Seeds And Their People - Ep. 28: Zee Lilani, Kula Nursery, and South Asian plants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

This episode features an interview with Zee Lilani at Kula Nursery in West Oakland, California in January 2024. Zee grows Doodhi (Lauki/Bottle Gourd) and Kalonji (Black Seed/Nigella) seeds for our Truelove Seeds catalog as well as many varieties for Second Generation Seeds at her farm in Petaluma, California. In this episode, we hear how Zee left her work as a hydrologist, became a farmer, worked in food sovereignty and food security supporting other farmers, and then started her own nursery business focused on South Asian plants during the pandemic. During the partition of India, her family was displaced from the city of Surat, in the state of Gujarat, in India to Pakistan. Her work with plants familiar to her mother and grandmother bring Surat back to life many decades later, far from home.    In her words:  'Kula Nursery is a grassroots urban nursery working within and for BIPOC communities to increase food sovereignty through gardening education and culturally relevant plant starts. The mission at Kula Nursery is to reconnect the diaspora with heritage food, strengthen food sovereignty among these communities, and promote cultural and biological diversity. As a heritage nursery, we believe the act of growing, tending to, and eating heritage foods encourages folks to reclaim their power within the local food system while simultaneously honoring and reconnecting to their ancestors, immediate family and community at large.' Basically, this interview is right up our alley at Seeds and their People, focused on how plants connect us to our people, power, place, ancestors, and community.    SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Cuban Oregano, Indian Mint, Patta Ajwain, Coleus amboinicus Curry Tree, Murraya koenigii Night Blooming Jasmine, Raat Ki Rani, Queen of the Night, Cestrum nocturnum Mogra, Arabian Jasmine, Belle of India, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Jasminum sambac Henna, Lawsonia inermis Amla, Indian Gooseberry, Emblica officinalis Sugarcane, Saccharum spp. Taro, Colocasia esculenta Bindhi, Okra, Abelmoschus esculentus Doodhi/Lauki, Bottle Gourd, Lagenaria siceraria Kalonji, Black Seed, Nigella, "Onion Seed", Nigella sativa Krishna Tulsi, Ocicimum tenuiflorum Desi Girl Tomato, Solanum lycopersicum Lal Mirch Indian Pepper, Capsicum annuum Baingan Indian Eggplant, Solanum melongena Surti Papdi and Valor Papdi, Lablab purpureus MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Kula Nursery webpage Kula Nursery Instagram Kula Nursery at Truelove Seeds Second Generation Seeds (direct links to Kula Nursery varieties above) Diaspora Co. Seeds and their People - EP. 22: Gujarati Seeds and Flavors with Nital Vadalia-Kakadia Seeds and their People - EP. 2: Kristyn Leach and Namu Farm ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Zee Lilani Nital Vadalia-Kakadia Ruth Kaaserer Emilio Sweet-Coll

I was just whacking at normal. Welcome to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director of Sankofa Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We're a seed company that offers culturally important seeds grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and by our listeners. Thank you so much to our Patreon members at patreon.com slash true love seeds,

including our most recent members, our friend Jeannie and a supporter called Land Tangle's. In this episode, we continue to explore the way we're entangled with land and seeds in an interview with Z. Lilani from Kula Nursery in West Oakland, California. In her words, Kula Nursery is a grassroots urban nursery working within and for BIPOC communities to increase food sovereignty through gardening education and culturally relevant plant starts. The mission at Kula Nursery is to reconnect the diaspora with heritage food, strengthen food sovereignty among these communities, and promote cultural and biological diversity. As a heritage nursery, we believe the act of growing, tending to, and eating heritage foods,

encourages folks to reclaim their power within the local food system while simultaneously honoring and reconnecting to their ancestors, immediate family and community at large. Basically, this interview is right up our alley at Seeds and Their People, focused on how plants connect us to our people, power, place, ancestors, and community. And I wanted to know, and you'll hear in the interview, Z and Kula Nursery grow a couple varieties for our catalog, including the bottle gourd or duty, and Cologne, or black seed, Nigella. So in this interview, you know, as in so many of ours, I'm always hyper aware of the things that unite different diaspros of the world. And I was very excited to hear about disease collecting of ochre seeds, growing these out and spreading them out, especially to diaspora's out there in the Bay Area. and so it's always nice because of my understanding that you can't grow okra very well in that part of california i may be wrong but i've heard people struggle with it so it's very

nice to hear about it um you know being dispersed again and people um just continuing the fight to keep their foods alive yeah i know that you've said to me and other people like if okra can't grow somewhere you're not going to live there for example so And I know okra does well at the farm where Z grows in Petaluma, you know, California, a little outside the city. So there's some news for you about where you might fit in. Yeah, probably not. But I'm excited, especially when next we visit, to see some okra growing out there and to know that it's still a powerful connecting force between different peoples who find their home. in that very, very multicultural state.

