Visiting The Milpa Garden Trials Getting Kids into Gardening

Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Welcome to Growers Daily, your daily dose of ecological farming insight. It is Friday, July 3rd, 2026, and today we are talking about motivating kids to garden. We get a little Milpa patch update from the field, and it is Feedback Friday, so let's do it. All right, happy Friday, everyone. I hope you all had most excellent weeks. Hello from inside the heat dome still. The heat is expected to stick around until Sunday, which is fine if I wasn't tempted enough by afternoon World Cup soccer. 110 degree heat indices definitely help sway me and justify the break. I hope everyone is staying safe though through this heat and that the gardens are hanging in there. I know I jest a lot about my love of the heat, and I do prefer it to extreme cold most of the time, or maybe all the time, but heat like this can also be really hard on the body and on productivity and on crops. So wishing you fellow heat domers and anyone else dealing with extreme heat the best for the next few days. Despite the heat, I did indeed get that lettuce planted yesterday early in the morning, of course, and then got it covered with some shade cloth, and then doubled it up for the first day just for a little added insurance. Then I got some cultivation and pathway management done and even harvested a basket of potatoes for new potatoes. Very excited about that. We had some potato salad yesterday. It was delicious. They look good. Potatoes, happy with that whole project so far. Going to start with the harvest in earnest next week, but wanted to get a jump on it with a bunch of rain in the forecast for the next 10 days or so, which I don't know if you've ever harvested potatoes out of mud. That's exactly what it sounds like. It's not my favorite. Onions won't be far behind on the harvest list either, so we've got some stuff coming up. What are you all doing right now, especially if you're in the heat dome or in a hot spell, but even if you're winter farming down there in the southern hemisphere? How's all that going? Let us know, or better yet, upload a 20-second farm video clip to Dropbox or Drive, and share it with farmerMike at NoTillGrowers.com. Always a highlight to see those. Anyway, it is Friday, which means Feedback Friday, where we explore what you all were saying about this week's topics. On Monday, we talked about unconventional cover crops and growing Brussels sprouts. AtkinB351 wrote, quote, thank you for the reminder to plant the fall brassicas. A friend said fall is just around the corner, and as things are heating up, it's hard to believe and easy to forget to plan ahead. I started some cabbages too late in the spring and junked the entire tray because I figured it wasn't worth the space. Got to start these things early to get anything. Gonna have to make soil blocks and start thinking about the fall garden and overwinter cover crops, end quote. And indeed, there is no hard transition in farming. It's not like now it's spring crops, now it's summer crops, now it's fall crops. These things kind of happen all at once. You have to be one, if not two, seasons ahead at all times. And for sure, the hardest time to do that is in the summer to prepare for the fall when you are already overwhelmed with crops you have to grow and harvest and keep alive. It's hard to think about putting more in at that time, but the sunlight will dive soon. The growth will slow down. It's definitely coming, and it happens fast. This is where winter planning obviously can come in handy to make sure you are prepared to have those beds you will need for the fall season in July or whenever you plant your particular fall crops. On the chia and other unconventional cover crops, atmarkwkid wrote, quote, my experience with a few varieties of chia seed indicates that most are photo-period sensitive and will not produce seed in Kentucky. There is at least one variety that has been bred for Kentucky conditions. It's marketed by Heartland Chia, end quote. Thanks, and that does seem to be the case with chia. I didn't realize that, that it requires quite long nights to go to seed, which is a nice quality, honestly, to have in a cover crop from which you just desire the luscious biomass versus the flowers, which notably can be good for pollinators. So that's cool. Again, going to start trials on that here soon, so I'll keep you all updated. Atbradlistin also noted that day, quote, awesome viewer videos today, everyone, looking good, end quote. And I totally agree, Brad. Good stuff from you all this week. Thanks for that. Really love seeing your gardens, as always. On Tuesday, we discussed the value of constraints, why we don't use a greens bubbler on our farm, and a quick fix for, meh, cover crop mulch. Lots of great comments throughout, and especially on the constraints. And I'll have to summarize a few of these because there were so many, but for instance, atshano wrote, quote, love the constraints idea. I suffered so hard from analysis paralysis this season, but I'm