Sirius XM Podcasts This episode of The Sporkful is brought to you by Bonnie Plants.
Bonnie Plants makes it easy for you to grow healthy plants that bring you joy.
They're actually the leading provider of vegetable and herb plants in the United States.
So you know that Bonnie Plants has a commitment to quality and sustainability.
They've been a trusted partner for gardeners of all levels for over a century.
Make Bonnie Plants your number one choice to get your garden started this season.
Head to bonnieplants.com for more.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
Today we have a special bonus episode for you, sponsored by our friends at Bonnie Plants.
I hope you've had a chance to check out the Bonnie segments that have been running at the end of some of our recent episodes.
If you're into vegetable gardening or want to get into it, there are tons of great tips from a pro in there.
Now, later in this episode, we'll have more tips to help you grow your garden to new heights, including one that involves a very surprising use of forks.
That segment will also feature a cameo from my wife, Janie.
But before that...
I wanted to talk about the other reasons to get into gardening, in addition to trying to figure out how to get the best tomatoes.
Gardening can be relaxing, even meditative.
For some people, spending time weeding and pruning is therapeutic.
And no matter how small your crop is.
When you start bringing those fruits and vegetables and herbs into your kitchen and cooking with them, there's a special kind of satisfaction.
Today, I'm talking with one person who knows all of this very well.
Kiata Menci, founder and executive director of A Sip of Paradise Garden.
Sip of Paradise Garden is a thriving community garden in East Atlanta Village that Kiata created in 2020 after years as a bartender.
It's built for and by hospitality workers.
Gardening has always been something special to me.
It was something I did with my American grandmother.
She lived in LaGrange, Georgia.
And I also have a Liberian grandmother.
I used to garden with her as well.
Her name was Julia T. Cooper, but we all called her Aunt Titi.
When Chiara was a baby, her father moved the family back to Liberia.
That was when she really got to spend time with Aunt Titi.
So one thing I love about both my grandmothers, they're both gin drinkers.
Like I am, I am a gin girl to my heart.
My grandma in Liberia and TD, and TD drank Gordon's gin.
She always kept a bottle in the freezer and then she kept tonic in the fridge.
So with the things that she used to harvest in her yard.
I feel like when people came over and they were like yeah, and she would offer people something to drink, everybody got a gin and tonic.
And it matters if you didn't drink gin or not, you got a gin and tonic.
So she used to put the herbs or whatever she was growing into the glass, to kind of garnish the glass.
And people were like, oh, I don't drink gin.
Yes, you do.
Everybody drinks gin.
What kinds of herbs?
I feel like it was mainly mint.
She had a lot of flowers, but the only herb that I clearly remember was kind of mint.
And did you like work with her in the garden?
I kind of just watched her because it was her safe space.
She was a psychiatric nurse.
She was the head of all the nurses at the main hospital in Monrovia.
She also took in a lot of girls.
Like she took in people's nieces and daughters, young ladies whose parents weren't able to take care of them for whatever reason.
A lot of women... owe a lot to my grandmother because she kept them in the house.
She taught them how to cook.
She gave them a place to stay.
You know, she supported them as best as she could, but she took care of a lot of young women.
What were some of the things your Liberian grandmother grew?
She grew a lot of flowers and she had a lot of fruit trees in her backyard.
So plum tree, hibiscus, Americans call it guava, but we call it guava.
When we say plum there, Americans call it mango.
So I know she had a lot of fruit trees.
It's interesting that you talk about the idea that her garden was sort of therapy for her, because she was probably dealing with a lot of folks who were in difficult situations now living with her.
Folks who maybe had been through some kind of traumatic experiences.
Can you tell me more about that, the role of gardening in her life?
For NTD in Liberia, I think it was more of a way for her to feed her mind.
Because they didn't necessarily grow things to eat per se.
Because again, she was a psychiatric nurse.
Being the head of all of that, I'm sure there was a lot on her plate daily.
And a lot on her mind.
Right.
You have all these people at home that you have to take care of to at least be present for it.
So I think it was for her, it was more mental escape for relaxation, things like that.
When Chiara was 12, she moved with her parents back to the US, where she got to know her American grandmother.
My grandmother used to have a blackberry tree next to the house.
And from time to time, I would sneak blackberries and we weren't supposed to.
Once I got caught because she was like, open your mouth.
And I was like, uh, because, you know, my tongue was black.
After that, I kind of got demoted to picking pecans.
