311. Grow Great Vegetables | Ira Wallace | Southern Exposure Seed Exchange | Mineral, VA

Ira Wallace serves on the board of the Organic Seed Alliance and is a worker/owner of the cooperatively managed Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which offers over 700 varieties of open-pollinated heirloom and organic seeds selected for flavor and regional adaptability. She is also an organizer of the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, a fun, family-friendly event featuring an old-time seed swap, local food, hands-on workshops, demos, and more. She currently writes about heirloom vegetable varieties for magazines and blogs including Mother Earth News, Fine Gardening, and Southern Exposure. Tell us a little about yourself. At this trying time, the number of people who started buying seeds this last week, people with children we homeschooled to have a homeschool moment everyday so much math and science good nutrition and taste for your amid Mineral, VA east coast earthquake epicenter between Charlottes Ville and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, mid atlantic and southeast people who have ea. yanking for With climate change people are growing different things, I've heard of people growing okra here in Montana. Tell me about your first gardening experience? well, It looks like our internet is a little unstable so that might be a problem but we'll try to keep going started gardening with my grandmother about 71 years ago in Tampa Fl we had a double lot in one of the lots in the town was our big garden pecan tree hot in the summer summer garden was partially shaded okra southern peas however we had a 3 season garden in terms of the fall, winter spring turned around from the way that I am used to now my grandmother who raised me gardening passed away when I went off with college motivated me with my student friends to start a garden, it was a pitiful over by the art studios but we thought it was the best garden ever! at The New College in Sarasota Florida private college at that time, since it has become the honors college of UFLA system yeah so I was lucky that I had been admitted and had a scholarship when my grandmother passed How did you learn how to garden organically? I learned the basics from my grandmother David Bradshaw I learned the sensible things from family and back it up from science in college I took taxonomy classes I never thought anyone would make a living out of farming, my grandmother said you garden for yourself, but only rich people can make a living at farming. But we small farmers have proved that to be wrong. I was lucky enough to come up in the florida where I grew up to Carolina, I was lucky of the part of the start of the farmers market one of the early great farmers markets in north Carolina same time work with little kids before I moved into being a crafts person and professional farmer and seeds person I did a lot of volunteering in botanical gardens and local garden initiatives. Especially with kids. The thing that I did with the North Carolina Botanical Garden was plant rescue of native plants so when they destroyed by buildings