Jessica 0:06
Hey, good afternoon, we are here at Broccolo Garden Center. I am Jessica. I am the general manager here for Broccolo. And I’m here with Laurie Broccolo. And we’re just going to talk to you a little bit today about how we can integrate some of the edible landscape plants into your existing gardens or, you know, create spaces of their own to create maybe some different themed gardens, and things along those lines.

Laurie 0:38
And I have to add, Jessica is a cook. And so she has all her own Jessa-pes, that we love to put together. We’ll talk a little bit more about that too. Yeah, you know, the salsa garden, what do we need there, and the salad garden and all that. And I’m not a big cook, but I do love plants and the textures and the whole understanding of how they all work together. So yeah, looking forward to sharing

Jessica 1:04
You know, edible plants can be also integrated into your landscape for aesthetic value, as well as what you know, you can eat from it as well. So you know, you don’t have to be overwhelmed by thinking oh, I have to create a huge vegetable garden. And I have to tell in yards of renewer or compost. And I think that that scares people off a little bit. Where, you know, you could just find little nooks and crannies in your existing landscape or along your, you know, foundation of your home and incorporate some of these different plants, especially some of them like I think Laurie had her hands on some chard over here, which is what rainbow colors.

Laurie 1:45
Swiss chard is the prettiest planet. And when it gets large enough, I mean, the color of these rainbow colors are fascinating. And I don’t cook with it. But fortunately, I do have an aunt who comes over harvest it and then she makes some for me. That’s when I planted every year just because it’s so darn pretty.

Jessica 2:06
And you know, and before I get into maybe the different themed gardens. And I think that this is another thing that people ask about a lot. And especially when it when it comes to planting lettuces and things like that. People say, Well, aren’t the rabbits just going to eat everything? And, you know, what can I do to kind of, you know, keep that from happening? To my answer was always to get a cat or

Laurie 2:32
That’s the best. Really Yes. But I have seen some customers take that black netting that you can’t really see the black netting and they just put it over third plantings and the deer absolutely painted. And so the plants can actually kind of grow up through them. And you can even harvest that I picked these all up because I started looking at just the combinations and the design of the lettuce color. Yes. Aren’t they gorgeous? We have here we have red cabbage, multicolored spinach, kale, which everybody has to have these in their smoothies. According to my husband, he actually hates it but he loves smoothies, more of the bright lights, the Swiss chard

Jessica 3:22
And we do have some other mixes over here. You know like the spinach and those other lettuces that combined together to give you different color textures and different flavors in your garden. I just wanted to mention, excuse me one other you know, kind of method that people try to keep the rabbits out of eating their cabbage in their in their lettuces. As you can get a sprinkler that is motion activated. So when the little guy comes over there to eat it squirts him with water and scares them away. I you know, I’ve heard it work before but so anyway, so I want to talk about maybe doing a themed garden if you’re looking to do you know, let’s just say a classic vegetable garden. And in a lot of the things that you can include in that are, you know, your your nice big cucumbers. And you want to put these in a space where they’ve got something to crawl up usually. And that can be something as inexpensive as running a piece of string up and attaching it to a dowel or something on your home. So that needs something to climb up. And maybe if you have a fenced in backyard, you can grow this up along the fence. And it can even go across that chain link and give you a little privacy. And so that can really give you a nice wall of privacy by putting a nice batch of cucumbers in and then we also you know can import ate some of the beans and peas into a classic vegetable garden, which again needs something to claim them. So these are the kinds of the climbing ones that you would use almost in the background. And then in the foreground, you can have things like I plant, you know, that can kind of sprawl a little bit on its own, it doesn’t really necessarily want to, you know, claim as much as like a cucumber or pea wood. And then, you know, we’ve got all of our tomatoes and things over there. But we’ll talk about that when we can talk about our, like ourselves in the garden,

Laurie 5:31
As you were describing it. I just started thinking about how we talk with customers about flowers and flower arranging and containers. And we always talk about the thrillers, the things that are up in the middle, and that’s, you know, Oh, right. That’s the thriller. That’s real. Fillers, fillers, and the filler. So the eggplant tomatoes would be fillers. And maybe the herbs would be the spiller. Right. Exactly. So you can create that layering effect,

