This month's Food Literacy podcast is entirely devoted to gardening. Happy Meteorological Spring, here's to a great gardening season!

It is March and the plant and gardening communities are raring to go. In fact, I have distributed thousands of seeds to our partners to begin seedlings and their crop plans.

One site we like is Mind & Soil and their YouTube Channel where they have done numerous experiments on garden-related processes. I think the Mind and Soil website is worth a deep investigation—the following video details and experiments that will influence our soil mix for the upcoming season. The soil mix we will use this season will include 50% potting mix and 50% compost. Into the transplant hole, I will add worm castings and organic granular fertilizer. See the video for rationale and details:

Garden Experiments With Mind and Soil-Compost vs Fertilizer

Check out the videos from the site for tips on seed starting, grow lights and the optimal hours of light required for your seedlings, if you anticipate starting seedlings this season. Remember, do not rely solely on this information source do a search of keywords such as grow lights, best grow lights for vegetable seedlings, vegetable seed starting, best methods for starting vegetable seeds indoors, etc.

The next consideration is a seed starting schedule for cool and warm weather crops, also see. In addition to the schedule other factors to consider are the last frost date for our area, soil temperature and soil temperature requirements for various crops. There are no hard and fast dates or rules, every year is different as you study various sites you will quickly see that for our USDA Hardiness Zone last frost dates vary widely from April 15th to May15th. It is critical for you to begin with cool weather crops because should your guess about frost dates be off it may not damage your crops, Collard greens can tolerate frost, tomatoes cannot. Frost dates are used to determine when to start seeds indoors if you are so inclined so pay attention. See Growfullly with Jenna also in Zone 6 for crops you may want to consider for March.

Here are the links from the 2023 and 2024 March Food Literacy podcasts that you may find useful.

Contact: orrinw@uic.edu

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the OCEAN-HP, the CPHP, the CUT, or the RWH podcast series. The material and information presented here are for general information purposes only. While the podcast is about food literacy, we offer no health advice and encourage our listeners to seek guidance from their healthcare providers.

Please listen to this episode of the Roots Watering Hole podcast with Dr. Christy Garrison Harrison of Southern University. We asked Dr. Harrison to respond to a question we asked of respondents to our collaboration with the Center for Humans and Nature for their Questions for a Resilient Future series. The question is "What can we learn from the soil about our fundamental interconnectedness?"

Additionally, we followed up by asking Dr. Harrison to respond to how people in the African Diaspora should deal with the meta-crisis or poly-crisis threatening all beings with extinction. For more information on the term see: https://www.realitystudies.co/p/explaining-polycrisis-and-metacrisis.

We asked the question from the framework of acknowledging that the people of Africa and the African Diaspora are the oldest human populations on Mother Earth. After over 200,000 years of adapting to life, how do we take responsibility and leadership for the future of humans and all of our relations?

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the OCEAN-HP, the CPHP, the CUT, or the RWH podcast series. The material and information presented here are for general information purposes only. While the podcast is about food literacy, we offer no health advice and encourage our listeners to seek guidance from their healthcare providers.

Introductory podcast for the 2025 season. Tune in for updates about what to expect in 2025. Also, please share topics you would like to see us cover beginning in February 2025. We are looking for guests as we will offer video episodes with content experts in February or March of 2025. Stay tuned for that, in the meantime let us prepare for a healthy and happy gardening and food literacy season!

National Seed Swap Day is January 25, 2025. Check out the Cool Beans website for more information. Thinking of doing a seed swap this year check out the Cool Beans video on the topic?

Many of us who are advocates of home and community gardening, as well as urban farming, do so because we believe the future is a diversified food system, check out this video regarding why planning for the future is urgent.

Check out this interview on unlocking the secrets of longevity and healthspan from the Center for Food as Medicine. Here is another article to consider regarding the treatment of diet-related diseases versus prevention.

Finally, (and again I am not promoting Traditional Chinese Medicine), is food enough, or are other considerations required for health and well-being?

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the OCEAN-HP, the CPHP, the CUT, or the RWH podcast series. The material and information presented here are for general information purposes only. While the podcast is about food literacy, we offer no health advice and encourage our listeners to seek guidance from their healthcare providers.