By Matthew Enloe
Imagine a world where fresh, nutritious food is grown right in your neighborhood, transforming urban landscapes and strengthening communities. That’s the vision driving Cerca Cultivation, and in a candid conversation with Matthew Enloe, we’re pulling back the curtain on how they’re making this a reality. Get ready to explore the innovative strategies behind growing food closer to where we live, learn, work, and eat. This interview offers invaluable insights for anyone passionate about sustainable agriculture, food security, or simply the desire to connect more deeply with their food sources. You’ll uncover practical approaches to cultivating a more resilient and localized food system, moving beyond theoretical concepts to tangible solutions. Dive into a discussion that demystifies the process of bringing food production into our daily lives. We’ll explore the core principles behind Cerca Cultivation’s mission, uncovering how they foster growth and connection within communities. Discover the nuances of specialty crops and the exciting potential they hold for urban farming initiatives.
TL;DR – Quick Summary
Unlock the secrets to growing specialty herbs and peppers, maximizing garden yields, and mastering advanced cultivation techniques.
Specialty Herb Sourcing: Specialty herbs like holy basil and motherwort are often harder to find and more expensive, making growing them yourself the best way to access them fresh, especially for medicinal uses.
Perennial Herb Savings: Growing hardier, perennial herbs such as thyme, oregano, sage, and rosemary can save you significant money compared to buying small, expensive bunches at the grocery store, as they can be free for life once established.
Pepper Planting Timing: Specialty peppers like shishito and Thai peppers can be grown at home, but success hinges on timing: start them in late spring/early summer to ensure ample foliage development before flowering and fruiting for a better harvest.
Pepper Nutrient Needs: Peppers are heavy feeders, requiring a nitrogen-rich fertilizer early on, followed by a phosphorus-rich blend for flowering and fruiting, and consistent feeding once established to maximize yield.
Indoor Pepper Cultivation: Growing jalapenos indoors requires advanced techniques like optimizing artificial light spectrum (blue for vegetative, red for flowering) and duration (16-18 hours for veg, 8 hours for flower), alongside hand-pollination, to achieve good yields.
Pro tip: For indoor growing, focus on creating a flat, expansive canopy during the vegetative stage (6-8 weeks) by adjusting light hours and spectrum to maximize light exposure to every leaf, which is crucial for yield under artificial lights.
Cultivator Connections: Growing Food Closer to Home
Matthew: Hi everybody, welcome to Cultivator Connections, the podcast that we’ve started through Cerca Cultivation. The point of this podcast is to help bring people closer, like the name of our company implies. We’re trying to help people grow food closer to where they live, learn, work, and eat. And this is one way that we’re trying to do our best to serve all of y’all. And what we’re going to be doing today is answering some common questions, talking a little bit more about specialty growing, specialty plants, and maybe a little bit more advanced techniques. So if you guys have any questions like that, hopefully I get a chance to cover it. The main topics I’m going to cover are herb varieties and their uses, pepper growing challenges, microgreens and baby vegetables, seasonal growing strategies, and then ways to sort of start maximizing your yield as a grower in your garden. So without further ado, let’s get right into it. Topic number one, herb varieties and their uses. So one way that this question comes up is like you’ll see there’s a special variety of basil like holy basil or cardinal basil and maybe you see you come across it on like a blog online or you across it when you’re flipping through a seed catalog and you’re wondering what is the difference between holy basil and the common basil which is usually a Genovese or sometimes it’s called Italian sweet basil and you might be wondering what’s the difference what are the growing conditions that I need to consider why is it more expensive and I want to address that here and this is a good example that can be taken into other herb varieties as well. So, holy basil versus Italian sweet basil.
Holy basil is a little bit more tender. It’s has often used, you’ll find it in medicinal herb growing guides, and it’s a little bit harder to find even the seed for it. And it’s kind of rare that you’ll even come across, that you’ll come across it at all in a grocery store. So if you want to start making these more sort of healthy, teas and tonics and holy basil is one of the varieties that you’re trying to use in those like in those teas you your options might only be dry or to grow it yourself so with a specialty with specialty like this that might be something that’s the only way to get it so for specialty herbs options are kind of get dry. Like I was having conversation last week with someone who wanted to grow motherwort which is kind of calming. It’s known to be calming and calming and relaxing without it being like sedative or like making you sleepy. and I asked them, because they were making like teas and tinctures, I asked them whether they getting it now and they said that they were just getting it dry and ground. So what they were asking me is like, can I get it from seed? you help me find the seeds? And I had to tell them like, no, because motherwort, this one, It’s harder to find the seed, but it’s easier to find the live plant because it’s propagated primarily from root division. So it’s hard to find the seed, but you can find the plants. And I sort of started helping them search for the plant, where they could source it either locally or online.
