Hey, celebs. I'm Jonathan.

I'm Jeanette.

We're two old high school friends, current.

Geriatric millennials who took different paths living in different gardening zones.

I'm 6A.

And I'm 42D. Sorry, I mean 8B.

We eventually found ourselves in the same.

Place, on our knees in the dirt. Coming to you from Salem, Oregon, in.

A rooftop in Montreal, Quebec, where plant sluts wear plant sluts.

Hey, sluts.

Hey, sluts.

On today's episode, Jonathan reveals his dirty little gardening secret.

And we talk about leaf cleanup and spotlight cranberries.

At the end of the episode, I'll reveal my famous cranberry sauce recipe that's a hit every year.

Oh, and we should mention that we're going dormant for the winter. So we'll be back in February, the first episode of next year. We will finally reveal what the hell a has gap is. But in the meantime, keep subscribed for winter cuttings.

Let's share our garden status updates. John, how's your garden?

So I've been holding something back, which is that a few years ago I bought some land in Italy.

Oh, my God. I knew that.

Don't pretend like you didn't know. And I haven't mentioned it here because I'm a little bit embarrassed about what it sounds like when I say, you know, I think people think of under the Tuscan sun or something. Like I'm Diane Keaton. Is it Diane Keaton?

Oh, she just passed away. No, I don't know, actually.

Well, I'm that actress, whoever it is, Diane Keaton, or. And I'm, you know, pulling up my sleeves and learning how to saw things and tile. And meanwhile there's this like, live laugh love guy. I start to date in the village or something. Anyways.

Wait, so this isn't what's happening?

No, no, it's. It's. It's literally an abandoned house that's just sitting in a. In a large piece of land with lots of olive trees. I mean, there's hundred. There's possibly 200 olive trees over like a hundred years old. It's very. It's like, it's very beautiful. And honestly, it's not. Well, it's not one of those one Euro houses, but it's also not an expensive villa. You know, it's. It's. It's really a farmhouse. It has a stable inside of it. So I went to Italy. I just got back, actually, yesterday.

I'm just going to insert a boo sound effect here. I'm just kidding.

And it Was really great. It's the third year that I go around this time of year for the olive harvest. This is the first time that I actually participate in it in a more meaningful way. Meaningful, meaning laborious. And it's a lot of work. The land is also on a super steep slope, so it's a lot of, like, walking up and down, but it was a lot of fun. So there is someone there that takes care of the land and harvests the olives. And. And he's paid in olive oil. And then I. I take my share of the olive oil, which is one third.

Is. Is everyone in Italy just paid in olive oil?

Yeah, basically, you know, I'm an olive baron.

Oh, my God. Move over, landowners. We have an olive baron in our mid.

Yeah, basically, this is the way he is paid in olives and olive oil.

That kind of just pays for itself. So, like, you're not gaining massive profits or losing massive amounts of money for the olive trees.

Yeah, exactly. So. So he's. The farmer is paid through the olives, and there's no additional money that I. That I spent on that. I mean, there's still a lot of renovations that need to happen in the house. It's. The house has been sitting there for three years without any. It doesn't have running water. It doesn't have running electricity. It doesn't have a septic system. So it's. It's like. It's basically uninhabitable.

Yeah.

But the plan is to actually, you know, renovate it. Not in this, like, beautiful, polished villa way, but just, you know, just have the basics. Running water somewhere to poop.

Okay.

That's the most important thing.

Yeah. It sounds like you chose this place because of maybe the olive trees and other things you can grow on the property.

Yeah. So I have been dreaming and contemplating over what I would do to it. You know, there's a lot of erosion on the. On. On the slope. And so I am trying to think of all these different ways that I could help stabilize the slope, how to turn it into, like, a food forest, what kind of activities I could possibly develop on the site. You know, like agritourism or something. You know, there's like, the possibilities are endless. Yeah, it's a really nice spot. So. So, yeah, that's my. My garden update is about the olives. This year was a good olive harvest compared.

Oh, I remember that people were trying to pass off, like, seed oils as olive oil, and it was, like, hard in the US to get, like, make sure that you were getting Real olive oil. And the prices of true, like olive oil were going up due to the plants or was that like a production thing?

Yeah, it's because there was a really bad harvest in Spain and Spain is the number one producer of olive oil.

Oh, okay.