And, you know, we talked on there also about the bottle gourd being an African species. There's, there's, this is the same thing we say in a lot of our episodes about the connection between the continents, especially Africa and Asia. So stay tuned for that. Okay. Time to transport you to a thriving 1,000 square foot greenhouse in West Oakland right off of a noisy grand avenue. We're sitting underneath a, you.

giant disco ball and lots of garlands of marigolds and thousands of curry plants and other south asian plants enjoy i'm zilalani i started kula nursery and we're yeah we're in west oakland so i started this nursery about four years ago i'm going into my fourth year and i grow primarily south asian heritage uh vegetable herb and tree plant stars So in the spring, between April and June, I sell small plant starts, and I've been really focusing on trying to grow those vegetables and herbs that you can't really find in our local food system, or if you can't find them, they're frozen or dried, which is not how my ancestors like to consume them. So I have been using this greenhouse as a space to grow the plants, and then I've been opening it up to the public and having people in my ancestors. my community come by and shop directly in the greenhouse. And then just last year I started growing seeds commercially for you guys, true love seeds, but then also for other seed growers or

seed shops. And yeah, I've definitely fallen in love with the whole seed growing process. And I hope to use the same seeds I grew last year to grow in the nursery and to grow the plants and trying to create like a more circular model in the nursery giving myself more availability and access to the seeds themselves how did you decide to focus on south asian seeds how did you get here oh gosh um it was never by design um it kind of just happened serendipitously i got into farming like seven or eight years ago i was just in South America. I had decided to take a break from my job as a hydrologist in my early 20s, and I volunteered on a farm, and I ended up loving it, and that kind of got me more interested in

pursuing a career in agriculture. So I went back to UC Davis and got my master's in agricultural development, and I was doing food sovereignty work, food security, nutritional security research among folks in the Central Valley of California and then also among women in the Andes region of Peru. And I graduated with my master's March 2020, which was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And so my research got put on pause and I kind of just gravitated towards what I love to do what I was already kind of doing, which was gardening. I kind of turned my backyard into like a little food forest just with all the time I had. And I started growing plant starts for a local nursery that had asked because I think gardening had just become such a popular activity in the

pandemic. And I started growing plant starts. And I remember this one time my mom came to my backyard and she had seen Amaranth growing in my backyard. And she was like, I used to eat this every Friday growing up like where did you find this plant and I was like it's amaranth like and you know in like the US a lot of people grow amaranth for its flower I think it's called bleeding the red bleeding coral amaranth so I was growing it for the flower I had no idea that the leaves were consumed and so my mom's like visceral reaction to that plant kind of just prompted me to inquire more about what plants and what foods she hadn't seen in decades since coming to the U.S. And I asked the same question to my grandma. And it turned out there were all these stories

and all these foods and cultures and medicines that they hadn't seen, but they still clearly remembered. It was like a very special moment to be able to ask them these questions and then watch how their faces lit up talking about it and so from there i yeah i was just like okay maybe i'll try to grow like dudi which was bottle gourd you know or um kalonji which is nigella and these are all plants like there there's so many different plants but these are all different plants that i initially started growing with the nursery um and i basically just looked online like would find seeds through Etsy, like, or like ask people in my family if they had seeds or just take seeds from my mom's like spice cabinet. That's what I did initially with the Kalongi and like tried to

grow them and was pretty successful more or less. Like every once in a while, the seeds I bought online were not what they were advertised for or they just wouldn't germinate. And then that following year in 2021, I started selling plants at this farmer's market in the South Bay. And I remember the, you know, I had gone on a little tour throughout the Bay Area and was like trying to figure out what farmers market to sell at. And I found this farmer's market in Fremont. And it felt like I was back in South Asia. Like everyone there was, most people there were Asian, predominantly South Asian. And I just knew like when I stepped foot there, I was like, I need to sell my plants here.

So that following year, I did exactly. that. And that's kind of where I learned what plants were missing from the local food system, what plants are still so important to people's cultural heritage. And yeah, now today I grow like nearly 100 different varieties of plants and almost all of them have been informed by like my community. And now I'm growing about 12 to 15 different varieties of these plants for seed. the plants that I'm growing on my farm for seed mostly come from seeds that were given to me from community members like this one pepper variety was given to me

and so this past year I was about to run out and I was like I need to grow it if I don't grow it this year I'm not going to have any more like seeds to grow this plant next year so yeah they're very special and I'm continuously learning from my community I mean they're constantly telling me what I'm doing right when I'm doing wrong. They don't shy away from telling me the truth.

What a beautiful story of connections. I love that it kind of begins with your mother's memory of Friday meals in your backyard. And did you know that about her growing up eating Amaranth and Fridays? No, I had no idea. And then same thing with my grandma. Like my, I remember I was there when my mom was like, Zee's growing Cholai, which is what we call Amaranth. And my grandma was like, she just couldn't believe it. And they were both just like, wow.

How beautiful for all of you, I imagine you've really gotten to know your mother and grandmother a lot better just through growing these plants. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I think, like, especially with my grandma, because my grandma's, story feels unique, but it's probably not that unique for older generations that were born in South Asia and came, migrated here to the United States. My grandma is originally from Surat, India, and then moved to Pakistan after the partition, and then shortly after that moved to the United States. But my mom was born in Pakistan, and I was actually born in

Pakistan too, but then moved to California before I was even a year old. But I grew up eating and Gujarati food. I grew up hearing Gujarati. Like that was just normal for me. Like I didn't even think about it. And it wasn't until I was older that I realized that my family had been influenced so much by my grandma's Godrati side that I understood Gujarati more than I understood Urdu. And Gujarati is like the language that they speak in Surat and Urdu is the language that's more commonly spoken in Pakistan. All the memories of the foods I ate growing up, they're all mostly Gujarati dishes. The vegetables I know, I know them and their Gujarati names. In a way, it's like my grandma's, like, resistance to, like, the partition and her resistance to, like,

the colonization of, like, the South Asian people. And she just, like, really wanted to cling on to We're Gujarati, everything. I'm technically Pakistani American, but I, yeah, I am so influenced by Gujarat that, yeah, now I'm, I honor both of those cultures and both of those languages and those foods. But it's definitely interesting, but it's also not that unique. Like, I think a lot of people have similar stories of either living in Pakistan and then moving to India, post-partition. and vice versa. Can you give a little historical context to these movements of your family over time?