So that’s a good example of like, if you want the freshest of that specialty herb. your only option might be to grow it. So that’s for, and that’s for a lot of things that fall under the medicinal herb category. Comfrey, Molin is hard to find as a living plant. It’s a little easier to find as a seed. and then there’s more common medicinal herbs, which are like something like Rosemary, Rosemary or common mint, like a spearmint or a peppermint. So just because it’s got a special use that you’re looking to use it in doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily hard to propagate or hard to find, but some of them are hard to propagate and hard to find. And that like that just the reason why they might be hard to find is because there’s not much demand for it. For instance, I grow more romaine and green onion than any other variety because more people want romaine and green onion than anything else. But I still am always looking to try and find things like holy basil was on our summer menu because I knew it was hard to find. I’m trying to incorporate when I’m picking the offerings that I’m going to be giving to other people, a lot of the common stuff that they’re interested in, that everyone’s kind of interested in, stuff that I grow for myself as well, as well as the stuff that’s kind of a little bit off the beaten path and can serve more people with maybe it’s their first experience getting it or… they like can’t find it anywhere else. Like a good example is on a kind of on a whim. I started growing marjoram over summer and I’m still growing it now and marjoram.
I don’t love the flavor. It’s like kind of has a unique like almost soapy kind of like how some people think some people perceive cilantro as a little soapy. I which I don’t as much but I do. who kind of associate marjoram with a soapy flavor. But it’s in almost every like Italian, dry Italian herb blend, they’ll have marjoram in it. And one of our customers, a week or two into when we had launched marjoram, they were like, I can’t find this anywhere. I can’t even find the seed. And by doing something that… I thought was a little bit interesting off the beaten path. I was able to meet that customer’s needs. So it’s probably not only you or you in your area who wants to grow that one particular fun, obscure, like unique plant, herbs specifically, because this is what we’re talking about. There’s probably other people around you. So it’s definitely something worth like sharing and sharing with your community. maybe even introducing people to their new favorite herb that they’ve never grown before. A good example of that is a friend gave me some seed for papalo, which is a central and South American herb that’s really hard to find fresh here. But they gave me the seed and I’ve since been growing it year over year and saving the seed because lots of people in my community, I started introducing it into my cooking and lots of people in my community can’t find it fresh anywhere. So I get to give that out to like friends and folks around me where they can’t find it.
And so moving on to another question was, herbs can I grow that will actually save me money compared to buying them fresh at the grocery store? That’s a good question. So your really, really, really common stuff, green onion, cilantro, parsley, you’re not going to save any money there. The biggest benefit is that you have them when you need them fresh. Like for me when, let’s say like I just happen to not be growing cilantro or parsley at that moment, if I have to go to the grocery store even just, even if it’s 50 cents or a dollar for a bunch, which is more than I need, it’s just frustrating for me because I’m like, why didn’t I, when I harvested parsley last, why didn’t I replant it? So the benefit isn’t cost, it’s having it when I need it as fresh as it can be. For those ones, that’s green onion, parsley, cilantro. On the other hand, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, these things are so easy to grow almost all over the country, almost year round. Obviously, if you’re growing in somewhere where… is literally frozen. You can’t do it. You can’t be harvesting off of your oregano then. There are techniques to keep your plants warm over the winter. I’m not that experienced in cold weather growing. Honestly, we’re always open to suggestions and advice. So emailing us at info at or support at saracacultivation.com even with just like hey, I grow in cold climates and Or commenting on our social media. I grow in cold climates and this is something that actually benefits me or this is an approach that I’ve learned over time.
I would love to learn that because I’m that would help edify me and give me more information for if I end up going somewhere to try and grow in the cold. So yeah, I mean, I would, I’m always, I’m always learning no matter what about gardening. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and I love it and I do it every day, but I still have plenty to learn. So yeah, I’m always open to suggestions and advice and anything that can help me become a better grower. But point is, is the things that can save you money, a little clamshell, plastic clamshell package of time. And just because you need a little bit of time for your roast or your soup, can, to me, it’s so frustrating when I don’t have that one herb that I need. and it cost me three, four, five dollars for a few sprigs, which, knowing that once I have it and have planted it it’s established of rosemary, for instance, it’s literally free for the rest of my life. Those hardier herbs, are mostly in the Lamiaceae family, that’s the mint and sage family, those ones are the ones where you can usually save money by growing them yourself, especially because you have them year over year over year, and once you have it, you kind of have it forever. Next. Topic two, pepper growing challenges. The question is, why are specialty peppers like shishito and Thai pepper more expensive, and can I grow them at home? So, shishito and Thai are a little bit more specialty. They’re… There’s more specialty than that, but I think it’s, I think that this person was asking based on, comparison to bell peppers or jalapenos.
