Joe the Mason Greenhouse coordinator and awesome Elementary School custodian returns from Orono Maine to tell us about the school greenhouse he cares for, and the pollinator garden he’s going to create this spring with a grant from the Audubon Society! As well as his pickling successes and many other golden seeds! You won’t want to miss this episode!

Tell us a little about yourself.

Thank you for having me back on ! I feel like an honor to be back on the second time. I am a custodian at our ASA Elementary.

I am an organic minded grower in the backyard

this year I was selected to be the greenhouse coordinator and I was selected

that is

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

So it was back when I was a kid in the same house I was living in now, my grandfather

qualtiy control

wipe the dirt off on the shorts

tomatoes

pull a accept

when I moved back to maine in 2007

I started gardening on a

back in the house that I grew up in

dug the back up again

go to lawn

dad mowing it

dug it back up 20’ x 50’

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

Once we

not a good year for my garden

grew well

my tomatoes

back to hand tilling g

more earth worm friendly turn over

new seeds

one of my ag friends here

seeds were too old

maybe

here’s a tip I wasn’t aware of

planting all of my seeds 1/4 inch deep

a seed isn’t supposed to be planted more then a 1/4 inch

what makes it grow and the food to get there

if it doesn’t have enough

too deep

not envought to

hear it it makes total sense

use all these lessons

• carrots
• beets
• peas
• basic garden

still grow brussels sprouts because I love those

cucumbers and zucchinis

I pickle everything!

actually for Christmas my friends got me this book:

The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving: Over 300 Recipes to Use Year-Round 

small gardeners

we don’t get 300 cukes

• asparagus
• taragon and shallots

great book

fallen in love with pickling

• carrots
• fiddleheads
• Maine item
• cucumbers
• pumpkin skin

you use

its a sweet pickle

clove an cinamin

candy ginger

it’s there’s some labor invovled

sterilizing your jars

if your

grocery store

6lbs bought the recipe

spring comes

taragon is a spring crop

pick up some from them

pickle those

test

going back to the asparagus

going to follow it

I’ve been talking about it

putting it in in

getting it so you get the size

just what I read when I was first looking into it

you put the seeds in

I might see some growth

they’re short and thin

you can cut them

the roots stay in tack

following season

root structure becoming more sound

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

I’ll put the asparagus in

follow my friends advice

carrots zuc

fun seeds

green house

to put seeds in to grow at the school

year before I had a tomato blight wipe out my tomatoes

gonna have to wait 5 years

that sounds like a challenge

at the other end of the garden

the rest of the garden

garlic

was great had a great garlic crop

120 bulbs got a 115

only put in 70 bulbs last fall

first year of using garlic bulbs from the garlic I grew last year

saved bulbs

first generation

use garlic

So our greenhouse was built in 1986 I wasn’t around when it was built

have ogne in and watered plants

as coordinator

part of what your tasked with you have to incorporate some sort of student activity throughout the year

enter the school through main doors

just off to the left

other side is the lobby

basic plants in there

ivy spider plants

small jade plant

pretty big plant

hybiscus

ficus tree

in the green house

looks great fills up some open space

very healthy

so it’s basically

used as a teaching space

one on one that teachers do with students

I maintain it

25 feet by 12 feet

people love to go join there and sit

teachers will go through

on a nice day

grapes that grow outsdie too

outside is not as well taken care of in

within the greenhouse

a couple of the things I am lining up

Maine Ag in the Classroom

been around since about 2008

funded by grants and sponsors

maine ag license plate

choose when you get a car

money from that

teaching ag which is a big business in maine

to kids

3rd weekend in

weed and ME

and ag

they have a book

one book for every classroom

have volunteers each week

read the book

Applesauce Day!

passed on through the generations

applesauce

kitchen manager

each classroom

• so for a special reader
• will go into each kindergarten class
• one reader for each 4th grade class
• pre-k
• 19 classrooms
• 19 readers in that day

and the book is left in the

apples are big crop in Maine  too!

I was thinking there was someone who told me that Maine was a good place to start a farm if you were new to farming looking for land.

at that time

three years ago

Maine’s average age of farmers was like in the 30s

Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners

MOFGA

works with farmers helps them secure loans to start farms

organic

They can buy a small plot of land here and get a lot of produce

or animals for meat they can still have a small farm and produce cheeses and some milk for people. IDK if the median age has changes. 

welcoming

800 farms in Maine

for a population of a million and a half people quite a few farm, it’s not easy, it’s a hard life but they are obviously passionate.

I keep hearing these statistics that a small farm produces more food per acre then these big conventional farms.

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Now Let’s Get to the Root of Things!

Pollinator Garden Coming

Another way doing this in conjunction with some other teachers

co-sponsored by the Audubon Society

We were selected to have a pollinator garden built

were still choosing the site 10 foot by 20 foot

flowers

and lots of colors!

One of my first guests was Elizabeth Leonard from EARLS kitchen gardens in NY and she talked about how soothing it is for kids to have gardens to be in!

specific

rusty patch bumble bee

Audubon is selected the flowers those bees are drawn too

hasn’t been seen up this far in Maine in years

were also gonna focus on butterflies like monarch butterflies