Like what was going on at the time and how were they affected by it? Yeah, so the partition was the largest mass migration in human history. It was when the British decided to leave India. All hell kind of broke out. I mean, the British had been in power for so long, that for many reasons, there was just a lot of tension in the lands.

And so they decided to create two different countries, India and Pakistan, where they would separate the religions. So Muslims were to move to Pakistan and be ruled under the Pakistan president. And then Hindus, Jane, like Buddhists, moved to India. And that was just kind of what happened. and it was very violent. There was a lot of tension, chaos. It's a really dark time in our history.

And of course, you know, when the British left, they just like wipe their hands clean and left without, you know, much acknowledgement of what they were leaving behind. And so, yeah, about two million people migrated between the borders. And these were borders that never really existed. Like my grandma, like, will still talk about growing up in Surat and her best friends were Hindu like for you know and all of my grandma's ancestors before that probably lived in harmony with with Hindus even though my grandma was Muslim and that's

that was the case for a lot of people people lived in harmony regardless of their religion and then so when the borders were drawn up people started people had to leave you know of pretty much overnight they didn't really have much of a warning my grandma left behind her family home, like she left with, you know, a suitcase. And at the time, they were lucky enough to get on an airplane and fly to Pakistan, but a lot of people had to take the train, which was super dangerous. Colonization is a way that, you know, our cultural identities are taken away from us. And one way of doing that is by taking away our lands or displacing people from their lands. And I kind of see this, like, parallel between,

that and how my grandma went through partition, like the removal of her from her lands and the foods that she knew to Pakistan. She tells me that when they first moved to Pakistan, a lot of the vegetables that she used to eat were not available. It took many years for those vegetables to be imported into Pakistan or for people to start growing them in Pakistan. And yet, like even now, she still has such fond memories of these good roti vegetables and foods, and she still cooks with them, even if she can only find them in the frozen section. So it must feel, probably it's the wrong word,

but it must feel magical to her, to see this growing by your hands and have access to fresh versions of the foods that inspire memories of her life pre-partition. What has she said to you about this work that you're doing? Yeah, oh my gosh. So this past year, last year I got a half acre, at least half an acre and started growing these plants. And, you know, it's not that big of a plot. And I share the plot. So it's even less. And the vegetables I chose were like definitely I wanted them to be special to me and my family as well as like the seeds having special seeds. But I remember I told. my grandma, like, I know you'll never be able to go back to Surat, so I'm going to bring Surat to you. And when I told her that, like, I saw the tears in her eyes well up. And, like,

that to me was just, like, enough to continue doing this work, because it's not easy. Let's be honest, like farming in general is so, it's rewarding in some ways, but, you know, it's also a very difficult career path to go down and yeah and so I do it because of like those sorts of responses like I brought by this plant it's called ajuin patta in English it's called Cuban oregano it's actually right over there should we visit it yeah sure while we walk over to the azuin pata or the Cuban oregano we're going to take a quick break to hear an ad from some friends of as far as we have an ad exchange for. Here you go. We'll be right back.

Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this show, you may also like the No-Till Market Garden podcast with co-host Mimi Castile, Natalie Landsbury, and yours truly, Alex Ball. We interview growers, researchers, and others in sustainable ag community about everything from soil first farming practices to farm business management in the wild world of soil biology and health. So head over to your favorite podcast platform today and subscribe to the No-Till Growers Now. work. It's probably one of the most cultural plants I grow. Like it goes by so many names, Mexican

mint, Cuban-Oragano, Indian mint, Ajwin Peta. And I started growing it because somebody at the farmer's market was like, can you grow Indian mint? And I was like, what's Indian mint? And so I Googled it and then I grew it. And then I remember the same customer was like, no, this isn't Indian mint. It's fuzzier than that. And I was like, oh gosh. So yeah, so I ended up finally getting the right cutting. Actually, you can only grow it from cutting. So I ended up getting a cutting of it and growing it. And I finally got the approval that it was the right Indian mint. But yeah, I brought it to my grandma's house for her birthday last year. And she took a sniff of it. And she was like, I haven't seen this plant in 45 years. She had all these stories of growing up, eating it. She said that she, she traditionally used to chew on the leaves when she had a cold or like a sore throat. And she said that her mom would give her, like, leaves to chew on. So she would just constantly be chewing on leaves when she was sick. And I love that story because I feel like that kind of, yeah, it shows different ways plants have been used for medicine.

And that, you know, when you're sick, you don't need to reach for, like, cough syrup or go to the drugstore. Like, you can grow plants that can help you. And apparently it's really good for children, too. So it's been a popular plant in my nursery. A lot of people have really fond memories of it. And I love how cultural it is. It's important to so many different cultures. Is it used in any other ways by your customers

or just to chew on the leaf when they're sick? It's really good in pecorah, which is like where you take the leaves and then you cover it in chickpea batter and then you deep fry it, and it's so good. I highly recommend that. Yeah, but you can also make chutneys with it, so you grind it up with, like, some spices and water and, yeah, and then use that and use it as a dipping sauce, basically. Nice, and it's so succulent, and it seems to root no matter what you do.

Once you have it, you have it. Oh, yeah, I know. I learned that lesson the hard way. I was like, this needs to grow a little slower because it's going a little crazy right now. But which is also like a crazy thing because I've never seen this plant before and it grows so well in this climate and it's so prolific and like you can literally just take a cutting, put it in water, forget about it, come back two weeks later and you have a whole new plant and like and it's so medicinal and so cultural and like why why is this just not available, you know? And it's easier to grow than oregano, but you could substitute it for oregano and like any dish. What other plants here should we visit that can kind of speak to the connection between you and your family or you and your customers or you and other people in your community? I mean, we can just kind of go like in a clockwise circle around the greenhouse and talk about the plants that are available.