So if anybody knows about picking pecans in the hot sun, it's awesome.
What kinds of things would she make with those blackberries?
She did a lot of preserving.
Everything was pickled.
But I guess that was kind of the way they preserved things back then, pickling and freezing things.
What were some of the other things she grew?
So they grew a lot of corn, beans, potatoes.
They grew a lot of hearty things because they had a lot of mouths to feed.
That was a four-bedroom house with one bathroom that, like 10 12 people lived in at any time, which back then was crazy to me.
As an adult, Kiara would dabble here and there with growing things, but she didn't have much room or time while raising kids and holding down a bartending career.
Really, it was just some basil and some other small things and a back porch.
Then, in 2018, when she was in her early 40s, something happened that would change her course.
She and her then-husband ended up living near a community garden.
That was around the corner.
We used to go for walks all the time, and we just ran into it, and they invited us in.
We became partners.
We got the code to the padlock and it was like yeah, you know, just take what you need, leave what you don't.
Water when you're here, you know weed when you're here, that kind of stuff.
So it was the quarter of an acre, really nice.
We ate from that garden a lot.
Like, we plucked a lot.
And also when my kids used to make me upset, I would make them go over there and weed as punishment.
Like, go over there.
Go next door.
That'll learn you.
You sound a little bit like your grandma, Kiata.
I did.
You've been messing with my blackberries?
Yes.
That neighborhood garden helped Kiata rediscover her connection to gardening.
And she had an idea, a community garden specifically for bartenders.
Because, she says, bartenders do a lot more than make drinks.
We are also the babysitter.
We're security.
We're the therapist.
We're the parents.
Because people are sitting up at the bar.
They're telling you all their problems.
Man, I can write a book on the stuff that I've heard and seen at the bar.
I can write a book.
I really could.
But the point is, you know, being a bartender, so much of the action and the stress of the Right.
And we sustain so many people.
We sustain so many people and nobody sustains us.
Who takes care of us but each other?
You know, and the money's not great.
So it's a lot of stress that comes with that, a lot of responsibility.
Kiata says for years she'd hear the sound of the machine that prints out drink orders in her sleep.
She felt that bartenders could really benefit from a garden.
Because you have a time to put your phone down.
You can slow everything down.
And being outside and being in sun is good for you.
It aids in depression.
Getting your hands in soil, all those things help you not feel as depressed as you are.
And even you can take out your frustrations in weeding and gardening.
And there's nothing more rewarding than putting work into something that you did and watching it grow.
And watching it reward you.
So those were things that I took away from the community garden that me and my husband at the time were at, that I wanted to bring to bartenders.
And it was just a really small, dinky idea for me to play in the dirt with my friends.
Kiata kept this idea in the back of her head.
Then, in 2019, she entered a global competition called Most Imaginative Bartender.
It was held by Bombay Sapphire, the gin brand.
The winner would receive a $25,000 grant to turn an idea into reality.
Kiara made it to the final 12 of the competition.
Before the finals, though, the group of 12 got to go to the Bombay Sapphire headquarters in London.
She started telling some of her fellow competitors about her bartender's garden idea.
And one of them encouraged her to make it for all hospitality workers.
If you really want to be in community hospitality, all of us are going through these things.
All of us take care of people.
All of us sustain people.
All of us are underpaid.
Most of us don't have health insurance.
Most of us don't own anything.
A space like this could benefit so many people, especially if you put the right people together.
And that's how it went from just being a bartender's community garden to being a hospitality community garden.
Armed with this new vision of her community garden idea, Kiata went to Chicago for the Bombay Sapphire Finals.
But before she could present her concept, she first had to show off her skills as a bartender.
There was the botanical challenge, where we were all given a botanical and we had to come up with a cocktail.
What botanical were you given?
I got Angelica Root.
What does that taste like?
So Angelica Root tastes like feet.
It's bad.
But it is a binder.
It connects everything together.
You don't need a lot of it, but it binds all the flavors together so beautifully.
And it's shocking.
And it was what I was given.
I actually won the botanical challenge.
The cocktail that I came up with was called The Root of All Evil is Never Gin.
And I used any kind of roots that were in there.
So... turmeric, ginger, sweet potatoes, like anything that had a root.
I threw it in a blender.
I double strained it and I made the juice from it.
I used that.
I used Blanc vermouth.
I used Bobby Sapphire, of course.
I used a little bit of lemon juice.
