it like he's out of Atlanta, I think. Right. Know,

16m 18s

Alison McClendon

I actually don't know that, that side. No, I don't believe I'm on there.

16m 23s

JackieMarie Beyer

He, oh, huh. Well that tells you where I'm at. I could've sworn, I had seen you posted in his Facebook group, but he, he does the growing a greener world show on, on the TV anyway. So then how did you learn how to garden organically was from your love of nature from your mom or where, where did document?

16m 45s

Alison McClendon

Well, both my mother was, you know, she was a, an early adopter of a lot of this stuff. And I think really my love of nature was from her directly. She had a wonder about her that I have definitely got. And so I think really the time in nature has given me an appreciation for all the living, things that are out there. I, I really can't bring myself to use the heavy chemicals that will throw off the balance. I don't want to kill anything. I want to create balance so that the, the system will work on its own as much as possible.

17m 32s

Alison McClendon

So I also, I growing up in Illinois and seeing all of the crop dusting, the, the, the model of growing there, the soil is some of the richest soil in the United States and it's just being ruined and frankly, and, and it just kills me. It makes me so sad and upset to see that happening. I also, my family has celiac disease. And so when I am thinking about raising food, I am thinking about the food is nourishment and how it will affect my body is something I'm really aware of.

18m 14s

Alison McClendon

My son also has celiac disease. And so when my husband and I first began gardening, it was really never a question. We had some of the Rodale's material. We were trying to learn about, you know, disease and insect pressure and how we could mitigate that. And, you know, for us gardening for our family and gardening with a baby and small child, we didn't want to use any of the chemical stuff that was out there. So that was really a lot of our motivation there.

18m 54s

JackieMarie Beyer

I love all of that. And that's, that's exactly why I started my podcast, because since you haven't been following me for very long, you might not know, but technically my husband's the gardener and I've always called myself the organic eater a little bit. This year, I did myself and I grew, I grew so much, like I was like at the point where I was like, I don't want to go to the garden anymore, but I'm kinda over that already. Like, I just love the healthy food. And then just, even like, when you're talking to the pre-chat, we just got back from the grocery store and some of the food that was in there, some of the vegetables, and I was just like, seriously, like, oh, this just looks so, you know, you could just tell it had been neither sitting on a store shelf for a really long time, or just didn't have anything to make you feel like you were going to get any nutrients out of eating this piece of fruit or this, I can't remember what it was, but there was something that I was like, really they're selling this as like a vegetable there's like, God can't be any nutritional value left in this like super pale celery or something that was just like, so maybe it was the, lettuce, I don't know.

20m 3s

JackieMarie Beyer

Anyway, where was I back to tell? So tell us about something that you've done, such an amazing job describing your place. Like a lot of times I feel like I have to ask guests to really like go in a little more depth to explain, like, I can't really visualize, but you did such a good job helping us visualize what your garden looks like. So what's something that did grow well for you this year?

20m 27s

Alison McClendon

Well, I have to say because, I mean, I've been around gardening for a long time and you know, my husband and I did start our garden at our old house in the, in the...