So I guess the curry leaf tree is next. The curry leaf tree is actually the first plant that I seeded when I really decided to focus on culturally important. plants for my nursery and I think it just happened to be a coincidence in some sense or it was fate but my aunt came over with like six seeds um just six berries for the curry leaf tree and she was like you need to figure out how to grow this because I cannot get it to germinate and she was giving the seeds to my mom but I was there and I was like I'll try it um and so I did and I was and it was yeah, it was the beginning of this four-year journey where there's been a lot of failures. It's kind of a very difficult plant to grow because it's such a tropical plant.

And it's a tree, so it grows really slowly. But it's also such an important plant to me and my family and I think a lot of South Asians. I grew up personally with it in my kitchen. Like my whole life, it's just always been in a little pot growing in a corner, like a sunny corner of my parents' kitchen. And my mom will cut off like a little stem of it and cook with it whenever she's making doll or whenever a recipe calls for it. And so that's how I'm familiar with it. It's just always been around. It's like a very ubiquitous plant. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. There's nothing like it. Like you can't substitute the curry

leaf with another type of leaf and you can't use it dried like you don't really want to use it frozen like it has to be fresh and that's what I love about it like you can't even really find the leaves dried unless you're really in a location where people are desperate but it just doesn't impart the same type of flavor and no other leaf imparts that same flavor so yeah I get really hungry when I'm watering it. I'm like, I miss my mom's cooking. It's almost like an ode to our lands where we come from, where my ancestors come from.

Back in India, Pakistan, like different parts of South Asia, it grows to like a 10 to 15 foot tree, and they grow so easily because it's so humid and so warm there. But yeah, we just, even if it grows in like a one gallon pot in our kitchen corner like we still want it around because when you walk by it you can smell it it brings back all these memories of deliciously home-cooked meals um so yeah i think this is like the curry leaf tree it's almost like i'm not solving the tree itself i'm selling the nostalgia um and the memories that it brings up i feel like it's almost been like my greatest challenge

these past four years but I feel like I finally figured it out and the story of how it all happened is kind of interesting too like I had to basically like forget all the things I know about plants and like relearn it but relearn it in a way that like the plants were telling me like I had to be still with the plants to really understand what they needed because I'm growing it in this temperate like gloomy climate you know yeah it was definitely an interesting journey can you tell us how to successfully germinate and grow curry plants because i've tried from my own curry plant at home and failed every time oh my gosh yeah well so the seed you need a fresh berry it cannot be dried so it still needs to be in its purple little seed uh berry open up the berry take the seed

put it in some soil and it requires like 21 days to germinate if it's warm outside so I usually if I am germinating seeds I'll germinate them in like in the summer because it's already warm and if I if I have the seeds in the winter I'll put it on a heat mat so that it does germinate that's like rule number one like after 10 days if you've given up hope you still have 11 more days to go like don't give up that easily and everything I learned in grad school about, you know, incorporating compost into the soil and watering it only when the soil is dry, like never overwatering it, like those are all the things I kind of had to like unlearn because the curry leaf tree was like I will never tell someone to incorporate compost into their soil. I found that that actually kills the curry leaf tree, which is so, you know,

it's been taking me so long to figure that out. But yeah, basically, I just had to unlearn, like, all the horticultural knowledge I learned through grad school and then just be present with the plants and figure, like, really observe how they behaved in different types of soil, different types of fertilizer. And so now I make my own soil blend for the plants and they've never been happier. Like, they're growing and it's winter, you know? Like, I've, yeah, so I feel like that's been my greatest accomplishment. I finally, I'm sure, sure I have much more to learn about this plant but I finally like demystified some of how to grow this plant and yeah yeah they're beautiful like a foot tall like I said maybe almost a foot

and very green and they clearly are growing like continuing to mature when were these ones started from seed yeah these ones were started last no almost 16 months ago Yeah, so I did a collaboration with Diaspora for two years. The first year, we grew 400 plants, and we sold out in like four hours. And so last year, we decided to do 2,000 plants. And I might have started way too many. And so now clearly you can see I still have thousands of plants left over from the collaboration. But, yeah, I think it was shocking to see, like, those 400,

plants be sold in four hours. And I think a lot of people, I guess I just never realized, like a lot of people have that same experience and connection to this plant as I did when I first seeded this plant. So, and there's still such a huge demand. And of course, everyone wants to learn how to grow it, you know, because it's not an easy plant, but they treat it like their babies. And yeah. Can you say more about diaspora co? Like how that collaboration came to be and just I think people would be excited to learn about them if they don't already know. Yeah, diaspora sources, single origin spices from family farms in India. And Sana, the founder, lived in Oakland at the time.

And so we ran into each other at a farmer's market, got to know each other, started following each other on Instagram. And then I think she came to a farmer's market once or a pop-up that I was doing once and she was like hey do you want to grow 400 curry leaf plants for for us next year to do a collaboration and I was like uh maybe sure and so I was like what the hell like I'll just seed seed 400 plants and and then that following spring we were like okay let's do this um so we yeah we we put it online and there was such a huge demand and in that time sonna and I developed a friendship and we were like, let's just do it bigger and better next year.

Do you have plans to do it again? This year, I don't think I'm going to be doing it because the whole shipping of plants is really not my thing. I realized this the hard way last year. Like, I think I, yeah, I think I want to focus more on just selling plants directly to people. I like that human interaction. and, yeah, I think I want to keep it small scale.

Like, I want to still be the one growing the plants and packaging plants just felt a little strange. But I'm definitely interested in, like, interacting with the community at large via, like, classes and care guides and, and, yeah, all of that. Well, how can someone take a class with you? This spring, I'm going to start doing classes. I'm going to do a curry leaf care class.

