Podcast

Transcript

Joshua Miller

Everyone, welcome back to another episode of the 5 in 20 Podcast by Remarkable Academic Foods. I'm your host Joshua Millerua Miller, and we have at least another five questions in 20-something minutes today. And we're talking about another part of the Grow series, part two of three, which is all about growing school food, fruits of labor. That's both literally and figuratively. We have with us today Farmer Greg, who is the Creator and Chief Visionary of the Urban Farm which is your go -to resource for online food growing education. And through courses, classes, and even podcasts, they help you gain the understanding, the knowledge, and confidence, and inspiration to grow your own food. So each year, they walk the walk too by delivering more than 4 ,000 fruit trees to their local communities. And that podcast I was telling you about, get this, close to 800, if he hasn't already reached the yes since the last book with him, 800 podcast episodes. So make sure you stick around for this episode.

Greg, thank you. Welcome. And thank you again for joining with the audience today. And to kick things off, let's talk about you first. Let's start with what is your guilty pleasure food? Oh, peaches.

Greg Peterson

Peaches and apricots. 

Joshua Miller

Are you serious? Okay. Okay. That's, that's funny because you know, sometimes I like to see if it blinds up with what you grow or what you do and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. So yeah, that's nice to see you. You're definitely celebrating the fruits of your labor for sure. Awesome. Well, let's start with where, where are you from? Where are you located and what got you going into this, this, uh, enterprise that you started?

Greg Peterson

I lived in Phoenix, Arizona for 55 years. And two years, a little, a little over two years ago, my partner, Heidi and I decided we wanted to go someplace quiet. Now Phoenix is a, is a metropolitan area of 4.7 million people. And I was looking for something a lot quieter than that. So we uprooted ourself after both having lived pretty much the entire entirety of our life in Phoenix, Arizona, and we moved to Asheville, North Carolina. And I am starting the fruit tree adventure here, brand new. We planted 160 fruit trees and berry bushes last summer. Wow. Yeah, I'm not going to do the same thing again this summer. That part of the experiment's done. I'll probably plant 20 or 30 more. So going back a little bit in time to 1975, we moved into the Weldon house.

The Weldon house is the house I grew up in I was 15 at the time and I wanted to grow fruit trees and have a garden. And my mom said, see the right half of the backyard, that's your garden. Go start digging. So I actually planted out my first three or four fruit trees in 1975 and grew them out there for, oh, maybe six or seven years moved. Got my rear end kicked out of the house.

Yeah, I didn't want to go to school and as long as I wasn't going to school, my parents said, get out of here. So I got out of there and three or four years later in 1988, I purchased what became the Urban Farm in Phoenix, Arizona. And the urban farm in Phoenix is a third of an acre. That's 80 feet wide and 160 feet deep. So it's not a lot of space.

And over the years, I experimented with a lot of fruit trees and came up with sequences and processes to successfully grow fruit trees. I'm going to say in the desert, but what I'm learning now after having moved to Asheville, North Carolina, that what I learned about planting and growing fruit trees absolutely works here as well. So nice. That's beautiful.

Joshua Miller

Beautiful. I can't even wrap my head around that many fruit trees, other than, you know, going to like the apple orchards or something like that. But I can only imagine the amount of work that went into your project last summer. Right. So that was a project that I had 10 people helping me. So it wasn't just me because I didn't holes and swales and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I can only imagine.

Greg Peterson

Back in 1999, so what, 24, 25 years ago now, I discovered that you could go into most nurseries and every big box store and they would sell you a fruit tree that would never make fruit in our area in Phoenix. Just the wrong varieties. And so I started studying it and started teaching my neighborhood friends and colleagues in Phoenix. And then they wanted to know where they could get fruit trees.

So I sourced fruit trees and that first year I actually ordered wholesale a hundred fruit trees. 60 of them were for a friend of mine's backyard. So I was planting my first orchard because back then I had the goal to plant 500 fruit trees in Phoenix, Arizona. And that's an aggressive goal. Thank you. And so it started with 60 fruit trees in my buddy's backyard. And then I had.