learning so much, end quote. For sure, that is a big one for me sometimes. Big shout out to lists for help with that. They definitely keep the paralysis by analysis thing down. Atlope wrote, quote, would have never considered constraints to be increasing creativity, but hearing it laid out does make sense. Similarly, I'm always the most productive when I have a deadline that matters to me, such as having guests over, end quote. Yeah, totally, totally get that. I'm also more productive when I have deadlines looming that matter to me, like World Cup soccer. And of course, spending time with family and all that good stuff. AtStevenRowe wrote, quote, constraints are vital. I often say in regards to design, we are only limited by two things, your imagination and your budget. Then, employ the scale of permanence. Without these parameters, decisions are overwhelmingly exhausting. Cheers, Rowe. End quote. Yeah, thanks, Rowe. I like that framing. AtPhilaflamme added, quote, so in college, studying psychology, I remember learning about how there is a relationship between options and dissatisfaction. Multiple studies have confirmed that in purchasing, for example, the more options there were in purchasing a product, the lower purchase satisfaction there was and a higher degree of buyer's remorse. What this boils down to is that having more options gives you a greater sense of FOMO, fear of missing out. Constraints on a situation literally make us enjoy those situations more and give us a greater sense of satisfaction and reduced expression of regret. End quote. Pure here. I love that. So, yeah, create a world for yourself with fewer options and a few more constraints and be more satisfied. OnTheBubbler at David B. wrote, quote, unfortunately, your dunking and handwashing will never get out every hidden aphid in some cracks and folds when they are deep down in a broccoli joint, for example. The bubbler is the only thing that will do that, which is why the commercial industry uses it. Sound is not a valid argument. Your personal preference for music does not override the end result needed. I would not trust your lettuce by the method you are using, and it is highly disturbing to find alive insects such as tiny aphids in your greens when you go to eat them. End quote. So, yeah, I think especially if you're doing a lot of broccoli that a bubbler maybe makes sense. I'm not anti-bubbler, just it isn't needed for our particular system. And I totally agree with the bug thing. You don't want to give bugs in your lettuce mix. People kind of assume it's already ready to eat. If there are bugs in it, that's not great. In my 17 years of farming and like 10 hardcore years of lettuce production, I've had one bug complaint and it was a slug that in fact crawled out of the bug. Luckily, it didn't crawl into their lettuce, which I felt horrible about. And so we started being even more vigilant after that. However, that was back when we used a bubbler. So no perfect system or whatever, the quality control enabled by the hand washing is pretty effective in my experience. I'm sure a bug or an aphid or whatever sneaks through here or there, but obviously that goes for almost any system that isn't using bug detection technology, which is something the big guys also use. Also, I'll defend music and conversation too. A farm should be an enjoyable place to work and be. Growers and employees might spend more time on quality control if they enjoy the environment in which they're working. Just a thought. On Wednesday, we did a little compilation episode on how much water you need for a market garden, storing rainwater safely and water bankruptcy. In the intro, I had mentioned that I vastly prefer summer to winter and at Maria wrote, quote, it's hot and humid here in Southeast Alabama. And I don't like summer as much as I like fall and winter. In my youth, I worked all day, every day, but Sunday in the heat and humidity and didn't know AC was a thing. But now I don't know if I could live without it. And quote, and for sure, totally get that in a place like Alabama and not having AC in that environment would be tough for sure. We lived off grid for like six years. And so I have some idea of how hard it is to sleep in that heat. Uh, for us in Kentucky, our winters are just the worst though, which is why I feel that affection for the heat versus our winters. Our winters are cold and muddy, but without snow. So our options of what to do in the winter that kind of disappear, I might enjoy your falls and winters more too. Maybe I'll just a snowbird down there in Alabama. Good eats down there in Alabama. Then on Thursday, we talked dry farming onions that flop over and is double digging worth it. I liked this from at oak knob farm who wrote quote, if you have rocky soil, double digging is worth the effort. I double dug our 30 foot by 30 foot garden. About 40% of the volume was rocks that I removed mostly from baseball to basketball size. I refilled the trenches in a lasagna style using leaves, grass clippings, the original soil compost and biochar and alternating layers. I