There is a pest that's been affecting the olive oil tree and it's in, it's, it's definitely in Spain and it's in some parts of Italy and I think it's, it's really spreading. Spain is the number one producer of olive oil, so anything that happens there dictates the olive oil market. I'm so knowledgeable about the olive oil market now. No, not at all.

And I'm sure the prices will continue to rise because of tariffs.

So for you maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me. That's what I meant. So I'll be begging you for just a drop of olive oil.

Yeah. I have so much olive oil here at home, Canada, because I've shipped it.

Here, bathing in it.

I'm actually selling part. Part of it just to recuperate the cost of shipping it here, but.

Oh, okay.

It's quite cheap. I'll sell you some.

Thanks.

So what's your garden update?

Oh yeah, like let's leave Italy and come to my, my humble home in, in Salem where all I have to talk about is all the leaves everywhere. That's my update. We're just dealing with the fall leaves.

Yeah.

Not a, not as glamorous as an olive orchard, but we live on a really tree lined street. So I'm trying to figure out where to keep leaves and where to move them. Because if you go on our social media that is only for gardening and plants. Every single post is like, leave the leaves, don't move your leaves. The bugs need them. And I don't like being talked down to, so I don't even. I know I'm leaving the leaves, like to mulch plants and putting them there, but I also, you know, but I'll take, take some off the yard and I'm deciding where to pile them. The big thing is there's an area where I know the vine borers grow and I don't want to leave the leaves there because I actually do want to kill the bugs. So all my gardening right now is just leaf control.

Do you do leaf mold?

I know the leaves get moldy.

Yeah, well, it's, it's basically you. What you can do is put them all in one spot. Like maybe what you're doing already just let it disintegrate. You let the Bugs kind of take it apart, and you have a very carbon rich source of, like, mulch and soil amendment. It's not like, super rich in nutrients like compost would be, but it's a good. You mix it in and it kind of. It creates a lot of aeration, and it's obviously, like, really good for your plants.

Yeah, that. That sounds like kind of like what we're doing. They're pretty leaves. We have, like, the Japanese maple, red leaves, a ton of like. There's an orange tree, I don't know the name of it. A yellow one, I don't know the name of it. And then there's the tree I hate that just does brown leaves. The one that I tried to get cut down.

Oh, that's the maple.

Is that a maple?

That's the maple, right?

Yeah. But the Japanese maple does the pretty red leaves. The maple one I hate does brown ones. And then last night we had really bad winds, and a big branch is in our yard. I'm gonna throw it over the fence later. It gets very soggy here as soon as fall hits. So, like, the leaves just kind of stick to the sidewalk. So it's hard to have good times to clear your sidewalks and pick it up. It's our version of snow that we have to deal with so you don't slip on the sidewalk. And then I'll fill up my compost tumbler with some leaves as well.

I've gone around grabbing people's bags of leaves that they put out for compost.

Yeah.

And then I'll. I mean, another way to make the leaf mold is by putting it into garbage bags. And then you just kind of like pop. Like poke little holes in it to. For the aeration to let all the bugs in. And then I, like, stash them in my backyard or. Once one year, I had my father take them.

Oh, my God.

One year I had my father take them and put them behind his storage shed.

He must have loved that.

Yeah, yeah, my dad. My dad, he didn't ask any questions. He knows not to ask questions anymore. Just like, dad, can I store my trash bags full of leaves behind your storage shed? Thank you. Please and thank you. And then, you know, sometime in the spring, I ask him to turn them. Imagine that. I was, like, decomposing a body with, like, acid or something. Or like, you know, some sort of. My dad's just like an accomplice.

He's Italian. He doesn't ask any questions.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He knows better.

It's time to grab a mug, pick some Herbs and spill the tea. Jonathan, do you have any garden tea for us?

Well, in the community garden, there's just so many different characters, right. And one person I wanted to talk about is someone who's friendly. Like, I like her. She's nice. Yeah, she's one of those people who kind of, like, hangs around a bit too much, you know, where you'll be digging in your garden plot, and she'll just come around and be like, oh, the tomatoes this year. Right. And then, you know, she'll just ask me questions, and then she'll just kind of stand there and, like, with this awkward, you know, silence. And then you're just like, all right, you know where you, like, every sentence that you say, every new sentence you say always, like, has this, like, conclusive end to it, like, yeah. Oh, well, you know, that's climate change, Right?