Over time, I had 80 fruit trees in my yard.

Joshua Miller

So more than enough fruit for everyone. 

Greg Peterson

Right. Well, that's the thing about that in a little while. That's the thing about infinitely abundant. 

Joshua Miller

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely will come back to that later on. So I did already have an episode on like traditional food gardening. Right. A lot of schools do their own gardening and of, you know, traditional fruits and vegetables. So what's the difficulty level difference between a traditional vegetable garden and fruit trees. 

Greg Peterson

Well, the nice thing about fruit trees is if you plant them appropriately, I want to say correctly, but if you plant them appropriately, you're giving them the nutrition they need to thrive. And the nice thing about a fruit tree is you plant it once and it makes food for decades, if not a hundred years. I had two citrus trees in the backyard of The Urban Farm in Phoenix that were over a hundred years old still making fruit. So as long as you do your homework and make sure that you're paying attention to the needs of the tree, the thing is you plant them once. So I planted 160 fruit trees here on the property last summer. They're coming up quickly on being in the ground for a year. And my task right now is to walk the orchard once a week. I just walk the orchard. 

I'm looking for any animal damage, I'm looking for any problems. So it's a 10 minute walk for me once a week. Wow, that is super simple. I feel like compared to the traditional garden where you have to be a little bit more frequent hands on for sure. And I know from past failures of trying it at home. So in terms of you talked a little bit about you learned that a lot of what you were doing in Phoenix applies to where you are today.

Joshua Miller

Let's think about like the northern US, right? So I know apples are big in the northern US, right? So what other kind of fruit trees could be planted up north? 

Greg Peterson

All right, so let's go back to Phoenix here just real quick. In Phoenix, what I found was that there were about a half a dozen varieties of peaches, two varieties of apricots, three. Three different varieties of plums and two, two apples and whatever citrus you could dream up mulberries. So there were very specific trees that grew really well in Phoenix, Arizona. So after having grown them for almost 50 years in Phoenix, my mindset when I arrived here two years ago was I'm going to grow the same kinds of fruit trees here that I grew in Phoenix and what I'm finding is is that stone fruit that's anything with a pit in the middle of it so peaches apricots plums cherries those kinds of things don't do that well here the pest pressure is massive so we get funguses and molds and all kinds of stuff that I don't even understand yet plus birds and all that kind of stuff and

So I'm re-evaluating what grows best here and what I'm finding is that the things that grow best here are berries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. So I'm shifting my thinking process from traditional fruit trees, which I have more exploring to do here because persimmons are supposed to grow really well here. Uh, pawpaws are supposed to grow really well here. So I haven't kind of, I haven't quite gotten into those yet.

I'll get there. I've only been here two years. But what I'm so and I do have about a half a dozen apples in the ground. And I do have 20 different stone fruit. Again, those are anything with a pit in the middle of them. And a bunch of blackberries, a bunch of blueberries and about 100 elderberry plants.

Joshua Miller

I didn't even realize that there were that many varieties of stone fruits. You know, I see like the couple that are in the store and that's about it. All the mainstream ones, but yeah, that's a lot of varieties. 

Greg Peterson

Exactly. Well, and here's the thing about, well, let's just talk apples real quick.

There are an unknown amount of different varieties of apple trees on the planet.

And y 'all have heard about Johnny Appleseed, right? 

Joshua Miller

Yeah, of course. Yeah. 

Greg Peterson

He was a real person. Yeah. He was a real person. And what he would do is he would go in advance. I don't even know what year, maybe the 1700s. He would go in advance of the civilization as people were traveling West and he would go to the cider mills. He would buy the seeds and go to different communities beyond where people lived, plant out apple trees so that he would have apple trees to sell them when people arrived.