let it sit for a few weeks and tilled the whole area. It was the one and only time I used a tiller and the results were fantastic. No need to ever till again in quote. All right. Great perspective there. I appreciate that also could work for invasive roots like Johnson grass, perhaps like getting those out as you're digging, you're double digging makes sense to me on the onions at eyeball tat. Oh, that's fun. Noted quote, hearing that the onions were from sets versus seeds. It may not be the correct day length variety for that location. A lot of sets are long day varieties and may simply never bulb in an intermediate or short day zone. I would think, okay, Oklahoma is an intermediate day area. Imagining the map in my mind in quote, uh, in fact, yeah, I hadn't thought about the sets thing, but I agree onion variety in particular short day and long day could also play a role at Brian wrote quote, very good thoughts on dry farming. You can do the nuance. Well, thank you. I'd like to know your soil type. I've heard you say clay. I'm in zone five now, 20 years in Sandy loam, but 20 plus years of clay loam before that it's like growing on a different planet in quote, uh, funny enough, some people hate the nuance and just want me to say, this is, you know, the right way to do X crop. But obviously that's not a thing. Context is absolutely everything. I think if you've grown on two different soils, you kind of know that because yes, totally agree about the different planets thing. Uh, we're on clay now, whereas we were on silty loam before that. The difference is absolutely stunning. I eat clay is way harder to grow in. I'm glad I've done it though. And to have that perspective now, I'd love a chance to grow on sand for instance, one day, uh, just for the experience. So I guess I'll have, um, to just like move to my dream citrus farm in Florida this winter. Oh, well, I'll just have to take one for the team. You're welcome. Anyway, great stuff that day and all week, you all, you all are the best, but hopefully you knew that we're going to take a quick break. And when we return gardens are the new playground or that's the hopes BRB today's episode is brought to you by grown by grow smarter with grown by the farmer owned cooperative grown by is the platform for online sales of everything custom and traditional CSAs, halves of beef, flower bouquets, wholesale to restaurants. And now grown by supports in-person sales to their new app grown by register. You can supercharge your market and farm stand finally bringing together your online and offline sales and customer data. Grown by is proud to make local food accessible by processing snap benefits online and in-person right within the app grown by helps you put your best food forward. Schedule a demo at co-op.com slash no-till that's co-op.com slash no-till. All right, back to the show. A quick and loving reminder that if you, the listener or viewer enjoying this podcast, getting even a small amount of value from it, consider supporting our work over at patreon.com slash no-till growers. I will try to get to questions from everywhere that questions come in, but I will always get to your Patreon questions. Now, today's Patreon question comes to us from Patreon member Jacob Bureau. Sorry, Jacob, if I botched your last name there, who writes quote, hi, Jesse, really appreciate the show and I can't get enough. So I'm catching up on all the old apps. I especially appreciate your insight into the overlap of family and farming. My family is unique in that I have six foster children, mostly teen girls, and my wife and I are expecting our first biological child this summer. Congrats. My garden actually started as a therapeutic project suggested by one of the girls, but I can count on one hand how often she actually visited it while living with us. My question is, how would you suggest building interest in gardening, especially for the mental health and nutrition benefits for my extremely disinterested teens? I do a lot of modeling and inviting, particularly for the fun stuff like harvesting and exposure to fresh veggies on the table, but the repeated lack of engagement over time gets discouraging. Thanks for your thoughts, end quote. All right, great stuff here and good on you for fostering. That's very cool. Now, this is a great question and one I'm sure a lot of people struggle with, and it may not just be with their kids. It may be with their spouse or with their friends or whatever. For us, our kids are only passively interested in the garden, one of them more so than the other, and notably neither of them in their teens yet. The younger of our two is more interested in just like hanging out and helping, and the older one will do actual work if it involves Legos, you know, in return or something else. In other words, he won't do it for free. The truth be told, everyone finds their own way to the natural world, and I don't think it's always through gardening. For some, it's going to be like livestock. They're interested in raising chickens or ducks or whatever. For some, it will be