Episode-974- Stephen Scott from Terroir Seeds
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Cindy and Stephen Scott of Terroir Seeds
Stephen Scott is co-owner of Terroir Seeds along with his wife Cindy. Terroir is a family owned and operated heirloom seed company that focuses on the “Cycle of Terroir” defined as “from the soil, to the seed, to the food you eat”. Terroir seeds provides unique varieties of heirloom seeds, education and information for all phases of the “Terroir Cycle”.
Stephen has a business background, from management of a nationally known rental car agency to warranty administrator for a local car dealership. He is an acknowledged chili-head who loves the hotter side of things and loves to cook.
He feels one of the biggest appeals of the garden and growing is to supply the freshest ingredients for the meals! He has a large interest in self sustainability and resiliency- being able to do and produce most of what one needs, and building a strong community of local food producers.
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Awesome. These guys live in the same town as I do and I follow their blog. I’ll be looking forward to hear the interview! Just bought some of their winter seeds (I guess I missed the fall season 🙁 ) last week!
Great interview Jack! I am so motivated for fall gardening now!
Were you able to get a MSB discount Jack?
Thanks
Awesome interview Jack/Scott! I would like to see a monthly interview with Scott where you guys would feature a couple of different veggies, and give tips on growing those particular veggies/melons, etc. I also enjoy the fall garden because its not as hot and the bugs are gone. I find I spend more time in the garden at that time.
Jessie in Mesquite
I just got my first seeds in from them and they took care of my very fast.
All this talk about planting has me SO excited about the fall. Here’s my question though. We planted our first real garden (in the ground) this year, and we didn’t plant enough stuff in it. It’s mostly clover and other stuff (like what grows in the rest of our homestead “grass”.) Any suggestions of what we can plant in the fall to make it more “garden” like and less like grass with a few veggie plants? So many good things to think about from today’s episode. Thanks, guys!
Where are you located?
I’m in south central IN.
When our neighbor came over to plow our garden spot this spring, I was too excited to get planting, and we didn’t worry too much about the grass that just got plowed under. Whenever I showed anyone the garden, I’d say, “You have to promise not to laugh. If it looks like it was planted by a blind woman and three kids, that’s because it was.” 🙂
Right now, there are a few tomato, pepper, and spaghetti squash that are hanging on along with some watermelon, but that’s about it. At the beginning of the summer when my husband complained that the garden “looked like the yard”, I wasn’t too worried. Now that I, the legally blind person, can tell that the garden looks like the yard though, I’m starting to get worried. 🙂
My kids and I definitely learned some stuff this year, but I don’t know what to do with that part of the yard to build soil, produce some food, and salvage it from the “pasture” (if that’s even what I need to be doing.
I LOVE these types of shows because they really get my wheels turning!
Sarah,
Give me a call and we can go over some ideas to help you get where you want to be and grow what you want to eat. It will be faster than emailing back and forth a bunch!
888-878-5247
mustard and peas will help (supposedly) improve soil and will definitely squash out grass.
Not sure about your climate, but in AR mustard will hand around all year. You could probably leave a patch going through the following spring and summer just to kill some grass, and in my climate it would do that very well.
Something I was wondering,
Say in a time of bartering seeds, like that of figuring out whether a coin is real gold/silver or not, how would we go about knowing if seeds being traded are heirloom or not, gmo or not?
Any ideas? I’d imagine it would be a lot harder to determine that vs an easier gold/silver test.
There would be no way to know other then to know the reputation of the person supplying the seed. You would only know how viable it was when you planted it and let it grow out and you would only know it is going to produce good seed in the second season after saving your own seeds.
Just checked out their website and bookmarked it. Saw some good stuff in there and can’t wait to add them to my next seed order.
Great show. You and your guests keep on raising your own bar.
Great interview Jack. I have never heard of using charcoal to improve soil. My garden has great soil but was wondering if i used charcoal would that improve the nutritional value of my vegetables? Would you use store bought charcoal? I might try charcoal in one small section of my garden to see how it works-I did an internet search and didn’t find much info on this.
@Dan, again the thing to understand is the main thing char provides is structure. So that means improvement in nutrition would be from the soil system working better, that is likely but it isn’t the char itself but the structure it provides.
This is important due to your second question, can you use store bought charcoal, um yea and no. First there is a huge myth on many garden sites saying the most moronic thing I have ever heard, “you need to use horticultural charcoal”. They say this because briquettes have binders in them, etc. While true the horticultural statement is still stupid, charcoal is charcoal but briquettes are not charcoal, they are pressed and formed charcoal.
So the reality is that there is no such thing as horticultural charcoal there is only charcoal and any actual charcoal will provide this wonderful structure, just briquettes won’t. So at any store that sells charcoal you will likely find something called “lump charcoal” which all really serious grillers know is top notch anyway. Buy that an you are golden.
Now here is a trick or tip or whatever. In a bag of this you will find a good 2-3 cups of really tiny pieces almost dust to small pieces down to the size of a dime. During the high season of grilling (for me that is spring and fall) I can go through a bag or two a week easy. Instead of dumping it in like most I build my fires and when I get down to all that “waste” I dump it in a bucket. Two months of grilling will get me a full 5 gallon buck of this valuable amendment essentially for free.
This year though I am going to go ahead and sacrifice a full bag along with a bag or lava sand and green sand to each of my 7 hugul beds in the fall maintenance phase, I will still keep getting my free char too though.
Next if you have fires that is another source, just select some of the hardwood logs when they are still a decent lump, set them aside on a good rock or gravel surface and spray em enough to douse them mostly, they will smolder a while and you get great bio char that way, again kind of at no real cost as by that point most of the logs “job” is done, I guess I need to do a show on stuff like this soon huh?
Soak it in your pee before you put it in your garden. This will make it work even better. Look it up on youtube and you’ll find people that have done that.
Dan it is not the charcoal per se that provides the minerals. You are looking to create what is called wood ash. Before there was gas and electric stoves people cooked with wood and then threw the wood ash in their gardens and this provided the mineral content for the plants which in turn translates into minerals that we humans as well as our livestock consume from those plants.
Plants can’t make or manufacture minerals. The minerals have to either be in the soil (which they are not because most of the soil in the USA is mineral deficient) or you have to add minerals in the soil. You can visit my blog: http://myheirloomseeds.blogspot.com as we cover this subject in detail.
Feed the soil and the soil will in turn feed you in abundance.
Just got to listening to this. I got to the part about bell peppers before I left for work. I had always thought that I didn’t like bell peppers for anything other than cooking and even then, I’d either mince them into oblivion or cook then discard them. After hearing the part about them being sweet raw, I remembered that I had some full red bell peppers ready to go in the yard. I grabbed one dusted it off, and took a bite. I had to think about it a bit, but then I took another bite, and another. I ate about half of it before I realized just how much I was loving it, and by then I was half way to work. Now I can’t think about anything but going home and chowing down on a few more.
Listening to this episode tonight I feel like a kid in a seed store! I look forward to checking out the site an info there. Going to look at some property tomorrow to maybe go in with my folks with where I’ll be able to stretch out a bit (10 acres).