Joshua Miller

Wow. You're taking me back to a little history there. Exactly. And so do your research. He was a real person out there. And interestingly enough, what happens when you get an apple seed? The genetic mix up mash up mixture of that seed is genetics from the mom where the flower came from and the dad where the pollen came from. So as he was collecting these seeds and spreading these apple seeds, he was getting a massive amount of genetic diversity out there. So we literally have thousands and thousands and thousands of different kinds of different varieties of apples out there because of this process that happened through 400 years ago.

And remember, I said that only two varieties do well in the low desert. Yeah, there's a variety of reasons why that's the case. But two varieties in the low desert, there are many more varieties that will grow here. I haven't started exploring that yet. And I'll get there. But so that went back to your question of, gosh, how many varieties are there?

There are hundreds of varieties of peaches, apricots, and plums, just from this, you know, thousands of years of genetic mashup that happens as trees cross-pollinate. I have a book that was put out in 1967 that is called The Citrus Industry. It is a textbook that is 600 pages long. That is a textbook. It has 300 pages of different varieties of citrus.

Joshua Miller

That's crazy. And I can only imagine how many, I mean, I know like even potatoes, like there's hundreds of varieties of potatoes and it's just like, I see like all of like a half dozen in this store. Exactly. It's crazy to see what's out there when you start getting into like the heirlooms and all that. 

Greg Peterson

Exactly. Well, then that's another thing to do in growing our own. We want to diversify those you know, those different varieties so that we don't just have three varieties of peaches that show up in the store or two varieties of broccoli or, you know, like that. So part of our job moving forward as urban farmers and as people that are growing their own food and that is to see how diverse we can get. In fact, I do a lot with seed saving, teaching people how to save seeds. 

And there is a term called GREX, G -R -E -X, that is in the seed saving arena. So normally people plant, you know, one kind of rice. Yeah. And what we do here is we're planting 80 different kinds of rice and experimenting. What we want to do, what we're looking for is to see which variety of those 80 different varieties of rice does best here.

Joshua Miller

Oh, that's a huge undertaking it sounds like to track all the progress with 80 different ways. 

Greg Peterson 

Well, here's the thing. It's not because what we're looking for is we're looking and I'm going back right back to fruit trees here in a minute. What we're looking for here is which one does the best. Who cares what it's called. So I'm going to hear in the next month or so, I'm going to plant out 80 different varieties of rights. I have a platform on my property.

A flat space on my property, I'm gonna plant them out and I'm gonna let them grow and I'm gonna see which one does best here and then I'm gonna save those seeds.

Joshua Miller

And now that's going to be available in the local communities, right? Because you're going to start planting them locally, right? 

Greg Peterson  

Exactly. And we do the same thing with fruit trees. So I've started that experiment with fruit trees. Now I'm not growing from seed with fruit trees, but I've brought in multiple different varieties of stone fruit, peaches, apricots, plums, nectarines. I brought in multiple different varieties to see which one is going to do the best.

And then what I'll do is I'll take cuttings from the ones that do the best and graft more of them and or purchase more of them and start growing them out. This is our discovery process to make sure that we're growing what's supposed to grow best here. Does that make sense?

Joshua Miller

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And each region has it's all nuances of what grows best there, right? So it doesn't matter if you're south, north or wherever, right?

Greg Peterson  

Well, and here's another thing about that. When I arrived here two years ago, I was listening to a radio podcast. I can't remember which one it was. And they were talking about how fruit trees are having to move farther north because of climate change the fruit trees that are growing in a particular area may not grow as well there anymore. So we're having to start to experiment more to see which ones are going to do better as the climate changes. 

Joshua Miller

So that, you know, that never thought of that. That is so true. So true. It's true with crops. So it makes sense that the same is going to apply to the fruit trees. Yeah. So in getting to the labor side of things. So I know that sometimes pruning might be a part of process. Does every fruit tree require pruning? Because I'm going to be honest, that's not my favorite task to do. That seems pretty tedious in and of itself. So does every fruit tree require that? 

Greg Peterson 

Yes. Fruit trees need to be pruned. It's a yearly process. And what we do in our fruit tree education program is we teach people how to keep their trees small.