hunting or fishing. For others, it may be like mushrooms and foraging, a love of birds, a love of trees and plants. In general, I think if you have a garden and are eating fresh food and offering them, you know, that food regularly, like you kind of suggested here, that that is the right amount of exposure and the right kind of exposure. They may not think much of it, you know, like now, but when they're older, they may miss those flavors and smells and that feeling of being in the garden and the nostalgia behind it and the good feelings. The way something feels to a child matters a lot in life, not to take it back to sports, and you probably shouldn't have expected anything less from me, but parents often make sports not fun for kids and are surprised when their athletic child drops out of sports in high school to pursue literally anything else. They just don't have great memories and feelings attached to that sport. In fact, in many cases, their attachment to that activity is their otherwise loving parent yelling at them from the sideline or berating them in the car ride home. And the same thing could be said of farming. I know a lot of farm kids who don't return to the farm because the farm is just a stressful memory for them. I think as parents, it's hard to remember that kids are people, individuals, and that we were once kids too. You know, they won't like being forced into a difficult activity any more than you did when you were young. Now, I'm obviously no expert and no two situations or kids are the same, but if you want kids to garden, I think having a garden is a great first step. Invite them to help or ask for help, but don't force it. Come up with some projects as well. Have them, you know, breed a seed or pick a specific crop that they want to grow. Really dial in on things they're curious about too. I always think about in my own life, the reason that I ended up on the farm is curiosity. I just took everything to its root, and its root is always literally a root, like a plant. I fell in love with wine, and then I studied wine, and I found myself on farms. I loved food. I studied food. I found myself on a farm. When you're curious, you will end up where it all begins, which is in the land. You could also do things like try some flower bouquets, you know, birdhouse gourds, gardening things that can become other projects. My oldest loves making popcorn, like by himself, he likes making his own popcorn. So this year, the plan is to have him, you know, help me harvest and clean the popcorn too. Maybe next year we can get him to help me plant it. We're playing the long game there. Again, to me, the goal is to make it fun and something they want to be involved with later on in life. So think of fun activities that involve the garden and the kids, and if they don't ultimately want to help, that's fine. More fun for you. Anyway, what say you all about this topic? Any successes or failures to speak of in getting kids into farming or gardening? My one bit of experience with this in a long-term sense is how many kids of farmers I know or have interviewed or whatever who actively did not want to return to the farm when they were older because of how hard it was as a kid. So yeah, I'm sure we have some strong opinions out there. Let us know. Otherwise, we're going to take one last quick break, and then when we come back, we will go out to the milpa patch together as a family. Be right back. Hello, fellow nerds. The gardens are finally starting to look the way I want them to. Everything is doing real well. We did have some much-needed rain. I was able to fill up all of my rainwater collection because my dog well really does not support this. But anyway, hoping for more rain over the weekend so I can keep watering all this in. Thank you, guys. Have a nice day. All right, so before we join me in the milpa patch, I just want to do my one obligatory apology to podcast listeners for how not interesting this might be or hard to see it because you're just listening. You can come check it out on the YouTube, and or Mike will turn this into a little clip for the old Instagram at some point as well. Anyway, I've been trying to learn more about how this system, this milpa system, can and does work. So here is me out in this year's milpa trials. Enjoy. All right, I'm going to do a quick catch you up on the milpa patch. So milpa is in the style of like the three sisters, you know, but in this case, I'm not trying to adopt the three sisters. I'm trying to get some, you know, sort of experience with it. And just so I can better advise people who have questions about it. And in particular, what I'm doing here, and what I did last year was plant the corn. So I have popcorn, I have sunflowers, beans, and squash, winter squash. So that's a pumpkin and a honey nut squash. And basically, I have four beds here, they're all four foot wide, two rows of the bean and the corn, and sunflowers, etc. with okra on the end. The okras, I'm not gonna lie, it's being a little slow, but squashes in the middle, they're doing okay. I see a little yellowing out