Get back to it.

And then you kind of go back to your thing, but then they still kind of, like, hang around.

How old is she? About.

Oh, probably around 45, I'd say.

Oh, so like, our age.

Not like a. I'm like, late 30s plus one. Yeah, I guess that is our age. Maybe she's a little bit older. 45 to 50.

Did you just guess 45 for someone who's, like, much older than me?

Maybe. Maybe I'm living in, like, a delay. An age delay where I don't yet. I'm not fully conscious of my own age. Yeah, she's your sister's age, Jeanette. That's what I would say. How old is your sister? Your older sister?

My sister's four years older than me. She's. She's 45.

Yeah. I'd place her in that category, your sister's age.

Okay.

So I'm also a group member of the Facebook group of this community garden. And I see you every now and then. Like, I'll see it come up, you know, I don't know. Someone sends me something on Facebook and then it opens up, and I see, like, all these things pop up from groups that I definitely not really keeping track of. And there's this one person whose profile photo is of a cat. And this person is always leaving, like, really negative comments, you know, like. And one thing that I remember that they had talked about was that the city is building a new bike path along the road where the community garden is. And she was really bitching on. Well, this person, because at this point, I don't really know who it is, was really bitching about the bike. Bike path. Like, oh, it's so hard to drive around, like, how do we get places? Oh, the city thinks that everyone's going to be, like, delivering their mattresses on bicycles and, you know, the. The usual.

Yeah.

NIMBY anti bike rhetoric. I don't know what it is that made me realize that it was her. I think she said something to me. I think she talked to me about her and then I was like. Then I made the connection. I was like, this is the crazy cat lady from the Facebook group, you know, who doesn't have any pictures of herself. It's all just like cats, you know, Anyways, nothing else to really report on that. Just that sometimes you just realize that people fill these kind of roles in the garden. And sometimes I feel like I'm the crazy cat lady. When I tell people I have two cats. That is a lot that need my attention. People come over and my cat's meowing and I'm like, oh, that means he wants me to pick him up and. And coddle him like a child. Like a baby. Yeah.

Do you think you'll confront the cat lady at the community garden about her anti bike rhetoric or anything like that?

I've thought about it. I've thought about making comments on the Facebook group.

She would know who you are.

Yeah. I don't know. Sometimes it does take like a. Like a person, you know, you know, to have you really reflect on things rather than just an anonymous person. But I don't want to. That's. I don't want to be that person. I get so worked up and anxious about arguing with people.

You know, you should just every time you see her, tell her you're having a mattress delivered. Sounds like that's a big concern, how often people get new mattresses.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you have any garden tea, send us an [email protected] so to continue our series spotlighting berries, you know, like our mulberry and pumpkin episode, I wanted to take a look at cranberries because we're also in the. A certain holiday that they're associated with. I think yours passed and mine is just coming up. Jonathan, did you eat any cranberry dishes during Thanksgiving?

No, I didn't. Oh, my mom has done cranberry sauce in the past, but I'm just realizing that she didn't do that this year. But also, like, our tradition of Thanksgiving is. I mean, in Canada is different from the U.S. but then also, you know, as an Italian family, it's more like pretending to be Thanksgiving.

Yeah, I feel like that's what we're all Doing. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are.

I don't know.

Maybe there are people that are really doing it.

Who are the people that eat the sweet potato and marshmallow dish, like, I.

Did as a child, but now we usually go to my husband's families for Thanksgiving, and they do not do marshmallow on the sweet potato or on the candied yams. And so his mom is, like, convinced that I really want it or can't have Thanksgiving without it. But instead of just making it as an extra dish, she'll, like, take some potatoes and microwave marshmallows on top. Oh, like, as if I can't get through the meal without marshmallows.

And, like, is it too late for you to break the news to her? Like, do you feel too awkward?

It's just such a weird, like, singling me out as, like, here's your special dish because you need sweets on yours.

Because you're from, like, the East Coast. Is that it? Is it, like, an east coast thing?

I don't know. They eat very healthy.

That's just something that Canadians make fun of Americans for. It's just their strange casuals and dishes. Okay, so tell me more about cranberries, then. Yeah.

Cranberries come from evergreen dwarf shrubs or creeping vines in the vaccinium family, which you might remember as the same group as blueberries and pumpkins.

No, no, no.

What you might remember is the same.