So bell peppers, jalapenos, those super common ones, even serrano, poblano, habanero, those ones can get a little bit more, like habaneros can get a little bit more pricey. But once you start getting into the shishito and tie, then it can be harder to find and can be more expensive depending on where you are and the time of year. So. The answer is can you grow them at home? It’s kind of like yes. Yes, anyone in the States can grow pretty much anything if you put enough work into it. What I would recommend as a starting point is grow them in, start them in spring, late spring even, into summer, so that you can make sure that you’re putting on that foliage, the larger leaves, before starts to flower and then fruit. That way you’ll get more harvest off of your pepper plants. I started a habanero in like, I think August and I got like one really awesome jalapeno. It was delicious. Had it packed a really nice punch, really hot. But I started it so late that I only got one habanero. So my suggestion is if… Yes, you can grow anything at home. It just depends on how much work you want to put into it. If you want to have a better chance of success, it’s going to come down a lot to timing, the time of year. That’s the first starting point. The other thing is peppers. They’re pretty heavy feeders. They want to be putting on a lot of large leaves, which means that they’re going to be wanting a lot of nitrogen at the beginning.
So going for an all-purpose blend or a vegetative blend before into your soil is going to help them get a really strong start and then after that you can start feeding them in with a more fruiting tomato pepper fruiting blend of organic fertilizer or however you feed your plants. If you feed your plants primarily with compost, then you’re not going to be making that switch. You’re just going to make sure that based on your experience with composting, if you’ve been feeding your soil with compost for a couple of years, you should have a good feel of how your compost, whether you’re making it at home or getting it from somewhere else, you should have a pretty good idea of how much it takes to burn a plant. So how much too much and what you want to do with peppers because they have heavy feeders is you’re want to just back off right below that and start feeding once the plant’s established. It has a nice strong root system so probably not the first six weeks of the plant you’re going to you’re not going to be doing that heavy feeding but once it’s established it’s got roots it’s got multiple stems and lots of leaves then you can start increasing that feeding with your compost if you’re if you’re just getting started into composting, it’s a good exam- it’s a good opportunity to start pushing that upper limit of how far you can go before you start burning plants. And burning a plant means that it just has too much, usually, nitrogen in the mix and the plant can’t take it. So it’s getting like a toxic dose of nitrogen. That’s more rare with, from my experience, with home composted, homemade compost.
More often than not, I see underfed peppers that are under producing when they could take more compost if you’re feeding with only compost. If you’re using an organic bag soil or a bag fertilizer, there is a good chance that you could overdo it. So start with the bag recommendation. There’s often a low dose and high dose recommendation. And as the plant matures, you’re going to want to push more towards that high dose. And again, if you want to get even more specialized, we’re going to be doing is feeding a lot of the vegetative growth fertilizer at the beginning. And then once it starts to put on flowers, you’re going to switching more towards that fruiting flowering. And that’s going to be more phosphorus rich than the nitrogen rich vegetative growth fertilizer. So those are my suggestions. I hope that that’s useful because, but yeah, I mean, think the number one tip is make sure you’re growing at the right time of year. That’s my number one tip. That’s how I found. I get the most yield. The other things you can add on top and what you’re doing with that is you’re trying to get the most amount of peppers off of that one plant and the most delicious peppers off of that one plant. Either way though, if you’re growing them at home and taking all the care and consideration to have a really healthy plant, then it’s going to be delicious. If not for anything other than just the fact that you grew it yourself. Next question. What’s the secret to getting jalapeno plants to actually produce a good harvest indoors? Producing jalapenos indoors is an interesting choice decision to make to start like right off the bat.