Oh, okay. We call it backyard orchard culture. And, you know, in most urban areas, cause that's where I'm from, I'm living in a rural area now, but in most urban areas, you have a small amount of space. You know, my space was a third of an acre. Using urban orcharding concepts, I was able to put, are you ready? 80 fruit trees on my property.

In Phoenix, Arizona, 80 fruit trees on a third of an acre. And basically what we do is we keep them small. And this is also called high density orchard culture. And they're starting to do this more and more in tree orchards. They're keeping the trees eight feet tall.

Joshua Miller

That's totally doable because I was envisioning like monstrous 20 plus foot trees and we're going to get out the scissor lifts and start working on these trees up there. Yeah, that makes total sense. The pronoun to be a certain size and maintain that size. Yeah, exactly. So in terms of care, it seems like from a little bit I have looked into, watering is a big aspect of fruit trees. Is that true? And how?

How big of like an investment or work are we talking about with making sure that you can actually take care of these properly with water? 

Greg Peterson 

Well, it depends where you live. Okay. So here in Asheville, North Carolina, we get enough rain every month that for the most part, it's just not a problem. Watering. In fact, when I arrived here, I immediately went to the hardware stores looking for drip irrigation supplies. They don't sell them here.

Because people don't put in drip irrigation because we get enough rain. Interesting. Okay. Exactly. And in Phoenix. So again, it really depends where you live in Phoenix. Um, you need to put in irrigation systems for your trees, uh, the fruit trees. And I learned this through observation because my first house member, I talked about the Weldon house earlier. Yeah. The first place I grew fruit trees had something called flood irrigation in Phoenix, Arizona. And basically what flood irrigation was is that you got six inches of water once a month in the winter and twice a month in the summer in your yard. And it came from a pipe that came out of the back of the backyard and you just get a lake in your yard. And what I realized in that process was that the fruit trees thrived getting watered once a month in the winter and twice a month in the summer. So I took that piece of knowledge, right? I took that piece of knowledge and I've carried it forward. And so now what I teach is you water your, you deep water your fruit trees once a month in the winter, twice a month in the summer. They have to dry out in between. For the most part, fruit trees do not like wet roots all the time. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot simpler than I thought it was going to be.

Joshua Miller

Yeah, well great. So, so far this whole thing is a lot simpler than you thought it would be. Yes it is. Yes it is for sure. So in terms of, you know, let's say that someone's decided that they want to get into growing fruit trees, you know, what's a good number? Let's say that there's a school program and they have a thousand meals a day, right? What kind of number of fruit trees do you think would do well for something like that? Obviously they're not trying to make every one of those apples or peaches or whatever come from that tree, but they want a decent supply to give the students to say that this came from our school grounds here. 

Greg Peterson 

Yeah, that depends. Okay. So stepping back from that and we don't have, so our fruit tree program is a kind of like a Christmas tree lot for fruit trees. We're only open for 20 days a year.

We do education all year round and then people can come and get their fruit trees. And I also do donations of fruit trees for the Phoenix metropolitan area to schools. And the first thing that I have, the first conversation that I have with people is you have to have somebody that is going to take 100 % responsibility for that fruit tree. Yeah you have to have that because if you just literally, if you dig a hole in the ground and stick the tree in the ground and walk away, good luck. 

Joshua Miller

Yeah. And that's the same thing with gardens. You know, there's plenty of gardens out there that didn't do well because the ownership, the accountability of who's going to be the champion of that didn't exist. So yeah, you're 100 % right with that with this as well. 

Greg Peterson 

Exactly. So you need to have somebody that's taking responsibility. And then, you know, it really depends on their level of interest. You know, I've had schools with, and schools in community gardens with two or three trees with 20 or 30 trees. Okay. You know, by keeping them small, by using backyard orchard culture, you know, it, they're a lot easier to manage. You did ask about pruning earlier. That is an ongoing process. I prune.

I just carry the pruners in my back pocket and as I walk the orchards, you know, if something is growing outside of where I want it to be, I prune it. See, here's the thing that people don't get. If you plant a fruit tree and this peach tree all of a sudden is 30 feet tall, which they can be 30 feet tall, the fruit at the top of the fruit tree is bird food.