Jessica 5:58
Right. I, I like the idea. And you know, there’s also you know, sometimes you can look at things like an assertion and never think for a second that you could eat this flower. I regularly I have this growing on my windowsill in a box. And I reach out and pick it and I incorporate it into salads pretty much every week. So the Cistercian jewel mix is my favorite, like Martha’s store. I do. You know what my mother used to idolize her and I have all of her cookbooks Martha Stewart. And now she’s taken another path. So let’s just kind of look down the row here at some of these other Look how big these tomatoes are. So if you were looking at doing something like a I love doing a salsa garden and you don’t need a lot of space to do a salsa garden, you basically just need a couple of nice tomato plants. We’ve got some cilantro over here in our herbs. And you know, growing some garlic helps is very easy. Anybody can do that. You basically just pull up some salsa, I know what’s in salsa. So you’re going to chop up tomatoes, you’re going to chop up fresh cilantro, and you almost don’t need anything more than a couple of lines to go along with it. It should be fresh, and it should be you know, cut up right from your garden. I think that’s the best kind of salsa, not the jarred stuff that seems saucy in the store. So yeah, it’s just a matter of fresh vegetables. I don’t like peppers in it myself. But a lot of people like to incorporate the hot peppers. Oh, so it’s all a matter of your you know, tolerance to spices. So you can certainly use some have in euros if you’re brave or some jalapenos, and I do we have any hot peppers over in the area.

Laurie 7:59
We have jalapeños. We have a long red lamb.

Wow. And hot red cherry tomatoes. And I know I ordered the one off because that’s when I actually liked. I don’t grill a lot of festivals but the bottles are so delicious. Oh,

Jessica 8:21
Okay. poblanos are nice for grilling. So these are some these are peppers. I probably wouldn’t grow. These are very hot. These are the Scoville. My dad or my brother would be all over these and you know, and it’s when it comes to the grilling thing. The guys love these hot peppers. Um,

Laurie 8:42
I think it’s like a challenge for me. So there it is. Father’s Day is a great time that families come in and buy a lot of the growing vegetables. Yes for that that weekend. Oh, right for daddy. That’s a gift. Of course. Yeah,

Jessica 8:56
Yeah, I’ve experienced the pepper eating competitions, many days by my pool where there was men hiccuping and couldn’t. But anyway, the jalapeno is actually an easy one to grow and it’s a little more mild than you expect it to be. And so that’s one that I actually enjoy growing. Now the some of the other ones maybe not so much for me. So there’s this launch row. And then you’ve got your Italian parsley two which are both staples and if you’re going to do a salsa garden or if you’re going to try and do like a classic Italian garden, you’re most certainly going to want this with parsley, maybe not the cilantro as much as a classic Italian garden. But you’ve got the Roma tomatoes, your parsley, and we’ve got things like fennel basil.

Laurie 9:51
Another one that I this is what I actually do pick and throw in my tomato salad. Look at the size of that basil plant the smell of it and

Jessica 9:59
This is actually used a lot in Italian cooking is the, the fennel, and it can be roasted in flavor, you know in lots of different dishes. I love that.

Laurie 10:10
Now I have a landscape comments about fennel, okay, that is also a host to the swallowtail butterflies. And so it grows really easily. So no worries, they couldn’t possibly eat enough of your fennel to make a difference. But it’s so great to actually find them there and then I knew they had I love that herbs for pollinators are one of the best plants if you let them go to flower, they are one of the best plants to bring in other pollinators to help you with your tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers.

Jessica 10:45
Well that’s I mean and I love with fennel to you, you can use the top and chop up the top prawns. My favorite part is what grows underneath. And it’s the bulb under the ground that you can chop up and dissect when you use in all sorts of dishes. And you can also use the prawns of the fennel along with a lemon grass or this camera meal here to create a really fantastic teas. And so we’ve got we’ve got some ideas on tea gardens.

Laurie 11:15
Okay, you can I’m thinking cutting flowers that that goes the real feathery foliage that you’re just showing. Oh yeah, so pretty with some cutting flowers and a vase just this blue. It actually does it looks kind of like the Queen Anne’s lace. Flowers. Oh, okay. It’s a little yellow.

Jessica 11:36
How pretty Yeah, it is.

Laurie 11:37
It is. Yeah,

Jessica 11:38
See, a lot of these things haven’t come to flower yet. But just like you’ve got some annuals that you can mix in with your vegetables to kind of create sort of instead of marigolds

Laurie 11:49
And garlic that you talked about things that smell herbs, they have a strong smell help keep the deer away and other critters. And then Zinnia on there’s so many different kinds are just gorgeous to put in fact, you can even eat from petals. But this is one of the best pollinator butterflies. Plants attracts wonderful critters to your yard and yes, we do want those kinds of critters.

Jessica 12:14
Of course we do. We just don’t want them you know, taking it all but we like to share.