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of people that just want to know how to properly grow their plant and I want to be able to share that with people, you know? Like not everyone has had the privilege of being able to grow thousands of plants in a greenhouse and spend like the majority of the year trying to figure out how to grow it. So I'm like, I might as well share whatever I know

and not, you know, allow everyone to have a thriving curry leaf plant at home. Did you, do you save your own curry seeds? I don't, because you do have to get the plant to grow to, like, at least seven feet tall, you know, before it starts to produce enough seeds. But I do have lots of people in the South Bay who, you know, they probably know more than me, but they've been the ones that have been sharing the seeds with me because they have these huge mature trees and just casually in their front yards. Wow.

I know. And they survive there all year in their front yards. Yeah, there's no frost. It's like a weird little microclimate in the Fremont area, the South Bay area. And technically, like, these plants, if you plant them when they're like three, four years old, they can grow and be happy. But most people just plant them when they're like a year old. They're way too small.

They're not adapted to the climate yet. so they usually just die I take mine in and out because obviously when I came here yesterday it was 14 degrees outside so I can't handle that and I think I think it was on the episode with Nital about Gujarati food and seeds where we talked about curry trees and I learned enough from my conversation with her to feel confident in cutting back my curry tree almost all the way to having like a stick maybe a foot tall because I have a problem with spider mites every winter on the curry tree. And so far, so good. It came back with vigor, you know, and the leaves look beautiful like this already.

And no spider mites so far. I don't know if you ever have to deal with that. Oh, yeah. I get every pest imaginable. I mean, I understand, like, the whole pest problem is probably the biggest impediment to growing a healthy curry leaf tree. Also, the pinching of the plants and the cutting. back of plants, the hard pruning, like people, it sounds so counterintuitive, like to take some

shears to a plant and just chop it down. But yeah, that's some tough love for you. And it does really come back. Like I did that right here with this plant. It, I think I, I think I, something happened to the plant and I was like, I'll just prune it and see what happens. And now it's like, you know, it's winter. So it's still kind of small. But it has three main branches. coming off of it, and it's going to be more vigorous and produce more leaves than before. Yeah. Are those flower buds? There's flower buds on it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Wow. It's growing a little too well right now. Maybe it'll make you some seeds. Yeah. There you go. Okay, last curry question, unless you have more you want to say, is what were you

taught growing up about cooking with curry? I mean, I basically just saw my mom put the leaves in, like, hot oil along with other spices, like mustard seeds, cumin seeds, a red chili pepper, and then pouring that oil and all the spices and the leaves on top of doll. And that's, like, probably one of my favorite dishes ever. Like, it's the most comforting dish to me, and you can't make it without the curry leaves. Like, it's essential. It's hard to explain. the dish is not the same without the curry leaves in it wonderful who else should we visit do you want to visit the jasmines I would love to so the this is

the night blooming jasmine it's called Raki Rani which means queen of the night and this one's probably one of my most popular plants a lot of people have really fond memories of this plant in their neighborhoods it's back in South Asia because it can grow to like 10 to 15 feet tall. It's super productive, super easy to grow. And it has these tiny little white flowers that open at night. And when they open, they like emit a scent that you can smell from like a block away. And I have so many customers, like even my family telling me the same, this same story.

Like, and it's so crazy how so many people have that same memory of like the flowers opening at night and being able to smell it from a block away yeah so all of these cuttings came from a customer actually because you can only grow this plant from cuttings a customer reached out to me via instagram and was like i have a really large rotkirani and i need to prune it back do you want to come by and take the cuttings and i was like absolutely yes so i went to her house and it was such a sweet exchange like her garden was so beautiful she had a huge curry leaf tree she had like like all these tropical plants and then she had this huge jasmine plant and the rat kirani and she like handed me some cheers and was like here take as much as you want and so this was

last july um i went over to her house and took a bunch of cuttings and um yeah i've been meaning to send her a photo of all of them now because these are all her little babies technically and like the scent is also unlike anything I've smelled before. In the US, star jasmine is kind of the more common jasmine that's grown here, which technically isn't even a jasmine. It's like not even a jasmineum.

And the Rakhirani also is not a jasmineum, but I think it smells better. But I do grow two other varieties of jasminaums. We call one Mokra, which is Arabian jasmine, Jasmine. It also goes by the name Arabian Jasmine. And then I grow, so I grow two different types of Mokras. One is called, like, Bell of India. And then another is Duke of Tuscany. Well, they're also regal. Yeah. Important. Queen, Bell, Duke. Yeah, I know. But once you smell it, you're like, wow, we have not been living, like, life

as we should be. This scent is, like, surreal. It smells so good. My grandma actually took the Mokra flowers and, like, made a little garland with them and put it in her hair when she got married. And so, like, in her photos, there's, like, this beautiful white garland of flowers in her hair. And I think that a lot of people use that flower in different types of ceremonies, especially weddings, especially as, like, garlands around your wrist. and the scent is like intoxicating like that's the best word for it it's intoxicating so I grow that and that's also a very very popular plant and also very difficult to grow are all of these hardy here no so I mean I tell people to grow them indoors and it's actually

wonderful if you grow it indoors because when it does flower like it makes your whole house smell up and so many of my customers have said that to me. But also for people that live in like places without a frost, you can grow them outdoors and they they grow fine. They're never going to grow like or they most likely won't grow to like the big lush bush that they grow to in South Asia. But yeah, just like thinking about them as a different type of plant here in the U.S. but still equally as magnificent, you know. Is it as simple as taking a cutting and putting it in soil? I like to take the cuttings and put them in water,