Group as definitely not.

I don't know. I was, like, trying to remember, because I know you said pumpkin is a berry, so I was conflating them.

I don't know.

Cranberries are perennials, and they grow super low to the ground. They get a few inches tall and can stretch out to seven feet long. And they have the thin, wiry stems and tiny evergreen leaves with dainty pink flowers we'll talk more about later. The berries start out green and then ripen into the red color we recognize. And they're edible raw, but they're really tart. So a lot of people haven't had raw cranberry. I don't. I might have tried to eat one once just to see, but I don't think I've, like, eaten it.

I've definitely bought cranberry juice from, like, Whole Foods or something that was no sugar added. And, Yeah, I think the experience is quite similar.

Yeah.

Inedible is how I would describe it.

It's more of, like, a tincture. Like, do a dropper of it in a glass of water or something.

Yeah.

So cranberries are One of only three native fruits grown commercially in the US And, John, can you guess the other ones?

So I would say blueberries, right?

Yep.

I think the next one would have to be, like, raspberries or blackberries.

No, it's actually Concord grapes.

Oh. Oh, I. Yeah. Wait, no, Jeanette, I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure that Concord grapes are a variety that was developed in Massachusetts by, like, a university.

Oh, interesting.

That's the story I tell people about conquered grapes. I have a conquered grape growing in the front, and my. My understanding was it was specifically developed around Concord, Massachusetts, to be, like, a very tasty grape variety that was, like, cold, hardy.

Okay. So I just looked up Concord grape is vitis labrusca, or fox grape, and it's a species of grapevine belonging to the vitis genus. They're native to eastern North America, and they have many cultivars, including Concord, Delaware, Isabella, Niagara. But I believed you. I was like, yeah. The US Is claiming, like, native means when the Pilgrims arrived, Like, it's native because it's been here for almost over 200 years.

If they're native to North America, like, what's the story?

Cranberries have been used by indigenous tribes from the regions that we know as southern Ontario, eastern Quebec, Massachusetts, down through Rhode island and Connecticut. Tribes like the Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Algonquin use them for food, medicine, and dye. As early as 1550, when they were eaten, they could eat cranberries fresh, maybe ground them, mash them, and they would mix cranberries with wild game and fat to make pemmican, which is like the original energy bar. And the word cranberry wasn't used yet. Different tribes had their own names that often meant sour berry. Sassamanash is what the Narragansett tribe called them, and Sassenak is what the Algonquin and Wampanoag tribes called cranberry in terms of, like, names.

The interesting thing is in Quebec, we have a name for cranberry, which is canberge. But in France, they call them cranberry. And if. If you say Canberra to a French person, they think you're not speaking French. But it's interesting because belche also means, like, a watery, like, edge.

There's also cranberries in a lot of indigenous harvest festivals. And the Wampanoag people on Martha's Vineyard still celebrate Cranberry Day every year on the second Tuesday of October.

Celebrating Cranberry Day is that. That's like, a harvest tradition that predates Thanksgiving or that Influenced current Thanksgiving.

Yeah. A lot of cultures have harvest festivals and celebrations, and we know that when colonists arrived in the 1600s, they learned how to harvest and prepare cranberries from indigenous people. By 1620, Pilgrims were using cranberries. And by 1683, they founded Ocean Spray, and they were making cranberry juice. Jk about the ocean Spray also, like.

There'S such a violent. There's probably, like, so much violence in between all of those things that you said that's like, going unmentioned. But, yeah, they learned it. They learned how to harvest it.

They didn't just, like, it took them 63 years to learn how to juice the cranberry. People think the name cranberry came from German and Dutch settlers who called them crane berries.

Okay.

Either because cranes like to eat them or because the blossoms kind of look like a crane's head and neck. Yeah. And then they shortened it to cranberry. And colonists later commercialized cranberry farming, which meant indigenous communities lost access to traditional bogs as the land became privatized. Native Americans likely made the first cranberry sauce. It was recorded being eaten with meat by a French explorer in the early 1600s.

And I guess at that time, it wouldn't really be sweet. Right. It would be more of a savory sauce or like a tart sauce.

Yeah, more of a tart. I don't eat meat, so I don't really know what goes good with it. But, yeah, it wasn't sweetened with that.

All I can think about is, like, eating it with tofurkey.