I used bitters, and I shook it up, and it was what won me the botanical challenge.
Now it was time for the next challenge, a Shark Tank-style competition where Kiara would be presenting her idea to three investors.
Over the previous year, she'd already been laying groundwork for her community garden.
She got a local farmer's market to gift her a quarter acre of land.
Her husband, at the time a talented graphic designer, created renderings and she got 50 bartenders from the area to commit to being members of the new space.
She even registered it as a non-profit.
It was time to make her pitch.
So I had all of this stuff walking in to the finals in February.
I got everything in place that I could put into place.
Pictures, having all the documentation.
The one question that stumped me, they were like, so how do you make money from this thing?
And I was like, it's not about money.
It's a nonprofit.
And they were like, well, how are you going to support your nonprofit?
I was like, oh, okay.
Well, it's a nonprofit.
I just kept saying it's a nonprofit.
Right.
You still need some money, though.
Right.
In my mind, I didn't think, oh, we're going to have these campaigns and we're going to fundraise.
None of that came out of my mouth.
I just kept saying, oh, but it's a nonprofit.
And they were like, yeah.
Kiata didn't win the money, but she still felt good making it to the finals.
I'll be honest.
I mean, I was happy that I did as well as I did, because out of 12 people, I was one of five women and I was the only black person.
Coming out of the competition, like what do you think you're going to do with this garden?
So I came home and I'm talking to the board and I'm talking to my staff.
I'm like, you know what?
We didn't win the money.
I think we should just focus on fundraising this year and get some money together, and then we can do it.
My team was like, we got land.
You got us.
The money will come.
We should do this.
And I was like, you know what?
Okay, let's do it.
Then March of 2020, COVID happened and we all got furloughed.
Like literally overnight, everybody lost their job.
And it was devastating because nobody understood that.
Nobody knew what that meant.
And then also as people of service, we're always talking to people.
And for you to be told, can't go to work.
You got to stay six feet from these people.
You got to put a mask on.
Like, it was devastating, and nobody knew what was going to happen.
So after about two weeks I was just every day I was on the couch saying just looking crazy and watching TV and watching the madness and drinking it away.
And one of the most powerful things that my husband at the time said to me.
He was like look, you're the center of this family.
You need to pull this together.
Like he was like, we all see you.
He was like, the children are walking by and they see you on this couch.
You need to get it together.
A few days later, people started texting me like, hey, Ki, you still got that garden?
Hey, Kiara, what's up with that garden?
Hey, are we still doing that garden thing? how can I not figure this out for my friends?
Because that's what it was for, right?
It was a space for my friends.
And overnight we got like 50 bartenders in the garden and the land was desolate.
It sat dormant for five years.
There were so many things there.
There was a blackberry patch that covered a white picket fence.
We didn't even know the fence was there.
We found a gun.
We found bottles.
We found chicken bones.
Everything you could think of on awful land, we found.
And we just came together and we built the beds with all the things that were there.
There were cinder blocks.
There was bricks, stone, wood, branches.
Like we built these beds with what we had and it came together.
And that's how I knew the power of community was real.
It became our safe space.
It became the place that we could be, because once we got the garden going like towards the end of March, early April, I would ride by and I would see bartenders in there laying in the grass with a book and a bottle.
I'm like, okay, I love that for you.
Since the community garden opened in the middle of the pandemic, it's now grown into an oasis for hospitality workers with a full slate of programming.
Mindful Mondays features weekly wellness conversations, along with yoga, Pilates and meditation sessions.
Workshop Wednesdays help with career development.
Then there's garden education, harvesting and composting, as well as emergency financial support.
Now.
Seven years in.
You know we're in season seven.
Now is just a physical garden space, but this space has turned into our meeting space.
We have wellness activities there.
We have educational opportunities there.
We have moments where we just sit there and we're us, because it's a space where everybody can check in on each other.
And somewhere where you can run into a friend and you can catch up and be good.
I think that's priceless.
What are you growing this summer, Kiata?
So...
This year, I wanted to be very intentional about growing food.
Groceries are high.
So we are growing butter lettuce spinach Napa cabbage broccoli cauliflower, bok choy, mock choy, 15 varietals of tomatoes.
Love is Love donated some eggplants and zucchini and squash to us yesterday.
Love is Love is a worker-owned cooperative farm that supports farming efforts in Metro Atlanta.
Love is Love has been a big supporter.
And it's funny, what we don't get from Love is Love, we always end up with Bonnie's.