and then it takes about a couple, like two to three months for it to start to send out roots, and then I put them in soil. Yeah. And then with them, so that's what I do with the Radkirani's, but then with the Mogra, I put them just in soil and put it on a heat mat or something to keep it, little warm and then they they're difficult to germinate but they yeah they're yeah but they're worth it

and then this is henna it's been a little neglected this winter but um henna actually has been surprisingly very easy to grow um someone out of farmer's market was like can you please grow hena and i was like no what are you talking about and then i went home that that day and looked it up and found seeds and I grew it and I was like, well, I guess you can grow henna. So yeah, this one has been very easy to grow. I think the hardest part is just getting the seeds to germinate because they do require a lot of warmth to germinate. But once they get going, they're pretty resilient. And it's been cool. A lot of people who do Mindy, which is like the drawing using henna to draw on your hands and making like artwork on your hands and your feet

and a lot of people that do the art of henna have come to me to buy a plant so that they can like grow their own henna and use it like on their clients and customers and apparently all you do is like pick off the leaves and then dry it and then mix it with a little water and lemon juice and that's the paste wow that is awesome and when do people do the art art of Hena? It's most common for weddings. Like the bride will get it done on her arms, her hands, her feet, and then other people who are attending the wedding will also get it on their hands and feet. Celebrations, like, yeah, but mostly around weddings. It's like a whole ceremony, like a whole day you basically spend just like getting Hena done to your feet and hands.

Wow. So you had mentioned earlier how you're kind of, I forget the word you use, but you said like selling sentiment or what word did you use? Nostalgia. But you're also like this plant dula involved in the most intimate moments of people's lives. It's very powerful. I do. Yeah, I get to observe and hear stories like without even really asking for them. You know, people are prompted to share their stories with me. and it's so special and probably why I've stuck around with this livelihood for so long because I feel so honored to be witness to people's reactions to the plants and then also be able to hear people's stories of these plants. Let's hear another plant story. Yeah, sure.

Um, okay, so these, these are like, um, my guava plants and then back here is Amla, which is Indian gooseberry and obviously they're a little sad right now but it's in the same vein as the curry leaf tree people just want to grow it like they want to see the leaves they want to they probably know they'll never get it to fruit but they just want the plant so I've been experimenting with different ways to grow these plants and they're tropical so They're hard to grow, but yeah, I'm trying out this new soil blend on these plants and maybe it'll work out. But yeah, people just want, even if it's like four inches tall, people just want it. They just want to have this reminder of home.

In my family, my mom uses it in her hair. She'll take the oil and put it and massage it throughout her scalp and hair. But it's also very prevalent in Ayurveda. Like, it's a very medicinal fruit, but it's very difficult to find. Like, I don't, I've never seen the fresh fruit here in the United States before. You can find, like, the oil at the grocery store, and that's what, that's what most people use. So you can get the powder. But, yeah, back in South Asia, it grows as, like, a huge tree.

Here, not so much. But, yeah, people, people want it. And I don't blame them. Like, it is a very beautiful plant. the leaves are so different than any other plant I grow. I want to jump in here and say you may recognize this plant from our episode from last July, 2023, episode 22, Gujarati seeds and flavors with Natal Vidalia Kakadilla. And so I'm just going to play like a very small portion of that

because it gives a little more information of how her family grows and uses this plant. And then back to our episode. But go check out episode 22 for a whole other episode. focused on the food ways from Goudrat. And I wanted you to try the grusberries. So let me get it because my mother, she, it's very good for health. So, you know, at our farm, we have the grusberry trees. So what she does is she cuts them up.

She soaks them in salt and turmeric. And then she dries them. And then we just eat them like a mouth refresher after meals. It's great for digestion. They have sour and bitter taste Wow There's so much flavor in there Yep

It's dried fruit It's like an explosion of sourness And they're high in vitamin C And other vitamins But that I don't know of But my mom does this Just for health And she

I welcome to she eat them Cheats them every day For me this is also just fun Like, it gives me a reason to connect to a plant that I don't know, but that my grandma and my mom know very well and probably many of my ancestors know really well. And that's kind of like why I got into this whole nursery business in the first place was like I do enjoy just like experimenting with different plants. I have a neem tree. This is like a baby neem tree right here. So, yeah, I do try to keep enough space here.

here in the nursery for my own experimentations and my own curiosity. We could talk about, don't talk about the sugar cane. Please, oh my gosh. I would love to hear anything about the sugar cane. Yeah, so going back to like wanting to just experiment and enjoying that side of the nursery. For me, it's been like finding different like plants that I can, propagate just from the fruit or the plant itself so the first example actually was taro which is the logo for my my nursery and it's also such a culturally important vegetable we consume the leaf

we make this dish called patra where you like take the leaf and you devane it and then you coat it in chickpea flour batter and then you roll it up and you cut it and you cut it and deep fry it and it's like the most delicious snack but my grandma said that when she came to the United States she found a taro corn at a grocery store and she planted it in some soil just so that she could grow the leaves and make that dish so that was the first plant where I was like I want to do that so I yeah I grow butaro and then I also have been experimenting with other things like ginger turmeric, but then sugar cane as well. And I just recently, like last week I went to the

farmer's market and I saw sugar cane and I was like, I think this is a sign for me to experiment with it and grow it. And I've actually seen sugar cane growing like pretty big up in Sacramento where it gets pretty hot. And they said that you just take cuttings of it and put it in soil and it'll root at the little sections. the nodes, yeah, and you can kind of see, like, the roots are kind of like that. I think that's where the roots would come out of. So, yeah, I haven't gone to it yet. I'll probably do it later today, but, yeah, I'm excited to watch that one grow, too.