So by the mid 17th century, with the growth of the slave trade in the West Indies, sugar became widely available in New England, and cranberries were used more frequently in things like pies and tarts. Sailors also carried cranberries on their voyages when they were commuting to and from England or Europe to prevent scurvy, because they have a high vitamin C content and a long shelf life because of the skin.

The fresh cranberries, I notice they do last a really long time when you buy them on, like, a whim and then realize that there's not very many uses for them, and then they just sit in your fridge for a while.

The term cranberry doesn't actually refer to just one berry. It's actually a whole little family. There's the American cranberry, which is vaccinium macrocarpan. That's that classic Thanksgiving berry. Big, glossy, red, very tart, mostly grown in the US in the states, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, and In Canada, most commercially grown in British Columbia and Quebec. And a guy named William McNeill planted Canada's first commercial bog in Nova Scotia in 1870.

Right. And today Nova Scotia is the place in Canada where when you think of cranberries, you think of like Nova Scotia. Like how in the US I think you think of Massachusetts or Cape Cod.

Exactly. Yeah. Wisconsin has actually been the biggest producer of commercial cranberries, more than Massachusetts, but there's also a lot more land. Then we have the European cranberry Vacinium oxycoccos. It's smaller, darker, extra sour, traditionally served with meat in northern Europe. And some botanists think it should be considered its own species.

I always love these, like, internal conflicts.

Yeah, Botany drama. Then we have the lingonberry vacinium vitis idea. And that one is a tiny, firm, slightly sweeter, Scandinavia's jam star and Ikea's favorite impulse grocery purchase.

I've been tempted.

I've even bought the concentrate lingonberry to put in like soda water cocktails.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I've also bought that.

And then there's high bush cranberry, which is a viburnum species. So it's not a true cranberry. It's an ornamental shrub with berries that look the part but taste a bit off. So, Jonathan, have you ever seen cranberries growing?

You know, I haven't. I. I don't think so. It's one of those things where I've only like, heard about. Even when I lived in Massachusetts, I don't think I ever saw an actual cranberry bog. But I guess that's because they're in a very specific, like, water intensive bog area. So it's not something that you like, casually see. You're driving because I bet driving through bog is not very common. Have you?

I've seen the bogs. Yeah. I've. I've driven by them. I haven't like, been in a cranberry bog. That sounds terrifying. When we're growing cranberries in spring, you're growing them in their bogs with sandy, acidic and very wet ground. They start with the tiny pink flowers on the vines that have both male and female parts. Like a lot of the plants we've talked about, they're hermaphroditic and they require pollen to be moved between the flowers or cross pollinated because the male and female parts mature at different times. And cranberries love buzz pollination. It's going to get a little steamy. Cranberry flowers have antlers with small pores, which means pollen can't easily fall out on its own. And I would like to read you all a sexy quote from the USDA Agriculture Research Service website. So if young children are listening, make sure they're ready for the birds and the bees talk. Bees always probe cranberry flowers for nectar. Simultaneously. Some foragers will vibrate the staminal column for pollen as they hang from the pen pendant flower to release pollen. They either audibly buzz the flower or drum the staminal column using their mid or hind legs. For unknown reasons, honeybees use their forelegs to drum the staminal column for pollen, which precludes simultaneous probing for nectar. Honeybees may probe cranberry flowers for nectar, either legitimately parting the staminal tips with their inserted proboscis, or on occasion, illegitimately by inserting their proboscis between the bases of two staminal filaments. Illegitimate foragers make no stigmatic contact.

Wow. Usda. I would have loved to be that intern that had to write that up.

I was blushing when I read it. I don't know if everyone needs a minute, but bees do most of the work. Self pollination isn't reliable for cranberries.

Okay. It kind of reminds me of this thing that I saw. I forgot where it was, but someone was using a. An electric toothbrush to pollinate flowers. And so I don't know why, but I feel like that would be something. You know, all that sexy talk or, you know, made me think of vibrators and. Yeah, that would probably be a really good tool.

Yeah.

To kind of like tap your toothbrush, your vibrating toothbrush or your vibrator. I mean, just go right for that.

Next time you're ordering sex toys online and you get caught, just say it's for your. It's. It's a garden tool or like a.

Great down cycling of old vibrators.

That's true. Yeah.

You're blessing.

I'm cutting this. My mom listens to this and my grandma. I know. I'm just thinking of my mom and my grandma right now.