And we've had lemongrass, lavender, the oregano.
That's not going anywhere.
Neither is the rosemary.
Like the heartier herbs that we have have just been with us since the beginning.
We've had...
We've had the strawberries.
Somebody donated four strawberry plants to us back in 2020.
It's evolved into six beds of strawberries now.
So it's interesting Kiata, because I feel like, in listening to you describe the the role of this garden in addition to what you're actually growing and feeding people with it, it sounds like you have become sort of a combination of your two grandmas.
I didn't think about that.
On one hand, the garden involves a therapeutic purpose, like your grandma in Liberia.
But it's also feeding people, like your grandma in Georgia.
I did not put that together.
Oh, my God.
Now I got to talk about that more.
Oh, my goodness.
It's funny.
I thought the connection with me and my grandmother was that we're all the same complexion and we all drink gin.
But you saying that feels really good.
I'm glad.
Well, next time you're out in the garden with your gin and tonic, you can think of both of them.
Absolutely.
Coming up, another guest joins us, the primary gardener in my house, my wife, Janie.
She's got a bunch of questions for Kiata.
Stick around.
Advertisements.
Yummy.
Let's take a quick break to thank the sponsor of today's episode, Bonnie Plants.
Look, as you'll hear in the second half of this show, my wife Janie and I, we love to garden.
We grow some vegetables.
We grow some herbs.
We're not great at it.
Every year, some things work better than others.
And recently I have found that the Bonnie Plants website is a phenomenal resource full of information to know what types of plants to grow, in what types of sunlight, in what types of soil and what they need to be successful.
I get it.
Starting a garden can feel intimidating as a first-timer, but Bonnie Plants believes that growing your own garden should be simple, accessible and attainable.
And pretty much whatever kind of plants you need for your location, Bonnie's got them.
I've got some peppers, basil, tomatoes, and more from Bonnie growing in my yard right now.
With over a century of experience growing fresh quality plants, Bonnie Plants can be your go-to partner in successfully growing delicious fresh food right at home.
Don't order out.
Find moments of flavor and nourishment by growing your fresh ingredients at home.
It is such a joyful and satisfying experience to plant something in the earth and watch it grow, and then enjoy the literal fruits of your labor.
Find moments of peace as you find a few minutes each day outside tending to your growing garden.
Find your moment this season by making Bonnie Plants your number one choice to get your garden started.
Head to bonnieplants.com for more.
All right, let's get back to the show.
So Kiata, I'm now very excited to bring on probably the most popular, most requested sporkful guest of all time, my wife Janie.
Hi.
Hey, girl.
So Janie is actually really the primary gardener in our household.
And so I want to bring her on Kiata to ask you some questions, because you know we've only been doing it for a few years.
We're not experts.
Janie, what are some of the things that you've been struggling with that you want to ask Kiata about, kind of from the beginning, at the point we are now in April when I'm starting to think about the garden?
The first question is, do I need to put fresh soil in each year?
So we have these two large garden boxes.
Last year, I put some more soil in.
Like can I just rake it up or do I need to keep putting in fresh soil?
You kind of have to eyeball it because you don't want your soil levels to get low.
And that happens just from it being more compacted or for you taking stuff in and out.
But it's always good to add a good mix of soil, fertilizer, and compost in every year.
Just kind of mix it up every year.
And even mulching, it all helps the soil.
Because even if you're mulching with like leaves or hay or wood chips, it all eventually breaks down anyway.
Can I ask, when we first put mulch down, it always looks really nice.
But then, like in a very short amount of time, I feel like it gets blown away or washed away or just broken up.
And then I'm kind of like, does mulch really do anything?
Yes.
Mulch actually helps with your watering.
It helps with making sure that everything doesn't always go straight into the soil and dry out.
Mulch helps with moisture.
Okay, so it slows down the water going into the soil.
It does.
Got it.
Okay.
It does help with weed suppression as well.
Yeah, I mean, one of our issues is I don't even know what's a weed and what's not a weed.
Yeah, I don't know.
We have, like, especially this happens with the cherry tomato plants.
Like, they start just coming up this year, I guess, from some of the cherry tomatoes.
From prior years.
Yeah, from prior years.
Yeah, from seeds.
But then I'm not sure, like, is this a weed or is this the cherry tomato plant coming up?
You know, every time we have these big volunteer days, I always tell people if you're not sure, leave it.
Just if you're not sure, leave it.