there, that's a little concerning, but they're doing okay. I can definitely see some health, something's going well. And then again, the same sort of bean and sunflower and popcorn on that right hand side. I did plant the bean and the sunflower and the popcorn all together. That's not my favorite because the beans are kind of strangling a little bit of the corn, but I've just been going through and popping some of that off to kind of, you know, let that corn outgrow it a little bit. But ideally, you plant the corn and the sunflowers first, and then a week later, you plant those beans. I may try that as a better option next year. But, you know, like, plant the corn and stuff, let that come up, cultivate it once and then put your beans in, that could probably be a better way of doing it. But I mean, this is without a doubt, like, my favorite part of the farm. Like, it's just, you know, you could imagine indigenous growers have, you know, acres and acres and acres of this stuff, and it just goes on for miles. All this greenery, all this diversity, the sunflowers, like the yellow finches love it. This is without question, like, one of my favorite things to do on the farm. We had good success with it last year. I'm not sure what I learned exactly except for weed control. Weed control, I'm really, really feeling it up where we had our patch last year. But you can see I've done a better job this year with weed control. There's still a little bit, and it's a challenge because you have to walk through here without stomping on stuff to get any of these weeds. So this, like, groovy weed, which is the scientific term for it, no doubt. Keeping it weeded is definitely the biggest challenge because all of this stuff is going to be in here for so long that these weeds are absolutely going to go to seed at some point. And you can see more coming up. So I will have to kind of stay on this in order to keep it from being a weedy mess next year. I don't, it won't be a weedy mess this year. Like, we're not having, like, grass issues that are going to hide all the pumpkins. But by next year it certainly could be. Anyway, let me know what questions you all have about that. See, this is what the beans do. They sort of strangle the corn and that makes it harder for the corn to produce. So I've just gone through here a couple times and just picked it off where it was easy enough to pick off. And like that, like, that's way too many beans. So they'll keep growing, but this way it gives that corn a chance to to do its thing. So next year I will have to plant those beans just a little bit later. Yep. All right, I hope you did in fact enjoy that little jaunt out into the field. Let me know what questions you all have for later updates on the Milpa Patch. Otherwise, I think we are done here Friday. Don't forget, No-Till Growers is a non-profit 501c3, so donations are tax deductible and greatly appreciated. Please make sure to like and or subscribe and or follow wherever you're getting this podcast. That is a super easy way to help us out. Kind of squeaked there when I said super, which is fun. Enormous thank you to all of our show sponsors, and if you'd ever like to sponsor the show, you can reach out to FarmerMichelle at NotillGrowers.com. Big thank you to Michelle. Big thank you to the No-Till Growers Board of Directors. Huge shouts to Willie Breeding for the theme music. Mike Hilbert for the production help and editing, and my wife Hannah for absolutely everything in the world. Also, shouts to Epidemic Sound for the background music that you can hear. Pick up a hat or a copy of my book, The Living Soul Handbook at NotillGrowers.com to support this work. Big, big thank you to everyone over at Patreon.com slash NotillGrowers, where at a certain level or if you just bump up from one level to another, you sign up in the month of July, you get a shout on the show. So, big shout outs today to Haley Simpson, Hudson Carter, Bill Price, Alex and Oliver, Dwight Yoder, and Doug. Big shouts to you all for keeping the show going. All right. So, returning to our story of Merv, the eight-year-old magician currently hiding in a cabinet from the mysterious man who has just entered his house through a kitchen window, but who is now curiously saying Merv's name. So, the man, once again, calls out for Merv and just says, I just have something I need to give you. That's it. So, I'll leave it here on the counter and you can take a look whenever you're ready. And with that, Merv hears the man crawl back out of the window. No idea why he didn't use the door, but anyway, he crawls back out of the window and Merv, you know, after some time, crawls out of the cabinet and finds the book that will change his life forever. A book with a very special title, How to Not Destroy the World, A New Wizard's Guide to Proper Bond Technique. Needless to say, that book withstood some good cereal spills over the time and probably saved the world, or two. Anyway, thanks for watching and or listening. Have a great Fourth of July, Fourth of Julyers. Otherwise, we will see you on Monday. Bye.