And I think a lot of my customers, too, are, like, excited by whatever I get excited by, you know? Like, I think a lot of them are gardeners and wanting familiarity and their foods, the foods that they garden. So, yeah, I've never had a problem, like, trying to convince people to buy and grow all of my crazy, wacky ideas. I'm going to try that. We've been wanting to try to cook sugar cane for years and just haven't gotten to it. Yeah. And you guys are kind of in a more tropical climate, right?

It would love that area. Yeah. Sacramento, it would grow, it was like eight, ten feet tall. It's funny to think of. Philly as tropical, but really gets very hot and humid for many months. So we can do a lot with subtropical and tropical plants with the growing season that we have. Now it's really cold, but during the summer, yeah. Wow, I'm jealous of that.

Because here, I mean, where I grow things up in Petaluma, it's just hot and dry. And it's great because it's hot, but it's also very dry. The hot and humid is, like, ideal for most of these tropical South Asian plants. Could we talk about your farm a little bit? bit and specifically seeds, because so much of what we're looking at here is not sexual reproduction in this greenhouse. But let's get to the sexual reproduction part. Yeah, I'd love to hear about the varieties that you're saving seeds from and why and where they're ending up and things like that. So let's see. I think there's 12 varieties that I'm like intentionally

growing for seed, and I hope to up that number this coming growing season. A lot of these seeds about half of the seeds were just given to me from community members in like an indiscreet plastic bag or even a water bottle one time. So, you know, I really felt like I needed to ensure the longevity of these seeds and survival of these seeds. So I'm growing Indian okra and those seeds were given to me from a farmer that sells at the Old Oakland Farmers Market. And I regularly shopped there and I used to actually be a vendor there selling plants. But I walked by his booth and I saw the Indian okra. And Indian okra is like very different from like the other okras that are more commonly available.

It's dark green and long. And so when I saw it and the sign said Indian okra, I was like, how did you get seats for this? And I started talking to the farmer and he was like, someone gave them to me like many years ago. and we've just been growing them and our customers love them. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I own a nursery. And, like, I've been licking for seeds like this, and it's so hard to find. And so, yeah, the following week, he was like, come back next week. And so the following week I came back, and he was the one who gave me a water bottle

full of okra seeds. And I was like, awesome. This is the best gift anyone could ever give me. So I grew those out on my farm last year, and they were so beautiful. Like, they were probably the plant I connected to the most, and it's hard to even explain. It's more of just, like, a knowing. Like, I would just go and sit with the okra, and it was so, so, such a joy. Like, I'm really looking forward to growing that variety again.

So I'm growing Indian okra. I'm growing Indian eggplant. I'm growing this daisy tomato that's, like, very sour. And I've never tasted a tomato. like it. I'm honestly not even a fan of tomatoes really. But I love this tomato because I and it's more of a cooking tomato. So I've been like using it to cook with. And then I'm growing this long Indian pepper that my dad loves and a lot of my customers love because it's so spicy. Like yeah, I remember like tasting them out on my farm and like immediately running over to the tomatoes.

to be like, I need to, like, get this spiciness out of my mouth immediately. But, yeah, I mean, my family loves super, super spicy food. So, and, yeah, these seeds are from a region in India. One of my customers gave me seeds for it. And, yeah, and every year he's like, can you bring me some of the peppers? Like, I'll give you more seeds. Just give me some of the peppers. Can you grow them for me?

What a beautiful relationship. Yeah. Seeds for peppers. I love that kind of bartering that can happen with the work that we do. I know. And it's such an honor. I mean, I'm like, wow, you're trusting me with these seeds. That's such a big deal. Like, I think it just makes you want to be more intentional with every single seed that you have. Yeah. And so my friend Hettel, she actually, her family owns a family farm in Surat, which is the region my grandma's from. And so it was really, really special. She has been sharing all different varieties of seeds from her family farm.

And her family has been stewarding these seeds for like six generations. So the bottle gourd seeds that I'm actually selling through you guys is originally from her family farm. So I've been growing that variety out. And then I'm growing this type of bean called surti papri. Yes. I got some seeds that I brought for you, not knowing if you had it from Nita, my friend Nita. Aw. Yeah, that's my grandma's favorite vegetable and such a hotly debated topic among my customers because there's two types, there's two varieties of popri. There's Serti Papri and Valer Papri. And Serti Papri is like shorter and then Valer Papri is longer. And I'm honestly not even sure

like what the big fuss is all about, but my customers are like, you only have Serti Papri Can you grow Valer Papri? I'll wait. I'll come back once you have the plants. And so I really do have customers who come back, they used to come back to my farmer's market every week and be like, is the Valer Papri ready? Yeah.

So now I make sure to have both varieties because people are very picky, but I love that. You know, like I couldn't ask for anything more. Like I want people to have preferences and I want them to freely share their preferences with me. And yeah. But yeah, I grow the Surti Papri just because it's like my grandma's favorite vegetable. And then I'm growing the Kalonji, which is like such a medicinal seed. And I actually grew up like in Hindi and in Urdu.

The way they say it is if you translate the way they say it, it means onion seed. And so growing up I always thought it was onion seeds because that's how what they how they call it. And then it wasn't until I started the nursery, and I was like, I want to grow onion seeds. And then I looked it up and I was like, this is not, these aren't onion seeds. These are like this beautiful flower. Like, what? And yeah, the first year I grew it, I was just so enamored by it. And I still am.

Like, the flowers are just so mesmerizing and the way the bees pollinate it are so mesmerizing. Yeah, many people listening may know it as Nigella. And how did you find the right one? I kind of just found the seeds online for this variety and was like, this is good, and I wanted to grow it. And so, yeah, I've been growing that variety now for a couple of years, but never, this was the first year that I grew it in such a large scale to be able to offer it to you guys. But, yeah, I brought my grandma a jar of it because she'll have seven seeds every morning. And she believes that seven seeds every morning, or sorry, seven to 11 seeds every morning will ward off any and all diseases. And this is the same one that many people call black seed, right?