We'll find out eventually if it's a weed or not, the way it grows.
What are you looking for when you ultimately figure out if it's a weed or not?
How do you know?
Something that doesn't look like the others.
Like if it doesn't match anything that's growing currently in there.
So there's some weeds that are really big, strategically big long, and they don't look like anything else.
Definitely take those out.
And then there's some weeds that are like little sprigs.
I don't know the names of the weeds.
I don't really like to know the names of my enemies.
I just like to take them out.
I just like to take them out.
You don't want to become too friendly with them?
I don't.
You know, we're not cool.
We're not friends.
That doesn't work out.
But, I mean, especially if it's connecting or if it's smothering something, yank it out.
All right.
What's next, Janie?
What do you got?
So I feel like when I'm planting and it says to space the seeds or the plants like a foot and a half to two feet apart, like we have a pretty small space.
So I don't usually listen to that.
How important is it to follow those guidelines?
I think what's really important is that you should focus on companion planting, because they kind of help each other in the bed.
Like certain plants will keep certain bugs away.
Certain plants will cover the base of certain plants so they don't get dried out.
So I think companion planting is something that's a big deal.
But I mean, unless you have a ruler or you've been doing this your whole life.
If you plant something a little bit too close, it'll be fine.
So we don't stress about it too much.
Yeah, don't stress yourself out over that.
But I will say this, and something we've learned ourselves.
I remember one year we planted watermelons, and we literally just put them in.
The watermelons took over everything like literally smothered everything and was growing out of the beds.
Like we were freaked out.
Yeah, so just be careful with viney things.
We do have the issue with vines and the cucumbers.
Well, then just trellis them up.
You should just trellis those up and just use twine.
You don't want it on the ground because when it gets on the ground it's more susceptible to any kind of rodents or any kind of bugs that you have out there.
Speaking of bugs and rodents, last year I decided to plant strawberries, but the strawberries were getting a lot of animals getting into them.
So I put a net over them, but then...
A couple of times a bird got into the net and that was really a disaster.
And so now I don't know what you think.
Is strawberries just a bad idea for a small garden?
Strawberries are great.
We have strawberries as well.
The strawberries are also perennial, so they'll keep coming back every year.
They're pretty hard to kill.
Now what we've done.
We put clear plastic forks kind of around each plant and that freaks out any kind of critter that comes there.
Oh.
Yes.
Why are animals scared of forks?
Well, because they kind of don't really see them and they kind of run into them.
Oh, that's why you do clear, you're trying to get them to bonk into them, and that way they sort of just get startled and they're like let's get out of here right, and after a while they'll stop coming.
Right, they are on to us.
Also, another really fun thing that we did we put pinwheels in there because again pinwheels, when the breeze blows they kind of swirl And especially if they're aluminum and reflect the sun, it'll kind of freak them out too.
Those are the non-toxic things that you can do.
So I love these ideas, although I don't know if I ever told you this Janie, but I'm actually terrified of pinwheels.
Sorry.
So I can't help with the garden.
Sorry.
Those things really scared me away.
Okay.
I like these sort of DIY hacks because they're going to not hurt other animals, but also allow us to have strawberries.
Right.
I'm like just trying to live day by day and make sure I don't kill everything.
We're just trying to make it through this year.
With some kind of crop at the end.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I do feel like every year.
You grow good stuff.
Like every year we have things.
Every year we get to pick it and enjoy it.
It's always a good time.
But it is a learning experience.
And I do love having the garden there.
And I do think that I'm learning a lot each year.
So let's hope for this year being a really successful crop year.
So thanks for all your tips.
All right.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much.
That was Kiata Mincy, founder of the community garden, A Sip of Paradise.
We'll have a link to their website in our show notes.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
This episode was produced by me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara and producer Max Miller.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcast.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
I'm Willa from Appleton, Wisconsin, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
Thank you again to the sponsor of today's episode, Bonnie Plants.
If you want to start a garden, I get it.
You're like, where do I begin?
Well.
With factors like weather and climate, expense and time getting into gardening can feel daunting.
But Bonnie Plants believes that growing your own garden should be simple, accessible and attainable.
I went on their website.
I clicked a few boxes for what I was looking for.
The site guided me to the plants that were right for me and my needs.
And now I'm growing like a pro.
With over a century of experience growing fresh quality plants, Bonnie Plants can be your go-to partner in successfully growing delicious fresh food right at home.
Head to bonnieplants.com for more.