Do not cut that out. That has to be in there.

Oh. So the Canadian wildfires in 2025, it's going to affect the next crop in actually fall of 2026. Because the bees avoid smoke, the cranberries actually take over a year from fertilization to harvest.

Oh, really? Oh, interesting.

Yeah, it's about 16 months if they're not reproducing, buzzing with their vibrators. Cranberries can reproduce asexually through stolons.

Stolons?

Stolons, which are those horizontal stems that grow along the ground like strawberries. Then in the summer, you hit the growing season where the pollinated flowers turn into green berries that slowly ripen to red. The vines spread and form thick mats over the bogs. And the farmers have to manage the water levels. Too much water and they'll drown, and too little. They dry out because they're not actually flooded all the time. I know when you see a cranberry bog, you'd almost think it's like a aquatic plant. But that's not the case. The flooding happens in harvest time in the fall.

And they float, right? Mm.

Farmers usually flood their bogs with about 10 inches of water and use a tractor type machine to knock the berries off the vines. And then they float up and they use what's basically a giant shop vac to suck them all up. And before that, farmers used to rake each berry by hand. So the flooding just made it faster. So I listened to an interview and heard kind of the process in the winter of how they protect cranberries, especially in Wisconsin, where it gets super cold. And it was kind of interesting. The vines stay under frost, ice, and snow, and the frost protection starts with sprinklers. And they even do this through the spring that coat the vines in ice because the ice keeps it warmer than the air.

There's something about ice that keeps things warm because when it melts, it releases heat.

Do you remember that ice cave you made when we were in high school? Like, I was stuck at your house for two days and you dug it out. I didn't have any. Like, I still don't have any winter clothes. I don't know whose pants I wore to go out there. That was terrifying.

Oh, that's like my childhood. Every winter we would make, like, snow forts.

That's funny. That was the only time I ever did it. I was scared because I think I'm claustrophobic. And there was just a little tunnel to get out. But I also thought the plows were going to come and kill us whenever I was in there. But I think we had, like, two bottles of wine, so that helped, kept us warm. So then during the deep winter, the bogs are flooded again, creating an ice cap, or sometimes called an ice cave. And that keeps the cranberries warm. Farmers then spread sand over the ice, which in the spring melts and adds nutrients and controls weeds.

So basically they get a winter spot treatment.

They survive frost, flooding, ice, and even fire season. And somehow end up on our table, but not without large environmental impact. Yeah, cranberries do have a pretty big environmental footprint because they're farmed in the wetland environments. There's pests and fungi everywhere, which means they need a lot of pesticides. And the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers association has even admitted that insects and weeds have completely adapted to the bog ecosystem, so they're hard to get rid of. And then the chemicals leach into the wetlands, which hurts, you know, birds, fish, humans. I listened to an interview with Grant Holley, the executive director of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers association, and he said they avoid using pesticides as much as possible because they need to protect bees for pollination and have been using ice and nematodes when they can. So it might be late in the game. But I think industrial farming and the farmers I've met in the past, too, are really aware of minimizing their pesticide and chemical use. Cranberries often show up on lists of produce to buy organic. But organic bogs are pretty rare because they're expensive to maintain and they have smaller yields, but more and more people are asking for them every year.

Interesting. So in terms of these environmental impacts, are there some regulations that have been developed to better manage them? Yeah.

In Canada, the extensive use of water in cranberry production means that they have a lot of water holdings near farms. So public concern over contamination of the water supply through, like, misusing fertilizers and pesticides has resulted in the cranberry industry being highly scrutinized and regulated. The cranberry grower response has been actually exceptionally progressive, and they're recognized leaders among agricultural commodities in adopting IPM strategies, which I think we've talked about. Integrated pest management.

Yeah, you have this, like, progressive approach where you. You have the most ecological approaches that are prioritized, and under very controlled conditions, you would use pesticides in the U.S.

The cranberry boom of the 90s destroyed a lot of natural wetlands in the U.S. so the U.S. army Corps of Engineers stepped in and officially classified cranberry bogs as wetlands, meaning some activities now needed permits. Do you remember the cranberry boom of the 90s?

Did it coincide with the outbreak of UTIs in the 90s?

I don't know this as a fact, but all I could think of is cosmos and Sex in the City. Oh, could that have really caused a boom that destroyed the wetlands in the United States? Maybe Cosmos.