So by keeping the trees at eight feet, that helps us pick it from the ground. It makes them easier to manage any time. And here's the clincher. Anytime that fruit tree gets taller than eight feet, it needs to be pruned. And you can do that during the entire growing season. Because you're not pruning a lot. You're not pruning a lot pruning a little bit here and a little bit here and a little bit here just to make sure that you're keeping the tree in the scope of that, say, six foot diameter, eight foot tall tree.

Joshua Miller

That makes total sense and totally doable. So it's not growing like a wildfire, you know, off the different sides and you got to keep going out there once a week and prune it down. And so let's say you start planting, you know, fruit trees on a property. What was the time frame before you started to get see some return on investment where you can actually get a decent amount of fruit off of them? 

Greg Peterson  

Great question.

And here's what I tell people. The first year is about developing your roots. So that's roots. The second year is about developing the branches and that shoots. Okay. So I highly encourage people not to let fruit set in year two. Now year one, say we plant the, we planted, so we planted our elderberries.

In June of June and July of last year, 2023. That's the roots year. So now we're coming up in June and July as the shoots year. So I'm going to harvest all of the elderberry flowers this year. I've got somebody interestingly enough that wants them. So I'm going to harvest all of the elderberry flowers and get them to the my supplier or the people that I'm selling to. And then your number 3 is when we get fruit. 

Joshua Miller

So it's a long term game? 

Greg Peterson

Exactly. Exactly. That's that's that's for fruit trees. Our raspberries and blackberries that we planted last year, man, they were producing like mad and we were taking off the fruit as best as best as we could. But, you know, they were just voraciously growing. So I don't know. I haven't figured out berries yet. But so the answer to your question is three years.

Joshua Miller

Got it. Got it makes total sense. And going back to that whole getting the fruit off of the trees, there's a little tool that you can use that kind of reaches up on a pole and it brings the fruit down for you that they seem like a pretty, I would totally do that. Proning, I'm not going to sign up for it, but I'll go out there and I'll get the fruit off the tree with that tool. Great. Well, thank you again for joining. I got tons of value from this and I'm hoping that you get more schools interested and pursuing, you know, interest in the process of growing fruit trees possibly. So why don't you tell us how can people connect with you to learn more or possibly join any of your courses? 

Greg Peterson 

Perfect. So we actually have put together a extensive set of classes and lessons called root camp, your basic training for growing fruit trees. It's free and targeted toward the low desert. However, what I'm finding after living in Asheville, North Carolina for almost two years is that pretty much all of the things correlate. The way we plant, the way we fertilizers, the way we prune, it's all, you know, it's all done pretty much the same way. So if you go to urbanfarm.org/rootcamp.

You'll end up on a page with a video of me saying, hey, welcome to our program. It's free. Uh, and yeah, jump in and learn about growing fruit trees. It's an amazing set of resources. I, uh, I've been planting fruit trees in the desert for almost 50 years. And my fruit tree education program that we run and, uh, is 25 years old. And each year we adopt out about 4 ,000 fruit trees and bushes. So it's pretty active. And so that's urbanfarm .org forward slash root camp. And my podcast is urbanfarmpodcast .com. We, as you mentioned earlier, we have about, uh, we're on episode this week, we're on episode 798. So by the time this comes out, I'm sure we'll be at 800. 

And we get about, we get a lot of people listening every month and it's really a platform to share people's cool stories about how they're growing food in their front and backyards. 

Joshua Miller

Love it. Tons of value. Love the name Root Camp. And so everyone make sure you reach out, check out those resources, including his podcast and Greg, thank you again for joining us. And you are an absolute ambassador, I call everyone remarkable academic food ambassadors. Anyone contributing to this school food service space and you have absolutely done your part with helping out schools grow their own food. So thank you again and everyone. I'm your host Joshua Millerua Miller. Until next time I'm signing off.