My question would be like, is this the best use of your space? Is this the only way that you can grow peppers? I can think of maybe you really want a jalapeno and you want to grow a jalapeno and this is your only space, your only option. In that case, go for it. If the other thing I can think of is for some reason you can’t, like you aren’t going to get a chance to grow outside in spring and summer. In that case, I would say go for it. But if you have the outdoor space and it does get warm enough for you, definitely try to go for outdoor. The power of the sun is really hard to duplicate indoors. the amount of energy that it takes to actually do the photosynthesis that the plant needs is so much compared to what the sun produces for us for free. But if you want to grow indoors, despite all of that, and you’re like, still want to grow jalapenos indoors, to increase your yield, You’re going to need to dig a little deeper into slightly more advanced pruning techniques. So what you’re thinking is, how do I, because you’re going to be using artificial lighting, what do I do to maximize my canopy so that the light that I’m paying a lot of money for hits every single leaf? So you’re going to be taking a lot of care and consideration to push that canopy up and flat. And this is during the vegetative growth period. So you could spend six to eight weeks in this vegetative stage and the way that you can keep the plant in what’s called keeping it in veg, meaning that it’s not putting effort towards fruits or flowers.
It’s just putting effort to building strong stems, strong roots, and a strong canopy. you can adjust the light hours and adjust the light temperature. That’s not temperature, meaning like how hot or cold it is, like in degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius. The temperature describes how much blue or red it has in it. So as you get higher up the Kelvin scale, towards 6,000, you’re getting bluer, bluer, bluer. what looks like, imagine like an office building where it’s a super bright white light, that’s bluer. And then imagine like a cozy lamp next to your bed, more that orange hue, that’s going to be lower towards 3,000 on the Kelvin scale for the light temperature. and the more blue that you have and the longer you let that light run, let’s say 16-18 hours of on time with blue light, the plant is going to respond to that light duration and light spectrum to stay in vegetative growth. Once you have that really flat canopy where the light from your light source, it’s going and it’s hitting every single leaf, building really strong stems and leaves, then you can either and there’s some LED lights where you can adjust the spectrum or there’s some people will even switch out their light fixture for something that’s more blue, vegetative growth, and they’ll switch it to something more red. They’ll reduce drastically reduce the light hours down from 16, 12, 16, 18 hours a day on to eight hours on.
That hard flip of going from vegetative to floral growth is going to trigger hormone responses of the plant to sort of almost start panicking and say like, okay, now it’s time to put on flowers and then they’ll start going into flower and they’ll start producing those hormones that say, all right, let’s make flowers, let’s make fruit. So at this stage, you’ve flipped from flower to fruit or sorry, you’ve flipped from veg to flower. During this vegetative growth period, you can also parallel or like in tandem do one other step, which is kind of what I described in the soil growing, outdoor soil growing for the specialty peppers from the last question. It’s a nitrogen, high nitrogen plant food. for the vegetative growth stage and then it’s a high phosphorus plant food for the flowering fruit in the growth stage. that phosphorus is going to be used in the flower production and used in the hormone regulation of the plant. So, and at that point you don’t want to be putting on leaves. You want to have the plant putting all of its effort into getting sugars that are stored in its stem structures and produced by the leaves going straight in like a pipeline into your flowers and your fruit. Last tip around this whole topic is because we’re looking for pollinated pollinated flowers to make the fruit going along and if you have decent airflow sometimes the pollen can float around but you’re most likely not going to have a pollinator like a bee or a hummingbird to come along and actually touch the flowers. So go through and hand pollinate. That’s and the way I hand pollinate, some people will use a paintbrush, which is more sterile.
And if you’re doing a larger operation, you know, it makes sense. What I do is I just go and I touch the center of every flower and the pollen that my fingers pick up. I transfer to the next flower. So I just go and that’s once, twice a day, every time I look at the plant. And I do this for my tomatoes outdoors. I’ll go through and I’ll just real quick, just touch all the flowers, almost any flowering plant that I do. I also like it. It’s kind of fun because you get to look at, look more closely at the flowers and know that you’re helping the plant. So hand pollinating combined with all of those efforts of Choosing the right light spectrum, choosing the duration for the on time for your lights, and then choosing the right fertilizer for those two main stages of growth. The vegetative or the flowering and fruiting stages of the life of the plant. I think like my thoughts on this are that if you like for me, I love a certain part of this because of the challenge and the technicality and the sort of hobby side of it where it’s like I get to explore and build my skills as a grower and it’s something that like is really fun to sort of problem solve. If you’re just trying to increase like the yield or the harvest and you have a finite amount of time or energy or resources. I do think that you’d be better off if you can find a way to grow outside, to grow your jalapenos outside. But if not, I hope that those tips help. On to the next question. Topic three, microgreens and baby vegetables.
Are microgreens worth growing at home or should I stick to full sized vegetables?