Oh, my God. That's an episode where it's like Sex in the City and it's Environmental destruction of watersheds in the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Lower Nova Scotia. That's a thesis. It's a dissertation. So Cosmos have cranberry juice?

Yeah, cosmos are just cranberry juice, vodka, and a wedge of lime.

Oh, okay.

Cosmos might have the orange liqueur. Yeah, I think so. Most cranberry farming still isn't heavily regulated in the US because agricultural runoff was actually exempted from the US's Clean Water act in the 70s.

Such a great thing to exclude from, do we.

I don't even know if we still have the Clean Water Act.

Right. Like, it's probably gone by the time this podcast is released, so.

But most rules happen at time the same state level and through voluntary best practices. Like the Wisconsin guy saying, you know, we don't want to kill all the bees, so we try not to spray pesticides everywhere. From what I've read, though, Massachusetts has a lot more regulations around pesticide use and groundwater protection than Wisconsin, which is that big, the biggest grower. But that kind of matches up with Massachusetts having a more progressive politics.

So cranberries sound like, you know, they're a holiday staple, but actually there's a big. There's a huge environmental impact.

And as much as they help, you know, native pollinators and bugs and birds, if you're not buying organic, you might not be helping as much as hurting your native environment.

I. I see, like, an opportunity for a new, like, ngo, a new charity where, you know, in face of declining bee populations, we could collect used vibrators. Right. And reuse those to help pollinate the. The cranberry flowers.

Oh, my God.

We can even hire disadvantaged youth to go around and. And use the vibrators.

Well, we are going to have to have disadvantaged use be our new agriculture labor in the United States for sure. So if you want to grow your own cranberries, because you're like, I don't want to get into that mess of, you know, polluting waterways, or it's just fun to grow your own weird stuff. You can set up your own bog using a raised bed or shallow container with really sandy, acidic soil and plenty of water. And they grow best in USDA hardiness zones 2 through 7, because they require cool climates and they need a lot of cold weather to ensure they produce fruit. Yet I've seen that Oregon has a lot of commercial cranberry farms, and it doesn't get super cold here. Oregon's first commercial cranberry farm was established in 1885 in Coos county by a guy named Charles McFarland, who migrated from Massachusetts and brought cranberry cuttings with him.

Oh, interesting. Takes that, I guess.

Yeah. He's like, I can't. I can't. I'll move to the west coast, but not without my cranberries.

No, without his cosmos.

Coos county and Curry county are where Oregon's cranberry industry is based. Out of the coast's temperate climate and the long growing season, they say give Oregon cranberries a deeper red color and a slightly sweeter flavor.

And have you noticed that I have.

Never had an Oregon cranberry raw or a Massachusetts or Wisconsin cranberry? My students are always throwing away packs of craisins because they get them with their breakfast and lunch, and no one will eat them. Like, they're just, like, left everywhere.

Well, interestingly, there's a Quebec company that makes sour candy from cranberries.

Oh, cool.

That's supposed to be an alternative to Sour Patch Kids.

Yeah, that would be cool. They should rebrand the Craisins.

I bet you. Yeah, I bet you your students would love those. What about in terms of, like, medical uses or nutritional contents?

I think we all know the main reason people drink cranberry juice.

The UTIs, because you wiped from behind up. That's like, so I've been told. That's what causes a lot of UTIs.

Cranberries are rich in polyphenol A, and that's what gives it the antibacterial effects, and it reduces the risk of UTIs because it helps prevent E. Coli from sticking to the bladder wall. But it wouldn't treat a uti. So the idea of you get a UTI and drink a ton of cranberry juice, you're not doing anything to really help. But it also has other uses besides that, or other reasons to want to drink some or have a supplement. There's a bacterium called H. Pylori, and it's considered the major cause of stomach cancers, inflammation, and ulcers. And cranberries contain a unique compound which can cut your risk of stomach cancer by preventing H. Pylori from attaching to the lining of your stomach.

Yeah, And H. Pylori is, like, the bacterium that really reproduces in your gut. If you don't have a good microbiome, if you go through, like, really intensive antibiotics afterwards, when you stop taking those antibiotics, H. Pylori can, like, reproduce real quickly in your gut.