Yeah, yeah. So in different parts of, like, Iran, for example, they call it black seed or black human. And it's used in pickles, like where they pickle eggplant with it. So it's interesting how varied the uses are. I think I've also had it in Ethiopian breads. Yeah, I could see that because we sprinkle it on non. I'm sure most people have had it without even knowing it because it's just like that black seed that's on non.

And I believe it's the black seed of black seed oil, which is very popular with Muslims as like a heel all. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, that's what we call it, like a heel all. so super medicinal and yeah and I just love that and it's so easy to grow and and beautiful flower like why not just why not just incorporate it and a couple follow-up questions one could you mention how you like to use the lauki or did you call it duty duty yeah typically what you do with the duty is you like just throw it into different curries and like meat dishes with

like a sauce because it absorbs a lot of that flavor from the sauce. But more recently, and I don't know if this is super traditional, but more recently my grandma has been taking like a cheese shredder and like shredding the duty and then shredding potatoes and then mixing it all up together and adding spices and then like baking it until baking them in little like patties. And like I actually feel really bad because she'll make like a whole tray. and I'll eat the whole thing and leave her like two. And I can't stop myself. It's like the one food where I'm like, I'm so sorry.

And then I just keep eating it. And yeah, it's so delicious. God, that's making me very hungry. I know. Me too. And this is the same species for people listening that it makes the birdhouse gourd, which I see hanging over there. Like it's an African species.

It's the same as cuckusa, the Italian long gourd. it's the same as the one people used to make instruments and bowls and cups. And so it's, and I'm sure there's other people who grow it as well that I'm not remembering right now. I guess it speaks to, you know, probably thousands of years of trade between South Asia and Africa during the monsoon exchange. No, it's actually one of the oldest cultivated vegetables of human history. It's been cultivated for over 3,000 years. And like you said, it originates from Africa, but came to India and has become such a staple of our diet in India.

And then it has such a wide, like a versatile usage. Like, yeah, like if you let it stay on the vine, it all turn really, really hard. And you can use it to carry water, which I think, like, was traditionally what they did with it, with some of the fruits. Like, they would transport water in it. And then also make musical instruments. And, yeah. A lot of my customers know it by Opo or Loki. There's so many different words for it.

And it's definitely one of the most cherished plants among my customers. Awesome. I know you work really closely with my really good friend, Kristen Leach, and particularly around seeds. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that. And for those of you who don't know, we did one of our earliest episodes with Kristen. And she's been such an amazing kind of thought partner

and inspiration for me and the work that we do. And so I just would love to take an opportunity to shout her out if you don't mind. Yeah, definitely always down to shout out, Kristen Leach. Yeah, I remember listening to that episode back in the early, early days of my nursery and finding so much inspiration in the way that she was so steadfast in growing her Korean heritage crops and has been such a huge inspiration in my work. and she's just always been so determined to keep her Korean heritage plants alive and thriving and has always been so closely connected to her community by receiving community feedback.

And she's so methodical with how she grows and saves these seeds. And so I've learned so much, like, it's not apparently growing seeds. It's not just like grown a few plants and saving the seeds. Like, I've been really lucky to be part of her seed fellowship this past year, so she created presentations and we had monthly phone calls about how to properly save seeds for, like, more genetic diversity. And it's also fun because she gets equally as excited about my seeds as me, like, we'll nerd out about the Tulsi basil, and she's so excited about it.

And it's, like, so fun to just have another person who's, yeah, down to nerd out about different species and, like, days to maturity and flowering and all of those sorts of things. Because that's kind of a farmer's dream, right? Like, you can't really talk to a non-farmor about days to maturity. Yeah. So some of your seeds will they be, I think I saw they'll be in the second generation seeds, catalog too? Yeah. So I'll be offering five varieties with second generation seeds, a tomato, okra, pepper, eggplant, and Tulsi basil. Awesome. Which Tulsi do you grow? I grow the purple leaf variety Krishna Tulsi. Yeah, that one is the most medicinal. And I found that my customers also want that

variety more than any other variety for spiritual purposes so yeah beautiful I guess my last question will be how do you think about the future of your work what's coming up for you in the near and far futures I feel like I just want to get more rooted in community like all of this could never be done just by myself I want more people to be interested in farming and and food sovereignty and it's so beautiful even to just be able to share my little plot of land with another grower that feels really special and I want to include more people in that

you know like I want to have one day a place where people are growing seeds and vegetables and herbs from all over the world and we're doing it together you know like it just feels more fulfilling when there's more input more community involved with all of this and I would love you know like for one day

there to be this little community at least for me personally like my own personal interests of South Asian growers like we're all sharing knowledge and sharing seeds and and connecting with each other and yeah so yeah definitely just more community more interest in food sovereignty more getting more rooted in our own cultural practices and traditions and celebrating that too because it's worth celebrating you know beautiful as we sit under this disco ball yeah here's to more community and more celebration thank you so much for this conversation and for all the ways you're doing such beautiful important work oh thank you and thanks for taking your second annual visit to the nursery

got to make this a tradition absolutely Thank you so much to Z. Lelani for taking the time for this lovely interview. And thank you for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and their people with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone you love and subscribe to our show in your favorite podcast app. Thank you also for helping our seed keeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review and also ordering some seeds, t-shirts, and more from our website. True loveseeds.com. And again, if you'd like to support our podcast for $1 or more monthly,

please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. Thank you.