You have to be cautious because too much cranberry juice can upset your stomach and people on blood thinners, or if you're Prone to kidney stones. Should check with a doctor before going cran crazy. There's also some medications that it can interact with. The medicinal uses definitely had me thinking of cranberries in a new way and, like, thinking of how I can add them into my diet.

Your cocktail?

Yeah. No, not a cocktail. It's time for my famous cranberry sauce recipe.

Ooh. This is where you reveal the secret.

Yes. No Thanksgiving would be complete without Jeanette's famous cranberry sauce. I didn't invent this. So what you do is go to the store and get a can of jellied cranberry sauce. Not the whole berry one. It has to be the jellied one. And you bring it with you to Thanksgiving. In your purse, you find a can opener, open it up, find a smallish dish. Not too big if there's a lip, that's good so it doesn't run. And then what you do is you kind of shake it out of the can until it just lands on the plate. What's really important here is you have to serve it sideways because you want to have those little indents of the can for people to use when they cut, when they make slices so they can see where to slice. And if you're doing anything other than that, you're doing it wrong.

You're ridiculous.

That is my traditional cranberry sauce recipe. I bring it to my in laws every year. People love it.

And why not whole berries?

It doesn't. It doesn't do the. The slicing. For those of you keeping track, I did definitely find the zodiac for cranberry. Just so we know it's a female Sagittarius, but I'm not going to go into that because we always go into signs. And I'm sure we'll get back to a female Sagittarius later. There's some spells you can do with cranberries if you have some. Maybe if you're bored at Thanksgiving, you can just do witchcraft to scare your in laws.

Talking about politics isn't already scary enough to do with your in laws.

For an abundance spell, you can write what you want to fill your life with onto a piece of paper. Place the paper onto a plate and pour enough cranberries to fill the plate. Visualize that your life is full of what you wished for. Just like a bog is filled with the fruit. Then you cook and eat the berries. I've noticed a lot of spells are like positive affirmations, meditation. It's all kind of the same. What your therapist recommends in witchcraft tend to be the same. So for energy, you can do a spell where you make homemade cranberry sauce with cinnamon and clove and then you have to enchant it it to increase energy.

And what is enchanting?

I was literally gonna say do not ask follow up questions. Sorry, I don't know. For healing, place the berries in a bowl and place it under your bed while you're healing or resting.

Or you could just eat it and get. Oh yeah, and the good. That's a good idea. And encourage the good gut bacteria.

I do love things where it's just placing bowls of things around or under your bed. Like some lavender under your pillow, a knotted rope next to your bed to keep away your sleep paralysis demon, and a bowl of cranberries under the bed.

I prefer just saying, like, put a bowl of cranberries in your fridge and leave it there until they dry out and then put them in the compost. That's what I'm gonna say next time someone opens my fridge and they're like, woof. What's up with this? Like limp, rotting zucchini? I'm like, oh, that's. That's just the spell. That's just an abundance spell of doing. It's an abundant spell.

That's funny. The other thing is you can use the juice as a substitute for wine in rituals and spells. And you know, I think churches do that too. Their little witchcraft thing where you eat Jesus, you know what I'm talking about, and drink his blood. So it's like any spell.

Thanks, Jeanette. That was a lot of information.

Just in time if you're in the US for Thanksgiving. So you can just shout facts at people at the table. Play this episode while I'm eating with everyone.

What are some seasonal reminders then for listeners?

Write down your spring wish list so you're not stuck enviously watching harvest videos of loofahs cuz you forgot to plant them again.

Is that, Is that what happened?

Yeah. I keep seeing people peel their loofahs and I'm like, I wish I grew lofas.

I would love to be that person. You know, it's like, oh, this, this thing I'm using to wash myself and my dishes. Oh, I grew this myself.

I know.

That's like the one thing I'm missing in my life to boast about is. Yeah, oh, that's olive oil. Oh, I grew it myself. Oh yeah, it grew in my roots.

You should go cotton and make your own cloth too.

That's the next frontier for me. Yeah, my seasonal reminder is to start freezing a lot of your harvest so you can do some good preserves over the winter instead of doom and glooming under a weighted or heated blanket. Or you can even make jams now and then use them to make sandwich cookies or thumb cookies over the holidays, that type of thing.

Well, thanks for getting slutty with us.

So we'll be back in February, but in the meantime, keep subscribed for winter cuttings.

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Bye. Keep subscribed for winter cuttings. Don't put that one on, please.